A/N: I received a couple of reviews about Andrea being bisexual, asking why it's relevant to the story and how it's possible that Sharon didn't know if she and Andrea are such good friends. As a bi person myself, not all my close friends know. And several of those I told did not react well. I was made fun of, called names, and people trusted me less than they did before they knew. Female friends, in particular, always seemed scared every time I even looked in their direction because they thought I was making a move at them. In short, coming out as bi to (mostly) female friends injected a lot of mistrust into my friendships with them.

This story is about Sharon, so any discrimination that Andrea has or hasn't faced regarding her sexual orientation is not the main theme here. However, I wanted to write this moment when Andrea felt confident enough in their friendship to come out to Sharon. If anything, it shows progress in their friendship, and that was the goal here. I don't feel like this was out of place since this chapter was about them spending time as friends outside work and also out of the context of Sharon's issues. Also, I think many LGBTQ people, like Andrea, don't always feel safe in all environments to come out. Especially since both she and Sharon work in a small pond where everyone more or less knows each other. So I hope that answers your questions regarding Andrea's sexual orientation.

As always, I thank blossom-of-snow for editing this story.

The first thing Sharon noticed as she walked into Dr. Pratt's office was that the uncomfortable blue couch had been replaced with a dark aubergine couch. Sharon passed her palm on the velvet as soon as she sat down. It felt cozy, and it matched the taupe-colored walls.

Dr. Pratt took a seat in her usual armchair in front of the couch and smiled warmly at Sharon. "I would like us to try something different today."

Sharon hummed tentatively, unsure if she would be open to Dr. Pratt's suggestion.

"Usually, you and I discuss the previous week — how things went for you, what issues arose and what emotions they brought up. Today, I want to challenge you a bit, if that's alright."

"That depends on the challenge," Sharon said.

"I want you to choose one moment of your childhood that you feel shaped the person you are today," Dr. Pratt said.

That sounded harmless enough. Sharon took a moment to reflect on her childhood. Many moments stood out, but she kept returning to the same incident.

"Diana Walker called me an ugly dwarf," Sharon said.

Dr. Pratt scribbled something in her notebook but nodded for Sharon to continue.

"I was in second grade, and Diana was probably the most angelic-looking child I've ever seen. She had blond curls, blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and everyone liked her. I wanted to be her friend, but I was not as pretty or popular as her."

The December cold seeped through Sharon's thick, itchy wool tights. She tightened her scarf and pulled her beanie down to cover her ears as she walked to the school playground. Her breath came out in puffs as she headed towards a group of girls who were building a snowman. She stopped a few yards away from them and admired the group leader from afar. Diana was wearing a baby pink woolen coat with a fluffy gray scarf and a matching soft beanie. It looked so warm and fuzzy, unlike Sharon's hat that had a couple of holes, as her mother was not a great knitter. Diana's perfect curls shone even on the overcast day. Sharon wished she had such beautiful hair, but it was just plain dark and straight. Sharon looked at Diana's black, shiny leather boots. Sharon's were brown and worn. Her mother always told her that what she lacked in beauty, Sharon made up for with kindness. Diana was a smart girl — the brightest in their class — so Sharon was sure she would see beyond Sharon's dull looks. With confidence, Sharon approached the group of girls.

She smiled at Diana. "Can I play with you?"

Diana didn't seem to notice her.

Sharon cleared her throat. "Can I help with the snowman?" she asked, her voice louder now.

Diana looked at one of the girls in the group. "Judy, you need to tighten the snow."

Judy, a girl almost as pretty as Diana, nodded at the command. Sharon wasn't sure how Diana did it, but the other girls always obeyed her as if her orders were holy.

She tapped Diana's shoulder. "I want to help too."

Now Diana turned to her. But instead of the usual soft angel face, her eyes were dark, and her lip curled. "We don't want your help, you ugly dwarf."

Sharon's heart skipped a beat, maybe even two. Her face felt hot and a knot formed in her stomach, accompanied by a lump in her throat.

"But I want to play with you." Sharon's voice was small and whiny.

"Go away, dwarf brain!" Diana shoved Sharon away.

Sharon stumbled, fell onto a frozen puddle, and slid away on the ice. The girls stopped working on their snowman and laughed, but Diana was not looking at her anymore. As if Sharon were no more than a fly to be swatted, Diana returned to command her friends.

Sharon shivered, but not from the cold. The blood whooshed through her veins, and her ears buzzed. Her fingers curled into tight fists as she stood up. At her feet, she saw a thick stick, and she bent down and grabbed it. If she couldn't build a snowman, none of the girls would. With all the force that she had, she charged towards the snowman like a furious comet tearing through the night sky. The girls scurried away, screaming hysterically at Sharon, who was crushing their precious snowman with her stick.

