Mwallace: Sadness.
RJRMovieFan: Thank you.
Pixie1913: I have no comment.
FromTumblr: Idk how I do it either.
96itadakimasu96: I would never kill anyone in this story. I blame Jesse.
Guest: Thank you!
Bechloe-bible-49: The dude? Which dude? Lol.
Surreal: Is it broken yet.
SunDanceQT: Your questions will, eventually, have answers.
Vickstik: Yeah! She's only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.
Unique100: Who knows?! ...besides me.

Dysrhythmia

So they tranquilized me, analyzed me, threw me back in my cage.
Then they tied me to an IV, told me I was insane.
I'm a prisoner, a visitor inside of my brain,
And no matter what I do, they try to keep me in chains.
- Alec Benjamin

There is a picture on the wall that, in the dark, looks like the head of a deer, staring down at Aubrey as she tries to go back to sleep. Once she's sees it, she can't unsee it, even when she closes her eyes. It's just there, looking at her, threatening to jump down and tear her throat out, as memories and current realizations help it rip the rest of her apart one piece at a time. She eventually lets her head lull to the side against Chloe's mom – fear increasing the once steady beeping of the heart monitor she must be hooked up to.

"You okay?" Julia asks.

Aubrey nods.

Only, she isn't. Not in the slightest. Not emotionally, not physically. Definitely not physically. There is a lot going on with Aubrey's body, and she starts to assess herself from her head, which is absolutely pounding, down.

Her mouth is dry, and her throat is sore. Combined with every muscle aching and her stomach rolling, if she didn't know any better, she would think she has the flu. And that's the least of it. That's the tolerable part.

Aubrey's entire left arm seems to be completely out of commission. (At least she writes with her right hand.) Her shoulder is heavily bandaged, and it hurts, and the rest of her arm is in a full cast that won't let her move her wrist or her elbow. And, while her shoulder may hurt, her fingers are completely numb. She isn't even sure if she can wiggle them.

Her right arm seems okay enough. There is an IV line attached to it, and that's why bending it is so uncomfortable. Other than that, it's just scraped up and sore.

Then there is another line between her legs, and Aubrey stops thinking right there. She could live without being absolutely humiliated that she's probably been peeing into a bag right now. That makes her question just how long she has been in this bed, and why she hasn't woken up before now. And also whether or not the catheter bag is visible to people like Beca and Chloe's family.

Somehow, everything just keeps getting worse.

She wants to go back to sleep and block all of this out, but she can't – not with that picture on the wall. Maybe, in the morning, she can ask someone to take it down. Or maybe once she sees it in the light and can determine what it really is, it won't bother her – unless it's actually a picture of a deer, which would be just her luck.

There is one good thing, at least – Aubrey feels clean. She can't see enough to be sure she's spotless, but she does know that she no longer smells like sweat or blood or vomit. Instead, everything has a light florally vanilla scent, and she assumes the blanket she's wrapped up in belongs to Chloe's mom, because that's what she smells like. It's one more thing that's familiar, and she relaxes back down again.

No picture is going to jump off the wall at her.

That's ridiculous.

She's safe now.

She's fine.

Everything is fine.

Except Chloe.

Chloe isn't fine.

The silence without her begins to feel suffocating.

"Mom?"

"Hm?" Julia hums, sounding half asleep, even though her fingers are still rubbing across Aubrey's stomach.

Aubrey stays quiet, feeling bad for keeping her awake. But, on the other hand, she doesn't want to be the only one awake - alone. What if something happens? Like what exactly, Aubrey isn't sure. But what if it does?

"What are you thinking?" Julia props her head up with her other hand.

Every question Aubrey has is one she's afraid to know the answer to – so she picks the least terrifying one for now. "How long have we been here?" Everything is starting to hint that she has been in this bed for more than just a few hours.

"You, about four days. Me, about three," Julia answers.

