Thanks to d2496 and Mrs. Ace Merrill for reviewing the last chapter! You guys gave me motivation to actually write this chapter! :)

Chapter Twenty One:

Brooke gave a small smile at Charlie's enthusiasm to learn about what happened between her and Shana, but she was dreading having to relive those memories. Between her and Shana alone, there weren't that many good things to remember. Everything Shana had done to Brooke were just…

Brooke shuddered at the flashbacks that invited themselves into her conscious.

The young brunette got off the bed, and began to walk towards the door.

"Hey, I thought you were going to tell me the story?" Charlie called out, confused.

"I will," Brooke answered. "but I want to get the photo album to help with it."

Once she saw Charlie nod in understanding, she went to find the album. It wasn't hard to find the album because there were only two in the entire household; one of her parents and Shana and one of all of them, but mostly of Brooke, Lindsey, and Shana. These items were the only things that helped remind her that things used to good, that there were things to be happy to remember.

After she found the thing, and scurried back into her room, Brooke sat back down on her bed. Charlie had sat up too, and had now propped his chin upon her shoulder.

"Alright, well, I don't know where to start." She opened the album, and the first picture was of Shana having her arm wrapped around a four year old Brooke.

"You look tense in the picture," Charlie noted softly.

"Yeah, I don't really remember what she did, but my dad told me that I wouldn't sleep alone for weeks." Brooke stated with her fingers gripping tighter and tighter onto the item with every passing second.

The second picture showed the two girls hugging. Shana had a brilliant smile on her face while Brooke look almost…worried. Brooke had been five at the time.

"My parents asked me about the bruises that were on my arms, but I lied to them and said that I just got hit really hard."

"What actually happened?" Charlie rubbed his thumb softly on Brooke's other shoulder.

"Shana, she…well she was just angry about something, and I guess I annoyed her with something. She grabbed me real hard and just screamed in my face." Brooke sighed. "In almost every picture, I had a bruise somewhere on my body. Of course, it usually because of Shana, she was really cruel."

Brooke gave Charlie the album to flip through while she continued telling the story.

"When I was five, I had this idea that something was wrong with Shana. She would sometimes just mutter things to herself, and she was almost paranoid all the time. She hid it real well, though. She fooled my parents, but when we were alone, she would show me just how brutal she could really be.

She would hurt me almost every day. She'd slap me around, push me, and say things to me, and…just everything. Shana made sure to try and not leave bruises though. She wanted to be smart about that. She always told me that I wasn't good for anything, and tried to put this idea that our parents didn't love me. Hell, she even tried to tell me once that I wasn't even blood related. I told my mom that and she was really mad at Shana.

After that, things just escalated. I was terrified of Shana. I really was." Brooke felt tears encompassing in her eyes, and tried her hardest to not cry.

"How the hell didn't your parents notice?" Charlie asked, shocked.

"Shana and I acted normally when they were around, and I was terrified of telling them anything because Shana said things would get worse for me." Brooke wiped away a stray tear that had escaped from its prison.

"But anyways, after she turned eight, things started to kind of change. She'd start having these anger issues, and would always scream at Mom and Dad. Shana would also lock herself in her room, and just color. She said that it helped with everything. We didn't know what everything meant because she wouldn't tell us, but when my dad went to look at the pictures when she went to school, well, let's just say they made them seriously concerned for her mental health.

I didn't really know what the hell was going on. All I knew was that I was seriously terrified to be left alone with her. I would not be alone with her. If my parents were home, I would always be with them, but if they weren't, I'd hide until they got home. Then, she met Ace, and everything seemed good again. It was like he made everything all sunshine and rainbows for her.

My parents were relieved, but then they found out that Ace was a horrible influence on her. He apparently convinced her to skip school and shit like that. I didn't really care, I was finally having a good time being a kid and not having to worry about Shana trying to hurt me.

After I turned nine or ten, I think, Shana started to become…delusional." Brooke struggled a little to find a kind way to put it.

"What do you mean delusional?" Charlie asked, looking up from the photo album.

"She would sometimes say that she saw someone or something when there wasn't anything there. It was weird. Sometimes it would seem like she was talking to someone, but there was no one there, but she would insist that there was someone there. My parents knew that there was something wrong with her, but they didn't know what to do.

They only hoped that it would go away, and just try to help her as best they could. I just thought that she was losing her mind. At night, I would sometimes hear her screaming because of a nightmare, and my parents would rush to help her. I did feel worried about her, but I stopped worrying when she went one step too far.

We were home alone for a bit – Mom and Dad went to buy some food – and Shana went into one of her episodes. She started shouting at me, and I was really scared. I wanted to hide, to just lock myself away, but my legs barely moved. I ended running into the kitchen, and Shana, she…she…she grabbed a knife." Brooke bit down hard on her lower lip as she thought of the memory.

