A:N/ Heeeeeeeey,

Alright so, basically, this may appear random, but I just got random inspiration a week or so ago for this oneshot, and so I thought I'd post it. Their will be an epilogue, but I just wanted to see the response on this before I post it :)

And yes, I am working on TWNC- promise. (I find it so scary that only a few chapters ago I was starting sixth form, and now I'm in upper sixth and only a few more chapters in... hahaha.)

Any questions/feedback, message me here or on my blog- .com :D

The inspiration from this story came from many places, such as the prose from one of my favourite writings blogs, Writings for Winter, who seems to write so much that relates SO much to my life. She's amazing. Check her out and buy her book on Amazon :)

PEACE & LOVE,
x x STARSWalkBACKWARD x x

fyi- I'm not 100% sure on the name of this tory, it may change over the next 24 hours, but it may now. :) Just a warning.


for twenty-year-olds who have never been loved

All of a sudden two decades have passed and you still have not kissed anyone with tongue, or kissed anyone at all for that matter, or had a 3 AM conversation with someone who would rather look into your eyes for ten minutes straight than talk. You have never worn a lover's sweater or "forgotten" it at home in your bedroom just so you would have an excuse to see them again. You have never even stood face-to-face with someone who makes your hands shake so hard it feels like they're both having a separate anxiety attack.

This causes you much guilt and self-blame and sadness but above all, an overwhelming curiosity. Are you really that ugly, that unwanted, that uninteresting, that boring, that no one, absolutely no one, has ever looked at you like the only thing on earth?

The answer is no. The better answer is that someone out there, somewhere in the world, is "wondering what it's like to meet someone like you," and they have two decades worth of love stored in their veins like a shoot-'em-up drug, and they're just about ready to inject it into someone else's bloodstream. All you have to do is roll up your sleeves and wait for it to happen.

At times you felt so lonely you could stand at the edge of a cliff with nothing beneath you but air and grass and a long, long way down, and you'd still feel emptier than that canyon itself. Maybe you even danced with yourself alone in your room a few times, arms outstretched around a ghost, pretending someone else's hands were on your waist, someone else's eyes boring into yours.

Or maybe you fell temporarily in love with strangers on public transportation, fell in love with anybody who so much as accidentally brushed your hand on the way past. For you, falling in love with dozens of people a day was a coping mechanism for not having anyone to love you in return. But people are not eggs and falling in love with a dozen of them does not mean your shell will remain uncracked. One day you're going to hit the point where you're so desperate for human contact that you're going to snap in half and all your love will bleed out like egg yolk.

But someone out there is eating a bowl of Ramen noodles right now, or putting on slippers, or settling into bed. They are doing all the normal things that you've done in your own life. They are just like you. They have cellulite and extra fat in all the wrong places and goals and fears and doubts and bad handwriting.

The truth is that they are just like you, and being just like you, they're looking for a lover too. They're what you might call a soulmate.

They think they're all alone in feeling the way they do, but you're really both two halves of a whole.

And one day you'll meet them, bump into them on the street, and your two halves will be put together, and you'll make one.

––WRITINGS FOR WINTER, "for twenty year olds who have never been love."


Monster of Men


Everything wasn't quite in focus anymore.

It hadn't been for a long time.

Another step. Ouch! It hurt to walk. Everything hurt. Every ligament, joint, hair and fibre...

...my tongue got stuck to the icicle
when i licked it;...

But she had caused this.

Always in a rush to give her life away...

and she really did this time.

A white, glass building. Great and clean.

A hospital.

Hospital. How much further? She was so tired. So tired.

Help, someone! Anyone!

She would have screamed if it would have made a difference, only now there was no rewinding the tape, no turning back. She had lost all voice. Lost everything.

She tracked her feet on the ground, feeling no pressure on the soles of her feet, where shoes had once been.

What was this world? It was so dark, and so, so cold...

Tears with no taste as her lips were salted enough, still with the taste of... She wanted to reverse her stomach and let it all out, but everything was just at the tunnels edge...

Less focus. Lights, headlights, more headlights. Taillights. Blurring, turning to blotches across the night... Ouch, it hurt to move. It hurt so much.

Help. Someone, please, help...

Stumbling. Tarmac under grazed palms. Pain, and blood. More blood...

How long...

Blink through the lashes that cling to the tears––Oh!

There! Lights. White, glass buildings. Sirens. Shrieking sirens. Panicked voices. Crunching fabric to take the stains of every walk of like... White coats...Rushing bodies.

Hands, sets of ten fingers and thumbs, reaching out, and they reach her, clasping at everywhere with nothing but tenderness...An arm, a hand...

Skin to skin.

No! Stop!

...and when I
touched the candle flame
my fingers came away red and blistered...

It burns. The fog of his scent, His violating palms, spreading their poison... Not just memories...but reliving everything. They were rough and clawing, not like intimate hands performing intimate acts are supposed to be. Not like novels on late school nights. Not like the movies on Sunday afternoons...

This could be a poem about
savage beauty and the danger
inherent in nature.

Not like it was ever supposed to be every time she had wished it here, every time she wished her time away.

How could an angel with...such a smile have such poison in his skin, in his heart. How had he hidden those talons from view?

instead it's about people,
and how they're always,
touching the things that
they shouldn't.

They were not him, yet every touch was plagued, and may has well have been.

(that girl on the news never invited
that man to touch her.

Before, every touch she received from a male had been plagued with the idea of 'what if' is he ended up being The One to finally want her, emotionally or physically...but now...this was the painful reverse. Now, her childish what-ifs were screaming back at her. Foolish, stupid, stupid girl. She should have lived a little longer in the innocence she knew, instead of rushing to get rid of it. Just for one night longer...

all I can think about is how
I wish she had had something savage
coursing through her skin.

Please. Please stop touching me.

Screaming. Wailing, filling her ears. Her own voice, though there is no recognition clicking in the clockwork of her mind now.

They reach for her, to take her inside, to take the pain away, but they may never do so... How do you take pain from someone who knows nothing but pain?

She couldn't even catch the faces of those who took her in from the cold on passing by.

All the healers in this one white and glass building, and she would have betted with anyone that none could mend her, an innocent torn in two by the monster disguised as the kind, smiling good samaritan at the bar... Who had shredded all belief in human kind with his one single pair of hands.

What had she done wrong to deserve this?

She stared at the walls of her life, torn from the foundations, the images stained there, as all surroundings began to fade, leaving nothing left as she sent one last silent prayer with no words.

God should have made women lethal, when he made monsters of men.)

❝~x~❞

Troy Bolton rubbed his dark brows and temples with strong, subtle fingers, feeling weary. The night shift felt longer than usual, even though it was the same length as always. The night in London, England was a cold and grey November one, the British summer clearly long gone as people began filtering into Accident and Emergency more and more as a result of simply falling over deathly slippery icy sidewalks, or 'pavements,' as they called them here. He always found such Britishisms endearing, though they also made him feel a little inferior, as his own American slang and wording often left him feeling unaccomplished and much less classy in comparison, though they did not seem to agree. Many of his English female colleagues had commented plenty a time on how charming and 'lovely' they found his accent to be, though, the closest of his friends here, 'posh,' Simon, also a junior doctor like he, and 'East-ender' male nurse, Flech, like to do nothing but remind him that most of these comments came from the nurses, who all simply 'wanted a shag' from him. When he finally found out what this meant, he had laughed for a week, because despite how flattering it may be that most of his female colleagues wanted sexual interactions with him, he, for some reason, hadn't seen anything that would lead him to 'fancy,' as the English put it, any one of them. They were all great people and amazing friends to have, but... No. He couldn't ever.

"Troy, mate, you're needed in RE-SUS," Flech called as he stuck his head through the staff locker room door. Troy turned from his locker, shutting it quickly, rubbing a hand down his green paper-fabric scrubs. "What about Dr Hanna? Isn't she in RE-SUS? She said she wanted me in cubicles," he questioned quickly, filling his shaggy dark-haired friend out the door and through the busy hospital A&E reception.

"I dunno', but the patient is in pretty bad shape, an' Dr Hanna asked for ya' to assist 'er."

This intrigued him. Over the entire process, Troy had been asked by Dr Hanna, one of the senior doctors who had also been mentoring him, to shadow her with her patients, while also treating his own, though each had been different and of slightly higher caliber every time, which he had guessed were tests set by Dr Hanna to test him abilities. He had helped patients through domestic disputes, drug overdoses, far too many RTCs, and even the odd circus performer accident, however, something felt different this time. How intriguing.

"Dr Bolton," Dr Hanna greeted, looking her usual calm and collected self with her sharp ebony bob cut, black rectangular glasses and deeply tanned skin. She wore business attire with a stethoscope around her neck. She was the 'glamour-puss' of the department, because she was also clinical lead. "We have a young female. Age estimated at around eighteen to nineteen. We don't have a name yet. Suspected sexual assault. Blunt-force trauma to her scalp, possibly a hairline fracture, and a possible fractured right wrist. So, we give her an IV line, and..." She trailed, prompting him to finish, though this was the most basic of questions. He frowned, confused as to why she would ask something so simple of him––he had been on rotation in England almost a year, and graduated in the US before that as one of the highest degrees in the whole class! What was going on?

"Ten units of saline, and a ten of morphine."

Dr Hanna nodded in approval, though her eyes seemed distracted on something else as they walked through the heavy glass double doors hurriedly. Troy barely noticed the way the blinds were closed on the inside, or the "Resuscitation Unit, please keep clear," plastered across it, anymore. It was easy to forget how many lives were saved and how many were lost in this room when you worked her every day; so easy to forget that it was never just a job.

