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“That’s good, Doug. Take a minute. See your younger self. Really see him.”
“That’s me, alright” Doug stated, but he didn’t like what he was seeing. The boy he’d been looked so sad.
“He…I need a hug,” he whispered.
“Can you hug yourself, Doug?”
Doug scoffed. The dreams felt pretty damned real, so… Maybe. He could at least try.
He made his fingers reach down and he poked the boy.
Eyes that were too big looked back at him, and he could see the world’s sadness inside the black orbs.
How wretched was that? He wrapped a big, comforting hand around his boy-self’s shoulder.
“I’m touching…us.”
“Good. Tell him that he’s going to be alright.”
Doug liked that idea.
“We’re okay,” he told young Doug, and knowing what would make him, as an adult, feel peaceful inside, he reassured his juvenile self. “We did it, you know. You eventually got us out of here, and she was never able to touch us again.”
The boy didn’t speak, but he blinked a question that Doug immediately heard inside his heart.
“Yes. We’re going to be just fine,” Doug said. In his mind, he floated down and wrapped his warmth around the soul-deep cold of his youth. The longer Doug laid there, the more their tension eased, and closer they came to be the same. The same… He closed his eyes. Sleep might be nice.
“Doug. Don’t fall asleep yet, okay?”
Doug yawned and looked up, actually seeing Will. The filmy curtain that had been cast over his vision before was losing its grip, but not completely…
“He trusts me,” Doug told Will in wonder, still partially trapped in his dream as he hugged his younger self.
“You trust yourself.”
Doug blinked, and reality reasserted itself. He looked down where he still clutched Will’s hand, seeing the sinew and veins in his own forearm.
“It’s only old me, with you.” He stared, and realized that tears were running down his face, wetting his cheeks and running into his collar. “I have muscles again.”
Will laughed. “You do. Which means you can protect yourself. Youandyour younger self. From this point on, neither of you are helpless anymore. Lotus no longer has any power.”
“But I’m crying.”
“Because you’re sad?” Will prompted. “Or maybe it’s…?”
“Relief,” Doug whispered out on a sigh that was balm to his soul.
Doug’s entire body softened. It felt like he was drifting on a warm breeze. “I’m going to burn the place down now, at least in my head,” Doug told his mentor.
“Have at it, my friend,” Will encouraged.
With a blink, Doug pictured his nightmare home bursting into flames.
It felt so right as it fell into ashes.
Before he let everything go, though, he made a point to mentally examine the child that he’d been, and noted that the tranquility he suddenly felt had extended to his childhood self. He carefully tucked that younger Doug carefully away inside his chest, and breathed a sigh of relief.
He couldn’t remember a time when he’d felt so whole.
