A/N: Thank you ElektraMackenzie, ZenyZootSuit, ForeverACharmedOne, Artistic Punk, pourquoibella, Noniona, AtheneLN, don'tblameme33, takara410, KorroksApostle, linalove, Lea, corbsxx, Ravenclaw992, SammiRichGurl, drivenunder, Camaro Love, Lady Liesel, GooseberryIcecream, and Sharpthought for your reviews. I know I told you guys that I'd have the next chapter published earlier, but life got in the way, as it sometimes does. Hope this chapter makes up for it. Enjoy!

Scythe

Chapter Ten

/

For a few moments we simply stared at each other, Crane with an expectant look on his face, waiting for an answer to his question, and I blinked at him stupidly, wondering if I really heard what I thought I'd just heard.

"...What?"

Dr. Crane shifted in his seat, never breaking his gaze. "Your mother, Hanna. Why didn't you tell me she drowned?"

I gaped at him, desperately trying not to lose my temper and start mouthing off at him about things that were none of his business to begin with. At the same time, though, I couldn't deny how the question had caught me completely off guard. I opened my mouth to respond, watched his eyebrows perk, expecting an answer, and then I closed my mouth, looking down at my hands in my lap, feeling weirdly embarrassed and I didn't know why. "Who told you that?"

Surprisingly, Crane didn't seem too perturbed about my typical skirting-around-the-question that I was bad for (I admit); he was probably taking his time, waiting patiently, because I was, after all, in the hospital. I couldn't just get up and storm out if I got mad at him. "Your father told me."

"When?"

Crane crossed his legs elegantly. "Your doctor had me sit in with your father and stepmother after the...episode. Your father told us what happened."

I looked away from him, down at my hands in my lap, at the IV sticking out of the back of my hand. I was at a loss for words. "...Fuck."

Crane was studying me very intently, and though I wasn't looking at him, I could sense a sort of soft-disappointment in his air, like he was upset I felt I couldn't trust him with this deep dark secret part of my life that I always tried not to think about. "This is a major key-point in our therapy, Hanna. Why didn't you tell me?"

He wasn't pissed off, not from what I could tell; more so just genuinely curious about why I'd failed to mention probably the most horrific thing I had ever endured that resulted in the unnatural loss of my mother. Then again, it hadn't really come up in our discussions, and I was never in any hurry to relive the memory of that day. But now, in retrospect, I saw why it was meaningful...to this recent hallucination, if nothing else.

I sighed and shrugged. I had no excuse. "I dunno, I guess...I guess I was too scared to hear what you'd say."

Crane made a thoughtful sound in his throat. "It correlates directly to what you've been experiencing. The dream of drowning, this hallucination-"

"-Yeah, but," I interrupted, looking at him. "Why is it happening now, Dr. Crane?"

His blue eyes flashed with surprise, probably from hearing me formally address him. Surprised me too, in fact, but I shook my head; it wasn't worth dwelling on. "I mean, my mother drowned a long time ago, I've made peace with it, why is it resurfacing now?"

Crane gave me a tentative little smile. "Well, obviously you haven't made peace with it enough."

I paused and thought about it, and sipped my orange juice absent-mindedly. Had I made peace with it? Could you make peace with something so violent?

After a moment of gauging my silence, Crane shifted in his seat, leaning towards me. "Do you remember what happened that day?"

I stared at him, suspiciously. There was something very gentle and unobtrusive about his manner, maybe because I was in the hospital. It was odd, but refreshing. It had never crossed my mind that Crane was capable of empathy.

I sighed and shrugged. "I try not to, y'know."

"Can you tell me about it?"

I took in a shaky breath and sat up against the pillows. Five days in, and the hospital bed was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. "Umm...it was Labor Day weekend, and I was seven-years-old, and...my aunt Marsha was renting a house on the beach and had a big party, so I guess my folks thought it'd be a cool idea to take me out on a boat for my first sailing."

It was so cold that day, too. I remembered Dad bitching about it to Mom in the car: Fine day for a beach party, looks like it's about to rain. -Shut up, Frank. She doesn't control the weather!

It made me smile just a little. "We went out, the three of us, and a storm blew in, quite suddenly. And my Dad was experienced with boats but for whatever reason he really started freaking out, and he and Mom got yelling at each other..."

I remembered I was scared because they were scared, listening to the thunder and the waves and my parents shouting, and I was standing too close to the side, looking down over the side, trying to find the dock so I could get the hell off.

"I was standing by the edge and Mom tried to grab me, and the water tossed the boat and we both went over. Mom hit her head and got knocked out and I..."

The water was freezing, so fucking freezing, and the amount I swallowed, ugh, made me feel sick for days.

"I was in the water long enough that I've never been back," I admitted.

Crane nodded as though he understood completely. "How'd you get back onto the boat?"

"My Dad dove in, grabbed me, brought me back to the boat..." I sighed and rubbed my face. "By then Mom was in the water for...I don't even know how long. But we couldn't see her for the longest time, and when we did, Dad dove out to get her...he was gone for a long time, trying to reach her."

