I don’t know if the boy was looking for me when he ventured into his own subconscious or if our meeting was merely accidental. I don’t know if he understood what I was, what I could offer, and what I would take in return. What I do know is that he was angry. Not the childish sort of anger, the kind that fades away with a few nice words and some candy. They had tried that.

This was rage. This was hate. The kind conceived in the white halls and dark rooms of the hospital. The kind that grew every time they smiled and danced around the questions about his family, about his sister. Every time they put a pill in his food or a needle in his arm and sent him to sleep.

The kind that brought him to me, one way or another, when he saw what they were doing to her.

What I gave him was the strength he needed to save her. The strength he needed to inflict upon them the same atrocities they’d put her through. I offered him a way out, and in return….

I took everything that he was.