Rhodes’ didn’t understand that because these were subconscious cries for pain made it worse. Couldn’t they feel it? It was more than pain, more than suffering. The words and memories were ripe with desperation, desperation he was all too familiar with, his memories trying to drag him back to his mad dash through the hedge but he had to keep focus and hold onto the other memory. Their voices were distant, a ringing filled his ears as they dropped their emotional bombs on him. They were right. He knew that of course, but it didn’t stop the caring.
As the dream was shattered, he felt his own heart break, felt the poisonous thoughts that caused one to lash out at others and cast them aside. They were all victims of circumstances outside their control, he couldn’t blame them for what happened. Not them, Not Bobby, not anyone, if there was a Gentry pulling the strings. James didn’t stand, his eyes closed as he pulled on the memory and let it filter through him.
Through the torrent of the dream the first thing he stabilized was the sun and it’s warmth. That was the keystone of the dream, that light, that warmth that would remind them of that one day of happiness, that one day of joy. To give them a beacon to run to, a light to guide them. He took another breath and focused as he pulled from his own memory to recreate it in painstaking detail but the important details were the emotional resonance of the dream. That echo of happiness, of joy, of one worry free day of freedom.
7 successes
“It needs glamour to hold it in place! Give them something that’s their own, give them a way back!” The sun had melted the tears on the Sovereigns cheeks letting them flow freely once more as they dropped to the ocean and were pulled away with the tide. His words were pleading, almost desperate as he kept pouring everything he had into the recreation. They had done the math as well as he had. Three lives for dozens was an easy trade, as was one for three if it had to be made.