The Starling Vigilante [Watty's 2015 Award Winner]

Chapter 21

'Welcome back,' a voice said, my vision too blurred to see who it was.

'Where am I?' I wondered, rubbing my eyes in an attempt to see my surroundings.

'Aria?' Another voice asked.

'I think she's waking up,' a higher voice added, my sight finally becoming clear.

Matthew, Blake and Anna stood around me, as though I was lying down and they were crowding above me to check if I was okay. In a... hospital. The unnatural white walls and people dressed in lab coats uniform confirmed my deduction.

'How long have I been asleep?' I inquired, suddenly getting a horrible headache to the back of my head.

'...two weeks,' Anna said slowly.

'Wha-what happened?' I worried, my voice rising higher and higher. 'How was I- asleep- for that long?' I didn't want to admit I had been unconscious. Or hear why. But I was just too curious for something as big as that to just go over my head. I couldn't not know how I had gotten into this mess.

'We found you,' Blake started. 'Well, Eddie Thawne did, actually.'

Eddie?

'He said you'd left something,' Anna added. 'At his store. I think, a loyalty card for CC Jitters? And just when he was about to enter the building and try and find you, he, er... found you.'

There was an awkward silence. For some reason, no one wanted to tell me what had happened next.

'What was I... doing?' I hastily wondered. I didn't know how else to ask.

'You were... on the floor... directly below your dorm window,' Matthew exclaimed. 'You had a nasty blow to the head. I'm surprised you survi-'

'Blake!' Anna hissed, giving Matthew the cue to stop finishing his sentence. I didn't dare to find out what horrors Matthew was about to describe to me.

'Thank you,' I smiled, trying to ignore the searing pain accumulating at the back of my head. 'You all stayed here, for me.'

'Not everyone did,' Matthew remarked, only to recieve a deadly stare from Anna.

'Of course we would stay to look after you,' Blake reassured. 'It's the natural thing to do. For a friend.'

Trying to smile at my friends through the pain, I thanked them all again and decided to relax the best I could, despite the migraine I had picked up. I must have missed a lot if I had been gone for a fortnight; the assignment which we had focused upon the Allen case had been due in the week after I had 'fallen' and my absense could have affected the efficiency of finishing it.

'How did you do on the case?' I asked, trying to take the focus off me. It all felt too much.

'Thanks to you, Aria,' Anna started. 'We passed! Although we had to conclude that there were no extra findings or theory since the case was closed, we got a B+!'

'That's great!' I smiled at our success. 'But I couldn't have done that on my own. You all helped, each and every one of you.'

Hugging Anna and grinning at Matthew and Blake, I tried to breathe through a particularly bad strain of the migraine, fighting the pain. I felt the opposite of what I looked like though. The others could remain thinking that I was happy, but really, I wasn't. We didn't solve the case, regardless of what Anna said, as I knew there was something up from the start. The way I kept getting into these... messes, and the way Merlyn didn't want me to keep getting involved was just... suspicious. And the man i saw before I was knocked out, that wasn't a coincidence. I ended up here. In a hospital. Because I saw him.

I didn't believe in coincidence.