"What have you done, you stupid rat?" Diana snarled and grabbed the stick from Sharon's hands. It made a hollow sound when it fell to the ground.

The rage burned in Diana's eyes as her fingers curled around Sharon's collar. With force that Sharon could never imagine a girl her age could have, Diana flung Sharon to the ground and climbed on top of her, pinning Sharon down.

Despite pouring her wrath on the poor snowman, Sharon still had enough rage to direct towards the angel-turned demon with the blond curls. She turned them over, so now, she was on top. Sharon heard the frightened screams of the other girls, the tearing of clothes, the cracking of bones and the wild growls they emitted as they rolled on the ground, each of them trying to dominate the other. She whimpered when Diana's nails tore through the skin of her face. In response, her fingers fisted a long blond curl that fell on Diana's reddened face and pulled hard. Suddenly, there was a dead silence around them. The girls were no longer cheering for Diana. It took her a moment to realize that she was holding a long blond curl that was no longer attached to its owner.

"You filthy cockroach! What did you do!?" Diana's nostrils flared. The punches and cussing that followed disabled Sharon from moving any further. She felt warm stickiness flowing down from her nose and the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. Her vision blurred, and Diana lifted the stick above her head, ready to strike.

"Diana Walker, stop whatever you're doing right this minute!" Sharon heard the voice of an adult, probably their teacher, Sister Agnes.

Diana's weight was lifted off of Sharon's body as the other girl stood up. "She ripped my hair!"

"And she ruined our snowman!" the girls yelled from the back.

"Alright, young ladies! You go back to class. Ms. Walker and Ms. O'Dwyer, you two go to Father Clarke's office."

Sharon stood up, her feet shaky and numb from the cold. She unfisted her palm and let Diana's curl fall to the frozen ground. Diana wept as she bent and picked it up. Even though she was still angry, Sharon felt bad for Diana. She wanted to apologize, but Diana didn't deserve an apology. She started this fight, to begin with. Still, Sharon's heart was heavy as she dragged her feet on the way to Father Clarke's office.

As she sat on the large wooden bench outside his office, she took an inventory of her injuries. A bloody nose, a split lip, skinned knees peeping through her ripped tights, a few missing buttons in her brown coat, and scratches on her face. If that was not enough, she lost her front tooth. It had been a bit wobbly over the last few days, and it must have fallen out during the fight. Sharon was already seven, but she'd never lost a tooth before. As she was ushered into Father Clarke's office, she wanted nothing more than to go back to the yard and find it so she can save it for the tooth fairy.

Father Clarke's roaring voice drew Sharon from her thoughts about returning to the yard. "Young Ms. O'Dwyer, I have never seen such appalling violence in my school before."

She blinked twice, shuddering at the sound of his voice. Diana didn't seem as petrified as Sharon felt, and she wasn't half as bruised as Sharon either. She sniffled as she described the incident to Father Clarke, making it sound like Sharon started the fight. When Sharon tried to interject, Father Clarke glared at her, and she cringed. He seemed sympathetic to Diana's anguish, and from the look of things, Diana was going to leave this room scot-free while Sharon took the brunt of the punishment.

She was right. After Diana finished telling her side of the story, he let her go back to class while Sharon remained standing in front of him.

"Ms. O'Dwyer, I have to say I am very disappointed to have a disturbed child like you attending my school," he said. Sharon didn't know what 'disturbed' meant, but it didn't sound like a compliment. "A girl fighting like a savage…" He shook his head disapprovingly. "What am I going to do with you?"

Sharon was scared even to blink. What was he going to do with her?

Father Clarke called for the secretary, a novice who came running. "What can you tell me about this girl?" he asked.

The novice went to fetch Sharon's file and handed it to Father Clarke. He read through it, humming derisively every few moments.

"Well, Ms. O'Dwyer, I see that your family has a reputation in our church. The apple doesn't fall far, huh?"

Sharon didn't dare to move or to speak.

"We'll have to punish you somehow," he said. Father Clarke called the novice again. "Sister Geraldine, would you please give Ms. O'Dwyer a shovel and have her clear all the snow from the yard, please?"

The novice nodded.

"And if she misbehaves, her parents will be notified, and she will be expelled."

Sharon followed Sister Geraldine to the tool shed in the yard and watched as the sister unlocked the shed and took a snow shovel out. It was almost as big as Sharon. As soon as Sharon's gloved hands touched it, she felt the cold of the metal handle freezing her palms, and its weight dragged her down. Barely able to hold the heavy tool, Sharon walked to one snow mound and tried loading snow on the shovel. It felt like she had been given an impossible task.

