Disclaimer: Once again, I don't own them.

A/N: Sooo, I was hesitant to post another WIP just now, as school in starting in two weeks and I'm taking 18 credits, and life in general is kind of all-consuming... but writing kind makes all of that manageable for me, and the reviews always boost my ego. So, this is the result. Usually I at least have the first 2-3 chapters written when I post a story, and I don't for this one. Therefore: fair warning to all who are used to my update schedule which is usually every day to every other day, though it has been dwindling lately, this one will likely not be updated as frequently, but I'll try to keep on it.

Also, this is going to be fairly dark. I'm not sure how far I'll push it, but... I got the idea from Culmination, for those who have read it, where I had Sara saying that she was just lucky... that with her life experiences, things could have been so much different for her... *she* could have been so much different. This is a Sara who is very... disillusioned. In my head, I see this being a kind of companion piece to Leave of Absence-it's AU, OOC, Sara at Harvard, again-but this time she is the pursuer and the manipulator. So, if LoA was too dark for you (I know it's not really all that dark, but I've been accused of not giving enough warning...), don't read this.

Otherwise, enjoy! Your reviews mean so much to me, and I can't begin to thank my usual readers (you know who you are) for sticking with me.

When you tell a story, it's important to tell the truth, even if you don't particularly care for what the truth reveals.

…My intention with this story is to be as brutally honest as possible, even when it doesn't show me in the most positive light. That being said, I want to offer something in my own defense before I confess my sins: I did not enter into the… situation… intending to trap him. It was never my goal to hurt the man—if anything, I fully expected him to hurt me.

It was the fall of 1990—I was eighteen going on nineteen and every bit the product and sum total of my life experiences… which was not exactly a good thing.

I set my backpack on the chair, just inside the living room, listening for any sounds to indicate where my roommate, Anni, was. The low thumping coming through the ceiling told me very little—she left her music on no matter where in the apartment she was.

To my left was our living room—empty—and to my right the hall closet. The wall slanted a few feet further right, past the closet, to accommodate a staircase. Straight in front of me was a short hallway into the kitchen. I moved down it, through an archway Anni had decorated with a large wrought-iron arch shaped… thing, and into the kitchen. To my immediate right, filling up the space under the stairs, was a small bathroom complete with a washer and dryer tucked against the slanting wall. The kitchen was on my left, the island breakfast bar serving as the only dining area in the apartment. This room was also empty.

I snagged a bottle of beer from the fridge, twisted it open, and headed back out and up the stairs. At the top I glanced down the hallway, between our two bedrooms, and moved through the open doorway of the one closest to me. Once inside, I could see the door into the bathroom between our rooms—she was in a tank top and shorts, meticulously curling slightly shorter than shoulder-length black hair.

Anni and I were very different people… we often said that we were each so far to the extremes that we'd somehow come together around the other side. She was born Anniliese Astor (of the Boston Astors, apparently), daughter of a man who had both old and new money and a woman who was a second or third cousin to the Kennedys. Yep, that's right. The Kennedys. Growing up, she'd had long, straight, bleach-blonde hair to match her bright blue eyes and when she'd asked her daddy for a pony, she'd gotten one. …She was smart enough to be at Harvard, but we both knew that she didn't need to be—her name alone would have gotten her admitted, at least for the first year.

It was a sharp contrast from me, Sara Sidle (of the Tomales Bay Sidles, naturally). And far from being related to the American Royal Family, I was fairly certain my father was a descendant of John Wilkes Booth. Growing up, I'd have been happy to have any money, new or old, as long as it meant never having to choose between my father's alcohol and my mother's desire to put food on the table. (Whenever they had that fight, my mother ended up in the hospital.) I had never had the fanciful notion of ponies as presents, although I'd once been backhanded for having the nerve to ask for the Prince Ken doll and horse to go with the Princess Barbie Grandma Sidle had given me the previous Christmas, before she died. I'd had short, curly brown hair my whole life, dull brown eyes, and absolutely no figure… but I was smart. Not just smart enough to go to Harvard—smart enough to get a full ride at sixteen.

But somehow, we were also a lot alike. I can psychoanalyze it for you, if you'd like. …You see enough child psychologists, and you pick it up pretty fast… it's not really something you need a doctorate to do. Anni is rebelling against her Stepford family, and I'm lashing out at the world, but mostly at myself, because I'm angry and self-destructive. ...Regardless, we found a common ground by virtue of our angry self-loathing, disrespect for the powers that be, and an over the top superiority complex. We were quite a pair, I'm sure.

