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It is three in the morning.
It is all Carmen can do to stop her entire bed from rattling as she shivers uncontrollably, and she stares blankly at the glowing red numbers that tell her the time. It is three in the morning, and Carmen is trying very, very hard to erase the sound of her own bones breaking from her mind as they replay over and over and over again.
She shifts, trying to stir herself from the haze, and when a plush of hers brushes her arm in the movement she jumps so badly that it forces her onto her feet, her sweaty sheets trying to drag her back as she goes.
It is nights like these, when the house is dark and silent and she is left alone with her worst thoughts, that Carmen spirals.
A smudge of nothing flits past her peripheral vision and her mind jumps to the worst. Her muscles all tense as one and the goosebumps already present on her skin only get worse as she clutches the vanity in her bathroom, trying not to look her reflection in the eyes.
She is being paranoid. She knows this. Her body doesn't, and she is afraid anyway.
It's the same fear she feels when Coach Brunt is standing over her as she is half bleeding out on concrete, or bound and gagged in a train car, or holding the front of her shirt with one already-bloodied knuckle grazing her chin, feet dangling. And yet, here she is, experiencing it in her warm, comfortable, safe room, surrounded by the only people in the world she trusts with her life.
When she emerges from her bathroom, fingers stiff and numb from gripping her countertop, it is almost 3:30, and she didn't realize she'd been in there that long.
She moves to the window, shoving it open with her shoulder and letting her eyes unfocus as the warm San Diego night rolls over her, the ocean glittering just a little bit in the moonlight.
Three in the morning, Carmen decides, is the worst time. It's the time when her body decides that it's still back in a ravine in Stockholm freezing to death, or in the sibling's rental van slipping in and out of consciousness as Zack asks if she is about to die and Carmen doesn't know the answer.
It's the time when her mind decides to torment her with the woman who raised her and taught her everything she knows today. When it feeds her thoughts of how, without the very thing she is fighting so hard to destroy, she would never have the tools to destroy it. How VILE will always be such a fundamental part of her that if she tries to separate herself from it she loses the core of what she is.
It's the time when her lullaby is the sound of what she was willing to accept as her last moments, repeating like a broken record in her head until she has to scream into her pillow to drown them out.
Despite her mind's willingness, her body does not want to die for her cause, and it makes sure she knows.
"I'm sorry." She lets the ocean's salty breeze take the words off her tongue and carry them out to Pacific. She's not sure who she's apologizing to. Maybe to Coach Brunt, for killing the daughter she raised for 17 years on VILE Island. She'd choose to do it a thousand times over again. She does- she chooses it every day she chooses to run or fight instead of letting herself collapse into the beckoning arms of VILE. But she's sorry, sometimes, at three (-thirty) in the morning, that fate had to twist so that they never could have been family after the truth laid its head on Carmen's shoulder and whispered its meaning into her ear.
Maybe she's apologizing to herself. Even though she and her body both knew from the day they put on the hat and coat that the price they would pay for leaving would be their life, she is sorry, sometimes, about that too.
Tonight, she leans on the window sill and wails into the night, knowing no one will hear her. She funnels her regret into that stuttering scream, tastes the salt of her tears on her tongue, and receives a cry back from a lone seagull she can't see in the darkness.
She shuts her window and climbs back into bed, piling the blankets back on and hugging a panda stuffed animal to her chest. They help a little with the shivering, even though it isn't caused by any cold from this place and time. She closes her eyes and silently begs for the morning, knowing she will wake up and pretend like she is completely fine, like she has every morning for the last three years.