For the next few minutes, Alissa breathed heavily, quickly, and raggedly. Then the slowing of her breaths, albeit still ragged, signaled that she'd fallen unconscious once again - but was still alive. Nicholas watched her with pain in his eyes, knowing that Mattie could not see them even if he wanted her to. It seemed his eyes never left his little sister, not even when Mattie left and he heard her vomiting some ways away from them. The noise concerned him - had she contracted something too? The paranoia was sinking into panic, because he would be alone if she had. He'd just assisted his little sister in dying, and now he had the worry that the only other kind soul in the world was going to die too. The thought made him want to curl into a ball and rot away with the rest of his family.
Then the convulsions that spread through Alissa's small, frail body brought him away from the thought. His breath caught in his throat upon a scream, a scream for her to wake up and throw the pills up. He remained frozen and quiet, watching as his sister seized and struggled to breathe - she was choking. The pills had already worked their way to her respiration, cutting off circulation and prohibiting her from breathing. His hands, though frozen by his side, yearned to reach out and shake her awake, force her to vomit. Was she conscious? Could she feel herself suffocating to death? Then, before he could rightly react, it was over. Her body was lifeless - and he didn't know how much time had passed. A few minutes? An hour? A few hours? Mattie hadn't returned, and it had taken Alissa at least half an hour to fall asleep.
Then just like that, she was gone.
Nicholas heard a sob break the silence, and became terrified before realizing it had come from him. His sister had assured him before her death that she'd be okay, not knowing that her big brother had just quickened her demise...but shortened her suffering. Had he protected her? It was his responsibility to protect her, to help her. He was the big brother. Had quickening her death helped her?
Not knowing what else to do, he rested on the fact that he had, in fact, helped her.
There wasn't even the slightest chance that she was going to survive the overdose anyway. And his emotions had officially, entirely numbed. He couldn't feel himself moving as he fished the matches out of his pocket. Nor as he drug his sister's lifeless body somewhere that he was sure away enough from where he was going to be sleeping. He didn't feel it while he draped her blanket over her limp form and set it ablaze. Nor as he walked back to his crude, makeshift pallet and sat himself down, ignoring as the atrocious smell of rotting, infected flesh filled his nostrils.
Then, for Nicholas, everything went black.
