Title: Forward (Sequel to Backwards)
Author: clhardi1
Rating: K+
Warnings: Mention of suicide attempt, depression and military missions (not too graphic)
Pairing: Olicity (Felicity centric in this chapter)
Genre: Angst
Word Count: 5,241
Fandom: Arrow (CW)
Summary: "She thought for a brief moment about how awful it was that they were celebrating the leveling of a building full of important technology and several security guards, but she shut that down quickly. She couldn't allow herself to go there, or she would go insane...again." It picks up just over a year after "Backwards".

Disclaimer: Oliver and Felicity do not belong to me, but they do belong with each other. Just making that happen on paper...or my computer, actually.

AN: Okay. Look what you all went and made me do! I specifically said that "Backwards" was a one shot, now here I am with another part a few days later! Honestly, writing multi chaptered fics scares me! I don't want to be one of those frustrating authors who start something and never finish or update once a year. But, everyone was so kind (insistent) in the reviews that I couldn't resist!

I was not sure if I should add a chapter to the last story or start a new one for each part. I really intended for "Backwards" to be a finished story with a sad ending. So if you like that kind of thing, don't read this! I also have no promises that anyone will like where this goes. I just know my plans are to make it have a happier ending than the first part.

Be warned, this chapter is Felicity centric and has several original characters. It picks up just over a year after "Backwards" so you need to read that first. Felicity may be a bit OOC, I'm not sure...But the idea is that she has been changed by her time with her fathers organization. I plan for the next chapter to be Team Arrow and Oliver centric. Again, I'm still looking for a Beta reader, so all mistakes are mine. Thanks so much for reading and reviewing! Hope you enjoy this chapter. Look for the next one next week sometime.

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"Go forward about ten feet and turn left." She spoke into the com.

"There is no left!" A voice replied.

"It should be just up ahead. I can see it, right here on the screen."

"I'm telling you there's nothing here. And security is right on our six, not to mention, this whole thing is gunna blow in just under 48 seconds." He was calm, like always, but urgent. This mission was cutting things very close. It was literally do or die right now.

"And I'm telling you, Agent Simms, there is an exit to the left. You're right on top of it...wait! Do you see a panel or a raised place on the wall? Like a button or a hidden notch?"

"No. We can't find...wait, here it is. Got it."

She heard the whoosh of a door sliding open and then him calling to the others, "We got it, boys. Lets clear out."

There was more shuffling and the sound of rapidly stomping boots. "Go, go,go!" She heard Simms calling out to his team.

"22 seconds till boom." Agent Dunccan, seated to her right, reminded her. She relayed the message to the team through her com.

"I can't see a thing down here. Are we almost out?" Simms questioned.

"20 yards." Felicity nervously tapped her pen against the ceramic coffee cup near her mouse. "Hurry."

"That's what we're doing sweetheart."

"I told you not to call me that!"

"We'll discuss it later, if I don't explode."

"You are not going to-"

And then there was a loud explosion as the coms cut out. It startled Felicity so badly, she knocked the half full cup of coffee off of her desk. Every one in the command room was frozen. After a few moments of silence, someone dropped a hand on her shoulder. She could tell from the cool touch of the wedding band on his finger that it was Agent Shay. He squeezed lightly offering her silent support as they waited.

She pulled up thermal imaging of the area and tried to reestablish communication. There were spikes of intense heat everywhere. The building had been leveled. But where was her team?

"Agent Simms. Are you with us?"

No response.

"Agent Simms, Sigma team," she said with more force, "Do you copy?"

Nothing.

Her voice shook slightly with emotion as she tried one last time. "Saul, please answer me."

But there was no response. Only silence.

Someone behind her cursed. She heard someone else to her right punch something in frustration.

Then there was a burst of static on the lines and a gruff voice, "You sound a little worried sweetheart."

The entire command room, including Felicity, released the breath they had been holding. She heard cheers in the background as Agent Shay slapped her on the shoulder in congratulations. All around her, people took a moment to fist bump and back slap each other in celebration of another successful mission.

She thought, for a brief moment, about how awful it was that they were celebrating the leveling of a building full of important technology and several security guards, but she shut that down quickly. She couldn't allow herself to go there, or she would go insane...again.

Then as quickly as time had frozen, it picked back up to double speed. People were calling for extraction teams and checking on status reports and getting ready for other missions that had been temporarily paused during the urgency of the moment.

