Roy's return to the world was a slow one. He let out a groan as awareness flooded into him. The first thing he registered was pain.
"Why do my shins hurt?" he whined, slowly sitting up and stretching.
He pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to force himself to remember how he'd gotten in this room.
In this bed.
'I'm pregnant.'
The realization hit Roy like a freight train. "Oh, fuck," he breathed, "I'm gonna be a father." A pause. "And I passed out," he groaned, "What the fuck."
He clapped his hands over his face in embarrassment.
A thought occurred to him, then.
Kori.
Roy looked around the room. There was no sign of her anywhere. "Oh, she's gonna think I don't want the kid," Roy winced, pushing himself up off the mattress, "Gotta find her."
He hissed at the pain in his legs but powered through it, limping out of the room and down the stairs. He straightened up, slightly, once he got outside, but it was hard to ignore the pulsing in his shins.
And, God, why did his shins hurt so bad?
Nevertheless, his eyes combed the backyard for his girlfriend.
His pregnant girlfriend.
A father before the age of 30. And out of wedlock. Boy, would his parents have loved this.
Roy smiled at the thought but he quickly shook it off so he could refocus on finding-...
Kori.
There she was, talking with Cole and Kiara.
"Kori!" Roy called out.
Kori perked up at that, scanning the yard for whoever had called her name.
"Kori!" Roy called again.
Finally, Kori turned to face him. Her face lit up when she caught sight of him.
Roy couldn't help the answering grin that spread across his face. "Kori, I-," he started.
But, then, there was this awful clanging noise. It sounded like a gate being slammed open.
"STORMSHADOW!" someone bellowed.
BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!
Screams. His name, maybe?
Pain. Worse than what he felt in his shins.
Falling.
More shots.
More screaming.
So much pain.
And then… darkness.