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This was it, Tommy decided. He’d finally, truly snapped.
There, standing in the doorway of this horrific cell, was the ghost that had been haunting his dreams and memories.
His panicked mind had conjured up this image of The Vision. Not even the one that everyone knew from books and old news broadcasts, the red one with the shining gold cape. No, this was the white Vision with the soulless blue eyes. The one that had only ever existed in Tommy’s own broken mind.
“No, no, no, please,” Tommy begged, his dread ramping up as the apparition stepped fully into the room. “No, you’re not real. You’re all in my head.”
He closed his eyes tight, heart beating loudly in his ears as his mantra deteriorated into panicked mutterings. He couldn’t think about anything beyond the sheer horror that this was the moment when he was finally going to tip over the edge. He was trapped and helpless already, now he was fully losing his mind as well.
“It’s alright,” a calm, measured voice broke through his terror.
The voice was familiar to him. So achingly familiar. Against his will, Tommy found himself opening his eyes and looking at the figure again. It was born out of an instinctive need to be close to that voice, to trust it.
What he saw wasn’t either version of Vision. Not the one the public knew, and not the one from his nightmares.
The face was as familiar to him as the voice, though. It was Vision, but it was the human one from his memories that couldn’t possibly really exist. It was the face of the man who had tucked him into bed at night and had comforted him after his dog died.
No, it couldn’t be. None of that was real. None of it had ever happened.
“I’m not here to harm you.”
He held his breath as gentle hands reached out and began snapping away his restraints. Solid, real hands. One of them landed on his arm and Tommy shocked himself by not pulling away from it. If anything, he wanted more contact, more reassurance that this wasn’t all in his head.
The man's hair was a different style than Tommy remembered it. Maybe a few more lines in his face, too. If this was all in his imagination, surely it would match his memories more exactly, right? Could that mean…?
“You’re safe now,” the maybe-Vision told him.
And, impossibly, Tommy found his panic starting to lessen. He wanted to believe him. He wanted to trust the part of his mind that already associated this face and this voice with safety.
“You’re real,” was all he could manage to say.
He wasn’t losing his mind. He wasn’t imagining this.
For the first time in his life, someone had cared enough to come save him.