Four days. Aubrey has been asleep for four days, and she still feels exhausted.

"You've been sedated for most of it," Julia tells her, "You've been in a lot of pain, and very scared – I think mostly for Chloe."

Aubrey is still in a lot of pain and scared for Chloe; she doesn't want to know how that caused her to need to be sedated. She doesn't want the shame and embarrassment that's now piling up on top of everything else.

"Do you want me to ask them to knock you back out so you can sleep 'til morning?" Julia offers.

Aubrey shakes her head.

Then go the hell to sleep by yourself, Aubrey hears her thoughts toward herself in her father's voice.

"Are you sure you can't try some water then?" Julia goes back to trying to coerce her to drink, "You might feel better with something in your stomach."

Or Aubrey will just throw up for the millionth time.

"Or we can get you some juice. Or soda. Even just some ice…" Julia suggests, "Beca said you haven't been eating or drinking, just throwing up. I know you didn't feel good when I talked to you last, and that was like a week ago. That's hard on your body; your body was in shock when you got here."

No wonder Aubrey felt like she was dying. She was. She looks at the form of the deer again. It was roughly a week ago that she talked to Chloe's mom on the phone – granted, she has been passed out for four days. But it's been a week since she huddled under a table with Chloe and Beca, listening to a room full of people be shot. How many days since everything else? It's all a blur of time that feels like it's still happening – and she can't orient herself.

"Will you, please, drink something?"

Drinking isn't going to be helpful if Aubrey can't keep anything down; it's just going to make things worse – or so she tries to reason with herself, feeling too sick to try, not wanting Chloe's mom to witness her puking. She shakes her head.

"Okay. Do you want me to stop talking?" Julia asks.

The idea of silence doesn't sit well – the idea of being left alone inside of her head with so many things trying to attack her all at once. "No," Aubrey answers, finally sinking into the comfort of her embrace. She needs words to keep her grounded and remind her this is somehow real, that she's not still in Hell. They made it out. Or, well, Aubrey and Beca did. Everyone else, aside from Chloe, is dead. Everyone is dead. Everyone is dead. How is everyone dead? She tries to subtly curl into her for comfort and warmth. Shock explains why she's so cold. "Keep talking," she requests.

"What do you want to talk about?"

Aubrey has no idea. Anything.

"Hm," Julia hums like she's thinking, "Have I ever told you that I used to have to talk my son to sleep?"

"No."

"After the initial four hour battle and pinning him to the bed." Julia lifts her hand and strokes it lightly down the bridge of Aubrey's nose, leaving her no option but to close her eyes, then brushes her hair from her face. "We used to have to put Chloe to sleep at 8:00, so we could have him asleep by midnight, if we were lucky. Then Chloe would wake back up, and I don't think I ever slept. But, we would go through every book in his room, and then I would just start saying the ABCs, or math facts, or random words – anything I could think of."

Aubrey sort of understands, because she has a voice that could make the phone book sound beautiful. It's just so calm and soft.

"I could never make up stories the way my husband can, but he refused to listen to him. So, every night, for years, I would put him to sleep just talking and talking and talking." Julia plays with her hair. "That never worked for Chloe. If you read her a book or tried to talk to her, she'd be wide awake all night. We just had to rub her face and shush her every five minutes – and I usually had to put her to sleep too, because Dad would get caught up in her antics and they'd start having a conversation."

No one ever put Aubrey to sleep; no one even tucked her in. But Aubrey was independent. She didn't need that. On nights she couldn't sleep, that's just how things were – and when she was tired in the morning, it was her own fault for not being able to shut herself off. And if she woke up in the middle of the night, she would have never woke up her parents – not even when she woke up sick. She gets caught up in the sensation of her hair being stroked, starting to feel heavy with exhaustion. "Chloe said she used to have nightmares," she mumbles.

