XXX

Henry opens his eyes and looks at Eleven, who remains silent in front of him. From a rational point of view, he has always known that, for her young age, she's already gone through too many traumatic events. However, there is something different about inhabiting her skin—even if only for a few moments—and living part of what she has lived, rather than simply knowing.

Without letting go of her trembling hand, Henry kneels in front of her again.

"Eleven." His voice is soft, the way he speaks to her whenever he notices that she is retreating into that dark place where he cannot follow her. "Are these nightmares preventing you from sleeping?"

The girl nods mechanically, defeated. Henry lightly squeezes her fingers.

"I think there's something you should know." He takes a seat next to her. The mattress sags under his weight and Eleven ends up sliding involuntarily against his arm. Henry considers it a good omen that she doesn't flinch at the contact. "That day," he confesses, "I was planning to help you escape. Nothing else."

Eleven looks away. Henry knows that both his own opportunistic personality and the general feeling of resentment already ingrained in the girl's mind are working against him.

"I know what you're thinking," he tells her then: "That I've been manipulating you all along. I don't blame you for thinking so; I would have arrived at the same conclusion.

"But the truth, Eleven, is that if you had followed my advice and went down the sewer I showed you, without my telekinetic powers, I would have been unable to stop you. I wouldn't have even tried: I would have let you go."

Eleven turns her face to look at him with distrust etched in her eyes. Henry doesn't take offense—he simply smiles sadly at her.

"I guess I don't have the right to feel hurt," he murmurs, and it's not a lie: her not trusting him must be one of the few things that can actually make a dent in his perennial apathy.

After a few moments, she finally speaks: "I thought about it… a lot." She gulps to try to ease the pain in her throat; Henry can't bring himself to suggest for her not to speak in this situation. "And… you wanted me to remove…"

"The soteria," he completes for her.

Eleven nods and continues: "I wasn't going to… make it alone… We both… knew it… So…"

"You underestimate yourself," Henry contradicts her, chuckling. "And you overestimate Papa, as well."

The girl frowns, her brown gaze a clear mirror of her inner confusion.

"If you had escaped alone, everything would have been much safer for you," he explains. "Yes, Papa would have sent search parties to bring you back… but once you overcame that, sooner or later, he would have given up.

"His project was just too valuable for him to admit he wasn't in complete control of his subjects; after all, while you were certainly the most powerful among them, with so many other guinea pigs available, he wouldn't have thrown all his resources into retrieving a single stray subject. No, Eleven; maybe if you had been the only remaining test subject he would have chased you to the ends of the world.

"But with all those other specimens there, at his fingertips? He would have thought you dead sooner or later, and you would have been free."

"Maybe… I would have died for real."

"No," he vehemently denies, squeezing her hand a little tighter. "You would have been hungry and cold and would have faced all kinds of hardship before you were able to become stable, but dying? No, I assure you; I know you, Eleven… One way or another, you would have survived."

Eleven, now, stares at him. Henry doesn't flinch at the silent deliberation in her eyes. The verdict, however, doesn't take long: it comes in the form of a thick tear that runs down her cheek from her right eye.

"Oh, Eleven…"

But just when he reaches up with his free hand to intercept that wayward teardrop, the lights flicker as he feels an invisible power freeze his arm in place. Although his instinctive reaction is to impose his own abilities on her, Henry knows that he is not in danger and forces himself to remain calm.

Maybe that will show her his good intentions.

"Why… did you kill… them?"

The irregular way her chest expands and compresses tells him that her stuttering isn't just due to her sore throat. Realizing that she's let him go, Henry lowers his arm and bites his bottom lip. Is this strange sensation nervousness? He has felt fear, anger, sadness, pride, desolation, even… but this? Nerves? It's new. Or, at least, it's been so long that it feels that way.

It's… refreshing, in a way.

"Because," he admits, "Papa wouldn't have let me go."

"You said… that he had many other…"

"Yes," he agrees. "But my case… was different. Because of who I am. Because of what I did. Because of what he knows I'm capable of."

"But… the other… children…"

"Weapons," Henry sighs, noticing a sudden weariness that seems to have taken over his entire being. "All of them: they were nothing but potential weapons. Weapons with which to chase me… no, chase us, Eleven, had we escaped together and had they remained alive."

"They were children," she snaps at him. "Like me."

"No, not like you." He can't hide the outrage in his voice. "No, I've told you: you are superior. You are…"

"Just… another girl," she stubbornly insists.

Henry gapes at such daring impertinence. However, he tries again: "No, Eleven, you don't understand, the thing is—"

"But—"

"Eleven." This time, overwhelmed by frustration, Henry takes her by the shoulders. "You don't get it. My job was to know everything. To know everything about you, about those other… children." He uses that word more to appease her than because he truly considered them such. "You don't know, Eleven, what they were capable of.

"You and your powers challenged the perfect mold that Papa had devised, but the others? No, the others were nothing more than puppies happy to wag their tails after him, happy to become his hunting dogs, his rabid dogs, even…

"And do you know what's the only way to deal with rabid dogs, Eleven? Do you?"

She, stiff under the weight of his hands, slowly shakes her head.

"You put them down, Eleven. Put. Them. Down."

"No, they…"

"Maybe you cannot yet understand it," Henry retorts before she can say more. "It's fine: you are still little. But five, ten, twenty years from now, Eleven… you will wake up peacefully in your bed, happy and free, and there will be no one, not Papa, not Two, nor any other threat waiting for the right opportunity to subject you to their designs or kill you off in case you refuse to be at their feet.

"And that day, Eleven, when you go downstairs to have your favorite meal for breakfast, to read the book you left halfway through the day before, to continue the drawing you started the night before, that day, Eleven, you will thank me."

Eleven's lips tremble. Henry keeps his eyes on her face, determined to make her understand.

"There will be… no one… to order me around or… hurt me…"

"No," Henry agrees with a relieved smile: she's finally, finally got it. "That's what I'm trying to tell y—"

And then, she disarms him with just four words.

"No one," Eleven mutters, "except you."

Henry removes his hands from her shoulders as if she had hit him.