Author's Note: I've been planning this story for a long time, I just lacked the inspiration to actually write it. But it finally came to me last night and I managed to pound this out in a solid twenty minutes. I'm actually quite happy with it. So, here you go. Enjoy.
He had fallen into a cycle, sitting in front of the television set, shooting up and feeling good. It was a ritual of sorts; one he performed again and again and again. How many times was this? How many times had he descended into that sweet, comatose high? He didn't know. It had started around the time he turned his back on everything – on his friends, his family. He had hurt them, he knew that, but the heroin made it acceptable, made it all right. The heroin made sure he didn't need them anymore, just the momentary rush and the rapture that followed.
And so, here he was again, in nothing but a pair of sweats, listening to the soft moan of an unavailable channel, able only to produce static and the ocean of white noise that swallowed him whole, and pulled him down, down, down into the reassuring abyss of euphoria. This was his promised land, his heavenly kingdom. His worries, his regrets, his world, evaporated into thin air and it was just him – him and the universe whose chaos no longer frightened him nor threatened him, but welcomed him in a mother's embrace and enlightened him. The heavy numbness that seized him, melted his bones down into his feet1, set him free. Here, in this transcendental chasm, he was Roy. Roy Harper. Not Red Arrow – not the cold, distant figure watching from rooftops, impatiently fingering his bow, ready to strike – the cruel nonpareil. And God, did Roy Harper feel good. Roy Harper was what he needed (though not necessarily what he wanted), his temporary escape. And then… and then it was back, back into the real world. The world that made him cynical, mistrustful, with all its lies and corruption. Yes, sobriety was painful, but it was then that he knew his worth. People needed him the way he needed heroin. But until then, until the red and the arrow called, he was drunk on this tranquil blue.