He had seen some real horrors in this room, but none would quite prepared him for the experience about to fast him on that cold, November night.

Troy swallowed as the doors shut behind him, greeted by the sight of the new patient: a small, young girl with dark ebony curls matted against her head. She was struggling against the medics' hands, begging in a strangled voice.

The words 'sexual assault,' rang in his ears like a threat of death. This was something he had managed to avoid up until now since joining the hospital almost a year ago on his junior medic rotation, as he had always just happened to have been treating a different patient when one of this type came in.

"What do you need me to do?" He asked softly, noting how there was already two nurses surrounding her.

"I need you to practice some of your miracle Bolton bedside manner," she smiled in good humour. "But not yet. First, we need to calm her enough to give her an examination." Dr Hanna instructed sharply, and Troy noted how the girl's hysteria was only climbing higher. "Word of warning: she has refused all care from male staff. I had to send Dr Ashford away."

"What?" Troy halted quickly, frowning. "Then why on earth did you ask for me?"

"I believe they don't call it the miracle Bolton bedside manner for nothing," she returned, calmly.

"No! Please! No skin! No skin! No, no. Please don't touch me... Burning––No—" The girls cries broke through their conversation from where she lay in the corner of RE-SUS, and they were nothing Troy had ever heard from a human before. Her cries became garbled sobs in which the words were almost unrecognisable as she quaked from head to toe. He noted her wincing in agony still, and quickly clocked the blood that stained the inside of her thighs. At the sight of it he swallowed involuntarily, feeling his stomach roll. After all the things he had come across, it was this, he knew already, that would haunt him late at night while the world slept. No wonder she didn't want men around her. The evidence of sexual assault was everywhere. Ripped clothing, matted hair, seemingly unexplained injuries, cuts and scrapes, terrified, puffy eyes and face...bloody thighs.

He watched her struggle away from the hands that rushed to hold her down, and suddenly her words began to process and he practically heard his brain click the logic of the situation into place.

"Wait—" he called to the nurses who hadn't even had time to pull of rubber gloves due to the girls violent protesting. "It's your skin. She doesn't want to be touched. Just—put your rubber gloves on," he instructed gently, pulling on his own, nearing her as he came to stand by Dr Hanna, who gave him an impressed nod as the girl began to struggle much less once the skin to skin contact had gone, her eyes meeting his and for a moment he could have swore she quaked violently at the sight of him and the sound of his voice. The volume of his voice must have terrified her.

"No," she whimpered, shrinking into herself, and he knew instantly as she stared at him with horrified eyes that slammed shut a moment later, that the sight of him, a male, may have to cause flashbacks of what had happened to her. He grimaced a little, just before Dr Hanna spoke.

"I can tell you didn't want men around you," she began, and this surprised the girl, who looked as her as if to say, How did you know? "but I really need another pair of hands here, and Dr Bolton has a miracle bedside manner. You could trust us––you can trust him."

"N-no," the girl stammered, and Troy knew what she must be thinking. How can you possibly expect me to trust anyone now? I trusted a man tonight who ruined me. Trust. There is no such word.

"Dr Bolton here is the best there is––from either side of the Atlantic."

The girl looked his way with wide eyes as she swallowed. He smiled gently at her, praying he wasn't going to cause her to scream and cry again. Only, something else happened. As the nurses had now let her be and put on their gloves as he had instructed, the girl looked around, letting her gaze halt on him, and she began to watch him in silence, with a look he could have sworn resembled...gratitude, as he had made the touching stop. He sighed silently with inward relief.

As Dr Hanna began receiving stats to the nurses, Troy came near enough really get a look at the girl. It was then he realised she not was a girl, but a young women. A Latina, he guessed, perhaps a Pilipino. She was slight and tiny in build, and her skin was a pretty olive colour, even with her pale, sickly complexion.

Her eyes met his as she stared at the ceiling, and he felt the familiar sense of deep, gutting sympathy in his chest, the very same quality that caused him to lean toward a medical profession in the first place. Her eyes were filled with tears, and under them was evidence of many, many hours of tears that had already been shed. They were red, swollen and sore, but not enough to disguise the pain and terror behind the chocolate irises. God only knew what those eyes had seen, what that body had felt, and while still so young. He feared something very awful had happened to this girl tonight.

His medical training kicked in as he received a nod from Dr Hanna to take the lead at the patients bedside.

"Hello there," he greeted, leaning over to speak quietly and gently to the patient, giving his trademark gaze with his blue eyes that said, 'I have all the time of day for you. Talk to me. You can trust me.' "My name's Dr Troy Bolton. You're in London May-view Hospital. Someone picked you up down the street and brought you here." He watched the girl blink and say nothing else. She was not surprised about this fact. So, she wasn't completely disorientated. Interesting. "Do you remember what happened to you?"

Not answering, she flinched with every touch from each of the staff, though less violently now the gloves were on, so he offered her a very small, warm smile and decided quickly to change his approach. Slowly does it. "These people are all here to help you, but in order to do that, we need to know your name. Can you tell me your name?"

He made sure to put across his softest, gentlest voice he could manage, one that only she would be able to hear, in the hope that she felt more at home. He was also hoping his accent would act in his favour. It seemed to, because her eyes never left him once he spoke to her, though she stared at his scrub-clad chest, never once looking into his eyes. Though her eyes had been filled with panicked before, they now seemed marginally subdued.

Good. He thought. Progress.

"G-g-g—" she tried to speak suddenly, but her body seemed to quake so awfully that it hindered her speak, which Troy had to strain to hear. "Gabriell-l-la.. M-Montez-z."

"Nice to meet you, Gabriella. Now, can you follow my finger with your eyes?" She did so, and he watched the movement of her pupils. "Any headaches, nausea?"

"A little."

Troy smiled again, nodding as he raised his hands in preparation to inspect her head wound. "It looks as though you may have got a nasty bash on the head. Mind if I take a look?"

She blinked with a nudge of the head in agreement, letting him lean over her face and touch the gash, now covered in padding. Blood was wet but also crusted in her hair as he gently moved it away with one finger. He inspected it for dirt, or any other debris from a struggle, she winced as he tried his best not to hurt her. When happy there was nothing else to clear out, he covered it again, her eyes trained on his sternum every second. Then moving to her right wrist, at her side in a padded brace, he touched it with extra caution. She winced and groaned out loud, and he softly cooed her, apologising quickly. "Yeah. Looks like we have a fracture here," he told Dr Hanna, who nodded in agreement. Next came the difficult part, the sumo-elephant in the room, and all staff in the room knew this.

"Gabriella, there appears to be some bleeding coming from a personal area," Dr Hanna prompted, speaking softer than Troy had ever heard her as she stepped to Gabriella's other side. "Do you know what may have caused it?"

Troy watched, feeling ill at the thoughts racing through his head, all possible scenarios appearing behind his eyes before he could lock them away. Gabriella closed her eyes and he watched with sudden shortness of breath as she said nothing as heavy, slow tears slid from her closed eyes, down her temples and into her hair, her breathing becoming ragged with soft sobs.

"If you were...attacked, we have people you can talk to," Dr Hanna informed softly, from the broken brunette's bedside, "If you need––"

"I don't want to. I don't want to talk about it." Her tone was sharp and definite, so unlike her previous tone that it shocked Troy for a moment. Her voice was hard as a flint. Well no wonder, Troy justified to himself. It was probably the most traumatic, horrific day of her life, for gods sake.

"It will help––" Dr Hanna defended again.

"––How can it?" Gabriella whimpered, almost wailed in a voice that remained hard to hear, and Troy watched his colleague sigh sadly. "How can anything help me now?"

Dr Hanna nodded in acceptance that this patient, for now, would most likely be too closed off to discuss what had happened to her. "Just...know it's there. If you won't let anyone examine you yet... I'll just ask one or two questions. Does it...hurt?"

Troy stepped away, conscious that Gabriella may not wish for him to hear her reply.

Gabriella hesitated, then gave the smallest of nods.

"Scale of one to ten?" he heard his colleague murmur.

Gabriella hesitated again, and after a moment, Troy realised his hands were in angry, white-knuckle fists. Get it together, Bolton!

"Nine, I guess," Gabriella whimpered, her voice cracking as more tears fell, and Troy ground his teeth as he felt a sudden urge to get very, very out of control and track down the bastard who did this.

"Okay well... When you're ready, you tell me and then we can arrange an examination. In the mean time, I have ordered you an MRI to check that you haven't done any serious damage to your head, and an ex-ray for that wrist, which seems to be broken. After that, I'll send someone in to..." Dr Hanna paused, giving Troy a poignant look that said 'perhaps you could persuade her,' "patch up these cuts, okay? And I'll get you some more morphine..."

Gabriella looked at the ceiling fearfully and showed acknowledgement with the slightest twitch of the head. Soon after, as she was rolled away by the nurses out of RE-SUS and into the main corridor, Troy watched her begin to hyperventilate, which he could have predicted, even from behind her oxygen mask.

"No, no... No, please... I don't want to..." Came her muffled cries, and Troy quickly jogged to catch up before he could stop himself.

"Hey ladies," he called to the nurses, giving them a soft smile. "Just wait a minute." He leant his elbow on the railing if the bed to lower his face to Miss Montez's level, glancing at his watch, noting his shift was almost over. He only had minutes left.

"Hey, hey," he cooed softly to silence her soft whimpers. "It's okay. It's o-kay." She sniffed loudly and looked down at his hands on the rail with a broken expression that screamed, 'please just get me out of here.' "I know you're afraid, but no one will hurt you here. You need these scans, otherwise you could end up really ill and hurting more..."

