A/N: Slight, itty-bitty, small spoiler for My Body Is A Cage Part 2 in this chapter. Just an F.Y.I.

Clare was lying on the white faux leather sofa, head hanging upside down. Eli was lying on the floor, his head inches from hers. They'd spent all Saturday together, and were now enjoying their last few hours of uninterrupted, pure fluff before Clare's parents returned home.

"Twenty questions?" Clare laughed.

"God. Eli, that's so…"

"Cliché? Maybe. But let's do it anyway. You go first." Clare rolled her eyes.

"Okay. Uh… what's your living situation, that allows you to spend two nights at my house without so much as a single phone call?"

"My mom and dad died when I was 9- they got hit by a drunk driver. Cliché number two of the day, right? Anyway, so I live with my uncle, but he's like a music executive or whatever and flies to New York, L.A., Chicago, places like that in the States more than he's home. He's pretty laid back, doesn't care what I do as long as I don't drop out of school or whatever." He let Clare gape at him for a moment- it was in fact more than he usually said at once. He tended to speak more with his eyes.

"What's up with you and the Christian thing, exactly?" Clare sighed.

"Well, I used to be super-Christian. I went to a Catholic private school until ninth grade- I have a purity ring-" She dangled her hand in his face. "and stuff. But frankly… I'm kind of done with all this God stuff for a while. Darcy, my older sister, she was raped a few years ago, and then once she was barely over that, she went to Kenya for a semester and then when she came home Peter, her boyfriend who she'd never OFFICIALLY broken up with like… didn't love her anymore, so she's depressed again. Plus, my parents are always fighting and my mom thinks my dad's having an affair. I hate- God, this is cliché, too, but I hate my friends. I mean Alli, she can be great, I guess, but she's always so self-absorbed. She doesn't even know about my parents. All she cares about is guys. Which I guess is 'normal' for a teenage girl, but I don't. And my only other real friend, Jenna, is the one who basically stole K.C. from me. Which isn't really a bad thing, but I'm not exactly best friends with her, you know? And-" Eli silenced her by coming over and pecking her on the lips.

"Clare, you're cute when you ramble." Clare blushed, but kissed him back. She then looked upside down at the clock on top of the TV and struggled for a minute, trying to read it upside down. She then jumped up with a start.

"Oh my God, Eli, it's 5:28. My parents… they said 5:30, they're never late, and they will kill both of us if you're here when they get here. It took a day of convincing for me to convince them to let me have ALLI over." He popped up, too, and pecked her on the lips again.

"Say no more. This isn't exactly the way for them to find about us, eh?" They both laughed before Eli sprinted out the front door, jumping into Morty, his beloved hearse, and driving away. No sooner had he done that than Clare heard the garage door open, and her parents' SUV pull into the garage. She sat on the couch and flicked the TV on, fixing her unkempt hair as much as she could and re-applying a coat of lip gloss.

When her parents came in, she ran to them and hugged them both, her mother first and then her father, with less warmth. She didn't know what she thought of him at the moment.

"Mom, Dad, how was the retreat?" Unbeknownst to anyone except Eli, her parents had gone to a weekend retreat for troubled married couples.

Clare's mother pecked her daughter on the head. It was just then that Clare realized her mother's eyes were bloodshot.

"It was… fine, sweetheart. I'm going to make dinner, okay?" Clare nodded morosely. She'd thought, in vain, even PRAYED, that this would fix things.

Hours later, she heard her parents start up one of their screaming matches. She rolled over and groaned when she saw the clock. It was 1:39. She had school in the morning. She tried not listening, but she couldn't help but overhear.

"I was right! You're sleeping with that… that… WHORE from your office! She's only four years older than DARCY you bastard!"

"Shut the fuck up. You don't know what the HELL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT."

Crash. Bang. Clare winced as she heard things being thrown. Something shattering. Against her better judgment, she got out of bed and started to descend down the stairs after she heard her father's footsteps come up them, and his office door slamming.

"Mom?" She asked in a meek voice. Her mother was sitting against the sliding glass door leading out to the deck, now broken into a million pieces. The side of her face, having been cut with a piece of flying glass, was bleeding.

"Oh, Mom." Clare grabbed a few paper towels and started to wipe it up when they both froze as they heard her father's footsteps thundering down the stairs.

"Clare don't you DARE HELP THAT SELFISH BITCH" he began to roar at her.

"Daddy… she's hurt… I need t-t-o help her…." Clare whimpered, knowing full well what her dad could and would do to her.

"STAND UP." He bellowed at her. She obeyed, scared of what would happen if she didn't. Before she knew what was happening, he was punching her in the face. Then he slapped her. Then, her face met the ground. She felt a foot go into her gut. After that, simply heavy breathing was heard in the room. Her father's. After that, she heard his footsteps went back up the stairs and she heard the door slam.

Not caring about her mother right now, Clare dragged herself up to her room. She stumbled over to her vanity table and stared at herself in the mirror, tears running down a fresh bruise forming on her left cheekbone. She started to walk over to her bed, dragging her hand along the side of the vanity table for support, when something sharp pierced her finger. She looked down. An old boxcutter from when they'd moved was sitting on her table. She looked at her finger, which was starting to bleed a little bit.

Clare sat down on the chair in front of the vanity table and stared at the blood, a little mesmerized by it. It was like, everything that had just happened downstairs was just…. Trickling out. She squeezed the finger and watched as it dripped a solitary drop of blood onto the white table.

Then another.

Drip. Her father cheating.

Drip. Her mother's anger.

Drip. Her bruised face.

Then, just like that, the small hole in her finger stopped bleeding. Clare frowned. She hadn't been done. Fully aware of what this was, fully aware that she'd helped Adam stop doing something similar merely a few days before, she took the box cutter and traced a small, thin line on her upper forearm. She smiled a little as little dots of blood started to appear on the line.

