A/N: Hey there :) I'm back with chapter two! Thank you to those who are here reading this story :)

In this new chapter, I've already started to get into Donna's story (and it's just the tip of the iceberg). It's loaded with anguish, but I hope you enjoy it!


They're still there, in the middle of Donna's living room, where the lighting that surrounds them is dim and warm, their bodies so close together that they look like one, Harvey still holds her, one of his arms does it by her back, while the other by her head, moving his fingers smoothly between her hair. Donna's arms surround him with a little more force than a few minutes ago, but they are still weak. She feels weak; she feels vulnerable and, Donna Paulsen is not vulnerable. That damn phrase she had learned from her mother when she was young and had accompanied her all her life, as if it were a stormy cloud moving above her, no matter how far she runs.

Her body is still shaking, but Harvey doesn't feel it, because what is shaking is her inside. It's a feeling that she had never been able to explain, but that has happened to her since she was a kid, it was as if her muscles got too tight, even when she was lying down, and began to tremble, in a soft, almost imperceptible, but exhausting way. Although, that Harvey is still there reassures her a bit. That he's still here is a good sign, she concludes in the middle of her mental haze, and by that mere fact she decides to speak, just she doesn't know how to do it. Deep down, she knows that if it's not with Harvey, it's not with anyone.

Donna loses him and walks to the entrance of her apartment. "Yes, I cried out when I was a child." She murmurs, going back to the previous conversation. "But not later." She shrugs and walks a little further until her back rests against the wall of the hallway. Harvey is moving a little closer, but still leaves room for her. "No, I didn't do it later." She confirms. "I never had the space to do it. No one ever gave me the space to do it." She pauses. "Well, I guess I didn't ask for it, either. And I didn't even give it to myself." She slides down the wall with her back until she sits on the floor, her knees bent. Harvey imitates her, on the wall perpendicular to the one she is, staying close, but without looking at her, as she is asking him, speechless.

Harvey's hand walks down the ground until he finds hers. "I'm here if you want me to listen."

She nods, pressing her nose with the heel of her palm. "Just…" she murmurs. "I don't know if it will make sense."

"If it makes sense for you, it will make it for me."

She smiles shyly. "Thank you, Harvey." Harvey raises their hands together and brings her hand to his lips, gives her a long, heartfelt kiss on her wrist, and drags his nose against her soft skin. Donna closes her eyes as he does it, enjoying that moment, wishing that the kiss against her veins will make her blood flow calm down a bit. His lips keep against the skin of her wrist, and she can feel the warm air that is expelled from his nostrils. And she feels that so intimate. A few seconds later, she drops her head back until her eyes find the ceiling. "I really don't know how to start." She says low.

"How you can." He responds, his lips rubbing her skin.

"What if I can't?" her voice sounds helpless.

"You're good at words." He drops their hands together on his lap, his thumb rubbing her wrist.

"When it's about other people."

"What if you try to look at yourself from the outside?"

"God, Harvey, therapy has done you very well." She can't help but a little giggle amid the still-contained tears.

"Therapy has brought me here, so it has definitely done me well." He pauses. "But we're not talking about me now."

"I know." She exhales and releases the air that was accumulating in her body. "I guess I'll start by trying to explain why I find it so difficult to express my emotions."

"It sounds like a good way to get started."

Donna nods and her gaze leaves the ceiling to look again at the wall in front of her.

"The first memory I have to drown the urge to cry against my pillow was when I was a kid and heard my parents fight. I don't remember exactly why, but I'm pretty sure it should be because of some of my dad's business failures. Many nights I woke up with their screams, others I couldn't even fall asleep for that." Donna begins to remember, with an increasingly tight knot in her chest. "They believed I didn't hear, but I did." Her voice breaks with the last word and she needs to take some air, with the illusion that with that oxygen, her heart rate will slow down at least a little. "I know my parents love me, I know, but many times living in that house felt as if something crushed me and shut me up constantly." Warm, tiny tears begin to roll down her cheeks and accumulate on her chin, tickling her and making her angry even more. She dries her chin with her sweater and releases from Harvey, she needs to hug herself, stick her legs to her chest and be able to drop her forehead against her knees, just as she had done so many times with her back against the door of her bedroom at her parent's house, the only difference is that now her hands don't need to move toward her ears to cover them tightly.

