There was a lot in that tone. A year and a half's worth of complicated that hit Juno square in the chest. He thought, not for the first time, that he had been the biggest damn idiot on all of Mars to leave Peter Nureyev. Everything that had followed, the whole sordid mess with Ramses-or-Jack and the THEIA and Oldtown and Newtown and thirty-five years worth of bullshit, could have been avoided if he'd just let himself be selfish that once.
Because leaving with Nureyev would have been the height of selfishness. Sure, Nureyev thought he loved him, but he loved the handsome, quippy crackshot detective. Once he saw all the ugliness underneath that, and without the handsomeness or the crackshot to back it up, he'd regret it. But part of Juno had wanted to hold on to him, because he loved Peter Nureyev in a way he'd never loved anyone. Not anyone he got to keep, anyway. And that was why he'd let him go. Because he couldn't be selfish. Not with Nureyev. He couldn't put him through the trauma that was loving Juno Steel, professional disaster.
But god had he missed him.
"I survived," he said with as much of a shrug as he could manage when he still ached all over. Stevie had been by and healed the worst of it, but he hadn't let her fix everything. He needed physical reminders, so he knew it was real. Ramses...no...Jack, because he was Jack under all of it. Jack had always had a way of getting into his head and convincing him of things he knew weren't true. Even dead, the man had a kind of power. He needed to know that what he'd suffered was real. He could live with a few bruises.
He'd lived with worse.
He flinched at Peter's tone, knowing it was warranted but hating it all the same. God, did he want to tell him, but he knew Peter had things he needed to say and he was worried that if Peter knew what had happened, he'd try to just let go of all that anger and hurt, and that wouldn't be healthy. They needed to deal with what had happened that night a year and a half ago first.