A/N: Hello fellow LtM fans! Because this story is most certainly T-rated, and because the subject matter is not fluffy at all, I wanted to put a big, giant "trigger warning" right here at the beginning. Trust me, it needs one - for at least 2 different reasons. I'll also go ahead and tell you, though, that this story is not graphic. I've done my best to keep everything well within Gillian's character, but to also be subtle and respectful about the issues she faces in these chapters. This fic is, basically, a peek into her life long before she met Cal; it centers around one tragic event (and the fallout that comes after), and leads her full circle to The Lightman Group & to Cal. It's a take on "their" story, but unlike many of the other things I've written in the past, this one is much grittier.

Also, this isn't meant to be nearly as long as my other two in-progress stories - and yes, I promise, they really are still in progress. This fic will be 5 chapters long, and although the trigger warning will apply in each chapter, none of the installments are graphic in an over-the-top-way. (That's a promise too.) As always, thank you all for reading, and I very much hope you enjoy!

-Jennifer

Part I: The Beginning

She spends the first twenty-four hours crying, being poked and prodded by strangers, and squinting beneath florescent lights as she tries to remember how to breathe. The next forty-eight bring denial… nightmares… the fear that she'll never be able to recognize herself again, and the sharp, belated sting of the word "victim" surrounding the syllables of her name.

Her stomach clenches.

Her back throbs.

Her muscles ache, and her throat is still sore from screaming – and yet above it all, despite it all, it's the messy mix of fear and shame that hurts the most.

Green eyes, strong arms… the smell of sweat, anger, blood, and greed: each of those things still taunts her from the shadows even now, days later. She's taken seventeen showers and scrubbed her skin until it's almost raw. She barely eats, she doesn't want to sleep, and she's tired of the endless parade of predictable apologies that do nothing but pour salt into her wounds.

"I'm so sorry, Gillian," they tell her. Friends, family, doctors, neighbors – their words are always the same; always laced with pity, and backlit with gazes that never quite meet hers. So many useless apologies, and not a single one scratches the surface of what she actually wants to hear. Words can't fix this, see? Magic wands don't exist, and no one can save her from the harsh reality that keeps pulling her down, down, down with every breath.

Her body, her life, her free will, her future – all of those things are compromised, now. They exist as 'before' and 'after,' in this disjointed way that makes every emotion seem five times too heavy, and colors each conscious thought with lines of red pain.

She feels invisible. Silenced. Hopeless. She's consumed by the need to regain control, and repulsed by the rage flowing through her veins. And just when she thinks she can't possibly handle any more darkness, there it is: an impulse so dark that her blood runs cold, and she cannot pull away. It beckons. It cracks a crooked, yellow-toothed smile and studies her with hypnotic eyes, as it tries so badly to convince her that she's broken. That this is permanent. That she's marked, somehow. Damaged goods.

It passes, though. Eventually. Her heart is racing, she can't quite catch her breath, and panic seeps up from the pit of her stomach as the darkness gradually fades. But then she squints, and she shakes her head, and she tells herself that she's starting to go crazy - that she just needs to sleep. So she swallows her pills, buries herself beneath three layers of blankets, and waits for the pain to ease.

This is her life, now.

After three days in hell.

She sees the therapist on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She misses two weeks of class, promises herself she won't miss a third, and then tries to dive right back into freshman life without making so much as a ripple. She lives on caffeine, can no longer stomach the stench of beer or the weight of a hand on her shoulder, and the bruises on her throat – finger-shaped and sickeningly yellow, now – trigger pity and gasps at every turn.

She has thirteen stitches in her back, from where she landed on a broken bottle, and her right ankle will barely support her weight. She takes scalding hot showers… scrubs her skin raw each morning before sunrise… can't wrap her head around how the rest of the world is still turning, while her world, her life, her everything feels so very, very broken.

The doctors are quick to tell her that healing takes time. That's she'll recover. That she's strong enough to move mountains, brave enough to trust again, and smart enough not to give one man, one night, or one terrible event the power to control her future. And yes, she listens. To all of it. She hears the words, and she tries to absorb their good intentions – but in the end? She can't.

Mostly because it all just feels like false hope.

On the twenty-ninth day, she spots a tall, tanned, blonde man from across the campus, and then starts to hyperventilate almost immediately. It isn't him. It isn't him, and she knows that – but the similarities are so very close that it sends a chill up her spine. His build is identical. The color of his jacket is identical. He's wearing brown boots and faded jeans, and she can practically smell the sweat pouring off him in waves. So she panics. She's surrounded by the midday crowd, staring daggers at a man she's never seen before, and she just… panics. Her stomach lurches. Her heart pounds. Tears fill her eyes, and heat floods her cheekbones, and she longs to find something that will make her feel normal again.

She just wants peace, see?

She wants to rest.

She wants to forget what it felt like to have her body torn apart by a stranger, as her fists clawed and scraped against the dirty, concrete floor. Blood and pain and screams and fear – oh, how badly she wants to forget everything!

It takes a full ten minutes for her breathing to slow. The sun is shining and her bag is upended on the ground. Literature, Biology, Economics, French… heavy, well-worn texts spill onto the grass, and her muscles shout in protest as she cleans up the mess. Her legs want to run, and her arms want to shove, but she just wipes her sweaty palms on her pant legs instead, and wills herself not to cry. And in yet another ten minutes – when she's still rooted to that spot, helpless and hopeless, and utterly alone – she sees it again, off in the distance: that dark, dark shell of an idea that first hit her on day three.

