Liesha had spent hours laying on the couch staring at the television. It was unlike her to be such a couch potato; normally she'd be cruising through their small town on her motorcycle, stopping by the diner just past the pier for their regionally-famous blueberry milkshakes. She could still remember the first time she took them there, both of them getting brain freeze when they tried to see who could finish theirs first. Or the time they watched the sunset at the end of the dock, legs dangling off the side, and they had gotten down on one knee and-

"Shit." Tears flowed freely from Liesha's eyes as she watched the silver band glint in the hazy sun's rays reflected by the countless framed photos in the hallway, delicate cursive inscribed on the inside. For Lizzie, my Angel. Liesha couldn't bring herself to think about it. The hope they'd held in their hearts, even when she'd been shipped out. She was supposed to have returned years ago. Gotten her degree and worked at the elementary school down the street of the orphanage she grew up in. Married them, her teenage sweetheart, the love of her life, and settled down, had three kids (four if there were twins, she'd secretly hoped for them). Every night she'd spent in that damn cell, she'd dreamed of tucking them in at night, tucking them in before crawling into bed and drifting into sweet nothingness, the only thought that brought her solace as she shivered on the freezing concrete floor.

The thought of being back in that cell again brought a fresh wave of tears to her eyes, and she bit back her raw sobs as her heart raced. "I fought every day to get back to you. I can't even look you in the eyes now." Another thing her captors took from her. She tried to escape their clutches. Nearly succeeded. And they blinded her. All she saw in their eyes as she thrashed and pleaded was an infinite hell, smouldered to an empty void.

She wanted to get on her motorcycle so fucking bad. But it's hard to ride when your right arm was half-pulverized by a grenade and your left eye was blinded by a bunch of filthy sadists. "I can still feel them too. They're still there. I'm still normal." She buried her face in the couch cushions. "They still loves me..." She'd only been back home for a few days, but they had somehow taken her new odd behaviors and irrational mood swings in stride. When they made her breakfast in bed the morning after she arrived home, Liesha smiled for the first time in years. They were the only person who could stop her from spiralling whenever a convertible VROOMED down the street. And the way that they pitched the prosthesis surgery for her arm (that was way out of their budget) as the ability to cosplay as Captain Hook, it made her feel almost okay. The weight of the world was still on her back, but they made it feel okay.

shaka-shaka-click! The sound of keys in the door. "They're home? Already?!" Slamming the ring down onto the table beside her, Liesha's hand flew to the tissue box, wiping her eyes and shoving the tissue between the couch cushions. Then she looked at the television, which blankly stared back at her. "It had been on this whole time, right?" Pushing the thoughts of her fleeting sanity aside, she scooped up the remote and flicked the channel to the weather channel right as the door opened and they walked inside. Liesha scrambled to find a more relaxed position to lay in, before hesitantly asking, "H-Hey, how are you?"