Now that she could breath again, she laughed and shot back, "Worried? Not even a little bit worried."

"Right," she heard him tease back. Then she heard agent Burns, who they called 'Bear' add from the background, "I bet you wet your fancy computer chair, huh?"

"Gross! You guys are incorrigible. I knew I should have run you into a dead end. Hurry up and get back here before send the drone after you."

They all had a good laugh.

"See you in a few Smoaky." She heard Bear call out again.

"Alright. Be safe." She responded and disconnected the coms. The van was already dispatched to pick them up. They were about two hours out from the base, and it was already after midnight, but she would hang around to make sure they really were in one piece.

Her corner of the command room had mostly cleared out now. She could still hear some of the IT guys clicking away at their keyboards and a few shuffling feet, but most people had cleared out to go home for the night or to prepare for the next mission.

She leaned back in her chair and took a moment to breath. She felt like she hadn't breathed properly since this mission started two days ago.

It hadn't been their biggest mission or the most dangerous, by far. Sneak in, set charges, blow the building full of experimental technology for a competing company. Simple. But it was the most morally compromising mission she had been directly in control of in the last ten months. They were striking at night, so the onsite crew would be minimal, but there would be causalities. She didn't dwell on that thought. It was one of those details she had learned to push to the back of her brain and ignore. She had to.

Instead of thinking about the mission, she sat back and stared out the large window of the command center. It overlooked the computer work stations and the main sparing floor. On the far wall were large engraved letters that read CULP. This place had been her home for the last year.

She used to hate walking by those letters everyday. But with time, it had become almost bearable to look at them. And with more time, she had even started to feel a sense of duty and compassion for these people.

Oh she still hated it.

These were her captors. They wrecked her life. Well, they followed the orders her father gave to wreck her life..but still...

She sometimes felt like she should hate them out of obligation, but somehow along the way, these people had slipped into her heart. Completely by accident, but it was too late to turn back now.

She told herself it wasn't really CULP or their purpose that she cared about. She couldn't care less about the criminal organization her father had founded years ago. She wished he and all of it would just implode and leave her be. But these other people were not her father. And the more she got to know them, the more she realized that they didn't deserve to die. They were just doing what they were told. Following orders. It was the order giver, her father, who was to blame. That's who she really hated. So she did her best to keep that hate reserved for him, not the people who worked here.

It hadn't always been like this though. She remembered her first arrival a CULP like it was yesterday, even though it was over a year ago now.

Her father had forced her into this, but he was as un-present in his own organization as he was in her life as a child. She wasn't sure what she had expected from a deadbeat criminal lord, but it wasn't total ignorance. Deep down inside, the six year old that loved her daddy had come here with the thought that maybe the reason he had forced her to work for him was because he loved her and wanted to restore some sort of relationship with her. At the least, she thought they would talk, or argue even. But she had seen the man a total of three times in the past twelve months. Once at her initial arrival, and then two other times for required biannual organizational meetings. Maybe this was due to the fact that their first face to face had gone over very badly.

She had just arrived a head quarters. She was still raw and angry and devastated by leaving her boys behind. And she was full of hatred towards them all for hurting them the way they had, and then ripping her away. She wasn't very pleasant to him. Not that he deserved it. He had just had Digg and Roy tortured and forced her to leave behind her only family. She had walked right up to him and punched him in the face. She had probably hurt herself worse than him, but the look of shock on his regal face was worth it. Maybe he hadn't expected her to put up a fight. He had ordered some men to get her settled in and then show her around her new home. They deposited her few belongings in a comfortable looking room and commenced the tour.

She didn't see him again for quite a while.

She was then given a tour of the grounds by Agent Dunccan. Physically he wasn't much. Tall, a bit on the lanky side. Dark rimmed glasses and a tablet in his hand gave her the impression that he wasn't here for his combat skills. He was a serious fellow. Never smiled once on the tour, but she could tell from the way he spoke that he was both intelligent and capable. Probably a perfectionist, she thought, but every place needed one right? The UG, as the facilities were call, was built entirely underground. It was complete with a main command center, sleeping quarters, medical unit, mess hall, training centers, various upper personnel offices, interrogation rooms and holding cells. There was a secret entrance somewhere under a subway station in the heart of the city. Tunnels, most large enough for a van to drive through stretched out in 4 directions form the UG. She had been blindfolded when they brought her down, but she could tell from the sounds and the smells that they were no longer in Starling City. She thought they were somewhere in the North East, but she couldn't be sure. She was sure that it was impossible for an organization like this to exist so extensively with out government knowledge.

