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His words weren’t aimed at me anymore. His vision went glassy, as if he was staring through me, seeing someone else, somewhere else, sometime long ago.

He staggered back, clutching his head with both hands, fists knotted in his hair. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” he screamed at the ceiling. “Don’t look at me like that! Don’t tell me it’s my fault! You left me, you fucking left me!”

He spun, kicking at an overturned chair. His boot splintered the wood. He was all ragged edges and broken glass and wild, psychotic energy.

I tried to crawl away, but he was on me again in a blur, grabbing my throat. His face hovered inches from mine. His grip trembled.

“Why do you always leave?” he whispered, voice splintered, childlike. “Why do you always run? I did everything right. Didn’t I? Didn’t I do everything you wanted? Didn’t I love you enough?”

He wasn’t Malakar. Not the man who chained me, beat me, raped me. Just a little boy, lost in the dark, begging the ghost of his mother not to leave him alone with the monster in the next room.

My terror was all-consuming. Paralyzing. For a moment, I thought he was going to squeeze, to break my windpipe, to kill me right here on the broken glass and bloodstained floor.

But some desperate, wild spark inside me seized control. Maybe it was survival. Maybe it was madness. I grabbed his wrist, forcing my voice out through the terror.

“I’m not her, Malakar!” I gasped, tears streaming down my face. “I’m not your mother! I’m Starla. Your darling, your bluebird. I’m here, I’m not leaving you. I’m not her.”

His hand faltered. His eyes flickered, lost. He looked at me, really looked, for the first time in minutes, like he was waking up from a nightmare. His grip loosened, then dropped away completely, leaving red marks on my throat.

He stumbled backwards, clutching his head, rocking on his heels. “No… no, no, no, not Starla. Not my bluebird. Not you. I didn’t mean—fuck, fuck, fuck—” His knees buckled, and he collapsed against the wall, head in his hands, whole body shaking.

I knelt where he left me, shaking so hard my bones rattled. My skin was bruised, blood crusted in the cracks. I should have run. I should have ran out the door, out the shattered window, away from this house, this man, this endless nightmare.

But I stayed. God help me, I stayed.

Horror curdled into something else. A twisted empathy, a sick understanding. I crawled closer, even though every instinct screamed to run. Get away, get away, get away. But I couldn’t leave him like this. Some deranged piece of me needed to see behind the mask. Needed to help the ruined thing huddled at my feet.

“Malakar,” I whispered. My hand reached out without my permission.

He recoiled at first, but then he folded, collapsing into me, his huge body crumpling into my lap like a broken child. He sobbed, great heaving shudders racking his frame. His face pressed to my thigh, his arms clinging to my waist, desperate, needy, ruined. The same hands that had tried to strangle me now clung like a drowning man to driftwood.

I sat there, pinned by his grief, terror and pity warring inside me. I’d seen the monster, but now I saw the child underneath. The little boy left alone in the burning house, the son whose mother left him with the beast.

In a way, I could relate. Mother left me, and my father was a beast. We were both broken and traumatized. The only difference was that his trauma turned him into a mentally ill killer.

I couldn’t unsee it. I couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there. He was a monster, a murderer, my captor. But he was also just a boy, broken before he ever had a chance.

My fingers hovered over his head before finally settling, trembling, in his hair. He wept harder, curling closer, mumbling things I couldn’t decipher. It was sick, so sick. I was sick.

The horror was still there, but it was braided now with something darker. Grief. Pity. The knowledge that I was comforting the man who’d tried to kill me, that my own trauma was reaching out to meet his in the dark.

His sobs slowed, grew ragged. He pulled back just enough to look at me. He looked so lost.

“I can’t believe I tried to hurt you, bluebird,” he whispered. “You’re so special to me. From the moment I saw you in that group home, I knew. We were meant for each other. I always loved you, bluebird.”

The words coiled around my heart.

Group home. The memory flashed. Two broken kids, orphaned by monsters, passing in the night. I looked into his eyes and saw the boy I’d tried to forget. All these years, the monster had known me, had chosen me, had loved me in his own sick, ruined way.

It was the most haunting thing I’d ever heard. Worse than the screams, the chains, the blood. He loved me. He’d always loved me.

I held him as he wept in my lap, and knew I would never be free. Not from him or the dark that we shared.

I tried to conjure his face in my mind. Though, it was blurred. Was he Milo? I could vaguely recall that boy. He was a tortured soul. He was my only friend in that place, before he left. We only crossed paths for a few months, then he turned 18, and was free. I was the one left behind. Just a broken fifteen year old girl, lost and alone.

No, it couldn’t be. Surely, he was lying? My captor couldn’t have been my friend. No. No, no, no.

But, the more I thought about it, the more I believed it. It made sense. His obsession with me, his past, how incredibly familiar he looked.