For the first time ever, he finally has the missing pieces and actually knows the absolute truth of his life. He can't escape the memories, can't run away anymore. No longer attempting to forget or trying to temper them with insanely long hours of sleep deprivation while finding solutions to other people’s nightmares.

No.

This time the raw wound he had been trying to hide was torn open. A huge gaping hole that he just couldn't seem to close. Or hide.

It’s almost too much to bear.

How much anguish can one man endure?

How much before he breaks completely. Until he becomes an empty shell, without a soul?

Where're my mom and dad?

He remembers asking that question so clearly.

Remembers his hurt and pain and rejection.

Hello, my name is Sydney and I'll be taking care of you for a while...

He feels his heart pounding, just as it had that day when Sydney had walked into the room. This man with the kind brown eyes that were going to take care of him. He hadn't understood completely what those words would come to mean. Had no idea how drastically his life would change from loving hugs to the cold impersonal space in the Centre. He just knew he was scared and wanted to go home,

All he had known since that inauspicious day was the feelingof loss. The taste of fear. Of suppressing his memories of the kidnapping with made-up stories. Stories that he oh so much wanted to believe.

The alternative was left for nightmares. Hidden away in dark recesses of his mind.

Refuge

With one word Sydney had shown him how to hide himself. How to hide the bleeding ulcer in his heart. How to hide the wonderful memories of a time with family and Thanksgiving dinners. Childhood play.

How to bury the anger.

And the terror.

I'm burning...

Each and every sim he'd ever done. He can see them clearly, can see the movie of his life play out before him.

Hanging from a rope as he tries to save the little girl. Feeling the flames as they start to devour his flesh. His heart thudding in his chest as he tries to peddle harder, faster.

Mr Raines and Lyle killing him to test a heart drug.

The feel of the jumper cables blasting electricity through every nerve.

Jarod, there's been a plane crash...

And he'd believed that lie. He knows now that it was because he'd wanted to. Needed to. It made it easier to just not think about the alternative.

About his secrets he kept hidden away and never looked at.

That he was a stolen child. Torn from his loving family. That he wasn't free. Would never be able to leave the Centre.

So he made himself believe Sydney. And pushed the unbearable thoughts even further, deeper into his mind.

But despite all this, sometimes when he was laying in bed, exhausted after a day's sims, the thoughts would rebelliously return to taunt him. He would try and think of the day's problems, would do complex integrals in his head, anything but that. Sometimes it worked.

Until the day it worked too well and he did forget.

And he couldn't remember his mother's face.

Or what his house looked like.

Or playing outside with his father.

Sydney found him under the staircase, lost and confused.

Because he had really and truly had wanted to forget. Had wanted to take the easy way out of dark thoughts that had haunted him about the lies he had made himself believe.

But now that he had , he wanted his memories back. To taste them again. To feel them again. To wholly embrace all of them with all his senses.

To remember what love feels like.

What a mother's hug feels like.

You're a girl?

Then she'd come into his life. Unspoken. Unbidden.

An experiment.

For a short period in his childhood, he had a friend. Even if he never ever could bring himself to talk to her about what he did in the sims. Or of what went on with Mr Raines. She brought calmness and laughter and excitement into his dismal existence.

Suddenly he truly had someone he cared about.

She became his substitute for all the loss and loneliness and heartache his life had previously encompassed. With her he could concentrate on finding himself again. Deciding who he was.

Who he wanted to be. Not who they told him to be.

Not to be the lost little boy under the staircase with empty drawings of his mother's face around him.

He could be just Jarod.

Just himself.

And then she went away.

It tore his whole world apart... again.

Abandonment. Hurt. Depression.

He lost himself in the sims. He became better at finding until he realised one day he wasn't a child anymore.

With that realisation, came the fact that unless he did something he'd be stuck in the Centre forever. This happened the very day he'd happened to glance at a folder on Mr Raines' desk. The day he realised that the sims he'd been doing so diligently were being used to kill innocent people.

It was the day he started to rebel.

It was the day that led to Kenny's death.

"Jarod, can you hear me?"

It was weird. Even though he couldn't respond, couldn't answer; he could see the room. He was standing against the window, staring out towards the winter storm.

Miss Parker was standing by a chair, her face chalk white against the black darkness of her hair. He knew she was hurt, knew that standing there like that must hurt. He so much wanted to reach out to her but he found himself incapable.

He saw Angelo. His best friend all through the years of his stay in this hellhole. Angelo was staring right at him as if he could really see him. As if he could perceive his struggle to move.

His mother.

He didn't want to see her.

"Jarod..."

There was so much blood.

Blood that was on his hands.

He looked down. Could see it dripping from his fingers. Could feel the satin soft texture as itenfolded him completely.

Could smell it.

He knew the smell very well. Too well.

He'd lived with it for seven years.

It was his actual nightmares.

The ones he always had when a sim was done. When there weren’t those gruelling long nights or drugs to prevent it with exhaustive sleep.

When he felt at his most vulnerable.

He despised the feel of it.

"Listen to me..."

The snow was going to be thick tomorrow.

He remembers his first trip out of the centre. Of standing in the cold and catching the snowflakes as they swirled and swooped toward the ground. The only sound an occasional plop of snow falling from a nearby tree. Remember the icy feel of it on his face. On his hands.

He remembers how alive he'd felt.

The smell of snow in the air.

The bite of cold air in his lungs.

The taste of snowflakes melting on his tongue.

The clouds thick and woolly in the sky.

The crunch of snow under his feet.

"You need to remember..."

Every fist of the sweepers.

He remembers.

Fear.

Utter complete helplessness.

Desperation.

Pounding heart. Quickened breath. Clammy hands.

All this he feels.

Completely.

"...father's day"

He remembers every single day when Sydney wasn’t at the Centre.

To protect him.

All 237 days of them.

Today was no different.

Today Sydney

"I kept it"

What...

"I kept the card and every..."

Sydney?

"Father’s Day I took it out"

Something was happening.

He couldn't understand. It felt like he'd worn something heavy all this time.

The cold and hurt and rejection he'd been carrying all these years in the pit of his stomach.

Jarod, I'm sorry but I can't take this...

"I'd remember the little boy who gave it to me"

He had taken it.

Had saved it.

Had kept it.

His gift.

His love.

"You're my son as much as it was possible to have been then."

It was the words he had been waiting to hear his whole life.

It was the words

...

..

.

Refuge

"You have it..."

Refuge

"my son"