Gabriella rolled her head away from him, closing her eyes, pained. "I'm already hurting the most I ever could. I'm never going to be okay again..." Her breath jolts due to her body still quaking. "Everything hurts... and I'm so scared."

Troy frowned with such sympathy her feared his heart was going to burst from his chest. The poor, poor girl.

His hands were now bare, as he had thrown he dirty gloves in the trash, as required, so he gently touch her shoulder from over her the clothing she wore, and her eyes instantly met his own for the first time, but in surprise rather than fear.

"Can't I stay with you, Dr Bolton?" She asked softly, sounding like a lost little girl, and it almost broke him. She was perhaps five or six years his junior, and yet she looked so much younger, so lost, and all because one man chose to make her this way. He couldn't think about that. It would make his blood boil.

Troy gave her a broken smile as sudden emotion threatened to overtake him. He swallowed it and nodded. She had such pretty eyes, but the hurt in them was strongly palpable. "My shift is over. I'll come with you for the scans, how about that?"

Gabriella seemed to let out a breath, and her lip twitched in gratitude. "Yes. Yes please," she said, her voice barely audible again.

Troy swallowed as he walked at Gabriella's side to the elevator—no, the English called them lifts.

He knew now he was going to have to stay with this girl and see this through. God damn it Bolton. Always caring too much. What the hell was this he had gotten himself into?

❝~x~❞

Gabriella swallowed as a MRI machine the size of a car began to move, taking her further inside the mechanisms to be scanned. It was a tight space, the roof of the tunnel not twenty centimetres from her face. She felt her breathing increase involuntarily, a plea escaping from her lips as images began to blip around her eyes...

He was so close, too close. No. She didn't want this. 'Stop!' she protested, panic filling every vessel and every vein. 'You're suffocating me! Stop! Let go of me!' He wasn't listening...He had ripped off her fancy knickers, the only pair she had owned, and stuffed into into her mouth. She tasted the salt of her sweat on the lace as she tried desperately to breath enough air to scream, but with every one her stomach was threatening to reverse...The air around her in dark of the back room was too stuffy and hot, as he began pushing his hand down, down and into his underpants, pulling himself free and impaling her all in one movement. Agony stabbed her deep inside a place no one had ever been like a hot iron poker and radiated every possible nerve from her scalp to her toes. She would have screamed, but the pain robbed her of breath in her lungs as she began to choke on her own token pair of fancy knickers, as though they were mocking her. You put us on in desperation that you might finally getting a shag, well, now you've got one. Enjoying yourself yet? 'You dirty tease.' His voice was like a haunting chorus in her now torn apart soul. "Can you feel me inside you? I could tell this is what you wanted all along, you dirty, fucking bitch. You asked for this, and now you're gonna get it––'

"Doctor Bolton!" she gasped, her voice bouncing straight back to her off the roof of the machine as she wrenched herself from the vivid re-encounter episode. "Please... I can't...I can't...It's Him––"

A sharp, unknown female voice came on over the monitor. "Miss Montez, you must keep still, or––"

"––It's alright, Gabriella," Doctor Bolton's American vernacular interrupted over the intercom, his tone calming and soft, creating a stark contrast between the he and the other medic in the monitor booth. "It's okay. Just breathe. He's not here, he can't hurt you. You're safe... Talk to me. What are you?"

Gabriella blinked away her tears and sniffed, stilling as she focused on the soft timbre of his voice. "Safe."

"Good girl," he encouraged, accompanied with the slight repeat crackle of the intercom microphone. "Do you need to come out for a minute?" Gabriella heard a slight faint protest before Troy spoke again, seeming to ignore it. "Gabriella?"

"Yes, please," she wheezed out, needing to be with him for a minute or two in order to remind herself Troy was here, and he would care for her, keep her safe. Safe. He wasn't here. He couldn't do anything to her here.

"It's alright. You're out, you're out," Troy called softly as he made his way into the room, just as Gabriella was fully ejected from the machine. It was only then that she realised she was still wheezing, tears falling unchecked from her eyes. He raised a hand to help her sit up, her haphephobia, and more specifically, androphobia, meaning he had already made the precaution of pulling on a clean pair of latex gloves. As a result, she only flinched a little at his touch. She stared at her lap, trying to breathe, and her tears were heavy, creating tracks slowly down her already stained and puffy cheeks.

"What is it? What did you see?" he murmured in his quietest voice. She simply shook her head hurriedly, crunching up her entire face, trying to push the memories back.

"I just can't think...Can't..." she struggled to form a full sentence. They sat in quiet for a moment or to, the only sound being Gabriella's loud breathing, when suddenly an idea struck him.

"What's your favourite colour, Gabriella?" he questioned, leaning not too far from her, against the machine.

"It...changes..." she replied breathlessly, though not as much as before.

"Well," he continued, and she began to marvel at his ability to sound so genuinely interested. "What is it today?"

She paused knowing her answer instantly, though contemplating lying, but considering how she could have her lost her life earlier that night, it didn't seem worth it. Perspective and all that. "The color...of...your eyes," she replied softly, feeling a her breath returning to her. If she hadn't been feeling so out of control, she would most definitely have blushed. "They match...your scrubs."

Troy looked down the cobalt scrubs she spoke of, grasping them in one hand at the chest. "They do?"

Gabriella had an inkling he knew this. It was all just technique to distract her from––No. She couldn't even think it. ...to distract her.

She nodded, and he appeared thoughtful. "Do you slightly feel better now? Enough to get back on?"

Gabriella pursed her lips, nodding. "I'm so sorry," she apologised quickly, wiping her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. "I'm being a nuisance."

Troy bit back a scoff, instead frowning as little before shaking his head with a kind smile at her ridiculous comment. "No, you're not. You're just afraid, and perfectly rightly too."

Gabriella swallowed, not replying as she shuffled back into a lying down position on the tray of the MRI.

"Good to go, Miss Montez?" the women's voice asked over the intercom once Troy has gone back to the booth as the tray moved her into place again.

Her breath was shaky, and for a moment she couldn't reply. "Y-yes."

"Doing okay in there?" came Doctor Bolton's voice again, and a moment later, just as her breathing increased again, a tell for another flashback, he began to question what exact that colour that was.

"I...don't know," she muttered, concentrating on the roof of the tunnel, trying not to move.

"Well... What colour are my eyes, exactly? I don't exactly know..."

"You just said exactly twice."

"Did I?"

She rolled her eyes, still breathless. "You don't know...your own eye colour?"

"Can't say that I do, no."

She knew what he was doing, but she humoured him, as it was helping. "Well... I suppose they're...cobalt..."

She closed her eyes and swallowed. You are safe. Safe. Do not panic.

"Gabriella?"

"And...I g-guess...azure."

"Azure, huh? What else?"

"S-sapphire, maybe? With...slight...cyan...and...cerulean?"

"Wow. That's a lot of blues to know... I'm curious though as to how exactly you know this without eye contact."

She gave the smallest of smiles in amusement. He really had no idea how un-avoidable those peepers were. "It only takes one look, Troy. They're pretty...n-noticeable."

She swallowed, closing her eyes. Stop it, Gabriella, the devil on her shoulder scolded her. Stop it. Men can't be trusted. He, that man, that monster, broke you tonight, you stupid girl, and yet you're still at it, chasing men who want nothing from you. Men never want anything but one thing, thousands have told you this for years... Huh. Until tonight, they had never even wanted that from you, anyway... You really don't get it, do you? Idiot girl. They don't want you, so stop throwing yourself into them desperately like you're deserving... You're desperate and damaged, and that is all. You deserved what happened...

She whimpered once as the machine came to a stop and the tray moved out again.

Because why else would it have happened at all?

"Hey," Troy called softly as he walked to her side. "It's okay. It's done now. Are you alright?"

They both knew she wasn't alright, and this soon came out in the open when Gabriella was asked to change into a hospital gown. She had been allowed to be scanned in her dress, as it hadn't contained any metal that may interfere with the picture produced by the scan. However, her whole body began to coil with fear and tension at the idea of taking off her clothes and becoming bare in a place that she didn't know. Not after... Not after.

"I c-can't, Doctor Bolton," she whispered in panic as the nurse went to fetch her a gown once they had returned to a private hospital exam room, after having her arm casted and put in a sling, and the gash on her head stitched.

"You can call me Troy," he persuades softly from the chair beside her bed. "I'm not your doctor now...technically."

"T-troy... I know I can't change on my own...but people touching me...I-I...can't..." she shook her head in quick dismissal, shuddering in fear of the pain and of remembering the events she had been trying so hard to repress.

Troy swallowed, putting his metaphorical doctors cap on firmly for a moment. "Did you suffer from this haphephobia...before what happened?"

Gabriella closed her eyes, shaking her head slightly.

"Okay, well... Why don't you just make sure whoever helps you with your gown is wearing gloves?"

Gabriella swallowed hard but didn't speak. Troy sighed, pulling his chair closer.

"I know you're afraid to undress," Troy whispered by her side, hoping that being as honest as possible may help her to feel more comfortable. "That's perfectly normal after...what happened...but I also know that you...won't want to be in those clothes much longer... They'll remind you of every moment..."

Gabriella's eyes were clamped shut as tight as possible, but he saw a tear escape with her faintest of nods.

"Okay," she sighed, her voice broken with unshed tears. "I'll change but...only if you'll help me."

Troy gave her a tiny, broken smile as emotion threatened to hit him again. He let out a sigh. "Of course." He felt the urge to pull her hand to his. "Of course I'll help you, but only if you're sure..."

