C

For a few moments, Henry says nothing. Finally, he asks, in a voice thread: "And how… did that make you feel?"

Eleven opens her mouth. She closes it. Her lips tremble. The words don't come…

"Horrible," she finally blurts out. "I felt horrible. I felt... I felt like he just didn't understand… What I did was wrong, I get it, but… But I felt like I had no choice at that moment. And he… He looked at me as if he feared me, as if… As if I were a monster. He made me feel like one."

Sobs rise up her throat and she feels like she's drowning in what seems an imminent collapse.

"Oh, Eleven…" Henry approaches her slowly. Carefully, he cups her cheeks in his hands and forces her to look at him; she doesn't resist. "Follow my breathing, okay?" Eleven nods. "Breathe in… Like that, deeply, very good, hold your breath for a moment… Now breath out… Yes, like this, that's perfect…"

After a few minutes, her lungs and heart still hurt, but at least that feeling of unbeatable desperation has subsided to give way to a more manageable discomfort.

"Do you feel better?" he asks without letting go of her; she nods in response. "Okay, can we keep talking about this or would you rather stop?"

She hesitates for a moment but ends up nodding again: she is the one who asked for his help, after all.

"Alright." Finally, he frees her face; Eleven can't help but miss the warmth of his hands on her skin. "Well, if I'm being honest with you… I think this is a lesson that should be learned sooner rather than later."

"What… lesson?" she asks, and internally congratulates herself for sounding just a little breathless and not on the verge of suffocation like minutes ago.

Henry's smile is sad. "That we are all monsters to someone, Eleven. And sometimes it's the person you care about the most."

His words are a bucket of cold water that leaves her stiff. "Henry—"

But he just turns away, turning his back on her and heading towards the center of the room. She follows him with her eyes; in her lap, Poe opens his eyes again and observes the scene with a disinterest typical of cats.

"Sometimes," he continues, as if he hadn't heard her, "we are forced to make necessary choices that may seem terrible to others."

Eleven can't keep quiet about that: there's no way she's going to let her silence be misinterpreted as acceptance: "But what you did was horrible."

The silence that hangs over both of them is tense. Eleven feels like she is about to fall back into that desperate abyss from minutes ago and…

And she wishes Henry were right next to her, not across the room.

He, for his part, turns silently towards her. His expression is inscrutable, a perfect white sheet.

"Of course, I understand how you see it that way," he admits. "But, tell me… Isn't that the exact same way Mike sees your actions?"

The air has suddenly become heavy, impossible to breathe. "It's not… the same."

Henry laughs softly: it is a dry, joyless laugh. He looks up at the ceiling for a moment before returning his eyes to her.

"Of course it's not." His tone is ironic. "It never is, is it?"

"You killed—"

"I know what I did!" Henry protests. "And I will keep on telling you, Eleven, until my very last breath: it was necessary."

Henry purses his lips and averts his gaze to fix it on the closet at the side of the room. Eleven can't stand it anymore: she needs to get it off her chest, she needs to tell him…

"Henry, I want to forgive you. I believe… I believe in forgiveness… But you—"

"And yet, I do not want your forgiveness. I do not need it."