To right a life

CI

The way he looks at her after saying those words—"and yet I don't want your forgiveness; I don't need it"—, with his mouth half open due to indignation and his muscles tense at what he perceives as an offense, it hurts.

   She lowers her head. What was she supposed to answer to that?

   "If you don't regret what you did..."

   Henry snorts, boredom evident in his entire being. "How could I, when it was the price to pay for our freedom, for my life, Eleven? For yours?"

   Eleven keeps her gaze fixed on Poe's back, at his open wound. After a few minutes that seem to last an eternity, Henry speaks again: "Let's do a hypothetical exercise."

   She barely looks up, because she notices in the tone of his voice that he has somewhat regained his composure.

   "Henry—"

   "Humor me," he begs with a tense expression. "For once." After a brief pause, she nods. "Fantastic. Well, let's say I don't exist. Or maybe that I have died." Eleven makes a grimace at that possibility. "Or I've escaped before you, whatever. I'm not in the lab. Let's say, then, that you're still there, trapped, until now.

   "And one day, tired of years and years of abuse, you decide to escape. Do you really think, Eleven, that you could manage to do it without bloodshed?"

   She takes a deep breath. "I... I would try—"

   "That wasn't my question," Henry insists mercilessly. "Would you succeed to achieve it or would your attempt result in failure?"

   She closes her eyes, because it is something she has thought about several times. Something she hasn't dared to say out loud. She could, perhaps, accuse him of reading her mind and changing the subject, yet she knows that this is not the case: it is simply logical. It is only fitting that a former prisoner reflects on her past captivity and her precious freedom.

   So she decides to answer honestly: "No. I wouldn't... be able to."

   She finds Henry's victorious smile awful.

   "But," she then replies, vehemently, "I wouldn't have killed any children!"

   From the young man's calm expression, she realizes that this is not, in fact, the brilliant argument she believed it to be.

   "But you'd have killed the guards?" he asks with absolute calm. "The orderlies? Maybe Brenner, some of his colleagues?"

   Eleven looks down again. He doesn't insist.

   Because he knows she will answer. And he knows what she will answer.

   "Yes."

   He lets out a laugh.

   "Oh, you hypocrite."

   Although it humiliates her, she knows that Henry is right: that there is no scale on which she can equate the value of two lives and feel better for having decided to take some and not others. The fact, now discovered, remains there, visible, in the space between Henry's body and hers: with enough motivation, she is just as capable of killing as he is.

   She feels like crying out of shame.

   However, she hears Henry's footsteps approaching her. Her eyes fixate on his leather shoes, on his impeccable dark pants.

   She is unable to hold his gaze.

   Henry's voice is a whisper when he finally says: "But it's okay, Eleven, I understand you."

   That makes her look at him suddenly. Poe lets out a weak whimper at the force with which Eleven's fingers dig into his fur—she rushes to relax her grip so as not to hurt him.

   "You... understand me?"

   "Yes, I do. I know everything: that you came with me... because you feared for your life," he confesses in a low voice. "And, maybe, because you are that kind of person who wants... No, who hopes... to save others.

   "The type of person who does not flee at the sight of a dangerous beast, but instead chooses to tame it."

   The lump that forms in her throat is painful. He simply smiles with the same sadness that doesn't seem to want to leave him.

   "That you came with me in hopes of taming me, perhaps."

   "Henry—"

   He ignores her again. "I know, Eleven, that you think of me as a monster. And maybe you're right."

   Eleven shakes her head. "No, but I also—"

   "You haven't done anything," he reminds her gently. "It was all hypothetical." To illustrate his point, he brings his hands over hers, resting on the cat's back. "There is not a single drop of blood staining these hands of yours, Eleven."

   She considers telling him he's wrong, that just a few days ago blood was shed—Angela's, to be precise—but she knows that Henry isn't being literal.

   He, for his part, gently releases her and looks at the palms of his own hands. "Unlike mine."

   Before Eleven can even utter a word, Henry drops his hands to his sides and continues, his gaze back on her:

   "Regarding Mike... I can tell you that he's definitively wrong." Although she has always considered Henry to be a person who enjoys violence (even though he has assured her that he does not seek it for no reason), he does not seem to derive pleasure from the hurtful words he then utters: "However, I don't think there's anything, be it apologies, promises, or magic formulas, that can make him see you differently." More than sadness, it is resignation that now seems to nestle in his smile. "If there is anyone who knows it, it is me."

   She listens to what he doesn't say. Clearly.

   There's nothing I can do to stop you from seeing me as a monster.