It still beckons. It greedily takes advantage of her weakness, and it sneers as it preys upon all the doubts in her mind. It reaches out with its icy fingers and its tangible shame, and she shudders at the realization that it sees her, too. That it craves her vulnerability. That it hears her screaming from the inside out, and smiles at the raw heat of her pain.

"Gillian?"

She hears her name and instinctively turns on her heel, too shaken to speak and too shocked to fully break away from her demons' tight grasp. A familiar face, a guarded smile, wide blue eyes and the outstretched hand of a very good friend – all of those things are standing right in front of her, and they should be comforting. She should feel safe… but she doesn't.

"Want to grab some coffee?" her friend asks, shrugging as her gaze drops down to where the last bits of finger-shaped bruises still linger on pale skin. "It's cold out here, and I have some time to kill, and… I'm worried about you, Gill. I'm so sorry this happened. Is there anything I can do?"

One hand is buried in her pocket, squeezing the bottle of pills hidden inside. She takes tiny blue ones for the pain, giant white ones for anxiety, and ugly pink capsules to help her sleep. She's a walking pharmacy, these days; a living, breathing, broken girl, and the word 'victim' might as well be tattooed across her head. She has stitches in her back, swelling in her ankle, two cracked ribs… scars, and scrapes, and baggage, and fear. And just as she starts to answer – just as she starts to tell her friend that she's worried too, and coffee is as good a place to start as anything else – those icy fingers wrap around her wrist and squeeze.

Hard.

So she shakes her head and blinks back freshly formed tears, as the lie bubbles up from her gut and lands at her feet with a heavy, hissing thud. "I'm fine," she mutters quietly.

And just like that, the scoreboard tilts: Darkness one, Gillian zero. Rest assured, she isn't fine at all.

It's Tuesday.

And she hates Tuesdays.

Thursdays aren't quite as bad, because Dr. Taylor usually takes pity on her and cuts the sessions early – but Tuesdays? Are awful. Really, truly, mind-numbingly awful. He asks the same questions forty-six different ways, fills the hour with polite-yet-phony nods of encouragement, and squints so hard that she half expects his face to implode. He sees her as a specimen. A case number. A victim. 'Placation' is his favorite strategy. He uses the words "sexual assault" in a way that somehow demeans all of her feelings, and winds up locking her into stubborn silence just for spite. Or in other words…

He's being paid to listen, but he doesn't actually seem to hear her at all.

There are thirty-four bland, beige tiles on his ceiling… thirteen pictures on his shelves… eight pens perfectly aligned in an ugly plastic cup… and it takes five tries before she finally tells him that her body hurts less, and her mind hurts more, and that she still can't sleep with the lights off. That she barely eats. That she's constantly cold, hot, angry, lonely, too wired to rest and too tired to try.

Which catches him completely off guard.

So he pauses. He shifts in his seat. He shuffles his papers, and stares at the top of her head, and then he nods – slowly, gently, up and down and up and down, as if he could ever pretend to understand how she feels. And for whatever she thinks he might actually say in response, all she gets is this:

"These things take time."

…which pretty much knocks the wind right out of her. It's an empty statement, made by an empty man, meant to deliver empty promises to heal her empty heart, and it backfires. Big time.

She follows all the rules, you know? Even now. Even here. She goes to every appointment; listens to every piece of advice. She consents to exams, and she takes her medication like a good little guinea pig, and she doesn't tell the entire world to go straight to hell. She is strong. And yet, on the inside? She's breaking apart piece by piece, brick by brick, day by day.

"You need to rest, Gillian," he tells her. "You can't heal if you don't rest. And you can't move forward from this if you don't heal. And if you don't heal…"

Blah.

Blah.

Blah.

His words ricochet off her skin and bounce around the room in random, racing arcs until she can tolerate no more. The man cannot even manage to say 'rape,' let alone help her come to terms with having been raped, let alone understand how terribly insulting it feels to have the single most violent experience of her entire life bubble wrapped with pretense and chased with bi-weekly doses of bad advice. Rest. Heal. Move forward. How pathetic. He's supposed to be the expert, right? She's a nineteen-year-old business student who has never so much as read a psychology textbook, let alone pretended to be a shrink, and yet… even now, even here, even as broken and trapped and hopeless as she feels…she knows this: helping people takes heart. It takes getting outside of your comfort zone and stepping down into the muck to help pull someone else out. It takes sweat and time, compassion and care. Otherwise it's all just a mass of lies.

Dr. Taylor, however, is low on heart. He's two dimensional. He is perfectly happy being stuck at the center of his tiny, little comfort zone – wearing his silk ties, and taking immaculate notes, and squinting at her from high atop his muck-free perch. He's a liar. Hollow and empty. He's unable to give her the help she so desperately needs, and too oblivious to hear her silent cries.

She sits mutely while he talks, and talks, and talks – not to her, mind you, but at her… and yes, there's a difference.

She sees it.

She feels it.

Two months is her limit, and she cannot stand it anymore.

There are thirty-four bland, beige tiles on his ceiling. Thirteen pictures are propped upon his shelves, eight pens are perfectly aligned in an ugly plastic cup, and it takes merely three more seconds – at most – before she stands, cuts him off mid-sentence, and tells him to go straight to hell.

To be continued

(A/N: Rest assured, Cal is in this story. I promise. It's just not quite time for him yet.)