That meant that either her father had something to hold over the heads of high US officials, or that he did dirty work for them.

The organization, apply titled, was called Culpabilis. CULP for short. It meant guilty. Their motto, which was plaster all over the walls read in latin, Culpae poena par esto - Let the punishment be proportioned to the crime. In short, they were a retribution for hire group. If someone wronged you and you wanted to go around the law, they would handle it for you, if the price was right. They seemed to operate under the idea that their way of justice, no matter how wrong it was, was the right choice. They were the real law. And the people working for CULP fully believed in what they were doing.

Along this tour, she begrudgingly met several CULP operatives. Most of them weren't memorable, but one stuck with her.

Agent Saul Simms was the first person she had met down here who smiled at her. When he and agent Duncann had traded off, he slapped the younger agent on the butt and told him to lighten up. Then he let out a wolf whistle, cracked some joke about her being prettier than her father and called her sweetheart. She had immediately been angry about the gruff, 40 something year old stranger calling her such a personal name. So of course, he insisted on calling her by the name as often as possible. She had spent most of the day with him filling her in on the necessary info. He told her about the secret short cuts and the best food in the caf. Gave her the dirty on who was secretly dating, who not so secretively hated each other and most importantly, who she could trust. By the end of their talk, she had decided he was on the top of that list.

The sweetheart nickname had become a running joke between them now. And she allowed it. She needed some lightness in this dark underground prison cell.

Simms had explained the general concepts of the organization to her. They get a call, sometimes from political figures, sometimes from government officials, sometimes from foreign diplomats or a rich business executive. If the price is right, and the group is benefited, they do the job. No questions asked. They they go home to their lonely dwellings for a few hours of sleep. Repeat. Many times, they didn't even make it home. Several nights a week you could find most agents crashed in the on site sleeping quarters. Some had no home outside of this place.

Simms had also introduced her to many of the people who had become her most trusted allies in CULP. She was once again the only girl, surrounded by a sea of testosterone.

There was Bear. He was officially Agent Bruce Burns, but they liked nick names around here. He was tall, very dark skinned and covered in tattoos from his bulging biceps up. There were even black flame designs that twisted from his neck up to just under his earlobes. He had short hair and a loud voice. He would have been quite scary if he wasn't always making everyone laugh.

Duncann, according to Simms, was a bit tight laced, but was mostly a big softie. He was the youngest of the agents at age 27. He handled the technology stuff for them currently and was probably feeling a little insecure with her there to basically tell him how to do his job better. His explanation had proved to be true over time. Once Duncann and stopped being afraid of being fired, they had bonded over their love of all things tecky and bold glasses designs.

Then there was Agent Arnold Shay. At 63, he was just about the oldest person in CULP. He was a kind of father figure to the group, and though he didn't often go out in the field, he was always a constant in the command center, assigning orders and making sure the missions went as smoothly as possible. He commanded the respect of everyone when he spoke and no one dared to defy him. He also kept them calm when things were tough. Felicity told him regularly that his super power was the voice of reason. He was wise, had the white hair to match, and the most in shape 60+ year old she had ever seen. He would run laps around her if not for his bum knee from a mission 10 years back. He served as the onsite leader when her dad was away, which was most of the time. He may have been old, but he was the person you wanted on you side in any situation. Felicity would sometimes get a tear in her eye while he was talking to her because he reminded her so much of Digg.

The five of them had run several light missions together along with many other agents, over the first few weeks and had established a pretty good working relationship. At first she resisted the pull to call them friends, but they were growing on her fast.

After she'd gotten over her initial grief of leaving her little family behind, she had slowly been able to open up and learn more about the CULP family. She wasn't really allowed into the deep inner workings of the group. She didn't know why or how her father had started the group or how he accumulated soldiers and other workers, but over time, she had noticed a common thread among the workers she met. They all seemed to have a story of brokenness. Dunccan had been bullied heavily as a child for his intelligence and computer hobbies. It had lead to heavy drug use and a stint in juvenile hall for hacking into several bank accounts to fund his addiction. Bear had been the only survivor of 35 men, killed when a suicide bomber walked into their camp in Afghanistan. He had been honorably discharged and sent home, only to have his wife leave him for another, less damaged man. Simms had been a former army sniper and had over 200 kills under his belt. While some may have worn that as a badge of pride, he seemed to wear his like a scarlet letter. His parents had been killed in a burglary gone wrong, so he had went into service right out of high school out of necessity. As far as anyone knew, he had no family to speak of, as was the story for most of the people here. Then there was Agent Shay, full of useless love for his dead wife and child killed by a drunk driver decades ago. Maybe it was hopeless brokenness that brought people to this place. It had certainly brought her.