"I-I'm sure."

"Though, I may need a second pair of hands... Could I ask my friend Linda to help, the nurse who was treating you before?"

Gabriella's eyes were wider than before, panic hitting at the thought of a stranger helping her undress. Though, the fact the nurse was female seemed to have calmed her, as she nodded gently, her eyes trained on her knotted hands in her lap.

"Alright, I'll get her. It'll be okay."

Troy returned a minute later with a blonde nurse called Linda, who had a nice smile and a Northern accent that Gabriella found comforting. As they closed the door of the exam room, Gabriella felt her chest tighten.

"Breathe," Troy reminded, letting Linda begin to help her take off her ripped, ruined party dress. Troy assisted, keeping an eye on her face and breathing while they stripped her bare from behind the blue curtains. As Gabriella was turned a little, Troy bit his tongue to reframe from grimacing at the sight of the bruising, scrapes and...red, purple and blue angry finger and hand marks that littered her skin. He frowned, grinding his teeth. What animal could do this, and to such a poor, sweet girl? A chill ran down his spine at the realisation that her underwear was missing from her party outfit, and her thighs were clad with bruising. It made his stomach turn. Definitely rape.

He trained his gaze on her shoulders and face, giving her a smile whenever her eyes met his. "That's it," he whispered in encouragement. "Almost there." She shivered as they tied the hospital gown around her, then covering her in white sheets and a blue blanket.

"Thank you," she whispered with gratitude towards the both of them.

The blonde nurse, Linda, smiled at her. "You're welcome. You're lucky to have this one," she joked, nudging toward Troy. "He's a tall order around here."

Gabriella's lips nudged in the smallest of smiles toward Linda. "I can imagine."

As Linda left to bag her clothes, Gabriella was shivering, most likely with anxiety more than the cold.

"Cold?" Troy questioned as he rubbed her eye, sitting back down next to her.

She shook her head and curled down into the sheets, not taking her eyes off him. Troy took a deep breath.

"What happened to you, Gabriella?" he whispered, leaning as close as he dare with a soft expression.

Gabriella shook her head vigorously, her eyes closed. "I... I can't..."

Troy watched her with eyes filled with sympathy. "I know...but you have to. Not necessarily now, but you have to tell, otherwise, it'll eat you alive." He held his own hands next to her leg that was under the sheets, feeling the strange urge to touch her again. "Or worse, he won't get caught and then he'll do this to someone else."

"I don't want that," she whimpered.

"I know you don't... Gabriella, you're safe with me. You can tell me... You don't have to tell the authorities yet, but they'll want to talk to you so they can catch him."

"What will they want?"

"An account most likely, and some samples from..." he paused, swallowing his discomfort at the words he was about to say, "...from under your nails and from inside you. They'll then trace any DNA they find to catch him."

She swallowed, her eyes trained on her lap, silently.

"It will awaken the demons...but once they've been let out you'll feel so much better... Trust me."

For a moment, Troy thought he had gotten no where, however Gabriella suddenly spoke, and when she did, she didn't stop. With a tiny, shaky voice she told him of how she was a undergrad student at Kings College London, studying Law, and she had gone to a party at a top club with her friend Taylor and some others, when she had suddenly begun to be pursued by a good-looking older guy there. She had seen him around campus but didn't know his name, and then she got a little tipsy with her friends, only to end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"He was nice at first," she whispered. "But then he started to...t-try and touch me and get me to touch h-him...and he pushed me into a back room... I tried to get out, but...he was too...strong. His hands...were...everywhere...and I... He kept telling me to shut up so that we could both enjoy ourselves...but I didn't want it." She voice wobbled, and Troy sought her gaze to give her a sincere expression. It's okay. You don't have to say it. "Why did he does this to me? I didn't want it, Troy..." she whimpered, suddenly sounding ten years younger than her physical age. She broke into wrecking sobs for the first time since being admitted. True, wailing sobs that shook her body, and Troy felt her heart in his throat, at a loss at how to proceed. Usually he would offer the physical comfort of a hug, as he was not on duty and she wasn't his patient, so such actions were permitted, however, in such situations, with such a fragile patient, he wasn't sure what to do.

"I'm so sorry," Troy husked deeply, biting his lip to avoid breaking down with her. She curled into herself, and he couldn't help but picture her in such a way, all alone on the floor in that dark back room of the club, after He, that animal, left her there. Troy had pulled his chair as close as the design of the bed would allow, and so slowly placed a gloved hand on her back as she curled into a side fetal position. He had expected for her to flinch away from him, only, the opposite began to happen, she looked up at him, still crying just as heavily, and that was when he knew what to do. He had seen that look a thousand times growing up, in the faces of almost every girlfriend he had had, an expression many girls are not even aware they are displaying; one that simply requested something that all humans craved, and that one thing was love. It was a gaze that he had learned only appeared in desperate times, and should not be denied, it called to him, something within him he hadn't felt in a long time. A look that simply said, Hold me.

She seemed as drawn to him as he was to her, as she drew herself into his hold slowly, but almost without hesitation. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, curling her arms around her shaking body around her middle and shoulders, giving his most gentle bear-hug, if that were even a possible thing to give. She continued to sob noisily, her face hidden in the papery material of his disposable scrubs. "H-he just...k-kept grabbing at me, and he w-wouldn't stop-p... T-then before I could e-even sc-scream h-he... h-e..."

"Shhh, I know," he soothed, though in his chest he was anything but calm. Inside him was a burning ball of rage. "I know."

"The p-pain...I-It t-took all the a-air out of m-me... I tried-d to c-call for help. I t-tried.. but t-the music...no one c-could hear..."

Her breathing was increasing, so Troy quickly adopted his medical tactics to lower her heart rate.

"Gabi, I need you to breathe," he whispered, pulling her slightly away from his body, but she clung like an infant primate, her arms fisting the material. He pulled his stethoscope from around his neck with one hand, the other side still around her for reassurance, and once the buds were in her ears, he pressed it to her pulse-point at the top right of her back. Her heart drummed in his ears, and he began to count the amount of beats. "Breathe," he exhaled softly, rubbing her back in circles as he stole glances at his watch. He finished counting after sixty seconds, deciding that, though she was calming, he would have liked her heart rate to be slower.

When he pulled the stethoscope down and out of his ears, she was trying to breathe more evenly. He began to take deep breaths right into his lungs, exhaling loudly in the hope her body would naturally begin to match his breathing pattern as it should. "In...and out," he encouraged, softly. Gradually, her breathing did even out, and Troy rocked her lightly from back and forth. "That's it. Good girl."

Gabriella had her eyes closed against the fabric, feeling the solid wall of muscle beneath.

"I'm so sorry you had to go through all this," he whispered, against the top of her head.

"I deserved it," she muttered, causing Troy's body to freeze.

"Why on earth would you think that?" he whispered, astounded by her self-abhorrence.

"I do deserve it. I threw myself into flirting with him, because, well, guys don't ever hit on me, like, ever. In fact, that was the first time anyone had." Her voice was tiny, and Troy sucked in a breath on hearing her words.

"Never?" he breeched.

Gabriella shook her bowed head. "I had never been noticed by any guy... before...tonight... I've always been the freaky maths girl..."

"Well, I think you're terrific," he assured with a smile, going to move back but still clung on. She slowly loosened a little just to look up at him in surprise.

"How? How am I terrific?" her tone was suddenly stark, angry, not at him, he soon realised, but at herself...and the world, for raising such monsters of men into society who did this to girls like her without a second thought. "How is that possible?" She began to grab at her hair and hide her face behind her hands, which were shaking violently again. "Before tonight I was a pathetic virgin, Troy. A nineteen year old virgin," she growled bitterly, "And now, I'm even worse than that. Now I'm still a pathetic virgin, who doesn't even have her bloody virginity." Her crying while talking was becoming hysterical, her breathing sounding high pitched. "And all because I was so desperate I wore it like a prize on my sleeve." She laughed without humour as tears fell from her eyes unchecked again. "I flaunted it, I realise that now...and yet I have the audacity to sit around and cry about the fact some guy who I lead on actually took me up on my flirting." She shook her head, frowning and dashing her tears in fury. "Because, that's the thing, as much as flaunted and teased them, I had no intention of giving myself to any of them. I never have..." Troy was frowning with a great amount of shock and sympathy. "I prayed to the ceiling all the time for someone to come along that I could lose my virginity to," she whimpered. "Every night when my friends talked about their boyfriends, their nights out, their sex lives, the fact I had never had any of those things outcast me more than I already was... I was just so desperate to be like them, to have been loved..."

She swallowed a took a moment to calm herself a little.

"I realised the other week that soon I'll be turning twenty..." Her lower lip wobbled again. "I just really didn't want to be one of those twenty year olds who has still have never been loved... So, I see now: I brought this on myself..."

Troy took her hand tight in both his own and leant forward near to her face. "No," he denied firmly. "No way did you do that." He reassured her, but inside, his mind was in circles. Virgin. She was a virgin. Oh fuck... God damn the monster that did this! Let him rot in burning hell. "No matter how much that may be true, virgin or not, there is absolutely no justification for what that bastard did to you."

His eyes never left hers, and she nodded, wanting to accept his words. "Why couldn't I have met you at that club last night, Troy?" she asked rhetorically as she lolled back onto the pillow, tears sliding down her temples and into her hair. He leant forward and swept the tendrils from her eyes, leaning on his elbow next to her, and for a moment he let himself imagine, walking into a pub or a bar, and meeting the beautiful girl in front of him, in her pretty party dress with a big, bright smile and her big chocolate eyes, perfectly sweet and intelligent and...innocent. Yes, Lord––why couldn't it have been him? Why put this poor girl through this?

