Author's Note: I'm really, really sorry this took so long to get posted. It was a really hard chapter to write and I want to send lots of love and thanks to Skimmboardergirl for helping me out. It was much appreciated. Hopefully this will help us all to understand why Reggie is fighting her attraction to Dean so hard. Why she can't quite seem to trust him, or herself. Enjoy!
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It was two days and two long nights before they crossed the state border into Louisiana, traveling steadily east on the I10. Reggie had sat in the car and stared out the window, as the roads grew less dusty and the temperature steadily dropped. She sat in the back, away from Dean and barely spoke to Sam. Dean didn't know if her distant behaviour was the result of embarrassment, because he had seen something two nights ago in the car, her aching vulnerability, that she didn't want him to see, or if it was something else. Whatever progress he'd been thinking they'd made when they left Cullman, they'd taken two large steps back. Reggie wasn't just avoiding touching him, he swore to God she flinched every time he got near her. He HATED that. She made him feel like some sort of sick monster, because even in the face of her obvious distaste, he still wanted her. More than ever in fact. They drove past a small sign announcing the town of Sulphur Louisiana, population 22, 501, their new, temporary home. Dean barred his teeth in a harsh smile, the irony was killing him, and so was the silence.
Reggie had spent the ride thinking hard about her past. About her father. Immersing herself in the painful memories she usually avoided at all costs. She knew her cold, silent treatment of Dean wasn't fair, and she was even shutting out the worried Sam, but she'd thrown up a thick enough wall around herself to keep their emotions from filtering through and distracting her. What had happened in the car three days ago had seriously shaken her. To realize that she was dangerously close, closer than she had ever been, to giving herself over into the power of another. Something she swore she'd never do.
She had wanted to tell him those things, the ones she never told anyone. She had wanted to pour out the grief and the anger, at the aching injustice of her estrangement from her sister, explain the painful road that had brought her to such a dark place. She had seen the look on his face. She understood Dean, he was the protector, and he had offered, in that moment, offered her shelter, safety. And she had believed her could give it to her. She had wanted to lean, just for a second, on his strength, because she was tired, so very tired, of carrying the burden herself. But she couldn't tell him, so she had told him something else, and that information to, had been such that she had never shared before. To speak of her gift, to let him see that part of her, it had been…wonderful. To see his attitude change, to see him accept, and value that part of her. And now, she knew she had to be careful, she had to keep her distance, it was self preservation.
Her instinct for survival was to well honed, to strong. She wished she could explain to him that it wasn't his fault. It was just that men like Dean…No. She stopped herself, if that night in the car had driven home anything, it was that she was going to have to stop using that phrase, "like Dean". It was time that she admitted it, there were no other men like Dean. But regardless, he'd never understand. It would be like inviting someone to fall down the rabbit hole. Because that was what you would have to do to understand it, you'd have to leave the world you knew, and spend some time in the one she had known. Her father. With some distance, with some time, she was actually able to feel some pity for Daniel Thorpington. It had taken her a long time to realize that yes, he was twisted, and yes he was cruel, but he was also sick, truly mentally ill. He lived in a strange reality, that meshed well enough with the real world, as long as the contact was superficial, so it was only those who were close to him, within his sphere of power, that really ever saw the truth.
His one and only mission in life was to control, to know, that he could affect you. And if all he could make you feel was hate, that was fine by him, because it meant that he held the reigns. As long as he could hurt you, he had all the proof he needed of his own power. Of course, it hadn't begun that way. As a child she had not understood, and her love had been his favourd weapon. She didn't know why her father didn't seem to love her. She had done everything she could to please him, anything he asked. Including forgiveness. It had been something of a game, she realized now, to see how much hurt he could inflict, what vicious lies he could tell, and still have her forgive him. He would say those empty words, "I'm sorry", and it made her ill now, to think of how she would fly to his arms and let him wrap her in them; glad, in a twisted way, that he had hurt her, almost grateful, because it was the only time when he would show the affection she so desperately craved. Tears stung her eyes. It had been such a cruel mockery. She had been so starved for his love she would accept those empty motions in the place of the real thing, even when she had come to recognize the cycle, she could not help herself. For a long time, nothing he did, no matter how often he did it, was enough to crush the tiny flare of hope that lived inside her. The one that said, if she got an A on this test, or if she forgave him for destroying her favourite doll, he said it had been an accident after all, this time, when he hugged her, the touch would hold the warmth she craved.
