SHORT CHAPTER. PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK!

"You're a monster."

A monster. Something inhuman. Something incapable of human emotion. Something otherworldly. Something children were scared of, something children ran into their parent's bed to hide from. People made horror movies about monsters, terrorizing innocent people who feared for their lives. A monster?

Elizabeth stood there, her hands shaking, whether from rage, torment, or fear, she didn't know. She stood there, dressed in the clothes she'd crawled through the dirt in to try and save her daughter. The mud on her shoes had dried but the scene from the night before was fresh on her mind. The way she'd physically restrained her daughter from trying to hurt herself.

No, Elizabeth thought, Not from trying to hurt herself. From trying to kill herself.

Did a monster do that? Did a monster try over and over again to protect someone they loved? Did a monster feel the pain Elizabeth felt with each memory of a gun barrel pressed against the back of her head? Did monsters have a moment of blinding panic at the prospect of their daughter ending her life? Did monsters care about something so much that eventually, after years of being afraid of losing someone, that they just… had to force themselves to care anymore because their care was never enough to keep the person alive?

Or was that the monster? Had she stopped caring?

What if Stevie was right?

As Elizabeth watched her eldest daughter stand there, feet away from the hospital bed of her father struggling for his life, as she saw the passion, pain, and hate that Stevie threw at her, Elizabeth wondered whether Stevie might have a point.

What if Elizabeth's motherhood had reached the breaking point? What if she couldn't bear to deal with Emma's issues any longer? What if this had been the last straw? What if there was nothing left inside of Elizabeth to give her daughter but the utter rage she felt when she saw Henry there in the hospital?

Was that what she was afraid of? Was that why she couldn't bear to think about doing anything to change Emma's situation? Because then she'd have to confront her own inadequacies as a mother? Would she actually be a monster if she looked close enough? As Stevie's words cut through Elizabeth's hard exterior, she swallowed hard. Knowing what she had to do.

Once Stevie's tirade finished, Elizabeth saw her daughter's hands shaking from anger, the spokesperson for the two other children in the room. Allowing the words to drift into the room and dissipate, Elizabeth waited. For one. Then five. Then twenty seconds.

And she took a deep breath, turning to Blake instead of looking her children in the eyes. And she said, "Tell the motorcade I'd like to go to the Hoover building." But before her children could feel relief at her words, Elizabeth directed her pointed words at her eldest daughter. "I'm not going because I think they're doing anything wrong, Stevie." And she wasn't. Elizabeth took a few steps and leaned over Henry, running her fingers over his deathly pale cheek before lightly brushing her lips on his forehead. She tried to tear her eyes off of him, knowing her heart was here with him no matter where she went.

Knowing she was walking around heartless until he woke up.

And when she stood up, she said to her daughter, "I'm going because if your father doesn't wake up," and she looked between her three children in the room, making eye contact with each one, but settling on Stevie, before she snapped, "and I have to parent you kids alone, then you'll know I left your dying father's side to make you happy."

And with that, she strode out of the room, grabbing her coat from the chair by the door and walking with a fury she now understood might be her only companion for a while. Once out of the hospital wing and in the car, she tossed her coat with a heated anger across the backseat, wishing she could punch something or someone. Anything.

Anything to make the feelings go away.

To silence the questioning in her mind - to silence the gnawing inside of her that maybe, just maybe, she had become a monster.

"Get up!"

She wished she could struggle. She wished in her bones that the rest of her body had the ability to move. There was nothing more she wished to put up a fight, make them work for whatever they wanted to do to her.

But there was nothing left inside of her. She didn't know the last time she'd eaten. She knew the last time she'd sputtered up water, and she was still coughing from that. And whatever they'd shoved down her throat had made muscle movements slow and lethargic even more.

She felt a hand grab through her curls and wrench her upwards. And shoved her against the wall.

His lips, twisted into a sadistic snarl, hissed, "You think we're done yet?"

Please, she wanted to beg, please just leave me be. Please. She didn't know how long it had been since she'd slept. Didn't know how long the beating had been going on.

But instead of begging, she tried to speed the process up.

As she stared into his dark eyes, she took a deep breath that sent pain through her entire chest. And she spit in his face, the blood in her mouth splattering across his face.

His eyes closed in disgust, and his free hand wiped his face clean.

And when his eyes opened, she knew she'd succeeded. The evil in his eyes looked like even he couldn't control himself. Before she knew it, his hand circled around her throat.

And all she wanted was to feel it there long enough.

Long enough to make everything stop forever.

She held his eye contact, hoping her brazen rebellion against him would finally push him to do it.

End it all. Make it stop.