Eloise smiled gently until the tumblers in her bedroom door clicked into place. Then the smile vanished as if it had never been there in the first place. Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the door and took a moment to just breathe. Something’s wrong with me… she thought morosely. She should be happy; all of her best friends had dropped everything to be with her at a moment’s notice. Most people can’t say that. She should feel blessed to have such great friends and she did. But… But she still felt disconnected, the sensation having grown worse since the unnecessary intervention that they’d orchestrated.

Sighing in frustration, Eloise pushed off the door and made her way over to her bed. She folded back the rich red and purple fabric of her top comforter and the deep purple sheet before she shimmed out of her pajama pants, not liking the feel of them against her sheet, before sliding into her bed. Turning onto her right hip, Eloise uncapped her bottle of prescription pills, tipping some into her open palm. The pile of pills stood out against her skin, the seafoam color oddly beautiful as she stared down at twenty little capsules. It would be so easy…

As if she could hear her friend’s thoughts, Sarah began to sing lightly in the living room (no doubt using her iPhone to lull herself into sleep as was her habit) and Eloise shook her head. She put all of the pills but two back into the orange bottle. Popping the two remaining capsules into her mouth and sipping off the bottle of water that she kept on the nightstand, Eloise slid down into her bed, smiling softly as she gazed at the family portrait that was kept by her bed.

“Night Mom, night Dad, night Dustin,” she whispered before turning off the lamp on her nightstand. It took about half an hour for the drugs to kick in, but soon enough, she was drifting off to sleep. It was, however, not a peaceful sleep.

The smell of gasoline was overwhelming as Eloise scrambled for the clip of her seatbelt. Her fingers kept slipping, however, not allowing her to free herself. “Please!” She screamed, “Please help!” Her head hurting both with a pounding and stinging sensations, but she was distracted by the watering of her eyes as the scent of gasoline in the air. I have to get out…I have to get out… She fumbled over the button to free the buckle of her seatbelt yet again, as soon as she attempted it though, there was a hand gripping her wrist hard enough to bruise.

She raised her eyes fearfully, already knowing what she’d see, and indeed it was what she expected. Her brother’s head was turned toward her, his dead eyes still glossed over and yet somehow looking at her at the same time. “You,” he croaked, every moment of his jaw causing his skin to decay and fall off with every word he spoke, “you should have died.”

“Dustin,” she choked out, suddenly feeling woozy and weak, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“It should have been you. You don’t deserve life.”

“Dusty, please.” A cough tore roughly from her throat as her hands still scrambled to tear herself free, “Don’t say that, please.”

Her vision was blackening at the edges, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t look away from her brother’s decaying face, not even as she heard the glass in her window breaking, “You’re just a waste of space.”

It wasn’t until the belt holding her into the upside-down seat gave away that Eloise noticed someone was outside the car. Expecting to see the masked gaze of a firefighter, as she indeed had on that day, she was surprise to find herself looking up into Vlad’s face as he yanked her from the car. It was confusing. He doesn’t belong here. This isn’t how this goes…

Thea laid down in her bed, weary as always of late of going to sleep, but she knew Malcom was right. She couldn’t risk being completely unresponsive in case Ra’s al Ghul decided to  go on the offensive about this whole killing them thing. Still, not taking her pills made her nervous; it had been a week already and nothing had happened, but it still could. She remember what it was like to go to sleep in her own bed and wake up in various places: outside Oliver’s bedroom door, outside on the driveway, and in the most memorable insistence, in the rain on the dock where the Gambit had once been docked. She really didn’t want to start that again.

She sighed as she wrapped her arms around her pillow, waiting for sleep to take her away. It wouldn’t take her long to drift off after the day she’d had. Five minutes later and Thea was falling into her dreams, worries slipping away for the moment. After an about an hour of rest, Thea flipped back her covers from her legs before climbing out of her bed. She made her way across the room slowly, her feet dragging slightly on the carpet. Her fingers reached out and flipped the lock before she pulled open her door. Her feet scuffled across the floor as she made her way down the hallway, quiet in the silence of the night around her.

Thea reached out and took a hold of the doorknob, turning it slowly before stepping inside the room. Muscle memory led her up to the bed before she climbed up on it, her knees settling on the soft comforter before she laid down beside him. She wrapped an arm loosely around his waist before she molded herself to his side. His skin was so warm against her; it made her smile softly as she said in a soft sleepy sigh, “Ollie.”