I remembered how long I waited, alone, in that boat, looking for Dad over the crashing waves. For a long time, I thought I had lost them both.

"Hanna," Crane broached, softly. "You feel this hallucination was a reenactment of that day?"

I nodded, solemnly. It sure was.

"So that's why you hate swimming," Crane concluded.

"Not hate," I said, distantly. "Just...afraid to."

"Of course," Crane concurred.

At that moment, the door opened, and we both watched as Dean stuck his head inside and looked between us. I smiled widely at him; he'd gone the night before because he had class that day, but he promised he'd be right back after. "Hey, not interrupting, am I?"

I wanted to beckon him inside, Crane be damned, but the good doctor was being fairly tolerable so I decided I should be too. I looked to Crane for permission, and he looked at me with a wavering smile and uncrossed his legs, looking to Dean. "We were just finishing up."

Dean smiled and came lumbering in. He was wearing his grey jeans and black sweater; he seriously looked about a thousand times better since he'd gone home to shower. He extended his hand to Dr. Crane, who actually stood up to receive him. It was a moment of real surreality for me, my professor boyfriend and my professor therapist, shaking hands like they were respected colleagues.

"Thanks for looking after her for a bit, doc," Dean said, grinning. "Even bedridden, I know she's a pain in the ass."

I grinned, and watched as Crane smiled politely. "Not at all, I myself find keeping routine is key for any speedy recovery."

"And how!" Dean agreed, and I fought the urge to laugh right out loud. He was such a fucking goofy schmuck, god, I loved him.

"Well," Crane turned to me, seemingly having had enough of Dean (which made me smile even more) and tipped his chin. "Have a good rest, and I'll see you next week."

I nodded at him and smiled. "See you next week."

Eloquently as ever, Dr. Crane bid Dean good day, picked up his briefcase, and left without another word. I watched him go, wondering why he'd been so different this time around. It hadn't been a real session, we'd only been twenty minutes in, but I had appreciated it nonetheless. I hadn't talked to anyone about the day Mom died in a very long time, and I'll admit it did feel better to talk to someone about it. Made me think maybe I wasn't as crazy as I thought I was.

Dean took his seat next to me, pulling the chair right up to the bed so he could lean over and kiss me.

"See, he shook my hand and everything. The guy's not so bad." He said.

I shrugged. I didn't want to disagree, I was too happy to see him. "Yeah, not so bad."

/

They did an MRI, which came up with nothing abnormal or suspicious-looking. They did a cat-scan, which also came up negative. Throughout my weeklong stay at the hospital, my doctor started to look more and more puzzled, not exactly voicing his concerns despite the fact he was obviously very perplexed by the results he wasn't seeing. It damn near gave me a heart attack, the whole process; every time I did a test and went in to the doctor's office to discuss the results, I was positive they'd found something horrible to account for the hallucination, like a brain tumor, or some horrible disease. But the fact that they couldn't find anything didn't provide much relief, either. Eventually he had me do a bunch of elementary little tests, like arranging coloured blocks and putting puzzle pieces together, things I haven't done since kindergarten, and though it was kinda fun to take a break from the textbooks and the lectures and the long-ass articles that were barely readable, I couldn't help how weird I felt about everything.

When I'd first come out of it, they'd talked about schizophrenia. But now, they didn't even know what test they could throw at me next to rule out what, and it was obviously frustrating them. By the time they were ready to send me home, my doctor had decided it must have been just a really rare and intense case of extreme stress.

"Without going into details," he told me the morning I was being discharged from the hospital. "Dr. Crane informed us that you've been exhibiting some...very intense periods of stress. Would you agree with that, Johanna?"

I couldn't disagree. Everything, from my father's wedding to the new stepmother to the therapy with Crane to the fight with Dean and the clashing with Lydia was all in all fairly stressful. I told him he was probably on to something.

They sent me home with an order that I get some real rest and relaxation, 10 days of nothing but, forget that I was barely five weeks into fall semester, but my doctor had assured me that the school was aware of my "sudden illness" and that if they had any questions regarding the manner, they could trust in the word of Dr. Crane, who was obviously overseeing my therapy and wellness. By the time I left the hospital, I felt so weird and uninspired and my head was so full of bullshit that when Dean brought me home, I collapsed on the couch with the urge to go into a deep Snow White slumber until I died.

Lydia called at one point and very sheepishly apologized for not visiting but asked if I got the flowers she'd sent over with Dr. Roberts; I wasn't mad at her, I didn't have the energy; frankly I didn't think a visit from her in the hospital would have been much comfort anyway, but I didn't tell her so, and updated her on the whole situation. She told me how she'd gone to see Dr. Roberts in his office and how awful he looked, unshaven, looking like he hadn't slept in years, but happy to tell her that I was okay and the doctors were gonna get everything checked out. I told her about my mandatory days of rest and suggested we go for lunch one afternoon and she delightfully agreed, which made me feel better, especially considering how mean I had been to her when I holed myself up in her apartment after the fight.

