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Nova Hale has always found it hard to sleep.
Her slumber has been plagued with hellish dreamscapes for as long as she can remember. Her mom, Eloise, used to sing for her, and this usually calmed young Nova's troubled thoughts, but her mom is gone now and so this is a luxury Nova no longer has. Her anxieties only grew worse after the fire—survivor's guilt keeps her up most nights, and on the nights that she is granted sleep it feels more like a curse. She would like to think she has gotten a lot better at managing her feelings, but like any open wound she is easy to bleed, and her thoughts leave her tossing and turning restlessly all night.
The knowledge that Kate Argent is still alive has haunted her from the moment it was revealed. She cannot stop thinking about it. The how, the when, but most importantly the why. Why does she have Derek?
The question keeps her involuntarily awake the entire drive back from Mexico.
Ricardo takes a quick detour by his house where he lends her his old phone that she can use until she gets another one, and then he drops her home. Nova is so exhausted—both emotionally and physically—from the events of the last couple of days that she barely makes it to the couch before she is dead asleep.
For the first time in a long time, Nova doesn't dream, instead she awakes at noon the next day, feeling as though she has not slept at all. She opens her eyes and instantly the floodgates open and every single thing that happened yesterday rushes back to her. She lets out a pained groan.
And then all of a sudden the phone starts ringing next to her. Now, there are four phone numbers that Nova knows off by heart: her own, Ricardo's, Derek's, and Scott's. When Ricardo lent her this phone she had sent a message out to both Derek and Scott to let them know, and now as she leans over to pick up her phone, she will be more than happy to hear from either of them.
