I. What is Good
(A look at what made, broke, and remade the good doctor)
Once, there was a boy who found what is Good.
He believed Goodness was blonde, female with vibrant, golden tiger eyes who giggled and grabbed with chubby fingers at an eggplant he brought just for her.
He believed Goodness ought to be protected at all costs - even if that meant nourishing her grumbling tummy while his own gnawed at what little flesh remained on his starved bones.
He gave Goodness all he had - body heat shivering under a threadbare blanket as he soothed her with snatches of Baltic lullabies against the bitter cold.
He screamed when Goodness was torn from him and butchered, reduced to nothing but meat to consume and milk teeth in a latrine.
He did not believe in Goodness anymore. For where could it exist in the bellies of broken men?
But here, in the dungeons of Inferno, Goodness comes back to him.
Not quite as before, auburn rather than blonde, but with the same tiger eyes - bright like icy salt and silver light rather than liquid gold.
And bubbling with a vibrant determination to do right in a world gone so wrong.
Did he see it? Would he still believe in such Goodness? Even as he taunted her with crimes committed by and to him?
Would her plea to save and protect at all costs remind him that he once tried to do the same?
Even if he failed and prophesied she would too; would he believe in her, all the same?
Because, maybe, that is the only way out, to believe in something beyond the bounds of one's own experiences, even if he deems it impossible and improbable.
Maybe, it is the only way to truly take flight…and reclaim the boy who lost what is Good.