"I don't know, Gabi," he sighed, letting his gloved fingers linger on the heat of her skin. "You have no idea how much I wish it could have been..."

After a moment of quiet, Gabriella suddenly let out the smallest of giggles.

"What?"

"You called me Gabi."

Troy flushed, awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. "Err, sorry..."

"It's alright... No guy has ever called me that before." She smiled down at her lap, bashfully. "I like it."

Troy smiled shyly back at her, feeling his heart pick up. "Good."

"Knock, knock," came Linda's voice from the door as she knocked her fist on it. "You have a visitor."

A moment later, both Troy and Gabriella let a gasp of surprise as Taylor McKessie ran in to her friends side, only to come to an abrupt halt on coming face to face with Troy Bolton.

"Troy?!" Taylor exclaimed, hardly believing her eyes. Her old friend from high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, was stood in front of her, in England, in her English best friend's hospital room.

"What––?!" they both questioned, simultaneously.

"Wait––" Gabriella muttered, confused. "You two know each other?"

Troy grinned and gave Taylor a quick hug, which she returned with equal vigor. "Yeah. We went to high school together."

"Albuquerque," Gabriella breathed in realisation, having had many a conversation with Taylor about her country and where she came from.

"Gabriella and I both go to Kings. I'm doing my Masters degree––Gabriella is an undergrad."

Gabriella looked up at the two, feeling a little lost.

"Oh Gabs, what happened?! One minute you were there with a guy and the next you were gone. I tried to find you. I even got a pose of bouncers looking for you, but you were gone..."

Taylor instantly went to her friend's side, about to grip her in a hug. Troy expected her to flinch away, but was, yet again, surprised when she didn't flinch much at all. Hmm. Perhaps it was only skin to skin contact, rather than contact at all. In a moment, Gabriella hugged her friend back furiously and began to cry, and soon tears were excaping strong-as-steel Taylor McKessie's eyes too. Troy swallowed, knowing Gabriella would want to tell Taylor what happened, most likely giving her more details than she had given him, so be began to back to the door.

"You're going?!" Gabriella questioned, her voice sounding panicked.

Damn it, Bolton. Rape or trauma victims of any kind need consistency. She needs to know that friendly faces she has begun to trust don't leave her.

"No, no," he reassured quickly. "I'm just going to change." He took a peek out the small window in the door. "The Police are here to talk to you whenever you're ready."

Gabriella swallowed and nodded gently, looking down as this then caused a tidal wave of questions to cascade from Taylor McKessie's mouth all at once.

"I'll be back in a minute," he called from the door, before closing it and making his way to the staff locker room. There was no one inside, due to the early hours of the morning and the busy nature of the department. There was never much time to stop. The room was dim, the lights from the small windows and the window on the door leaking in artificial light. He trudged to his locker, suddenly realising in the dim, early light of the morning how tired he was. He stole a glance at the clock. It was 6am. With a yawn, he opened his locker, pulling on a fresh white t-shirt and jeans, halting as his eyes fell on the photographs on the inside of his locker door. The Wildcats, senior year; Chad and he at a Red Hawks game; his friends from here at the hospital... His family. Suddenly hit by a violent wave of home-sickness after such an emotion shift, he pulled out his phone and dialed the number he had had memorised since the age of six years old. Home.

"Hello?" came the groggy, half asleep voice of his mother. Shit, he realised. Oh, well done, Idiot. It's 11pm at home.

"Hey Mama," he greeted guiltily, using the name for her he knew she loved.

"Troy?" she questioned, sounding suddenly as though she hadn't been sleeping at all.

"I, er..." Hearing her voice seemed to unlock the vault to his emotions, and he suddenly felt the unmistakeable lump of unshed tears rising in his throat. It had been far too long since he had called them. "I just, er..." He sniffed and quickly wiped a tear that fell from his eye. "I just needed to hear your voice." His voice cracked on the last word, raising an octave, and he would have scolded himself for having no control, if he hadn't been so tired.

"Oh honey, what happened? Are you alright? Did something happen?"

"No, no," he denied quickly with a wobbling voice. "It's, erm, just been a really rough shift..."

"Tell me about it, sweetheart. You don't usually get thing emotional outside of the job."

"I know," he sighed, perching on the arm of the nearest armchair. "It's just, this girl came in earlier, and, Mom, she's beautiful. She's lovely and intelligent. She goes to Kings College, even! But she's...she's so broken..."

"What happened?"

"That doesn't matter, Ma. I––"

"If it's upsetting you like this, it must matter an awful lot, Troy. I know you." He heard muffled talking, and tail end of his mother protesting for his dad to wait a minute.

"The most horrific crime a man could possible commit happened to her, Mom," he mumbled, sadly. "He shoved her into a bad room and torn her innocence away from her, and all she wanted was a guy to finally pay some attention to her, and he...just violated her and left her there to bleed."

Lucille Bolton swallowed, not surprised to this kind of treatment of women from some men, due to her part time job at the local women's shelter, where she saw far too many cases similar to that her son was speaking of.

"She's nineteen, Mom... How does a man do such a thing to such an...obviously innocent, sweet young women..." He grabbed at his air. "I just don't understand..."

"Honey, I cannot express how relieved I am that this is such a surprise for you. Men are naturally stronger than women, as you well know, and unfortunately, many men daily make the choice to use that physical strength against the women, who in fact, they only evolved stronger than to protect and fight for." He could hear the bittersweet smile in her voice. "It's up to even stronger men like you to therefore protect and fight for the women they didn't...you see?"

Troy nodded, only to realise she couldn't see him. "Y-yeah," he agreed, clearing his throat with a sniff.

"You okay, Honey?" she checked after a moment of content quiet between the pair.

"I am now," he murmured, wiping his cheeks. "I just... She's been so broken, displaying some serious shifts in emotional state, and...she even said she thought she deserved what happened, all because she was a virgin before... I managed to get through to her, but, god, she cried so much, Mom. I've never seen such emotion before. All I kept thinking was that I had to be strong, and that I wished you were here, because you'd have known what to say." He looked down at the converse on his feet. "I mean, what do you say to someone who has just had all her perception and belief in the human race ripped from her like that?"

"I'm sure you did just fine, Honey. You're bedside manner is exceptional...plus it sounds like you have a particular soft spot for this girl."

He rolled his eyes, feeling like a teenager again, being teased about a crush. "Maaaa," he groaned.

She laughed at him. "Don't you 'Maaa' me. As I said, I know you, Troy Bolton."

He smiled to himself, thinking of Gabriella's rare little smiles, and how her small body felt against his own. So wrong, yet so right. "She is pretty terrific," he replied in a bashful, shy voice, reluctantly. "But, I barely know her, Ma."

"There's plenty of time for that," she replied, and he knew she was still laughing at him.

"I'm sorry I woke you," he apologised softly, closing his locker.

"It's alright, honey. It's lovely to hear from you. I would pass you over to your dad, but he's already unconscious again."

Troy laughed softly, shaking his head. "That's okay, Ma. I'll speak to you soon."

"Alright, honey." He went to hang up. "Troy?"

"Yeah?"

"Is she really that beautiful? Because I'll bet she doesn't know it."

Troy felt a wide smile spread across his face before he could repress it. "Yeah, Mom. She is, and no, she definitely doesn't."

"Well, you know what they say. Truly beautiful people are like butterflies; they can't see their wings, and so can't see how truly beautiful they are, but everyone else can... People are like that, too."

"Thanks, Mom. I don't know what I'd do without you and your proverbs," he teased, though grateful for her words.

"Yes, well, let's hope you don't have to find out for a long time coming."

Troy smiled at the ground, feeling so much better. "I love you, Mom. Tell dad I'll talk to him tomorrow."

"Alright, honey. I love you, too. Speak soon."

❝~x~❞

"You're back," Gabriella breathed as Troy closed the exam room door behind him, and he could see her eyes were still puffy and red, as were Taylor's. He could see from the far off look on both their faces that Gabriella had spoken of her ordeal. Taylor, a typical mother hen, looked distraught.

"Hey," he greeted them with a small, apprehensive smile.

"I gave my account to the Police," Gabriella whispered.

Troy sat down opposite Taylor on the other side of Gabriella's bed. "Good. It's the right thing to do."

"I, er... They said I need to let one of the doctors examine me and take DNA for evidence..." She swallowed. "And a pregnancy test." Troy closed his eyes involuntarily for a moment, silently praying on impulse. Please, God, no. She looked up, first at Taylor, and then at Troy and back again. "Will you stay with me? Both of you?"

Troy and Taylor looked at one another, both feeling emotional at her sweet, innocent demeanour. Like she had to ask.

"Of course," they agreed in unison in their American vernacular, all three pairs of eyes glassy with dark bags and hunched spines, but with gentle smiles on their lips. Maybe things would still be okay after all.

❝~x~❞

It was not long until Christmas now, and Troy thumbed his fingers against his local Pet A Manger table, sipping his coffee as slowly as possible to put off going back into the cold. There was thin snow on the ground, that had now turned to sludge, which he hated. It wouldn't be long until he was back home in Albuquerque for Christmas however, and then he would be finding another rotation back in his own country, where at least it was warm. At the thought of leaving, Troy's thoughts went guiltily back to Gabriella, the only reason he really had left to stay here. She had been so frightened as they examined her genital area for damage, as well as DNA, she had gripped his hand. "Look right at me," he husked to her, knowing how humiliating such an experience always was for patients. Luckily, she had only needed a few stitches, and she hadn't been pregnant or caught any infections. Safe to say all three of them had breathed a massive sigh of relief on that one.

