Guilt is a funny thing. It makes people do certain thing; sometimes even forget certain things. Gloria never was able to understand guilt, especially since she had seen so little of it over her life. How was she supposed to know that this feeling, burning at her insides was her feeling guilty? She had to go and ruin her mother's first night home in five weeks. She could not just smile, say congratulations and then make a run for it. She had to kill her mother's happiness.

Gloria did not even realize how warped this point of view was.

Shawn on the other hand, recognized his guilt. He wished he could take back what he said on Gloria's front door, wished he could have called out that Nick fellow on hitting her, and wished he could have stayed to make sure she was safe. Therefore, his guilt made him stay parked in a neighbor's driveway, waiting for any sign of fighting to call the cops or for Gloria to sneak out.

True he only knew Gloria for about a week, but that was long enough to know her. She would leave, she was not the type of girl to take this lying down. And sure enough, in about thirty minutes she was limping down the street.

Shawn followed, wanting to ride up to her and make sure she was okay, but he knew her better then that. She would never accept his help, she was too damn proud just like her uncle. So he followed her, and made sure she got wherever she was going safely.

Feeling exhausted, Shawn sat in the Psych office wondering what to do about Gloria. He had no proof that the intimidating man had hit her, and something in his gut told him Carlton would not take kindly to that kind of accusation unless he had proof and not just a psychic vision.

Then a very small smile crept on his lips. He could use his psychic visions to trick Carlton into investigating Gloria's new man of the house, and once Carlton sees that this man has been in jail, he'll never let Gloria stay there. So all Shawn now needed was the man's full name, and Gloria could help with that.

Yes Gloria could help, if she came in today. After last night Shawn could not blame her is she did not show up, he probably would not. Yet that did not stop him from hoping she would, he wanted to see her. He had a bottle of aspirin out, just incase she appeared.

"Hi Shawn," she greeted warmly as she entered the office. Shawn smiled back, still worried since she was trying her best to disguise her limp.

Still smiling he replied, "Hey Glor, how's it feel to be an adult for a full day?"

"I just feel old, my back aches already," she joked with him.

He nodded and the stated, "You want to know what's really weird? I woke up this morning with the worst headache. I have no clue why, did that happen to you?"

It was at this point she spotted the bottle and Shawn noticed the quick grin. "Actually yeah, I did. How weird is that? Mind if I steal some aspirin?"

He tossed her the bottle. "So that guy last night…" he began.

"Nick," she supplied.

"Nick, got a last name and who is he?"

She shrugged very casually. "Toinopski and he's my mom's boyfriend." She then flashed him a grin and asked playfully, "Did you think I was replacing you?"

He could not believe her attitude, acting like she was not hiding a bruised cheek under foundation. He smiled back, a little uneasy and replied, "You would never be able to replace me."

"I figured as much," she stated. "So what do two adults do when neither of them want to work?"

"Well, they can do as much as pretend to work, or spend the day conversing among each other. However, I found that if there is a mutual attraction between the two, they can spend the day still conversing, or not conversing," he told her.

She grinned at the suggestion. She wanted the last person to touch her to be him, not Nick. In truth, she did not want to be touch right now, not as a friend, not as a lover, but she knew she had to get over that, and wanted Shawn to be the one holding her.

"Now what kind of non-conversing would go on?" she asked, taking a step closer.

Shawn's smile dropped, he could not keep up with the charade. "Wait Gloria, are you sure you want to do this? I mean after last night…"

"What about last night Shawn?" she snapped, suddenly angry. "My mom and her boyfriend came home and told me they got married. That's it, nothing else happened. So we can either not converse or you can keep talking and I'll walk out the door."

"Are you sure?"

She sighed, it looked like she would have to initiate the kiss this time, since Shawn seemed so reluctant. Right before her lips meet his, she mumbled, "You're still conversing."

The kiss was the same from last night, sweet and passionate, something that should have sent waves of pleasure down Gloria's body, but this time she just could not get her mind behind the kiss. She kept feeling uneasy and strange with Shawn's lips pressed against hers.

Shawn did not seem to have that problem. He was enjoying it, and brought his hand up to her neck to caress it lovingly, but it caused the wrong kind of reaction. She panicked, and with force Shawn had not expected, she pushed him off of her. He fell back, glancing up at Gloria, who was clutching her neck for protection.

It was the fear in her eyes that killed him. She had become terrified for her life by him just caressing her neck. He apologized remorsefully, "I'm sorry Gloria. I didn't mean to frighten you."

"I, I shouldn't… have pushed…" It was the closest thing he would get to an apology, or her saying anything at the moment. She just stared, still frightened though there was nothing threatening her.

Shawn was about to get up, when he noticed that part of Gloria's shirt was raised, exposing her stomach. He stopped cold and stared, shocked at what he was seeing. Without warning he lifted up Gloria's shirt to get a better view. It had been less then a second before she pushed her shirt back down and ran into the bathroom, but Shawn had seen enough.

Gloria slammed the door shut and locked it. Leaning on the skin for support she took several deep breaths, and eventually steadied her shaking body. She glanced at the mirror, staring at the spot where she should have a bruise on cheek. Turning on the water she started to wash away the ivory colored foundation, revealing the small blue circle on her jaw line.

She wondered if the bruise was a punishment or a badge? She did not know at this point. Punishment for her mouth, or a badge to show she was living through a dysfunctional family? Her hand flew to her stomach, cradling it softly. Until recently she had looked at her stomach as a badge of some alternate version of pride. Though she could never explain why.

Taking off her shirt slowly, she glanced at herself in the mirror. Her light pink bra seemed to compliment her milky skin tone and the scars on her stomach.

