Levana had a knife. Cinder was spread out on the floor, prone after being beaten with her aunt's fists and words.

Levana had a knife. She giggled wickedly as the point of the knife neared Cinder's back.

Levana had a knife. Cinder felt the knife going into her back and she heard it slice through her thin shirt and her skin.

Levana had a knife. She slowly carved something into Cinder's back.

Levana had a knife. She walked away, dropped the knife in the sink, and left her niece to bleed out on the floor while she went out to the bar with her evil friends Aimery, Jael, and Sybil.

Cinder forced herself to her hands and knees, ignoring the dizziness she felt every time after Levana beat her. She crawled to the bathroom and got out the first aid kit. She pulled out the stuff that made her scab over quickly and a rag. She folded the rag with shaking hands and stuffed it in her mouth. She bit down on the rag and screamed around it as she worked her ruined shirt off. She screamed again as she put the scab powder all over her back and reached behind herself to press it into the cuts. Then, she passed out on the cold, tiled floor.

It was morning. Cinder lifted her head off the dirty white floor of the bathroom. Levana had only cut her once before, and that was a small x on the top of her right shoulder. This was much, much worse. She winced, hating the thought that she had to move. Today was a Friday. She had to go to school. She slowly got to her feet. She looked in the mirror at her face. There was a giant bruise on her left cheekbone. Levana had been less careful than usual to keep Cinder's face uninjured. Cinder dug through her toiletries bag and got out all her makeup. She also got out a large skin-colored bandage and opened her almost-empty thing of concealer. She put the band-aid over her bruise and caked concealer on to hide it. She'd have to get more one the way home. Idly, Cinder wondered whether she had enough money to buy lunch and more concealer. She'd just have to go hungry. She stepped into the shower and turned it on. The water in Levana's house was always too hot or too cold, and that day, it was scalding. She gritted her teeth and turned around to let the water hit her back as well, which hurt just as much as she'd expected. When Cinder stepped out of the shower, she felt better, even though her skin had reddened from the heat. She slowly got dressed in her usual outfit, being careful not to rip open the artificial scabs from the day before. The process was a bit more difficult without being able to bend over very much. Cinder's tank top was on the floor so she had to bend her knees and sort of awkwardly squat down until she could reach it. She also had a hard time putting on pants. As she walked out the door, she left her backpack, knowing that it would reopen her wounds. She grabbed her jacket and walked to the bus stop. As soon as she was on the bus, she ran for the seat in the back. There was already someone there, but she just smiled and sat down next to him. He smiled back at her and tried to hug her.

"Kai…"

She pushed his arms away. His face turned worried.

"What did she do to you last night?"

"I actually haven't seen it yet. It hurt too much to twist around enough to get a glimpse."

She turned around so her back was to him and shrugged off her jacket, inviting him to look. He lifted the hem of her shirt to the middle of her back. He gasped. She put her jacket back on.

"How bad is it?"

"She wrote…she cut the word worthless into your back."

"Lovely…I'll have that for the rest of my life. As if I need my self-esteem to get any lower. Hey…can you do my ponytail? I can't really lift my arms 'cause I'm afraid of bleeding all over your jacket."

Yes, the jacket was Kai's. When Cinder first started dating him, she had stolen it from him over and over again, if only to get a breath of the scent of him before she had to hand it back. He finally gave up and let her have it. She stuck her nose in the collar and breathed in. It smelled like leather, detergent, and Kai.

"Sure. Do you have a hair tie?"

"Here."

Kai gathered her mousy brown hair into a ponytail at the base of her neck and tied it, then kissed the place where her shoulder and neck met. The bus screeched to a stop, and they were at school.

A/N-Hey guys. As you can see this fic will be less fluffy and more serious than my usual. I don't really know what I'm doing here since I've never been in most of these situations, for which I am incredibly grateful. If I get anything wrong, please don't hesitate to tell me. (Just please be polite about it.) I'm going to have the next chapter out as soon as possible and I might neglect Novel Academy a bit while this is going. I'm sort of losing initiative on that one. But I will finish it, because I know the feeling of reading a fic, liking it, and then realizing the author has given up on it. It sucks. So, that will either be finished really quickly before Scars picks up speed, or I will continue to write chapters really slowly while I'm working on Scars. Um, that's all, I guess. As always, my PM is open.

Love,
Baz