Julia nods. "Yeah," she breathes, "The ones where everyone disappeared. I think that's because her mother and whatever man she was dating at the time would leave her and Daniel alone for days. That seemed to be her way of processing it. It never affected her the way it did Daniel. It was always just the nightmares that bothered her. Within a few months of living with us, she was talking non-stop, singing, running around the house like she'd lived there all four years of her life." She sounds like she's smiling. "She's always been resilient. I think she'll bounce back from this too, Aubrey."

"She loves you," Aubrey whispers, "She kept asking for you." The air takes on the consistency of water. "I didn't know what to do."

"Breathe, Bunny, breathe."

"I couldn't do anything." The helpless feeling settles in Aubrey's chest again. "I tried – I-" She what? She was useless. No, she shot someone for Chloe. She killed someone for her.

"I know how much you love her, Aubrey. I'm sure you did everything you could," Julia says, "Sometimes, things happen, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. Sometimes, there is just nothing we can do. Whatever happened, I know you are not to blame."

Aubrey killed someone.

She's a murderer.

Even if Chloe wakes up, she might never be able to forgive her, or look at her the same, or look at her at all...

The oxygen molecules in the air turn from water to sludge, and Aubrey's airways close like she's drowning in it.

"Sit up." Julia helps her upright then leans her forward. "Breathe."

Aubrey gasps, short, hard breaths that do very little to fill her lungs. Her stomach flips. "I'm – I -." This isn't happening. She doesn't want to be here. She wants to go home.

Julia grabs a pink container from beside the bed and places it on her lap, then presses the button for the nurse.

This isn't happening.

Her body and mind go numb.

She's listening from behind a wall as the nurse walks in, and Julia asks for something for anxiety and nausea.

There is a hand rubbing her bare back through the back of her hospital gown, but she can barely feel it.

All she feels is sick with fear, and worry, and guilt, and humiliation, and dehydration, and pain - all of it piling up on top of her like she's a dumpsite for stress.

Part of her wants to just throw up and get it over with - at least get that out of the way. She's never been trapped so long in just feeling like she's about to.

"I want to go home."

Aubrey will feel better there.

"I know you feel awful," Chloe's mom tries to soothe her, "I know you want to go home. Dad and I are taking care of it. Just try to breathe."

It occurred to Aubrey how trapped they were. Unless they waited on a ferry or happened across a local with a boat, there was no way back to the mainland. She was stuck there with a dead kid, and a dead deer, and images of blood soaking into the dirt etched into her retinas. She clamped her eyes shut and threw up again and again, her stomach twisting itself into knots that got tighter and tighter. She could feel the cold metal of the gun pressed against her hand. "I need to go home, Chloe," she choked out. It was unreasonable to think that Chloe could help. She knew it was. But, somehow, Aubrey hoped if she kept insisting, they'd leave faster. "Please."

"I know that you don't feel well, and that you need to go home." Chloe's voice was still soft and calm. "We're going to get out of here as soon as we can." She briefly stopped rubbing Aubrey's stomach, and pressed the back of her hand to Aubrey's forehead again, and Aubrey realized how out of it she was if Chloe was still checking for a fever. "I promise I'm going to take care of it. Just try to breathe for me."

Aubrey can't breathe. Chloe's mom is lying. She is never going home. She's stuck in this forever.

The nurse walks back in, and then something is being injected through a tube attached to her arm – sending a cold, tingling sensation through her body that makes her skin crawl. She presses her lips together, soldiering her way through a second injection that leaves a bad taste in the back of her mouth.

Whatever they give her, it isn't Xanax.

Xanax is tame compared to this.

In a matter of minutes, Aubrey is floating up through the clouds. And then, she's falling through them against Chloe's mom. She doesn't even realize she's being placed down on the bed until her head is on the pillow and fingers are running through her hair, helping ease her to sleep – easing her into pitch black nothing. No nightmares to keep her locked in reality. No dreams to whisk her away to somewhere better. Just dark, empty, inescapable nothing that never seems to end.