Roy had done many things in his sidekick-turned-hero career. A lot of it had been hard as hell. And this was by a large margin the hardest thing he'd ever dealt with. He'd been sober. He really had; he'd worked like crazy to get there too. Then he'd lost his little girl, and everything had turned to complete and utter sh*t.

"I'm not using," he insisted. The syringe was on the coffee table, full and inviting. He pressed his dry lips together, exhaling shakily. "I told you, I'm just...looking at it."

Truth be told, he wanted the hit. The escape. Just to stop feeling for a little while. Just to put all this out of his mind, to be lost in something other than this bottomless pit of grief he'd been stuck in. He shouldn't. He couldn't. But goddamn, he wanted it so bad.