When she was little, when her mom was sick or busy, she had spent a lot of time alone in their apartment. She remembers one time in particular when she had been running and knocked over an antique vase of flowers that had belonged to her grandmother. Overcome with extreme guilt and the desire to not make her mother any more sad, she had tried to glue the pieces back together. It wasn't a bad break, so it looked nearly perfect when she was finished. Only a few, barely there lines in the glass showed that the vase had been broken. Her guilty little 8 year old heart wouldn't let her hide the truth, so she had showed it to her mother the moment she came home. Her mom had taken a long look at it, deciding, and then tossed it into the trash can. "Broken things, even when patched, have a way of leaking over time, Felicity. You'd do well to remember that." She had then taken a bottle from the upper cabinet and retreated to her bedroom.

Her mother was sick. But she was also right. Broken things could never really be patched. And Felicity was broken. It was only a matter of time before she leaked.

In the beginning, she supposed they were giving her some time to get the lay of the land. No big missions, but she was expected to be helpful in other ways. She had started out offering Agent Shay suggestions for system upgrades and showing Dunccan more advanced programs they could invest in. She had redone their entire security protocols and firewalls. That was for them, but mostly, in the beginning, it was because she was so terrified that Oliver would find her if she wasn't hidden well enough. So she updated, and secured and secluded herself in to a safe little hole in her fathers organization. And she tried to forget all about team Arrow.

This worked for all of two months until she had updated all she could and they started asking her to be involved in more of their active missions. They started out okay, but the situations got progressively more terrible over time. Track down an investment banker they needed funds from. Reroute some flights to different locations. Crash a certain technology firms server for 24 hours. Find out where a certain politicians family has their car worked on. Hack into the witness protection program and find the location of a woman they needed to question. Remote take over the controls of a foreign dignitaries private jet. Guide them through a billionaires mansion in the dark.

On that particular mission, she had messed up. She had old floor plans and they had apparently remodeled. They found this out when the kill squad had walked into the mans 5 year old daughters room instead of his. When they had reported this back to her, she had lost it. She had finally broken. Weeks of holding everything in and pushing everything out had gotten the best of her. She didn't just break or leak, she exploded.

It was mostly a blur now, but Simms had told her later that she had run from the control room and had to be taken down by three operatives. He told her she had grabbed one of their guns in the struggle and instead of aiming it at any of them, she had turned it straight towards her own head.

That's when her and Agent Shay and really become close friends. He was the one who had talked her down.

She didn't remember everything but she remembered she had been ready to pull the trigger. It seemed like her only option at the time. She couldn't run away. They would find her or torture the people she loved until she came back. But she couldn't stay here and be apart of orphaning little girls, or whatever they had her do next. The only choice that didn't involve hurting others meant hurting herself. Her death meant others would live. And she was brave enough to see that through.

But she hesitated.

Agent Shay, had approached her slowly and started talking to her about his family. He had been married 34 years that March to the love of his life. She had passed away 22 years ago in a car accident with his only daughter, but he was still as in love with her today as he was on their wedding day. He told her that after that had happened, he had thought that nothing would ever be good again. He had also wanted end everything. She asked him why he didn't. He told her that he chose to live because he knew the people who loved him would want him to keep fighting. It was his duty to them to live the life they would have wished for him.

It reminded her of a conversation she had with Oliver years ago.

We honor the dead by fighting.

She had told Oliver that he was not done fighting.

But she felt done. It had only been two months, sixty days away from them and it had felt like a lifetime. The people she loved were not dead, but separated from her for an unknown amount of time. No contact. No connection. They may as well have been dead to her.

She didn't know if he would have been able to talk her out of it or not, but it didn't matter because Simms and snuck up behind her and tackled the gun out of her hand and her to the ground.

She had spent the next 3 months in a padded cell on in the UG.

She was drugged for a lot of her time there. This was both pleasant and painful. The medication mostly just made her sleep, but not deeply enough to make her forget her past.

