Chapter 2: Why Does Suffering Happen?

Laurel claimed to not remember, to save her father and friends further heartache. Joanna hovered. Normally, such hovering would be considered by Laurel to be sweet and demonstrative of concern. Quentin constantly oscillated between practically non-present and the most nurturing father figure anyone could ever ask for. Laurel, for her part, swung between wanting to be smothered with love and affection and completely isolating.

It was a lie. She remembered all of it, every single microsecond, because Ruby believed it would somehow be less traumatizing if she was awake. Ruby was more benevolent than the average demon, but she was still a demon. A monstrous, sadistic, snarky demon. How does one go about picking up the pieces after losing a year of one's life? It seemed impossible in the face of Laurel's suffering. She did a lot of that lately, suffering, with only Quentin knowing even a partial extent of his daughter's trauma. He knew she had been gone and he knew that she was hurting from whatever she experienced while she was away. It killed him more and more each day, even as Laurel refused to get help.

"I can do this on my own, I don't need anyone except you, Joanna, and Tommy," she said one night, staring into the fireplace. It didn't even have a fire going, she was just staring into it. By the looks of things, she hadn't moved from that couch all day. Glancing around, trying to think of something to say, something to make everything okay again, the law enforcement officer couldn't help but notice no less than four empty beer bottles strewn across the floor, with a half-empty champagne occupying the coffee table in front of his daughter. His daughter, his firstborn, his baby girl. How could she have fallen so far? What the hell could have happened to her to facilitate this decent into… whatever-this-is? Not knowing what the ever-loving fuck else to do, Quentin sat on the couch beside Laurel.

"Baby-"

"Why does suffering happen? Dad? Why? What did we do that is so awful to warrant this suffering?"

"You talkin', like, philosophically? Theologically? What?"

"In general," her voice is hollow, worn out, as if she'd been screaming all day.

In truth, she had. She'd gone out to a secluded place, a safe place, in the woods just outside the city and just screamed her guts out, screamed and sobbed and hit things until she felt as though she had shredded her vocal cords. The young woman proceeded to go to the nearest urgent care facility, get bandaged up, and go home. That's where her beloved daddy found her. Quentin hated himself for not noticing the bandaged hands sooner, but as he moved to touch and inspect them, Laurel drew her arms close into her, curling up into a scared and almost-fetal position on the couch. Yet she continued to not look at her father and instead focused her sight on the fireless fireplace.

"Why does suffering happen? Why did all this happen to me? Why did it have to be our family that got royally fucked up?"

"I…" Quentin's voice trailed off. He had no response. Laurel sighed, grabbed the champagne, and retired to her bedroom. Not for lack of her father's standing and blocking her way, of course, but the look she shot him was enough to make him back down against his better judgment.

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Tommy and Joanna sat and slept on the floor outside Laurel's locked room for most of the next week. Laurel herself hardly exited the small space except to use the bathroom. It killed them both that she wouldn't let them do more for her, but they felt their mere presence was more than enough for the time being. Nothing had 'happened' yet. If only they knew of the dreams. The dreams, the horrid dreams! Laurel had them nightly and while they were clearly taking a toll on her sleep, she had refused to divulge the contents of said night visions. One such dream resulted in a quite fitful slumber, excessively more fitful than most. Most dreams were flashbacks, but this was something else. Something newer and darker, doubtless a result of her mental state, a product of the ungodly and terrifying anxiety and fear she had to constantly push down in the weeks since her return to reality and humanity.

"Hello?" Laurel called out in the darkness of the forest. She felt like she knew this forest, or maybe she would know it in the future? Either way, it was dark, hot, the air was thick. She didn't like it. In fact, she despised it. She despised the only other occupant of the forest even more. She saw the girl every night. Every single night. Most nights, it was Ruby. Snarky, belittling, abusive. But that wasn't Ruby. Ruby took control over her body without her consent, a gross violation to be sure, but Ruby and Laurel got along as well as two entities in such a situation could. Tommy and Joanna had decided to she had developed some form of Stockholm Syndrome in regards to the "delusion" they all automatically assumed Ruby to be. But Laurel knew the truth. Ruby had done a horrible thing to Laurel, but Ruby was never as bad to her as the monster in her dreams. A monster of whose true nature Laurel was keenly aware: it was her fear, her pain, her trauma manifested in Ruby's form. Her form. She hated herself so much.

"Hello?" She tried again. And Ruby turned around, smirking that demented smirk she wore in every dream.

"Back for round forty, little girl? Huh?" She wore the jacket and jeans Laurel woke up in that mid-May evening.

"What you did was wrong. All those people."

"The demon-possessed schmucks? They received mercy compared to the objective hell that was their mean-suit-ness. Some people are strong enough to exorcise the demon on their own, force it out. Make it head out like a baby. But not you. No, no, cupcake, cuz you're weak and afraid of the world. Quentin and Dinah Lance may have been shit parents, okay so mommy dearest still is, but they didn't teach you to be a weak and whiny little shit. 'Oh, Ruby, nooo! Don't do it! You're so bad!' Boo-fucking-hoo, sweetheart, I-"

"You're not Ruby. You're me and you look like her."

"Ding-dong, bitch. You're not gonna amount to anything. You're pathetic. You couldn't even get Oliver to stay with you. You broke up and then got back together. What the fuck, L?" She fashioned the shape of an 'L' with her thumb and forefinger and pressed it against Laurel's forehead. "Hey, now, you're a all-star."

"Shut up."

"'Shut up'. What are you, five? Grow a pair. Oh, wait, you won't. You can't. Because you're too afraid. Oliver left you, knocked up some rando, then got with your sister behind your back. 'Run, run the fuck away from Laurel' seems to be the sign that comes with every molecule of your being. When you have kids, you're gonna be a shit mom. You're gonna fuck them up like your parents did to you."

"You're not Ruby, you're not Ruby, you're me, you're me and I can get past you," Laurel repeated throughout the Other's little speech, though her resolve cracked and faded the longer its torment continued.

Oliver got someone pregnant and didn't tell her? Oh lord. Maybe she didn't really know Oliver the way she thought she did.

The darkness surrounded them, enveloped them like an evil hug, until it was only Laurel and the Other. When it was just the two of them, this Other stared at her with the most wicked jet-black eyes much like Ruby's. This personification of her disease, her mental illness, smirked at her and suddenly it grew. It got taller, bigger, like the 50-foot monsters in old horror movies like Godzilla or Attack of the 50-Foot Woman. Laurel, in response, cowered as the Other scooped her up as though she were one of Sara's toys and dropped Laurel down its open waiting throat.

Laurel bolted upright, covered in sweat. The comforter had been kicked off the bed and her body was tangled up in the sheets. Apparently she had called out, too, because the door was forced open. Tommy had a crowbar in hand and he was cradling her. There used to be days when Laurel Lance felt bulletproof. Maybe that was all an illusion. Maybe she wasn't so invincible.

Maybe she wasn't bulletproof after all.