He softly let his gaze drift out the window, only to catch a sudden flash of dark hair that made her nerves buzz and his heart leap into his mouth. Leaping from his seat, he stuck his head out the door of the coffee shop.

"Gabriella?"

He watched her leap almost out of her skin at the sound of her name, spinning round to meet him. Her face, appearing frightened for a millisecond, became one of relief. Her chocolate eyes met his, and he sighed, realising how much he had missed her.

"Oh, Troy!" She huffed. "It's just you!" She quickly hurried into the warm, and followed him to his table, and Troy didn't miss the way she walked hunched, looking over her shoulder with every other second. As she sat down next to him in the booth, she wrung her hands in her lap.

"Would you like a drink?"

Gabriella met his eyes only once, and instantly, Troy knew she wasn't any better. He had seen her the day after she was discharged from May-view, and had kept in contact with her via phone calls when he had time, but his job in its final days was as demanding as ever, so this was not nearly as often as he would have liked.

"Tea, please."

"Earl Grey?" he asked, as he had noted a long time ago now it was a favourite of many Brits.

"Please," she breathed. "Milk. Two sugars."

"Sure," he smiled. "I'll be right back."

When Troy returned, having had an uncomfortable second conversation with the same barista who served him earlier, who still hadn't seemed to have grasped that he. Wasn't. Interested. She was nice enough, but she wore too much make up and, well... She wasn't...she wasn't Gabriella. Simple as that.

"Ah," he sighed as he sat down. "Here you are," putting down her drink in front of her. She swallowed, thanking him softly.

Then, silence stretched between them.

"How have you been?"

Gabriella frowned into her cup of tea, running fingers along the cast on her wrist. "Okay, I guess."

So... Not okay at all. "Have you gone to any of the the support groups Linda suggested since we talked the other day?"

Gabriella carried on staring intently at her cup as though it were a half finished crossword puzzle, indicating that she hadn't.

"Gabriella––" he sighed in concern.

"––I know, I know, I'm sorry, but I can't go to those things, I just...just...can't. I don't know how to talk about it...not with strangers..."

"Gabriella––"

"Because, I already know, I know that...that...no matter how many help sessions I go to, it won't help me."

Troy swallowed, his thigh centimetres from hers. His lowered his voice to a husked whisper. "But 'Brie, you don't know that...If you don't try, you won't get better––"

"––I do, though," she argued back in a slightly louder husk, her voice sad. "Because, Christ, it happened just down the road, Troy... I can't...walk anywhere by myself now without a can of pepper spray in my pocket, and I most certainly won't ever go out at night alone again... This was my home and now..." She shook her head, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. "He's ruined it all... This can never be home again."

Troy frowned. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying..." A small tear fell quickly from her eye, and he reached up slowly to wipe it away with the pad of his thumb, only to stop himself and instead hook his sleeve over it, using the material to wipe away the moisture. "I can't stay here." Her chin began to wobble as she tried to hold in the tears. She tried to calm herself with a sip of her tea, but her hands only shook more. He took them both in time to let her rest her head against his coat-clad collarbone, and he curled her into the warm of his body. Her skin was cold, and as she breathed heavily and sniffed to try and clear her tears. He pressed a shy kiss to her hair.

"It's okay... I get it...I'm just so sorry it has to come to that... What will you do about Kings?"

Gabriella shrugged. "I don't know..."

"I'm sure, with your amazing grades so far, you could easily get a transfer... If you tell them what's happened, they'll understand... Didn't you say your Mom's in California with her new husband?"

Gabriella nodded. "Mom moved to live with him when I moved out."

"Hmm..." Troy suddenly gasped, experiencing what can only be described as an epiphany. "'Brie. Come with me."

Gabriella wiped her eyes as she snapped her gaze to his, her eyes suddenly shining with an emotion he had never seen there before. Hope. "What? What are you talking about?"

"My rotation in England ends in the next few days...and then I go home for Christmas... I have narrowed down three possible hospitals for my residency...and one of those is...in California... Home back to the US with me."

With widen eyes, Gabriella's jaw had dropped, only for it to retract a moment later. "But...we barely know each other."

Troy paused, smiling suddenly as his mothers words from the same day he met Gabriella returning to him. "There's plenty of time for that." He reached to smooth her hair, shushing her as she jumped out her skin at the simple sudden noise of someone dropping plates. She was increasingly jumping and fearful after the attack, and no wonder. "I...I just...I have this...need to protect you since I met you that I...I can't quite explain."

Gabriella allowed herself to smile, and though it was a small smile, it melted Troy's heart. "Could we really do this?"

"Yes," he nodded, suddenly sure he had never felt more certain of anything in his life. "Of course."

"What about arrangements––Unis––Visas! I have no idea how to––"

"But I do," he confirmed, suddenly bouncing with the prospect on taking Gabriella home with him, taking her away from the city where her memories of her trauma were everywhere she turned.

Gabriella swallowed hard, wishing she could be optimistic like he was, but the Monster who attacked her almost three weeks ago had ruined any hope of that for her.

"Think about it," he smiled. "It would mean you could get away from Him, Gabi, and for good..." He took the final sips of his coffee. "I'll help you with anything you need, whatever you decide... Just know that."

Gabriella nodded, deep in thought, and Troy softly pull her to him, embracing her and wrapping her into his thick coat, taking her jacket-clad wrists as gently as possible in his hands and blowing warm air from his lungs onto her cool hands, careful not to touch her.

"It'll all be okay in the end," he whispered as she closed her eyes against him, calming at the thud of his steady heartbeat against her ear, the one lifeline she had since that horrendous night two weeks ago.

"If it is not yet okay, then it is not the end," she finished for him in an equally soft voice, silently praying he was right. About everything.

❝~x~❞

Troy hurried up to the address Taylor had given him, taking the stairs two at a time. He had received a worrying voicemail from his old high school friend that was rather cryptic, so he wasn't sure what was waiting for him inside her flat as he knocked his fist on her door.

"Troy!" she huffed before the door was even fully open, yanking him inside. "Thank god!"

"What?––"

"It's Gabriella." Taylor's eyes were fearful, wide and round. "I––"

As if on queue, Troy hear muffled commotion from another room, sounding distinctly like their brunette friend. His eyes snapped to Taylor's, suddenly equally panicked.

"Was that––?"

"She's been having night terrors since she was discharged, so after the first few nights she came here to stay with me so she wouldn't have to explain it to her friends in halls..." Troy quickly set off in search of the source of the crying, Taylor straight on his tail. "But it's gotten even worse..." Troy opened the guest bedroom door to find Gabriella in a twisted position on the bed, tangled in sheets with a anguished expression. "I can't wake her... Why can't I wake her?"

Troy rushed to her side, untangling her legs from the sheets. "Gabi!Gabi! Gabi!" he called over and over, running hands along her limbs to try and still them as they thrashed. She was whimpering like a broken puppy and begging in unintelligible unfinished sentences. She fought reflexively against his touch once his skin came in contact with hers, her voice rising suddenly to an almost deafening volume. He knew what was happening. Her mind was mistaking his skin contact for...That monsters.

"Please...No, no..." She inhaling and exhaling was laboured and loud, and he knew he was going to need to get her breathing normally to prevent a full blown panic attack. "Stop, please... S-somebody...h-help...n-no...Troy, help...me...I can't...breathe...NO! Get away!..."

"Shh, shhhh," he cooed loudly, his voice breaking under the anxiety of having to see her this way, taking her lashing body into his arms as he sat on the bed. "Gabriella! It's me! It's Troy, you're okay. Just open you eyes. It's all go away, just open your eyes. He's not here. You're safe. Safe, Gabi."

He held her tight, kissing her hair over and over. He held her wrists, letting her try to hit him all she wanted, as he strikes were weakening.

"Gabriella!" he called, cooing, rocking back and forth.

She opened her eyes suddenly, her gaze disorientated, spanning around the room and then meeting Troy's face, the whites of her eyes clearly visible with her fear, her limbs shaking. "Troy," she whimpered in surprise and confusion. "Troy," she breathed and suddenly she was curled into him like she had been the first day, clinging to him like an infant, sobbing her heart out in dry heaves. He was careful to avoid touching her skin to skin.

"It's okay. It was just a nightmare. You're okay... Breathe," he murmured into her hair, curling arms around her.

"H-he...was h...H-he pushed...my...kn-knicker-rs in my...mouth...and...I-I...It just... hurt...It hurt...so much..." Troy's heart splinted a little at the details that began tumbling almost unintelligibly from her lips as she shook. Gradually he got her breathing to slow as she lulled against him, fighting sleep with every fibre. Taylor had left the room a while ago with teary eyes, but not before handing him a cool cloth to mop Gabriella's heated brow and neck. He did so with his gentlest touch, her head lolling back as the moisture wet her skin. They rolled to lay down with her still against him.

"Sleep, beautiful, beautiful girl," he husked in the dim light of her room, feeling her fighting her body's urge to droop.

"I can't," she whispered, slowly. "He'll come back."

"He won't come back. The police have him, now... It was just a nightmare. He'll never come near you again."

"I just want to sleep," she whimpered, and he felt tears begin to wet his shirt and skin beneath. He realised he had obviously over-looked the dark rings under her eyes when he had seen her at the coffee shop earlier that day, but suddenly now they stood out in his memory. The poor girl probably hadn't slept at all since the attack,

"Then sleep, Gabi. I'll be here if the dream comes back." He kissed her hairline again. "I'll be here."