Sharon wasn't sure how long she stayed in the yard, shoveling snow under the watchful eye of Sister Geraldine, but when the bell rang and marked the end of the school day, her entire body was sore from the physical work and the extreme cold, and the skin of her hands was calloused. She was in too much pain to even feel sorry that she didn't find her tooth. Sister Geraldine returned the shovel to the shed as Father Clarke came to inspect Sharon's work.

"Remove your gloves and show me your hands," he said.

Sharon did as he directed.

"You see these?" He pointed at her blue fingers and peeling skin. "It hurts, doesn't it?"

Sharon nodded and bit her trembling bottom lip. She was too proud to cry in front of this man.

"Good. The next time you think about using your fists, remember this pain, and I'm sure it will make you reconsider."

Father Clarke released her, and Sharon returned to class and picked up her belongings. Every muscle in her body ached as she made her way outside of the school, where her mother waited for her.

When they got home, her mother filled the bathtub, and with her help, Sharon undressed and sank into the warm water. She held her breath as her mother kneaded her strained muscles. Everything hurt.

"What are we going to do with you?" her mother asked.

Sharon didn't know, but her mother's words made her feel even worse than she already did. She didn't want to cry, but the tears began flowing down her face uncontrollably. Her mother didn't offer her any words of comfort.

After the bath, Sharon donned her warmest pajamas and went to bed, even though it was only afternoon. Exhausted, sore, and upset, she wanted nothing more than to sleep and never wake up.

"It took a week before my muscles stopped hurting enough that I could return to school. And after that incident, almost everyone disliked me until high school." When Sharon finished telling the story to Dr. Pratt, the therapist had a stunned expression on her face.

"That is…" Dr. Pratt struggled to find the right words. "Tell me, how do you feel now when you're talking about this incident?"

"Angry. Not at Diana, but Father Clarke. I was seven years old, and although part of the fight was my fault, I shouldn't have been given such severe punishment. Who forces a child to work for hours in the snow?"

Dr. Pratt hummed and nodded. "Why do you think this experience made an impact on your life?"

"I think it was the first time I felt rage, and I did something to hurt someone else," Sharon said. "The funny thing is, my youngest daughter, Rainie — on her first day at the new school, she was rude to a teacher in front of her entire class. She spoke to that teacher in a way that made my ears burn. And I knew why she did it. I understood that she was angry, and I could even identify with it because it reminded me of that day."

"How did you act in that situation?"

"I asked her to think about why she was so angry that she was ruining an incredible opportunity," Sharon said. "I prayed so hard that night that the incident wouldn't impact the rest of her school years, but unfortunately, it did the same way my incident impacted me."

"The two of you share many life experiences," Dr. Pratt noted.

Sharon hummed.

"Sharon, if you could go back to that moment and talk to your seven-year-old self, what would you tell her?" Dr. Pratt asked.

"I would tell her that she matters and that she deserves to feel loved and wanted. I'd tell her that I love her, and I would hug her because I really needed a hug that day." Tears shone in Sharon's eyes.

"You needed kindness," Dr. Pratt said.

"Yes."

"When you have a rough day, do you show yourself kindness?" Dr. Pratt asked.

"I try to. Most of the time, I do."

"In what ways?" Dr. Pratt asked.

"I do things that center me, I let myself lean on people I love, and I forgive myself for things I don't like about myself," Sharon said.

"Good. Showing kindness towards ourselves is part of our healing process. It allows us to be vulnerable, to recognize that we are not perfect and that we need to cut ourselves some slack sometimes," Dr. Pratt said.

Sharon nodded.

"We're out of time for today, and I understand that next week we won't see each other because you're getting married, right?"

"Yes." The thought of her wedding filled Sharon's heart with joy, and she smiled widely.

"So, until our next session, I'll wish you and your fiancé many happy years together and a continued beautiful relationship. And when I see you in two weeks, maybe we will talk about him and his role in your life. What do you think?"

That suggestion made Sharon's heart flutter. She would love to tell Dr. Pratt about Andy and focus on the better part of her life for a session or two.

As Sharon walked out of the clinic, she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, just for a moment. She envisioned seven years old Sharon, standing beaten and sore in the snowy schoolyard, and walked towards her.

"I know things are not great right now." She spoke to the child softly. "But I promise you that you will grow up and become a wonderful person, and you will be happy and loved. And know that I love you." She wrapped her arms around the girl in her vision and around herself in reality. "Be kind and be safe, my love."

-TBC-