She glanced at me out of the side of her eyes and grinned. "How were your first few classes?" I moved into the room, plopping down on her bed on my stomach, my legs up behind me.

"Dunno, yet. Syllabi look like they'll be awful, but some teachers just make the syllabus look tough to weed out the lazy asses." I took a swig and she giggled.

"It's a little early, don't you think?"

I glanced at the clock. "It's after noon. Besides, it's a little late to just be doing your hair for the day, don't you think?"

She rolled her eyes, turning off the curling iron and picking up a bottle of hairspray. "Maybe for someone who starts all their classes at seven a.m. Mine start at one thirty." She sprayed, and I took another drink. One thing about us that was very unalike—Anni needed her beauty sleep, and I was an insomniac. If I didn't have early classes, it meant that I had nothing to do between four thirty and eight or nine in the morning. Which is the worst possible time to be unable to sleep, because it's when everyone else is sleeping.

"What do you have today?"

She shrugged. "Intro to Bio, Bio Lab, Creative Writing…"

I snorted. "Creative Writing?"

She tossed me a grin before turning her attention back to the application of lip gloss.

"Well, at registration there was this really cute guy ahead of me…"

I laughed and so did she. "So when are you done, then? Assuming you don't end up going out with him tonight?"

She rolled her eyes, her voice chiding. "Sara Sidle. What kind of girl do you think I am…? You never let a guy think he's important enough for you to drop your plans, even if you don't have plans. …If he asks me out, he'll have to wait for me to find a free night… in a few weeks." I laughed again and she packed up her makeup, storing it in her bathroom drawer and turning to look at me. "What about you? Work tonight?"

"Mhmm. Sounds like everyone's gonna meet there for drinks though. You coming?"

"And miss seeing you busting your ass serving drinks to friends who never tip you?" She teased, stepping out and glancing at the diamond studded watch on her slim wrist before picking up her backpack. "I gotta go if I'm not gonna be late. Teachers hate that on the first day…"

"See ya!" I called as she slipped out of the room, rising myself and moving further down the hallway, into my own bedroom. I had given myself a few hours between school and work for homework—self-destructive though I might be, I was still a nerd at heart. I might go to class hung-over—or still buzzed, even—but never without my assignment finished. But it was the first day of classes and so I had nothing to do for the next few hours. I laid on my bed, contemplating the year ahead of me as well as those behind me, wondering about my teachers… so far this morning I'd only had one male teacher, but I was pretty sure I had two classes the next day with male teachers.

I had never intentionally sought out a relationship with my teachers, per se, but it had always, always happened. At this point, I still wasn't seeking it… but I expected it to happen, sooner or later. I swear that it always started out innocently—I meant it when I said I'm a nerd at heart. I could throw down with the best of them and drink just about anyone under the table, but when I was in class, I absorbed the information. I did supplemental reading, extra credit, I stayed late to ask questions and though I'd never done a paper that was less than A level work, I almost always asked my teachers to read it through before the due date so I could make improvements. I did this with female teachers as well, and it seemed like all professors were excited to have a student who was more interested in their subject than in the frat party that night. …I invariably became a kind of pet, and it invariably led to something more, though I had never pushed for such a thing and though every single teacher had sworn he'd never done anything like it before.

Yeah, right. Just like they all said you were the best they'd ever had, and if they were brave enough to leave their wives and children for you, they would.

You learn to ignore those kind of empty promises pretty quickly—if you know what you're getting into from the beginning, you're far less likely to be hurt in the end. And invariably, it will end… You know that just like you know it will begin, with someone. And I was the perfect choice, for them… I never put them in a position where they felt like they might need to assist my grade to keep me putting out—I was a model student and I was generally always willing—and I wasn't offended when the inevitable end-of-semester talk/break up came around. My first relationship with a teacher had been rough—in great part thanks to the empty promises—but after that, I learned that it sincerely wasn't about me… a semester was all they wanted, from me or any other student. It wasn't personal.

I dug in the papers on my desk, finding a copy of my class schedule—two physics classes, organic chemistry, and the one class I'd taken for fun—Intro to Forensic Science. I was wrong—three male teachers. Dr. Anderson—my advisor and favorite physics teacher… and a man who had made me his 'pet' and yet never made so much as an inappropriate innuendo in my presence, much less a pass at me. Dr. Felton, a man I knew nothing about, and Dr. Grissom—a guest professor. All the science departments had been raving about simply having him on campus for a while, so he must be some kind of big deal.

I emptied the beer bottle I'd still been clutching and made my way down the stairs, thinking it couldn't hurt to have a snack and another beer before work…