Laurel's eyes were closed and her head was bowed as she held it in her hands and her fingers knotted themselves in her hair. She was undoubtedly and obviously overcome with grief, but even then she sill had pretty sharp instincts. And she was suddenly aware that she felt wrong. That sensation she thought she had felt in the hospital was back, that goosebumps and hair raising sensation that was unsettling and familiar. Someone was watching her. She wasn't alone.

She went very still for a moment and she lifted her head slightly to peer through her fringe of bangs. She couldn't see much, but she could clearly see the figure of someone sitting on the floor in front of her. She reacted to the sudden presence so quickly and fluidly that it was like a natural reaction. As her heart skipped a beat and her body jerked in understandable shock at the unexpected intruder, she also uncurled from her pitiful fetal position and pulled her arm back, her hand clenched into a fist that she was ready to throw at the asshole. Laurel was completely ready to show him (or her) just how mean of a right hook she could throw first hand when her eyes fixed upon the intruder's face and she froze completely before her arm had a chance to gain any momentum.

Shock rammed into her like a train. For what seemed like several long moments all she could do was stare, her green eyes round with a surprise that was almost innocent in nature, and her lips parted slightly as though she had let out an, "Oh!" sound. Her mind as utterly blank as she gazed upon the last face she ever expected to see sitting in front of her, a face she had only seen for the first time mere hours ago, and one she had only seen with conscious expression for moments at most. But Laurel knew she'd never forget his face as long as she lived. James Weller's face was seared into her memory as if it had been branded there with an iron. And here he was sitting right in front of her, hand raised as though her hand been stroking her hair, looking as conscious and alive as he had been when she had first laid eyes on him.

Moments before she had shot him. And put him in the hospital. Which is where he was right now. In a coma.

One moment she was staring at him in surprise and confusion. Her eyes traveled over him, taking in his appearance and seeing that he seemed to be part way sunk into the wood floor, before her gaze rose and she locked gazes with him. Then her mind seemed to catch up with the rest of her and in an instant she processed what she was seeing. 

The sound Laurel made was half gasp and half cry, and she nearly jumped out of her skin, jerking away from him and falling over to the side slightly as she did so. She crawled backwards towards the sitting room area of the apartment, putting as much distance between them as quickly as she could. However her limbs were still half frozen in shock and her movements were clumsy, and she slipped and nearly fell a few more times as she pulled herself as far away from him as she could go. Which, given the narrow nature of her home, wasn't very far. She bumped into the brick wall and was forced to stop moving, but her wide eyes had never left James Weller as she had tried to escape.

He could not be here. He was lying in a hospital bed on life support miles away from here. He was swaddled in bandages and tipping precariously between life and death. He was unconscious and comatose and not sitting on or in the floor of her apartment. But here he was, sitting there and looking at her, and she could see him clear as day.

"Oh God," Laurel finally got out, her voice cracking with strain. "Oh God, no, this can't be happening..." The guilt. The guilt she felt for what she had done to him. This was what it was, what it had to be. This was her mind's way of punishing her for her actions. It was creating a hallucination to haunt her. He wasn't real. "You're not real," she told him, squeezing her eyes shut for several second as she informed her mind that she was aware of what it was doing. She accepted that what she was seeing was all an illusion and all in her head, and when she opened her eyes he would be gone. Wasn't that how it worked?"

Laurel's eyes opened and the green irises fixed upon where he had been sitting. Where he was still sitting. She let out the breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and it come out loudly and half hysterically. "Nooooo no, no, no, no." She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands as though she could wipe the image of him from them, then she looked up again and still saw him there in front of her. Laurel let out of terrified and frustrated sound. "Goddammit, no!"