@afflatui ❤️’d for a starter many moons ago for Alessa
Soteria was considered a kind & humane form of psychiatric treatment that gave patients autonomy over their own treatment. The right to choose whether or not they wish to participate in medicinal therapy & otherwise possess all the rights of any other person, with gentle concern for their health provided. This concept was named after the greek goddess Soteria, who presided over safety, salvation & deliverance for those in need. It was supposed to be in direct contrast to the norm of psychiatric "care", which had long since been a brutal, authoritarian, wicked & stifling for those unfortunate enough to suffer was given to them as "treatment."
So then didn't come as a surprise to Henry that a man like Dr Brenner would take & pervert such a concept. It was cowardly, conniving men like him who fashioned themselves responsible for upholding the system of intolerance & oppression toward anything they viewed as different, hence a threat to their own narrow views of the world & what it could & should be. After all, if the world were ever to move beyond their shallow capabilities & comprehensions, where would they be ? Powerless, irrelevant ... Obsolete.
"Papa" at least wanted him to believe this "Soteria" of his a kindness. But he knew his only other option was death. To be snuffed out like an unruly animal who threatened to bite one too many times. An insult to his intelligence, but he had little choice than to play along. After all he knew the reason Papa couldn't allow his death was because he had, so far, failed to replace him. This was no matter of kindness nor sentimentality. It was simply ... Essential.
But though Papa could control him while he was conscious, & keep an eye on his every movement in the waking world, the same could not be said about the constellations of existence within the reaches of his mind. These were places that Papa could never see, nor could he follow. & so, at night, when he lay his head upon his pillow, he was offered an escape from this prison; there, between conscious & unconscious, existed a door to some type of astral plane, a dream-realm that he was called to where he had found that he was not alone.
In this world, there was a girl. She was not one of Papa's experiments, at least not that he knew of. Her presence begs questions. Were the others before him ? Perhaps different sectors ran different experiments with different subjects, something that would not be too far beyond the reaches of the imagination. Nevertheless, the last time he saw her was an accident on his behalf, but he was looking for her this time & he had found her just as he had hoped. This world between dreams & reality was strange, bright, but never entirely lucid. Here she seemed to sit protruding from a mist of consuming white fog. He could see only her & the disembodied swing set she sat upon though as unreal & devoid of other features, it all were he could traverse it as simply as one step after the other, just like anywhere in the waking world.
He approaches her with curiosity, head tilting slightly to the side as he comes to stand before her. ❝ Hello ? You're able to perceive me, aren’t you ? ❞ he asks tentatively, coloured by his hope & an underlying mirth as he is almost assured this was not a solo experience; a part of his perception, in fact, told him that perhaps she was hoping to meet him here too, which would mean she had powers much like his own.