Harvey listens to every word of her attentively, feeling his heart sink into his chest and wishing he could wrap her with her body, in a desperate attempt for that pain to leave her body.

Donna closes tightly, very tightly, and her mind immediately moves back to her childhood.

Suddenly, she is sitting against that white door, with some pink flowers that had worn with the sun coming through the window and the running of time. She used to sit there because she felt it was the only way she was able to control no one getting into her space. She was trying to have control over her room. But sometimes it seemed like she couldn't have control even over herself. This is not a conclusion she has reached at 8 years, but it has been throughout their years of maturity.

Her back against the door, her legs stretched, her feet falling to the sides, her eyes closed, her mind and her hands trying to dissuade her from the outside screams, remembering her piano lessons, replicating the melody in her mind, and letting her fingers dance in the air...

But that never worked.

Never.

She couldn't turn up the volume in her mind, though damn it was if she tried. She wanted with every part of her body that the volume could increase, that the melodies she imagined become more intense, but that was never enough.

It was a losing battle before it started. Her parents' fights always won.

Her eyes were closing ever stronger, her knees were sliding against her torso, leaving a space on her knees so that her forehead could rest, to hide from the world.

The cries of her parents seemed to increase in intensity with every new word. In her kid's mind, they were like a haunted tree, completely black, in which their branches grew out of control, traveling through the walls of every room of the house, passing under the doors that were even closed. Eventually, they reach her room, losing even control of her space. She knew that control was an illusion.

She tried to stop that damn haunted tree with her little body against the door, but it was always in vain. The cries turned into branches invading her room and she needed to hug herself, in a useless attempt to protect herself. It was never enough. The cushions against her ears weren't either.

And that nightmare happened every night.

Donna, don't cry so loud... they'll hear you.

Donna, please reassure yourself.

Donna, please breathe.

But their screams always won, her parent's screams were getting louder and her mother's tears were always stronger.

Always arguing for money, the problem was always that.

Donna had learned since she was a child that her father was bad in business and that every time he risked money he lost it, dragging his family to having to make every dollar worth more. At the young age of 8, she had already noticed how suddenly, the cookies that her mom put in her school backpack were no longer the same, that the brand of milk changed for one cheaper, or that her piano lessons were interrupted for weeks, or that her mother said no when she asked for a new book and had to go to the school library to find it. Again and again, as if they were always running in circles and already knew each of the stops.

Her parents believed she didn't understand it, that she was just a child, but Donna had always been Donna. She could always see beyond each person around her.

Donna's big problem was that no one worried about truly seeing her. Her parents saw she adapted to all the changes with no problems. At school, she was still an excellent student, and for the rest of the day, she was locked in her room reading, studying, or practicing on the piano.

Never anyone, not even her own parents, had encouraged themselves to see beyond that facade of perfection and adaptation to the environment.

Never had anyone noticed that she was caught between the branches of that tree, which covered her mouth and tied her feet and hands.

Therefore, since she can remember, that swallows her emotions, she spends all day accumulating them inside, in her chest, or where they fit, because over the years she had learned that unexpressed emotions accumulate in every part of her body, generating an almost constant tension. But she had already been used to living like that, she had gotten used to accumulating and trying to expel them silently, against a pillow, every night. And the real problem wasn't that, the real problem was that no matter how broken she felt, she had never been able to really cry. Cry for real, with endless tears, drowned screams, burning in the chest, blurred sight, and destroyed soul.

She felt completely unable to do so.

