Chapter 36: True Feelings
I had been in and out of consciousness for nearly three days. During that time a whole hell of a lot of things had happened. The pain had begun to get worse, like my muscles were being ripped slowly by huge parasite dug deep in my skin, I barely ate or drank anything, and I was dying. All while Roy carried me almost twenty miles in three days to a small cottage, where fortunately, they had medical supplies and treated me for a bunch of shit that I really hadn't been paying attention to.
I had slept for over twenty-four hours straight, which was a new record for me personally. The old lady who owned the cottage forced me up and practically stuffed food down my esophagus, which in the end, helped a lot when I woke up a little more refreshed than before.
"Thank God..." I heard a familiar voice murmur as I groaned and opened my eyes, sitting up a little bit on the bed I was occupying. I blinked, restoring my blurry vision and watching as Roy's fuzzy image began to clear up. He smiled at me. "Goodmornin'. How you feelin'?"
I groaned and sighed. "Like shit. Holy hell. Did I get hit by a bus or something, because the last I remember, I only had an infected cut. Not a body cast of pain and torture." Roy laughed.
"Well, there's no doubt about it. You're back to your normal self." He commented.
"Yeah. My normal self being drowned in weakness, pain, and a hell of regret." I rubbed my neck. "But seriously. Did I get hit by a bus, 'cause I'm totally not going to be able to get out of this bed without a shit load of pain killers."
"You weren't hit by a bus, I made sure of that. And there's no way in hell that anyone's giving you pain killers on my watch. Your last run with a drug cocktail you ended up with an infected cut and practically a death warrant."
"Was it really that bad?" I asked, embarrased by the fact that I had totally caved in front of Roy.
"Minus the fact that I had a need to check your pulse every few minutes and that you were literally dying in my arms, it was actually quite easy. I didn't have to listen to you whine all the time, I could go at my own pace, and, here's a bonus, I saved your ass for once."
"First of all, I don't whine. Second, if you ever say that saving me was easy again, I'm going to punch you. I'm not easy. Get that right."
"Whatever you say, feather-weight. Okay, seriously, you felt like you weighed sixty pounds. How the hell do you get from a hundred-ten to sixty in fourty-eight hours?"
"In my defense, Dinah was very strict the day before her wedding when I reluctantly tried on the dress she bought me. And let's just say that I haven't eaten a good meal since the day before that, so leave it at that."
"I have a lot to say about that, but I think I'll refrain from the harsh comments while I watch you recover from your death bed." Roy said. "And with that, you need to get some more rest."
"I feel like I've slept forever..." I whined. Roy smiled at me with a sheepish grin. I couldn't help but see the change in him. The hard, dark looks that he used to concentrate on seemed to have disappeared, and was now replaced with a calm, sweet, if that was possible, smile.
"I thought you said you never whined..."
"Well, my post-death bed stage must be the one and only exception."
"I'll take it," He laughed. "But seriously, get some sleep. You have a lot of things to catch up on." His eyes suddenly turned a little dark as he looked away, as if hiding the truth. I knew from not only his tone, but his physical appearance, that whatever the hell I was to catch up on, wasn't good at all.
"What did they do?" I asked, almost reading his mind. I knew that whatever it was had to be what they would've called my 'present.' I was nervous, scared even. But I had to know what they did to me.
"We'll talk later. Get some rest." He said, reaching for the doorknob.
"No." I demanded. "Tell me."
Roy sighed and walked back over to the bed, sitting down at the edge and placing his head in his hands. "They framed you." He said quietly. I could hear some sort of sadness in his voice. A depression even. "They framed you for murder."
My heart practically stopped beating. Murder. It was an ugly word, but a word I knew none-the-less. Him. He framed me. I knew that it was going to happen at some point in time. I knew that I couldn't stop it. But I still felt heartbroken and suprised and in shock at my new discovery. And I didn't know why.
Roy looked at me with sorrow in his eyes. "Star City has a warrant for your arrest. The smaller cities surrounding it have joined them. The accusation hasn't spread very far yet, but as soon as it hits a news station or online petition, it's going to spread like wildfire. I know it." I swallowed, my heart racing. I was physically shaken by his words.
"We're leaving in the morning. We're going to head to Montanna. I have a friend who lives there, and if we're lucky he'll let us stay for a few days. After that we can head to South Dakota. I have a family mem-"
"Roy." I said, stopping him in his tracks. "I can't do this."
"Look. I have everything planned out. Everything is perfect. It'll work. You don't have to worry. I'll keep you safe."
"That's not what I mean. I mean that I can't put you in any more danger. I've put you in the line of fire too many times to count. On missions, in public, on vacation. It...it kills me inside to know that I could've been the cause of your death in those situations. Don't you understand?"
"Sarah, I'll be fine. It's you who we should be worried about. You're the one being framed. You're the one that people want to kill. We have to fight back."
"No we don't. We don't have to do anything."
"If we don't do anything, you'll be arrested. You'll go to jail. Prison, even." His tone was harder, and I could see that I was unknowingly toying with his emotions.