A dot for Darcy. A dot for K.C. A dot for Jenna. A dot for her father's skanky secretary. A dot for Peter, for breaking Darcy's heart. A dot for everyone in the world. After a few moments ,the dots all blended together until they formed a single, solitary red line. A red line of pain that she could simply get rid of.

Clare walked over, holding her arm still so the line wouldn't be disturbed, and grabbed a tissue, pressing it against the cut. It made a thin, red stain on the tissue. It didn't bleed anymore, but it was okay. It was all she needed to bleed out of herself, at least for tonight. She took the tissue and went to throw it away, but then thought better of it and grabbed the key from around her bedside lamp and unlocked a small drawer in her desk. It was her special drawer. It had a family picture, a picture of KC, the edge burned on that one. There was a piece of fabric she'd torn from her old private school uniform before she'd thrown it away.

Without a second thought, she put the tissue and the boxcutter, which now had a slightly bloodstained blade, in the drawer, re-locking it and climbing into her bed, staring out the window at the moon.

Had she really done that? She'd read stories about girls who… did that to themselves. She couldn't bring herself to say it. It made it more real. She wasn't like them though. She wouldn't do it all the time. She wouldn't change who she was as a person. It was just… a way to cope when things got so unmanageable.

Yeah. A way to deal. That's it. A way to deal.

The next morning, Clare opened her eyes and grabbed her phone off the beside table, realizing she'd never texted Eli like she said she would. There were three messages from him.

Hey, Clare. Thinking about you. How was your parents' retreat? Are they getting better? Text me back.

Clare, it's like 10:30 and I haven't heard from you. I have some weird feeling that something's wrong. Message me back and put my silly worries to rest, will you?

Clare, it's almost 2am. I'm going to bed because I do need to manage to stay awake in school. But I feel like something happened, other than you being forgetful. You're in my thoughts. See you in about six hours.

Clare sighed. How did he know? She knew he'd freak out if he saw her face. She felt a dull ache from her arm and looked at it. The cut. That one, single cut. She remembered it- remembered how comforted she'd felt during it, and after it as well. She wasn't crazy. She wasn't a… a… one of those people. Not like Adam was. She just needed a release sometimes. Right? Because she was perfect Saint Clare, and perfect Saint Clare wouldn't intentionally hurt herself, ever.

Right?

With another sigh, she rolled out of bed and got dressed in a pink half sleeve shirt, appropriate for spring, but effectively hiding the cut on her forearm. There was only one, but it was so… precise. Just like everything she did. She didn't need anyone questioning how it had happened, especially Eli. She didn't know how to lie to him. Well, she did, but he always seemed to KNOW when she was lying to him.

She put on a pair of denim shorts and a pair of silver ballet flats and went to work on her face. She almost gasped at her reflection. She had a small red, hand-shaped mark on one cheek. But that wasn't the problem. There was a disgusting, yellow-fading-to-purple bruise on her cheekbone. She took concealer and covered it as much as she could- when she was done, it looked a little better. But not much. It was definitely still noticeable- Clare just prayed that no one would take the time to look at her closely enough, to notice it in the first place.

She was finishing up her regular makeup when she heard a familiar honk from outside. He hadn't, had he?

Clare raced to her window, facing the street, and there was in fact a black hearse parked in front of it, her favorite black-haired boy sitting in the drivers' seat. A grin broke out on her face as she raced downstairs. Her father was already at work, surprise, surprise. Her mother looked at her with a puzzled glance.

"Who is that outside, Clare?" Clare sighed. Now?

"Eli. He's my… he's my…" Her mom looked at her with a knowing glance, the gash on the side of her face wrinkling a little.

"He's your boyfriend, Clare?" Clare nodded, looking guilty.

"Does he know about your ring?" Clare nodded again.

"And respects it?" A third nod. Her mom sighed. She really didn't want her daughter to be dating, but what could she do? She was a normal sixteen year old girl, after all.

"Fine. Go. Be careful, be safe, and invite him over for dinner next weekend." Clare grinned.

"Thanks, Mom!" She ran over and gave her mother a kiss on the uninjured side of her face, neither of them pointing out the other's injuries. Clare walked out of the house, keeping her head tilted to the right as she walked over to her boyfriend's passenger side, thankful that her bruise was facing the window and not Eli. He grinned when she climbed in.

"Hey, gorgeous." That in itself triggered one of Clare's easy blushes. He reached over to kiss her, but she didn't turn to kiss him back, afraid of what he'd see on her cheek. He gave her a puzzled glance but shrugged it off. Girls were weird.

"How come you never texted me last night?" Clare bit her bottom lip.

"Sorry. Some… stuff came up." Eli didn't believe Clare's weak lies for a moment.

"Liar. What's the matter?" Clare sighed.

"Nothing."

"Look at me, Clare." She slowly turned her face to him, accepting that she couldn't hide it forever. He gasped.

"Your… your dad?" Clare nodded, a million words and emotions racing through her blue eyes. Eli gently raised a finger to brush gently against the bruise.

"He… I … I'm going to kill him." Clare's eyes got wide and she shook her head furiously.

"Don't, Eli. He's… he'll hurt you, too. I think he's going to leave, move out, soon. Just… no." Eli gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles started turning white.

"I knew something was wrong last night." Clare leaned over and turned his head towards her and kissed him softly on the lips.

"Come on. Let's just go to school."

"School it is." Eli smiled a small, fake smile at Clare. He was brewing inside. How dare anyone hurt Clare- his Clare- like this? It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. And he couldn't do a damn thing. He ignored it for the time being, not wanting to upset the beautiful girl next to him any more than she already was, and started the car, driving them to Degrassi.

Someone had to pay.