"Shana! No!" Brooke shouted.

She didn't remember how many times she had to yell it out.

"Please stop, Shana!" Brooke sobbed, looking into her sister's eyes.

"Never," Shana sneered.

"What happened after that?" Charlie was so intrigued, but he felt horrible that his girlfriend had to endure all that.

"She cut me, a lot, but they didn't go too deep. By the time she was done, I was bleeding a lot. I remember looking into her eyes, and noticing one thing, her eyes were normal." Brooke looked towards Charlie and noticed him looking confused at what she had just said.

"What I mean by that is that when she went crazy, she always had these wide, wild eyes. When she's normal, well, obviously she's normal. When I looked at her eyes, she was normal. She wasn't going crazy anymore. Shana did that…with a clear conscience!

After our parents got home, they were furious. Shana and Dad got into this shouting fight while Mom was hugging me and trying to make the bleeding stop. I remember her crying so much. She was telling me how much she loved me, and that everything was going to be okay. I wanted to believe her, but I couldn't. What Shana did was just horrifying."

Brooke held back a sob, and leaned against Charlie as he pulled her in for a hug. Brooke didn't mind his silence as she told her story, she kind of preferred it.

"I hated her!" she sobbed. "I hated her so fucking much for doing that to me! I wouldn't talk to her or be near her. I just wanted to cry every time she looked at me with this look of hate. It was as if she thought I was a bug or something."

"Brooke-" Charlie tried to say.

"But after that, she just made things worse for me. She ruined all my projects…she basically tried to ruin everything I had. When our parents tried to do something, she'd just act even crueler.

I tried to do everything to avoid her. Then, everything seemed to change after our parents' friends came back to town. Besides Ace, she started hanging around their kid, David. Things seemed okay, but after this one night, Shana seemed to be scared of him.

I had no idea why she was scared of him. He was a nice guy, and we got along pretty good. He liked me and I like him, but Shana would just never hang around him after that night. I tried asking her once, and she…she pushed me up against the wall and told me to quit bugging her. I never asked her again after that.

I'm guessing David was the reason she ran off to our uncle's place, though." Brooke sighed. Her tears finally stopped falling. Now her eyes were just red.

"Did she ever hurt Lindsey?" Charlie asked, holding his girlfriend close to him.

"No, she didn't. She loved Lindsey, to the point of obsession." Brooke buried her face against the crook of Charlie's neck.

"So why does she seem normal now?"

"I don't even know. Maybe it's because she's around Ace. She was always comforted by him, but I really don't know. She's still as vindictive as she was back then, though." Brooke sighed.

"Are you sure about that? She seems a lot nicer now?" Charlie questioned, slightly doubting that Shana had stayed like that up until now.

"Don't trust her Charlie, please?" Brooke looked at him with begging eyes. She knew no good would ever come out of trusting Shana.

"Okay," Charlie answered, giving her a reassuring squeeze on the hand. "Did she ever know that she had problems?"

"I have no idea." Brooke frowned. "I don't think so. I mean, our parents tried to tell her, do something with her, but she never believed them. She tried hiding it, so maybe she had an idea."

"Are you still scared of her?"

Brooke kept silent for a moment. She loathed having to admit it, she really did. It had been a few years since she had faced Shana's wrathful abuse, and Brooke had always thought she got over it. That wasn't the case, however. Before Shana came back, thoughts about her abuse slipped into her mind from time to time. It had been nothing Brooke couldn't handle. Now that Shana was back, the memories flowed back much easier.

They never really came back in the daytime, though. Mainly, the recollections appeared when she was asleep; appearing as nightmares as slumber claimed her. She tried her hardest to not let the fear get to her.

Silent as a statue, Brooke said nothing as she nodded her head, hating herself even more for doing so.

"It's okay, Brooke." Charlie pulled her into another hug. "As long as I'm here, I'm not gonna let her hurt you."

The statement caused a smile to leap onto Brooke's features. She knew he wasn't the toughest guy around, but she knew that he would do anything to keep her safe. Hell, he even stood up to Ace once a long time ago. Of course, he had gotten on Ace's bad side after that, and had been given the cold shoulder. Not to mention he wasn't allowed to see Brooke until he apologized.

"You know what you gotta say if you wanna get back into the Cobras." Ace laughed at the look on Charlie's face, never realizing it wasn't the Cobras Charlie cared about.

It had been tough for him to do so, but he did it anyways.

"Fine, I'm sorry, Ace," Charlie stated tensely.

While Brooke lingered on the memory for a few more seconds, Charlie asked:

"So what ever happened to David?"

"Oh he died about a year ago, I think," Brooke answered.