For as long as I can remember, my father's way of punishing me was to hit me.

Broke a window?

Slap.

Swore in front of Grandma?

Punch.

Stay out late?

Kick.

Got attitude?

Well, you get the idea. Most people would say he's a bad father. I never did think that, even from a young age. I just thought he was doing his job as my father, teaching me what I needed to know so that I could survive out in the real world. Sure, it wasn't the way most people taught their children. It was harder and harsher.

But then I'd become harder and I'd be able to withstand more.

There was one lesson that I learned when I was really young. I must've been eight when he taught it to me.

He taught me that love was a weakness. That love would get you killed.

And from an early age, I accepted that. I knew that because my mother had died when I was a baby in the place of my father and she had done that because she loved us. Love caused her downfall.

With that knowledge, I accepted that love was dangerous. It was no better than a murderous maniac and every time I even begun to forget that lesson, I would look at my arms, covered in purple and green and yellow bruises and immediately know that my father was right.

Because it had taken thirty years for my father to learn that lesson. And I had gotten it for free at eight years old.

I never questioned it, even as a child.

Until I met Zoe.

Immediately, I knew there was something different about her. I knew that if I wasn't careful, I would come to fall in love with her, to be wrapped around her finger like a ring.

So at first I distanced myself from her, pretending that I couldn't bring myself to trust her. But when she refused to go with the Grand Master, and when she jumped between Frank and that laser, I couldn't keep pretending to hate her guts.

So I didn't distance myself from her anymore, but I made sure to put walls up between us. It was easy, at first. I'd been putting walls up for years, so I had that practise to fall back on.

But Zoe . . . I'd been right when I said she was different. She didn't full on attack the walls I put up for myself, to protect me. She didn't try to destroy it with her bare hands, like most girls did.

She tried to get me to pull them down myself.

And eventually, I started to succumb to her insistence and what she wanted. Each day, I'd slowly remove one brick.

And I pinned it all down to her innocence. She'd had a difficult life too, but she dealt with it differently. She dealt with pain in an entirely different way. When I was in pain, I pushed people away. Zoe did the opposite. She sought comfort from the people she trusted, from her best friends. I'd always thought she was pretty, but when I saw how beautiful how soul was, it just made her outside beauty even more so.

It was just after the incident with William Todd-Williams when I told my dad that I was in danger of falling in love with Zoe. Even as I was telling him, I knew I was making the worst mistake of my life.

And I was right.

When I finished, he shoved me off the chair I was sitting on so I fell on my back onto the wooden floor, staring up at him as he roared, "STUPID BOY! WHAT DID I TEACH YOU?!"

"Love is dangerous." I replied softly.

"AND YET YOU LOVE HER!"

"Yes."

And then he proceeded to give me the worst beating I'd ever gotten.

He shouldn't have wasted his energy.

Because after that, I started to fall harder and faster than before.

The day that Steinberg tried to put Mastermind's consciousness into Zoe's body, I must've removed about two layers of bricks from my wall in my effort to get to her.

It was only after did I realise what I'd done, what was happening to me. I realised that I had fallen for her, so I started to distance myself from her again.

But it was harder this time because every part of me wanted to hold her, wanted to kiss her.

But I couldn't do that.

I just couldn't.

"Are you okay, Dan?" Zoe asked gently. It was about two weeks after the events of Sternum and I'd been distancing myself from her ever since, making sure to never to be alone in the same room with her, unless we were on a mission.

Until now.

I stopped my relentless pounding of the punching bag in front of me, focusing on the throbbing pain in my knuckles.

"Yeah. I'm fine." I told her, shoving the punching bag away, watching as it swung precariously.

"If you say – what the hell is that?" Zoe nearly yelled as I turned to face her. I glanced at her, seeing her eyes fixated on my arm.

Shit. I'd forgotten that I'd rolled my sleeves up.

I rolled my sleeve back down, so the ugly purple on my arm bruise was away from her sight. "It's nothing."

"It is definitely not nothing." Zoe said. She moved towards me, her green eyes an intensely dark colour. "Take your jacket off."

"Zoe –"

She gave me a sharp look that silenced me immediately. Knowing there was no way out, I unzipped my jacket and shrugged out of it, watching the black material hit the floor, leaving my arms dangling my sides.

Zoe gasped in horror and grabbed my right arm, her fingers sliding gently over a particularly dark purple bruise. "How'd you get these?"

"The mission." I told her. I didn't even know why I was lying to her. Why was I lying?

"Our last mission was a week ago. These are only a few days old." Zoe said. I pulled away from her and she let my arm slip through her fingers as I bent down to retrieve my jacket.

"Where'd they come from?" Zoe asked again.

I sighed as I zipped my jacket back up, turning to face her. "You wouldn't believe me if I did tell you."

"You'd be surprised what I believe. If I didn't know better and you told me vampires existed, I'd probably believe you."

"Vampires did it." I told her, moving to her right and grabbing my drink bottle.

"That's not funny, Dan." Zoe said, unamused.

"You're right, it's not." I replied, sitting on the floor. "I shouldn't make fun of the vampires. They'll probably come and murder us all now."

Zoe sighed and sat down in front of me and I felt my walls cracking, aching to be torn down. Zoe reached out for my hands, but I pushed my damp hair out of my eyes and poured half the water in the drink bottle down my throat, so I would have something to do with my hands.

"Dan, I get it if you hate me after Sternum, but I can see that you don't. You've just been pushing yourself away. From me, from everyone. I've been trying to figure out why, but I can't. Why? Why are you pushing yourself away? And why won't you tell me where those bruises came from?"

I hung my head and took a deep breath. "My dad teaches me the only way he knows how. That's all you need to know."

Then I walked off, leaving her sitting there to ponder that.