But it never did, and eventually, she had begun to hate herself, for not being able to resist, for being so weak, and she began to rebel. She had stopped forgiving him, stopped seeking his attention, his affection. And their relationship had turned a new corner. Reggie had begun to fight. But no matter how she screamed, or what she said to him, how clear she made it that he was loathsome to her, he did not care. Because her hatred just signaled another kind of control. Daniel was a master manipulator, and he had many tools at his disposal. Reggie's self-esteem had been in ruins by the time she began to distance herself from him, and because, for all his cruelty, she had never quite been able to stop loving him, her sense of self-worth had never really recovered. As all children, she had originally blamed herself for his apathy, his anger, and he had instilled in her a seed of self-doubt so strong, planted and nurtured from her birth, that she carried it with her still. Her guilt had been another weapon to use against her. And as her rebellion grew, so did his arsenal.
Reggie was not Daniel's only target, her mother and younger sister also needed to be brought to heel. And though his other tactics never completely lost their potency, even after all this time, he still had the power to make her doubt herself, still dictated the wary, skittish way Reggie approached intimacy; it was ultimately through others that he would hurt her the most. He used them against each other. Reggie, her mother and her sister. He'd torture or malign Reggie to enrage Kristen, Kristen or Abbey to enrage Reggie, and Abbey, Abbey he could hurt solely on the basis of the fact that she loved him so much. She was the easiest, the most vulnerable. He'd whip you up, using whatever he needed to, the most depraved tactics, so casually, until you were screaming and spitting like an animal, and then walk away, calm as you please, having achieved his goal. In his hands, love, hate, anger, all emotion could be twisted, all had been weapons. But Abbey, she never stopped trying to make him love her. And Reggie, well she never stopped wanting, wanting him to love her, though she stopped thinking that she could make him love her.
And then there had been the helpless rage of knowing that she couldn't stop him, couldn't protect her mother or her sister. That she was caught in a cruel paradox. If she fought him, if she tried to protect them, draw his fire, he still won, because he'd gotten to her, and through her, her mother and sister. Her powerlessness was another kind of torture. He wanted her to fight back, and lose. And Reggie always lost. Either way, for twenty plus years, both girls had lived in a nightmare. Reggie had watched the one person she knew to be more worthy, stronger, than any other, tear herself apart with blame, and self-loathing. Her mother had always said that, as hard as she tried to stop it, living with a monster for forty years had changed her. Reggie had watched her father make Kristen into a person who no longer liked herself. For him it was the ultimate triumph, because if she no longer liked herself, than her sense of self worth would slowly evaporate, leaving her more susceptible to him than ever. As for Reggie, well, she knew what it was like.
He made you so paranoid, pushed on every front, tortured you to the point where you lashed out at even the most benign behaviour, sure that it was some kind of cruel trick, something he was going to use against you. And to the outside world, you looked like the monster, and he the innocent. And nothing was worse than the resulting hypocrisy. Where you went about your everyday life, trapped behind a wall of rage and pain, swallowing the screams that tore at your throat, and played happy family. It became such that even the simplest act, her father picking her up from a dance lesson, was a blow. She would look at all the other fathers and see the pride and love in their faces, and get into the car, a fake grin plastered all over her face, so no one else would know, that she had completed her hundred plies in first, and was going home to hell.
Emotional Abuse. It was painfully ironic, that someone with her gift should have been subjected to that. It had almost killed her, almost. She'd finally struggled free, and even that had come at a cost. She had had to leave, leave Kristen behind, and Abbey. Slowly, she started to learn to trust again, if just a little. It became evident, even to her, that she was battered, but he hadn't broken her. Kristen and her extended family, they had saved her, taught her that love could be a blessing, and not a curse. She would always carry the invisible scars, her own, her mother's, her sister's, even his, on her soul, but she had slowly managed to build up a life for herself, managed to learn to love again, friends, family….but not a man. No, that, he still, would always, deny her. Because that was where the real risk lay. And she couldn't take it, couldn't trust herself enough not to love in the soul-deep, utter and complete way she knew that she would, if someone ever go that close. She would never again allow herself to need the love of another in that way.
When they pulled into the shabby little motel, Reggie was the first one out of the car. She practically bolted. Dean gritted his teeth.