35; SAME OLD STORY (post season nine, original episode)
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BLACK AND WHITE was the colour palette of Aria's dreams. Her subconscious was starved of the kaleidoscope that nature offered - vibrant greens, the golden globe in the sky and the pink streaks that accentuated it during sunrise, cerulean waters and blood-red berries.
Not only were they achromic but silent too. If she didn't dream, it was considered a victory.
Sitting on her twin-sized bed, back against the wall with her knees pulled into her chest and clasped hands resting atop them, Aria was watching through widened eyes as the sleeping Leo's arms swiped aimlessly through the air.
Another nightmare. The sixth one in the past week - not that she was obsessively staying awake to watch and make sure he didn't bring harm to himself or anything.
The lump inside the sleeping bag at the foot of Leo's bed - known to its peers as Chase - was yet to rise from its slumber, so that meant Leo wasn't crying out yet.
Aria's legs had grown numb from the four hours she'd spent in the exact same position, too scared to even risk a trip to the bathroom. Leo didn't respond well in times of turmoil. He once told her that something in his brain was broken, a special type of broken, one that a person just had to learn to live with.
But Aria didn't believe that. He wasn't broken, just a little bit different and sometimes his brain cracked but the pieces were all still there, rattling around trying to become whole again.
She was going to be his glue - even if he didn't want her to be. She was determined to gather up those fragmented shards and stick them back together. Piece by piece. Day by day.
He was almost all that she had now. She wouldn't let him slip through the cracks.
Catching the corner of her eye, Chase jolted upright and instinctively curled his fingers around the spear that lay next to him. He looked straight at Aria with a rare tenderness that she almost took solace from.
Aria's gaze swivelled back to Leo, refocused now, and she saw that his mouth was agape in a scream that would never reach her ears.
Chase wandered into her vision, clad in a ridiculous pink robe that Nabila had jokingly offered him when he shivered around the feeble campfire a few nights earlier. Poor Nabila, she had no idea what type of idiot she was dealing with - the woman was almost certainly never going to regain ownership of it.
"Don't wake him." Aria's hand motions carried a vigour that exuded how paramount it was that he heeded her instruction. "I mean it."
He tilted his head in thought, hands twitching by his side before he decided to crouch down in front of her - much too close, if you asked her. She could smell last night's soup from his breath - and mouth his response at a tediously slow speed. "I wasn't going to."
