"Ah..." Ari groaned as a cold shiver crawled you her spine as she woke up suddenly. She laid in her bed thinking about the mission she'd just had.
Thinking about it bit by bit she couldn't understand how people could be so flagrant about someone's passing. And that made her think about Zoe's passing.
Despite grieving for weeks on end she never thought about the reason for it. Up to this point she'd just mourned losing her and thought about getting her back.
She never gave any thought to why she jumped. She never gave any thought to what she was going through, the fact she had sunk so deep it was easier to just swim down.
A million thoughts she'd been avoiding flooded into Ari's mind at the same time. Thinking back to when she saw Cora in the restaurant and the fact she looked shocked to see her, Ari questioned what Cora did and didn't remember about everything that happened.
She'd gone on Cora's social media and everything appeared fine. She had seen Cora with her own two eyes and she appeared healthy and didn't appear sad or disheveled.
Thinking back to the mission she remembered the faceless gnome like creatures that had been throwing garbage at her and hurling verbal abuse the entire time. Thinking back to Buttons explanation of dream logic she figured that those gnomes represented some faceless trolls which had been cyber bullying her.
Grabbing her phone she went back to Cora's social media. In her initial shock the first time she'd checked it she hadn't looked at the top post. It was a video from three days earlier which was when she had died. She clicked on it and listened to it.
It was a three minute, clearly improvised video about Cora's struggles with her mental health. She talked about getting hateful comments and how that escalated to threats and having her address leaked and fearing for her safety. She talked about living in constant fear and paranoia and how she had no one to talk to about this because no one took her seriously.
She then said something that caused Ari's ears to perk up. She said that she had a dream and something about that dream had given her the strength to go on. She couldn't really remember a lot about it but she just woke up the next morning not caring about other people's opinions. She smiled and Ari felt a sense of pride wash over her.
"So it's all still there, the person just finds the strength to keep going" Ari thought aloud to herself. "So what's Zoe gonna think when she comes back... what's she gonna stop caring about" Ari wondered aloud as she went through her photos with Zoe on her phone.
Previously anything that would remind her of Zoe would reduce her to a puddle of tears but now seeing her beaming smile in pictures just made Ari want the next night to come sooner so she could be closer to bringing her friend back. She'd pushed all grief to the back of her mind and was now solely focused on bringing Zoe back no matter how many times she had to go into the 4th Dimension.