Chapter 5: The things he does

Theia went to that place inside her mind. Where she so often retreated to when the room became somewhere she could not afford to be. It was no longer her on the bed, it was no longe her body being touched. She was still and somewhere far away.

Callan weight came down against her body and his grip moved from her wrist to her hip and the words continued, whispered with a closeness she had no way to increase the distance from.

You’re mine, do you understand that? You've always been mine.

He yanked her nightdress off, ripping it. Forcing her legs apart with his own.

No one is coming for you.

No one else wants you, Theia.

Be a good girl.

He gripped her hair so tightly her scalped screamed as he yanked her head to the side and he kissed her hard.

You’re nothing without me, nothing at all…

He undid his belt and pulled his pants down and then pushed himself into her hard and with all his anger. Pinning her wrists above her head with a hold that felt like he might snap them. She yelped despite herself.

But she did not fight. She had taught herself not to fight. She had learned through a very specific and detailed education that fighting produced a version of this that was somehow worse and longer and left ever uglier marks. Instead, she made herself go very still. The fire in the grate burned even lower, and she looked at the ceiling and the shadows it threw, she was somewhere else, almost, almost somewhere else.

Afterwards, he stayed and he was gentle.

It made her want to vomit.

This was the part she had spent the longest failing to understand. He would lift himself from her and settle beside her, and his hand would go to her hair with the same tenderness he might offer something he was trying to cherish. He would smooth it back from her face once, twice, three times, and his voice was low and even and almost kind.

'There, that’s a good girl.’ He murmured against her temple. 'See. You're all right. It’s ok.'

She did not say anything.

'You always think it's going to be something it isn't.' His thumb moved along her jaw, the same jaw he had gripped hard enough that it now ached. 'You make things harder than they need to be. You always have.' A pause. The fire cracked with its dying embers. His breath still coming slowly back to its ordinary pace. 'You imagine things, Theia. That's what you do. You've always been so dramatic about this.'

She remained very still.

He kissed her forehead. And stayed beside for a while. The gentleness she had decided was worse. So much worse than anything else.

'Sleep,' he said finally, then stood, and she heard him moving around the room, the familiar sounds of him putting himself back into order, and then the door opened and closed, the footstep retreated and then there was silence.

When she was certain he would not return, she let out a breath that had been living somewhere behind her sternum for the past two hours, and she turned onto her back and began taking inventory of her body.

There was an ache in her wrists where he had gripped too hard, already tender and certain to be bruised by morning. The tightness across he’d hit her, would bloom purple soon. The still lingering pressure of figure tips on her shoulder would mottle her skin with marks. There was also a small cut at her collarbone, shallow but visible, she didn’t remember what had caused that, but she knew that it would need concealing beneath a higher collar or scarf tomorrow.

She noted each new injury carefully, methodically.

She did not sleep for a long time.

And she did not cry.

She had cried, many times, in the early months, it had changed nothing except to make her chest hurt worse the following day. Instead, she lay watching the frost patterns on her window, memorising them as if they were a language she might one day understand. She waited for her heart to find its way back down into her body, where her mind never seemed to want to stay.

He is the only one who comes, said the small, treacherous voice that lived in the same place as her loneliness.

She hated that voice, but she had never managed to silence it entirely.