"Thank you," she cried as she finally relaxed against him, and as the tension finally fell away from both their bodies and the air around them, Troy let a lone tear slip from his eye in mourning of what this beautiful girl had had stolen away. "Thank you for finding me."

❝~x~❞

Gabriella couldn't believe what she had just done. She had told her mother about...that night... She had been made to promised by Troy she would wait for him before telling her, but then say rang and, being the mother she was, instantly knew something was off and then would not halting interrogating her until she spilled the beans...only to be stunned into silence when Gabriella finally let go and told her. How, had been the first question, then, Where, and it went on and on until they were both in tears. She instantly demanded Gabriella come to California for the Christmas holidays or she would move back to live with her in her halls bedroom. Safe to say she had been relieved to hear about Gabriella's plans to come to California very soon...though she very deliberately left out any details of...arriving with a guy, her former doctor, and visiting his family in New Mexico first... She wasn't quite sure what was going to happen about Christmas Day itself... She wasn't sure she was going to brave enough to travel all the way from New Mexico to California by herself...but she couldn't exactly expect Troy to miss out on such a time with his family...

She heard a knock, walking quickly to the door, peering nervously through the finder, just to sigh in relief at the sight of Troy standing there.

She sighed as she let him in, softly reaching to hug him quickly over his coat, hiding her puffy eyes in the material.

"Oh," he sounded in surprise at her embrace, gladly accepting the hug gently. "Hello to you too. Where's Taylor?"

"Work. She won't be back until later..." She was hoping he wouldn't be able to tell simply from her voice that she had been sitting upright on the settee all late afternoon and evening, pretending to watch TV shows she once loved, listening nervously for any sound, waiting until she would have company again.

"Have you been okay here by yourself?" he asked, leading her into the open-plan kitchen where he folded his coat over a barstool.

"I'm fine," she replied far too quickly, and she caught his sympathetic gaze before he walked over to her again.

"You will be," he reassured, letting his fingers capture a loose curl that had fallen in her eyes.

"My mum called."

"Oh?"

"And I told her everything."

Troy stopped chewing a crisp and looked at her. "Gabriella, I said you could wait for me and I'd help you."

"I know, I'm sorry, but she knew instantly something was wrong, and I couldn't lie to her... You're not pissed at me, are you?"

"Hell no," he denied with a bemused frown. "Of course I'm not. What did she say?"

"That I should come to California...to which I said I was already planning to...at some point."

Troy began to chuckle. "Yeah––wise not to mention the random American junior medic."

Gabriella frowned disapprovingly. "She'd love you, but... I just thought I'd wait and see what we decide to do..."

Troy nodded and they both digested this in the quiet of the flat.

"I like your trousers," she commented of his navy chinos he had pulled on in a rush after his second to last day at May-view.

"You do?" He looked down at them, which he worn with his trademark converse. "They're pretty new. I wasn't so sure..."

"They're lovely...especially with those trainers..." She was smiling, as though about to laugh out loud at something running through her head. "Very British-prep-meets-skater-jock..."

She was smirking at him, and he chuckled along with her. "Well, considering I was once a 'jock,' and have become somewhat adopted by the British, that would make sense..."

"You were a jock?" she enquired with genuine interest, having always found the American people interesting, the idea of cheerleaders and homecoming and student elections and annual yearbooks and prom kings and queens all very alien to a girl of simple English country-side heritage.

"In high school, yeah. I suppose so."

"Wow," she murmured as the took a seat on either end of the sofa with a bag of Walkers crisps each. "So, you were popular too, I'm guessing."

Troy smiled at her sudden interest, delighted to see her finally distracted from her own life for a while. "I never thought about it much...but I guess I was." He suddenly cringed, recalling the East High cafeteria. "The school did seem to like printing massive, ceiling high banners with my face on..."

Gabriella's jawed dropped as she barked out a laugh at his expense. "No way!"

"Way," he replied, regretfully, causing her to giggle more, and soon he joined her chortling.

"I'm sure the girls liked them," she teased, sucking crisp salt from her thumb.

Troy laughed slightly awkwardly, having never liked to address the subject of his apparent good looks. He knew the effect he could easily have on females, of almost any age or caliber, but unlike most other 'jocks' he had known, he had never felt comfortable abusing those lucky qualities at the poor girls expense, much less preening or primping himself, or spending hours looking at his reflection.

"I know I would have," Gabriella carried on, before he could think of a suitable reply.

Troy's eyes met hers, and she seemed slightly bashful at her comment, as though it had slipped from her lips of its own accord.

"Well... That means more to me than if the entire female student body had so, I assure you..." he murmured, looking at her from under his lashes, and for a moment, they simply let his words sink in. "Few actually ever addressed me about them, or the rest of the team––they were on most of them too."

Gabriella smiled, taking comfort in the fact they both had a tendency to be bashful when discussing themselves, and suddenly, common ground seemed to be stumbled upon. The conversation became even easier from there, as each quizzed the other about the smallest details of their lives. Troy told stories of his days with Taylor, and with his best friend Chad with crazy facial expressions until Gabriella cried with laughter. Oh, such laughter. How she had missed laughing. She was beginning to think it really was the only medicine for the broken soul.

❝~x~❞

Gabriella sat, deep in thought, avoiding splinters from the wood of Troy's childhood treehouse as she breathed in the warm air of the Albuquerque night. It felt so strange to not need layers and layers of clothing so close to Christmas. She looked up at the stars that decorated the deep navy night sky, closing her eyes to the sound of loud, lively crickets in the bushes and the trees. For a moment, she envied his new male friend more than ever, not only for being the kindest person she had ever had the pleasure of coming across, but because he got to grow up here...must have been a small piece of peaceful bliss.

"Penny for your thoughts?" came an enquiry in a faux English accent from the lawn below. Gabriella smiled down at him, giggling softly at his attempt at her accent.

"Nah, dude. I'm not sure I feel like it," she replied, equally hushed, imitating him in a manner that, she already knew, was pretty accurate. She had always been good with accents.

"That was pretty good!" He was laughing as quietly as possible, not wanting to wake his parents at the early hours of the morning. "You got jet lag, too?"

"'Yup," she agreed softly. "It's a bitch."

He gasped, melodramatically, gripping his chest as he sat next to her at the edge of the treehouse. "Such language, Miss Montez."

"Fuck you," she sneered playfully to cover the desire the buzzed through her as he sat so close to her, his thigh parallel to hers as their legs dangled from the edge. This comment began to register though, and suddenly the last few weeks bounced back to her, and she frowned, more than displeased with her own choice of words. "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," he replied with a chuckle, in his usual 'no sweat' attitude.

"Your family are lovely, by the way," she murmured, grimacing subtly as she shifted position, feeling a fresh ripple of intense discomfort spread through her lower abdomen, lower back and pelvic region, aching as she felt the pressure building higher and the heaviness still as dominant as before.

"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked in concern as she shifted to dig her fingers into her abdemon.

"Nothing, it's just bloody menstrual cramps." She shifted again, letting a further wince twist her features this time. "Ouch, ah, it hurts..."

"Have you had any painkillers?"

"Yeah...but they don't seem to want to work. God, you're lucky you're a man," she groaned, flopping back into a laying position on the solid wood, her hands rubbing her lower abdomen. "No periods, no monthly searing pain, no giving birth..." She paused, releasing the significance of her next words in her own life suddenly weighing down on her. "Painless sex."

Troy lay down next to her slowly, looking over at her with a heavy heart. After what she had been through, he knew that men as a general species deserved that, because it was true for many. There for plenty of men who thrived on the fact they could, for lack of a better phrase, penetrate then leave. Women had so many more things to worry about. Pain on losing virginity, having another persons organ inside their body...not to mention pregnancy, menstrual cycles and shaving god knows how many parts of their bodies to appear socially 'acceptable' to men. Looking up at the stars, he sighed.

"Men are shits," he said matter-of-factly, earning a giggle from her he had hoped for. "We really are. We're idiots. Women wear the pants in every relationship, mark my words. You're just...so much smarter and more attuned and experienced than us guys, you know. So much more... I mean, we may be...fortunate enough to have and not have such things, but...in the end...the experiences and the lessons of life you learn are so much more worthwhile..." He leant up on an elbow. "Safe to say you have met a right load of shits in your life, 'Brie, but I promise you, we're not all that bad...and I know you won't believe me, and, fuck, I don't blame you after...but...there are good guys."

Gabriella turned to look at him, his blue eyes shining against the dim of the garden lighting. "If I hadn't met you that night...I don't think I would have have believed that again." She winced and whimpered again as Troy rolled closer.

"May I?" Troy asked, his healers hands hovering over her abdomen where she had been pushing her fingers into it. She nodded, her body stiffening, only to relax when his subtle fingers pressed right into the two exact sources of the pain at her 'V' of lower abdomen, just in from where either of her hipbones protruded, into her pelvic region. The flesh was soft, womanly, even from over her t-shirt, but he could also feel the more firmer muscle deep beneath, where, to Gabriella, it felt like both her ovaries were on fire. His strong fingers dug into the flesh to press the two parallel points where the aching pain seemed to originate, and she softly groaned in relief.

"Healers hands," she sighed as he continued, leaning over her on his hip.

"For you, Gabriella, always," he vowed with an exaggerated deep voice, causing her to grin with a flush to her cheeks.

"Wow," she sighed, euphorically. "You're good at this... Do you charge by the hour, because I could really use this every month."