Now staring at her stomach in the mirror, she grimaced as she saw it. Hundreds of small vertical lines running up and down her torso, some had paled into a color whiter then her skin tone, will other were still red and painfully visible.

She softly placed her hand over the scars, and shuddered from the touch. She ran her fingers over the majority of them, there were too many to count, the highest she ever got up to was a hundred and twelve. She shivered as her fingers grazed over a particularly long scar, and thought about how many nights she had become her bands mutilated zombie, playing up her scars with red stage make up, just to be some sort of sideshow attraction.

Tears sprang to her eyes and she could not hold it in any longer. Crying, she ignored the knocks on the doors and Shawn's worried pleads to open the door. She sat on the floor, knees brought up to her chest, while wishing she could just die, a thought not uncommon to her.

The door opened, Shawn peeked in cautiously, the key in his hand. He knelt next to her, concerned and said softly, "I'm sorry Gloria, but I need to know what happened."

She shook her head, crying into her knees. She would not tell him, he would not believe it.

"Gloria, I want to help," he assured her and placed a hand gently on her shoulder.

She pulled away from him, and glanced up, angry. Her face was red from crying, Shawn could see the glistening trail of tears running down her cheeks, and all the sadness in her eyes. She stood up, her shirt lay forgotten in the corner and screamed, "You want to help! No you just want to look at the mutilated freak, so go ahead and look!"

Shawn eyes moved according to their own wishes. He stared at her stomach quickly and counted a hundred and twenty eight scars, ranging in size from a centimeter to the longest one of about four inches. His eyes jumped back to Gloria's eyes and saw no shame there, just pain and sadness.

"Can you tell me what happened?" he asked quietly, not sure how to handle this situation.

"I got into an accident when I was twelve," she spat and fished up her shirt.

"What kind of accident?" he questioned, unable to get the image of her scared stomach out of his head.

"The magical fairy kind," she retorted, and quickly put on her shirt. Huffing, she made her way over to Shawn's desk, while he followed.

"I don't think fairies leave that kind of mark, maybe goblins, but not fairies," Shawn quipped halfheartedly.

Gloria searched through the draws till she found Shawn's emergency lunch money stash. She took twenty dollars and then told him, "It was a car accident and I'm taking lunch."

Before Shawn could disagree, she had walked out the door.

Shawn had waited for two hours in hopes Gloria would return. She did not, but he had figured that anyways. Sighing, he got up and decided to try his luck at the police station.

Carlton had just got off the phone with the restaurant, La Vacule, when Shawn Spencer sauntered up to his desk. "Big dinner plans?" he asked.

"Actually, I'm planning on taking Gloria there for dinner tonight since yesterday I had to work on a case, which no I am not going to talk to you about, so you can just walk on out of here," Carlton stated firmly and pointed towards the door.

"Well actually I came here on-" Suddenly Shawn stopped, and his mouth hung open. He looked like had just been stabbed. Wheezing he moaned out, "Oh, so much pain! Oh it hurts so bad. And there's an eleven, no twelve year old figure with piercing blue eyes, but so much pain!"

He bent over, groaning but managed to look at Carlton through his "pain". "Lassie, were you in an accident when you were twelve?"

"No," he answered gruffly.

"Then I don't know who this poor spirit could be, they have eyes just like yours," Shawn told him and saw the momentary flash of panic as Gloria's name popped into her uncle's mind.

"Is it a girl or boy?" Carlton asked, trying to hide the urgency in his voice.

"I can't tell, I'm in too much pain," Shawn groaned and then finally his "pain" died down and he could stand again. Letting out a deep sigh he mumbled, "That was intense."

"Spencer, is that all you came here to tell me? That was even more pointless then usual," the detective snapped.

"No, I just stopped by to see if you needed any help today," Shawn told him. "And that was not pointless, we just found out that at one point of time a twelve year old with blue eyes was in large amounts of pain."

"Well, there are no cases dealing with a twelve year old, so it was pointless," Carlton argued.

"Maybe it was a spirit from a cold case," Shawn shot back, but then his arm began shaking uncontrollably. "Oh boy," he cried as his arm moved up and down.

Carlton rolled his eyes as Shawn deciphered, "Box… One window, but there's solid stripes going through them. No, bars! Jail, I'm in a jail cell."

"All right, if you say so, I'll be happy to put you in a jail cell," Carlton said, getting up and going towards Shawn.

"NO! The spirits are trying to warn me about someone who's been in jail, and possibly just released. A Lick… A Mick… No, Polish Nick!" Shawn shouted. He opened his eyes and concluded, "Nick Toinopski!"

"That was oddly specific Spencer," Carlton noted. "What crime has this Toinopski supposedly committed?"

"I don't think any, yet, but the spirits are very concerned that he will commit one again," Shawn explained. "You should check up on him."

"No," Carlton responded flatly.

"Come on," Shawn whined. "The spirits are being specific and giving you a name and you're just gonna turn that down? All you have to do is click on one thing and type in one little name!"

"No, I'm not going to waste my time," Carlton said.

"But please!!!" Shawn's voice got high and too annoying for Carlton.

Sighing, he clicked an icon on his computer screen and typed in the name Shawn had given him. "Fine, you happy? I should get the results by this afternoon. Now is there anything else you wanted?"

Shawn paused, pleased he accomplished his goal, but pondered if he could be any more productive today. "What about this case that was too important to celebrate Gloria's birthday?"

A/N: So there you go, that explains a little bit why the guy on the bus asked to see Gloria's belly. now tell me, if you were Gloria, what would you have been doing all day after a breakdown?