When she slept, she dreamed of her old life. She dreamed she was in the arrow cave updating the computers. Or at Queen Consolidated running reports for Oliver to go over before a big meeting. Watching Roy, Digg and Oliver spar in the training area. Having coffee with Officer Lance, chatting about the latest Arrow sightings.

She dreamed other things too. Things that never happened but she always wished they had.

She dreamed once that she was having a family dinner at the queen mansion. She knew it couldn't be real because Moria was there, and she was being nice to her. Thea was there too and they laughed together, swapping stories about Oliver as a child.

Another time she dreamed they were at another house. Just her and Oliver. She didn't recognize this place, but it felt like home. They were cooking breakfast together. She was wearing his shirt, flipping pancakes and humming a song. He was squeezing oranges for fresh juice and laughing at her because she couldn't even hum on key. She noticed a shiny gold band on his hand as he squeezed the juice into the picture. Then she looked down and saw one on her ring finger as well. He came up to her when he finished and hugged her from behind. Resting his head in the space between her shoulder and her neck. She turned into him and press a delicate kiss on his lips. And then another. He turned her in his arms and pressed her more firmly against the counter, returning the kisses eagerly. It always ended before she found out what happened next.

These dreams were moments of peaceful bliss, only to be followed by the devastating realization that they were not real. That they never happened. That they never would. Then she would spiral out again and they'd shoot her up with stronger drugs that returned her to her peaceful lies.

In brief moments of lucidity, she could hear voices.

She had heard the doctor talking to someone about extreem exhaustion and malnutrition. It made sense. She hadn't been sleeping or eating much since she left Starling City. The words "clinical depression" were also tossed around. She could believe that too.

She had googled the definition for depression when she was 11. Her mother had never been the same after her father left them. She wanted to know if there was a treatment or if she would snap out of it. If it was genetic. She could remember the definition exactly.

Severe despondency and dejection, typically felt over a period of time and accompanied by feelings of hopelessness and inadequacy.

It didn't help her solve her problem , but she had memorized it anyhow so that if she ever began to see it in herself, she could stamp it out quickly. She would not become her mother.

A second definition for depression though said the lowering of something or pressing something down. That definition seemed more like how she had felt at that dark time right after she had went with her father.

She felt pressed, not just down, but form every side. She felt lowered too. She use to spend her nights saving her city with team Arrow. Now she helped a criminal organization track people down to be murdered. She had never felt so low in her life.

The voices of many different doctors and psychologist drifted in and out of her ears when she was awake. A few times she also thought she head other familiar voices calling out to her. Much of the time, she thought maybe the voices were coming from inside her head.

Out of all the voices she heard. She never remembered hearing the voice of her father.

It was during her break down that she really began to depend on and care about these people here at CULP. About half way through the second month of isolation, they had weened her off of the drugs and forced her to talk to their resident psychologist. He was a nut, but the one good thing he did do was force her to interact with other people. Bear, Shay and even Duccan dropped by weekly to just sit and talk to her. Simms came by everyday, save once when he was on a over night mission that couldn't be avoided. She didn't talk back at first. Then she began to speak, but only to beg them to give her more drugs. To let he float back to oblivion. Back to Oliver. But they didn't give in or give up. Eventually Simms crazy mission stories and smile brought out one of her own. Bear managed to make her laugh just a little and you would have thought he'd won the lottery. Dunccan came in all the time with technology problems she was sure were fake or maybe even deliberately put in place by him. Shay, though very busy running things up in the control center brought her burgers and a diet coke every Wednesday.

Slowly, they pulled out of her dream world and back to reality. She wasn't sure this life was worth living yet, but most days, she didn't want to die.

When she was well enough to be released, she walked the narrow hallways to her room in the sleeping quarters slowly. She was unsure if she was ready to be out, to go back to this life. She had almost jumped out of her skin when Simms, Dunccan and Bear jumped out from various hiding places in her room yelling "surprise!" They had decorated, well... as well as any man can decorate, and bought her a cookie cake. At first she had stared at them silently as they held out the cake. "It's your favorite, right?" Bear had asked, in a strangely shy voice. It was her favorite. They had been paying attention. It's what the cake read that gave her pause. Welcome Home Smoaky was written in bright pink across the middle of the cake.

She had to make the decision right then what she was going to do.