Troy shook his head slightly, chortling. He paused, unable to prevent his medical brain from churning as she expressed her discomfort. "Have you ever considered going on the contraceptive pill?"

Gabriella almost choked on her own saliva. "I'm sorry?"

"No, I––" He quickly grabbed at his bangs in despair and embarrassment at his own choice of words. "Sorry, I just meant that...the pill can be very effective for women who have excessive primary dysmenorrhea."

Gabriella blinked a few times, trying to digest his last sentence. "I'm sorry, I don't speak doctor... And by that you mean...?"

"Sorry––excessive period pain."

"Oh right, yes, duh, stupidme––Doctor Bolton," she blushed a soft pink, looking down at her lap. "Erm, I hadn't thought about the pill. It's just...always been this way, I guess, but I'd never had a reason to take the pill before...before, because I'd never...been sexually active at all, and I thought that was mostly its sole purpose."

There was a moment of awkward silence, before Troy cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, that was weird of me."

Gabriella smiled, lopsidedly. "It's okay. It's nice to have someone around who knows the answers to such pressing questions in life."

"Feeling better?" he asked, shifting to pressing his thumbs into her lower back muscles that were tight with tension, while also massaging her lower abdomen.

"Uh huh," she sighed breathlessly, riding out the pain that still radiated from her uterus walls. God, Troy..." She rolled to face him and his hands stilled. "Without you...I don't know what I would have done..." Suddenly emotional, both at his kindness toward her and just because the last few weeks had been such a roller coaster. "You make me feel whole...for the first time...well, ever, actually."

Troy lowered his face to hers, so close that his breath swept across her face, leaving her, ironically, breathless. "You have no idea...how mutual that feeling is..." He softly kissed her hair. "I can't believe the depths at which I already adore you."

Gabriella swallowed, trying to catch her breath. "Ditto," she slammed her eyes shut for a moment. "I just wish...that we could...that I could give you...what he took. I wish he hadn't ruined this for me... My heart drums in panic at any contact at all, but when skin touches mine..." She looked around, her eyes glistening as tears almost overflowed. "All I can feel is...the burning of...His skin grabbing, clawing at mine..." She met his cobalt eyes above her, only to see them equally glossy with emotion. "I just wish..."

As she trailed, he nodded firmly, sniffing. "I know. I know."

She looked up at the man next to her, who rolled slightly away from her to sit up, swallowing to try and clear his emotion. She thought back to how he treated her for the little time she had been his patient, and how he had stayed with her even when he had been up all night and barely knew her, taking a leap to get to know her. She realised how fearless he had been, how selfless, and suddenly, she knew what she had to do.

"Do it, Troy. Touch me," she blurted in sudden realisation, causing Troy to stare back at her for a moment, not sure how to proceed. She raised a hand, encouraging his to raise to meet it. He paused, his heart picking up like a teenage boy. "Are you sure?"

Gabriella closed her eyes, trying to calm her panicked heartbeat, that was thumping in her ears. "My heart is going crazy... It's so loud...Why is it so loud?"

"Here," he whispered, taking her hand with barely any touch at all and pressing the pad of her own thumb at the pulse-point at her own opposite one good wrist. She suddenly felt the surreal sensation of consciously feeling her thudding heartbeat through both sides of her body, as the beats pulsed through her thumb and also up her opposite arm. "If you ever feel panicked, just do this one simple thing. Feel how solid that beating is? That is all you, Gabriella, the life pulsing through your veins. You have lived through such a cruel and horrific thing, and look at you––Look how strong you are!" She went to shake her head in denial, only for him to tighten his pressure slightly of his thumb pressing hers into her pulse. "Hey––You are strong. Feel this pulse, steady and solid, and just remember: You survived. You beat that bastard, Gabriella. He didn't win. You did. You are strong. Remember that."

"You say that like you may not always be here to tell me."

Troy twisted his lips in dismissal, holding her gaze with an inner amount of strength she could only ever wish to possess. "I will fight with all I am to make sure that never happens."

"You're very impulsive, you know," she husked in reply after a moment of quiet.

"I've been told," he whispered, and it was then that the pair became suddenly conscious that the pads of Troy's thumbs had moved to the pulse points at her one good wrist, smoothing the skin with the more delicate of touches. Gabriella felt her heart racing, but this time it felt different somehow. It was a new sensation altogether. This one simple touch at her lifelines causing a sharp tug deep within her stomach, like a zap of electric current, that took her breath away and caused her lips to part involuntarily.

"Did you feel that?" His slightly amused half smile told her he had. "What was that?"

Troy let his face linger centimetres from hers, smiling at her innocence, but also in sympathy that she had never experienced such the simplest of human sensations before one man ruined it for her. "Desire," he breathed in a whisper, risking total shut down and rejection by lifting a finger to touch her plump bottom lip. "Attraction." He felt her breath quick against her finger, as he smoothed her pulse with his other. "Love," he finished almost completely mutely, before grazing noses with hers. After this, the gentlest of touches between two lovers, the touches became braver. Soft palms touched, fingers delicately interlocking as two pairs of eyes, out of focus and also crossed, stayed trained on one another; blue on brown; cobalt on chocolate. With great care, Troy tipped his head a little, his breath brushing her lips, causing her to close her eyes involuntarily as flashbacks began to take hold. "Don't," he whispered, urging her to fight back. "Keep your eyes on me." Gabriella swallowed hard, and Troy almost pulled away, watching a great internal battle commence in her eyes. "It's just me, beautiful, sweet girl," Troy whispered. "Just me. I would never hurt you."

Gabriella tilted herself toward him, their foreheads together. Troy slowly, sensual touched his lips to hers, not moving one inch, simply letting their lips, their noses, rest together and their hot breath mingle, and this somehow suddenly felt more intimate than any other first kiss could be. Their lips stayed against one another, not moving, hot breath becoming even hotter as they didn't move an inch. Finally shifting position, Troy pouted his lips in the tiniest movement to drop a feather-light kiss on hers before pulling back a milimetre or two. Gabriella sighed, tears slowly falling from her eyes as she felt the overwhelming emotion of being desired, being wanted, being loved.

Breaking away, she sobbed in relief, shock, sorrow and exhaustion, her head in her hands, and Troy instantly hesitated.

"Shit, 'Brie, I'm so sorry––"

"No, no," she sniffed. "It's not you... That was...wow... I just... I have never felt wanted before, and I just..." Her lip quivered as she tried to keep the courage she had built up to maintain eye contact. His blue eyes so deep she hoped to drown and never resurface. "I love you." Then, she had embraced him into a bear hug, tightly squeezing him around the neck as she buried her face into the warm, soft skin of his neck. "I love you, Troy. I love you, I love you."

Troy's muscular arms tightened around her back, a palm smoothing over her thin t-shirt, feeling her delicate body shutter with her emotion. There was suddenly wetness on his own cheeks, so he quickly nuzzled his face into the mass of ebony curls at her shoulder, sniffing himself. "Oh, Gabriella..." He took a moment to try and gather his bearings. "I love you, too," he whispered, curling and re-curling her into his body with a sudden need to cocoon her that was so strong he wished for a moment he could envelope her completely. "More than they earth loves the sun and the eye loves the stars."

Like this, the two cried for a while. It was cathartic, but also there was a feeling of washing one another with the sterile moisture of their tears in order to start anew. Washing away the grime of times past, preparing for life in new pastures, together.

"You know," Gabriella began after what left like a long time, as the sun began to rise and the two were curled under a discarded old blanket. "My mum always said that one day I would meet someone and for some inexplicable reason, I would feel more connected to this stranger than anyone else I have ever met before––closer to them than her, or any of my closest family––one sent to me for some higher purpose; to teach me an important lesson or to keep me safe during a perilous time..." She began to laugh. "That is so creepy. She really is always right."

Troy rested his chin on her head, kissing her above the ear with a soft smile. "She sounds like a very smart women. No wonder you're an Einstein-ette."

She huffed, poking his ribs, to which he chuckled and she giggled. "She said all I would have to do is trust in whoever that stranger was, even if their meeting came hand in hand with pain or suffering. But I would always wonder, what did you know which stranger would be this miraculous one who would change your life? I mean, aren't we brought up in our society not to talk to strangers?" She looked out at the view of the houses and the sun rising up while the neighbourhood slept. "Maybe we're just meant to be fearless in life, otherwise, how can we meet that one person...how can we love? After all, love is more fearless and reckless than anything... That is what you have taught me, Troy Bolton, that I have to be fearless, in spite of myself or whatever happens to me...because if I won't take the leap for me, who will?"

Troy smiled, biting back the urge to crush her to him. "I will," he vowed in a husked, choked up voice, gently and slowly taking her face in his hands and cradling it, smoothing back crazy, humidified curls. "I will take any leap for you, as long as I am able, and long after I'm not."

Gabriella had no words left, having been stunned by the depth of Troy's heart and soul at every turn. She smiled through tired, puffy and smeary eyes, pinching his t-shirt clad bicep that bulged as he held her like a delicate flower. "And I for you... Not that you'll need it, Action Man."

At her teasing of his physique, they chortled, the sound of laughter the only sound accompanying the soundtrack of New Mexico crickets and early-morning bird calls.

Yes, Gabriella thought as Troy Bolton's cobalt, aqua, azure eyes sparkled and danced with the merriment they shared; his child-like throwing-head-back laugh that lit up his already luminous features.

Perhaps laughter really was the only medicine, after all.

❝~x~❞

A/N: EPILOGUE to come...depending on how much to like this one :) LY guys- please review! xxxxxx