"Let them. Let them arrest me. Let them take me to prison. I deserve it." I felt more honest than I had been in ages. I was letting my walls down. And there was no stopping the iron and stone walls crumbling miles down and plummiting towards their doom.
"You don't deserve it, though. You don't deserve to be put in a cell for something that you didn't do!"
"Roy! You don't understand!"
"Then make me!"
Roy was up now, standing tall to prove his point at the foot of the bed. I swallowed as I stared at him. For some reason the slightly visible tears in his eyes broke my heart. This was my fault. I put those tears in his eyes. I made him feel this way.
"I'm not the girl you think I am." I finally said after a long silence. He just stared at me with solemn eyes. I looked down at the sheets. "I'm not innocent. I've hurt people. I've... killed people. They might've been the worst mistakes of my life, but I did them. You can't change the past, but you can change your future." I looked up at Roy to see him with a deep pain in his eyes. "This is how I repay all those people I've hurt. This is how they get justice. This is how their lives become easier. Better. This is how their voices get heard. This is how I punish myself for all the hell-driven things I've done. I confess. To everything." I can feel an unwanted tear slide down my cheek, but I don't even wipe it away. "You're innocent, Roy. And I want you to stay that way. So this is where you stop. You stop pretending that you aren't sickened just by looking at me. You stop pretending that you don't desperatly want to kill me for the crimes I have commited. You stop pretending that you've forgotten all about your accusations you've made against me and realize that you were right. You were always right. I wasn't there to be your teacher or your trainer, I was there because I'm the bad guy. I'm the enemy. I'm the person that should be responsible for the lives taken every day. Just stop pretending that you believed for one second that I was innocent. Stop pretending that that kiss wasn't just to knock me down a peg and get me out of the loop. To distract me from what was more important. To set me into a trap that you knew I couldn't get out of. Just tell the truth. All of it. I'm right, aren't I?"
Roy was quiet and I couldn't help but look down. On the inside I was in shock, I was stunned that Roy broke me. Broke me in a way that none of my greatest enemies could pull off. Not even the smart and sly and cunning ones that I hated so much. No. They didn't break me. Roy did. Red Arrow. One of the world's greatest hero's broke me. He broke one of the world's most smart, sly, cunning, evil, and commited women in history. And he didn't even break a sweat.
"You're wrong." Those two words shocked me more than everything else Roy had said to me combined. I looked up at him and I was even more suprised to find a soft and kind tint to his eyes. He sat down on the bed beside me once more and sighed. "When I look at you, I see regret. I see how much you hate yourself for all the things that you've done. I see sorrow and pity. I see how much you want to go back and fix those mistakes. I see the pain and the daily horror. I see it all. And it doesn't make me want to kill you. It makes me want to help you more. Help you relieve the stress and the hatred and the pity. The horror. Those accusations... those were merely my distractions. They were my way of pretending that I wasn't falling apart, that I wasn't...falling for a girl who clearly wanted nothing to do with me. I had my suspicions. But deep inside I didn't care whether you killed people or you had some weird secret that you never shared with anyone. That kiss...that kiss wan't anything planned. I never imagined in my deepest dreams that...that was going to happen. That kiss wasn't because I was inclined to kiss you for a photographer that I never met, either. That kiss was because I saw an opportunity. An opportunity to be able to show my true feelings without people judging me on it. It was an opportunity to experience something I had been waiting forever to try. To experience something that I knew would never come true even if I had the world at my feet. I..."
Roy sighed and I realized that he was done. He had just confessed everything to me. We had just confessed everything to eachother. Shit. What the hell was going to happen next.
It was quiet. Completely and utterly quiet, and I didn't like it. Roy wasn't talking and all I could think about was his words. Experience something that I knew would never come true...
Roy... Roy kissed me based off of true feelings. I had no clue what to say about that.
"Sarah, I-"
"You really feel that way about me?" I interrupted, still in awe with Roy's words. He flushed, his cheeks turning almost as red as his hair and my nickname for him.
"Uh...yeah. Look, I should've never brought it up, I-"
"It's sweet." I said. "Nobody's ever said something as open as that to me..."
"Well, it's kinda hard too when you can be such a bitch at times." Roy smiled and I rolled my eyes.
"Unfortunately, I'd feel bad right now if I totally just slugged you, so I'll take the next best option." In my nineteen years I had never imagined that a relationship like our's would ever end up anything but hatred all around. But at that moment as my heart took control of my body and my hands grasped Roy's shirt and pulled him closer, it was like nothing else in the world matter. Like Roy's lips belonged on mine.
Memories escaped and I thought back to my sixteen-year old self. Same feelings. Same imagination. Same ordeal. Same everything. Except for one thing. Patrick.
The name made everything that I had with Roy seem so wrong. So out of place. I almost shuttered as my imagination took control. Just breaking our lips apart was a huge relief. And at that moment I saw it all. And I knew that if anything was going to happen in the next few days, I was sure as hell going to get out of this one. I was totally going to prison.