Was she going to loose it again? Go for their guns.

This time not hesitate.

Or was she going to choose to make the best of her life now... to keep fighting?

She had told Oliver years ago that he wasn't alone and to keep fighting. She had also promised Digg she would be safe. Besides that, these men had obviously come to care for her and she for them...so she wasn't really alone. Strangely, she did have friends here in this prison cell. Her captors had become her confidants. Her foes had become her friends. The ones who held her chains had become her lifeline.

She made the choice to stop planning escape routes, ways to crash the system or ways to end her life. She vowed to stop looking at new reports for Arrow news, stop thinking about Starling City and stop feeling sorry for herself. No one here really liked to talk about their past, so that made it easier to forget hers. She would do her job here, no matter how morally questionable it seemed. She wouldn't worry about who they may be hurting and concentrate on who she was helping. These kind, broken men, brought here by devastation and kept here for acceptance.

Once again, in her mind, she said goodbye to Oliver, to team Arrow, only this time in her head as well as her heart, and this time for good.

Ten months later, here she was, mostly mentally stable, her own desk in the command center next to Dunccan's. When she was cleared for active work, it seemed that everyone had agreed that she would only run certain missions and that she would have her own specialized team and spot in the mission control area. She didn't know who had initiated this change, but she had a feeling Bear and Simms and volunteered to be apart of Sigma team. She owed it to them to keep them safe while they kept her sane. And for the most part, it worked well both ways.

Tonight had been a bit rocky, but her team was safe and on their way home.

Home

Was this what this place was now?

Time slipped away from her. She got comfortable and warm curled up in the computer chair and the drone of the servers lulled her to sleep. When she woke up it was to the soft shuffling of covers as someone pulled them up to her chin. Looking around through hazy eyes, she realized someone must have carried her to her room. She was in bed and someone had removed her shoes and tucked her in. She heard a soft chuckle and knew who it was.

"Bear?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Me too, sweetheart." called Simms. "Shay told us to make sure you got to bed okay and that we all sleep in tomorrow. That was a tight one."

"You all okay?" she questioned sleepily.

"Yes sir-ee Smoke Stack. You saved the day once again. Don't you worry about Sigma squad." Bear smiled down at her. "We know how to get her done."

She couldn't help but smile back at his crazy southern slang.

"Good." she said, then she lied, "I was never worried."

"Right." Simms laughed. "You sleep tight kid."

"You too. Night boys."

They slipped out quietly. Felicity tried to settle back down and fall asleep, but her mind was too busy now running over the details of the mission. What went right, but mostly what went wrong mixed with a bit of what could have went wrong. She allowed herself to think about it for only a few minutes. She tried to stay out of her mind as much as possible these days. Maybe that wasn't a healthy way to cope, but it was what worked for her. Let go of the past. Let the future be. Live in the present. And move forward one day at a time. Agent Shay had told her that over Wednesday burgers during her stay in the medical unit. Ever since then, she tried to live by those words. They kept her sane most days...along with her Sigma Team boys. They made sure she was sleeping enough, eating well, smiling for at least 68% of the day, Dunccan joked. And they were a big help. They made her life here better.

But it was a catch 22 situation. Because every time she found herself flooded with the happy surge of adeline after a good work out with Simms, or laughing at a joke Bear told or feeling satisfied that Sigma team was home, safe again with their mission accomplished...Every moment she enjoyed here, was a shadow, a memory, a reminder of her other boys, her other family. The ones she had left behind.

Here she was, working for the enemy, living, laughing at times, all while they were...

Well, she didn't even know what they were.

And that killed her.

Killed her.

For a year now, she hadn't listened to one news report or read a single article from Starling City. She had made it a point to work constantly, be around people in down times, talking, planning, distracting herself. Then going strait to bed, usually with the aid of a sleeping pill that didn't allow her to dream. A year ago she had been desperate to dream, to see him, all of them again in her sleep. Now she prayed for a dreamless night, and ensured that prayer with strong sedatives. Those dreams would only pull her back. Her focus was on today. Constantly moving forward, never allowing herself the chance to look anywhere else.

Most of the time this worked.

She tossed and tumbled a bit, then reached for the bottle of sleeping pills by her nightstand. She dry swallowed two and recited her mantra over and over again in her head. Let go of the past. Let the future be. Live in the present. And Move forward. She let the words sooth her rushing thoughts and block out the demons until sleep found her.

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