Dad called the afternoon of my first day home to tell me he'd met with the doctor and been updated on my situation, and that maybe I should really reconsider taking the semester off and resuming everything in the winter. And oh, what could they bring to dinner on Wednesday?

It killed me that I didn't know what the fuck was going on.

/

I sucked in a deep breath as I let my head collapse back against Dean's shoulder, tilting to the side as he began to nibble along my jawbone, up until he cradled my earlobe with his tongue. I shivered, curling my fingers into his arm and bit down on my lower lip as I felt his fingers slither down along the inside of my thigh, one fingertip brushing harshly against my clit. I arched against him, his free hand pressed against my stomach, holding me against him, while he delicately nibbled my earlobe between his teeth.

I whimpered as he rubbed me, gently, and his sexy little chuckle in my ear made my eyes flutter closed. I kneaded my fingers into his arm, in sync with his fingers as they rubbed me, and my lower lip was suddenly so sore from biting it that I started to suck on it, to ease the ache. When Dean released my earlobe, I turned towards him and met his lips eagerly, taking his tongue into my mouth and brushing against it with my own, moaning into him. To think I'd gone a week without his taste, I could have sucked on his tongue for days as if it were a candy.

As Dean pulled his fingers away, I whimpered pathetically for the loss of his touch, but then he gripped my hips and hoisted me up into his lap. I started as I felt his boxer-clad erection press against me and I squirmed against him, squeezing my legs on either side of his thighs. I wrapped an arm around his neck, bringing him closer to kiss him harder, as he began to raise his hips to press his erection against me.

I loved how he teased me; I felt my muscles tighten every time his bulge brushed me. But it'd been a week since we'd had sex and I just wanted him to fuck me, hard, and leave me limping for days.

Then, he seemed to have read my mind. He broke the kiss, and I breathed heavily against him, and before I had a chance to prepare myself, his hands gripped my hips, almost painfully, tore away my panties, tore them away, and his erection penetrated me, sharply, in one go.

I tried to withhold the scream but I simply couldn't, and it tore from my throat. It burned, despite the fact it'd only been a week. One of his arms wrapped around my stomach while the other hand cupped my breast; I felt his forehead press against the back of my neck as he thrust into me, slowly. I bit down on my lip, squeezing my eyes closed, reaching behind me to bury my fingers in his hair. It still burned, but it was good. It was so good...

With a gentle grip he began a smooth rhythm, thrusting into me gently as he kissed along my shoulder up towards the junction to my neck. I bit down on my lip to withhold moaning like an animal, delighting as his fingers tickled my side, but when his fingers slid down along my front between my legs to tickle me in that sweet little spot, I pressed my head back against his shoulder and let out a cry of absolute pleasure. His lips grazed my jaw and his nose tickled the shell of my ear. The hand that cupped my breast lifted and his fingers brushed my jaw, moving up to cup my face and my eyelashes fluttered closed. I wanted to cry.

And then, gently, he eased me forward onto all fours, and I sank down onto my forearms and buried my face in the sheets that smelled intoxicating, smelled like him, and I'd known why he'd wanted to change positions because as soon as his chest touched my back and I arched up into him, he sprung into action, thrusting hard, and I pulled at my sheets between my fingers and moaned into the sheets. The burn was long gone, and it felt so good it was just like bliss.

He was fast and hard, and I could feel his grunts rumbling up through his chest at my back. I don't know how he did it, perhaps because we hadn't had sex in a week, but he was relentless, never stopping, not even slowing down, but instead taking the time to search out my hand with his and intertwine our fingers.

It seemed to be over way too quickly. I felt his hands claw at my body and I knew he was close, and I wanted nothing more but to change positions and kiss him and moan into his mouth, but then I could feel that familiar sensation building up in my stomach, and desperate for my orgasm I held myself up on my forearms and pushed back against his thrusts, meeting him, listening to his throaty groans, and he seemed to move faster and faster until-

My orgasm rolled over my like a shockwave of electricity, igniting my limbs and numbing all other senses. I lowered my head and moaned, squeezing his hand, squeezing the sheets. It was hard and strong and immobilized me, and when it was over I could have died, happy.

I collapsed down onto my stomach, not able to hold myself up anymore, and Dean gently laid down overtop of me, covering me with his body. He'd had his orgasm, even in the throes of that mind-numbing orgasm, I had felt his hands grab me the way he did and felt his thrusts that were so hard it hurt. It was the first time in a long time we'd orgasmed together at about the same time. It was absolutely perfect.

After a few moments, and our breathing had calmed and the sweat started to cool, Dean eased himself away from me, and I sighed at the loss of him, but then he turned me onto my back. I looked up at him, sleepily, and kissed him gently when he leaned down to graze my lips with his own. I slipped my arms around his neck, holding him close, never wanting to let him go.

"Welcome home," he whispered between kisses.

/