"Time is precious and it's slipping away

And I've been waiting from you all of my life

Nobody wants to be lonely

So why won't you let me love you..."

"Nobody Wants to Be Lonely", Ricky Martin and Christina Aguliera

She couldn't love him.

She wanted to, but she couldn't.

It was different for her.

"I can't stay here anymore, Tas."

She looked up at her big sister with wide eyes, eyes that didn't understand. "Why not?"

Isobel sighed. "It's complicated, Tas..."

Tasmin stamped her foot. "I'm eight years old, Is, I'm old enough to understand!"

Isobel smiled, just a touch. "Ok, little sis... Mum and Dad want me to marry this boy... he lives in Japan... and he's only a year older than you... I don't want to marry him, you see..."

"Why not?" She was so innocent, so naive.

"I don't love him, Tas. It's difficult... Look, you need to stay, I need to go, ok? I'm going to America... I don't care what Daddy says. I love you a lot... and you just have to remember that you are the best person in the family, ok? Remember that..."

Wide brown eyes widened a bit more as it sank in that big sister Is wasn't coming back, and she nodded. "Ok, Is. I'll remember."

And Isobel smiled, and got in the car. It started raining.

It was the last time she would see her sister for a long, long time.

A hand fell on her shoulder. "Oh, Tasmin, you're getting utterly soaked."

She flinched away from her older sister Catherine. "I'm perfectly all right, Catherine, I can dry off inside."

"Inside?" Sophia smirked. "Who said you were getting back inside?"

The shoved her into the dirt and ran back to the house and locked and barred the huge front doors. All windows were locked. All small side doors were locked. She had to climb the ivy up the side of the house and open her father's study window from the outside to get in.

Not bad, considering she was only eight and a half years old.

It got worse. Much worse. Slowly but surely, they whittled down her self-esteem, locking her outside, locking her inside closets in pitch blackness, telling her over and over that she was worthless, pointless, scum of the Earth.

Her parents did nothing to disagree with that fact. She should have been a boy. Her father's heir. Nathaniel Marcus Witherspoon IV.

Instead she was Tasmin Witherspoon, hated and pointless. Useless.

That was proved when her sisters locked her out on the roof in the middle of a violent thunderstorm. Hail, heavy rains and hurricane-force winds buffeted her.

She was almost struck by lightning six times. Not a single person in the house had missed her, not even the servants.

She was still petrified of storms to this day.

The physical abuse became worse and worse until one day her sisters carved up her back with a wire coat-hanger because she had called them "whoring bitches". It had been the truth.

The truth didn't matter. No one had believed that they had done it. She'd done it to herself.

Somehow.

She refused to wear tank tops, bathing suits, skimpy clothing around him. It angered him. He didn't understand.

But it didn't matter. He didn't love her. He couldn't. He had the other half of his soul.

He didn't need her.

But that was fine. She didn't need him.

Of course.

A/N: ... I am so damned depressed right now... This is just some of Tasmin's backstory, and it's the most important bits all crammed together. Pointless. I don't care.