Donna is holding her legs firmly against her chest. Her forehead is pressing hard on her knees and although she is trying, she feels she still can't release all the tears she would like.

She's so scared.

Her body continues to tremble, more and more, as if she were a leaf in the middle of autumn, which is about to fall into the void, but the branch doesn't let it fall, no matter how strong the wind blows.

Harvey doesn't know very well what to do or how to help. He just knows that he wants to make her feel at least loved and safe. So, he decides not to say anything and just moves a little, until his hand raises on her back, leaving it still in the middle of her shoulder blades.

"You are not alone now. And no one is screaming here." He murmurs and gives her a tender kiss on her shoulder, then rests his chin there, his body strangely crooked. Donna feels it. The contact with him brings her to reality again, but still cannot move from there. She doesn't dare to stop hiding. "And I think it's been a good way to start."

"Thank you." She mumbles with a thread of voice, almost imperceptible.

Harvey raises his hand to her hair, gently straightening it with his hand. "I promise you'll get out of there." He finishes moving and sits in front of her, his hands wrapping hers. "I'm here to support you, always, okay?" she nods, even without looking at him.

"I wanna cry, Harvey," she sobs.

Harvey kneels in front of her and kisses her head, fondly rubbing her arms. "Wait for me a second here," Harvey says and quickly gets up to reach for one cushion from her couch. "Take it," Harvey tells her, kneeling again in front of her and handing her the cushion.

Donna raises her head, though only a little. He only gets to see her forehead and her eyes swollen. "What do you want me to do with that?"

"Shout, cry, whatever you need." He says sweetly.

"I didn't say so-"

He interrupts her. "Grab it."

"Harvey." She complains.

"I must remind you that you forced me to go see my mother when you knew I was ready?" she chuckles unwillingly. "I'm sure you can do this now."

Donna frowns and hides again on her knees, but just to catch a breath of air and look back at him, she tries to be brave, but still feels like an unprotected puppy. Harvey rests the cushion on her knees and then his chin there, looking at her in the eyes, too close. "Don't look at me like that." She murmurs. "My face must be a disaster."

Harvey raises his hand down her leg and gently clings to her calf. "Do you believe me if I tell you that you are still pretty for me?" she denies it with her head. Harvey rolls his eyes and makes her giggle. "It'll make you good to do this." He separates a little from her and dries the moisture from her cheeks.

Donna feels stupidly pathetic, even if her years of theater classes had used her to put herself in somewhat ridiculous situations in front of people… this isn't just ridiculous. She is afraid of screaming and that something would break inside her. She is fearful that her crying would sound so loud that it would stun her.

Harvey sees fear in her gaze and carries the hands of both on the cushion. "You may cry, yeah, but I think that's the point. I'll be here."

"Look the other way." She says, taking over the cushion, trying to gather some courage.

"Okay." Harvey stands up and walks to the perpendicular wall where he was a few minutes ago, leans against the wall with his back and his hands behind him, and just keeps quiet.

Donna swallows hard and takes air, determined to do so, but dropping her face onto the cushion is as if, once again, her mouth had been covered and all she gets is a drowned, sharp cry against the fabric, followed by stupid tears that she's unable to get out of her eyes.

Her feet hit the ground and her fists repeatedly hit the cushion as her knees fall to the sides and the cushion on her legs.

Harvey screams, looking at a fixed spot on the wall, trying to encourage her once again and it seems to work because she screams a little louder, her hands holding her cushion against her face and her knees returning to the previous position. Harvey screams again louder and she responds with a little deeper cry, ending in a sob against the cushion.

"Sometimes I hate you, mom!" she screams, drowning again.

Donna hadn't always been like that. As she had told Harvey, she had cried out at some time when she was a child. She knew she had done it when she was a baby, but she had also done it during the early years of her childhood.

It's not that she remembers it, it's that her mother had repeated it to her, frequently. She had heard her parents tell the story of how she hadn't let them sleep any night when she was a baby, that every time her mother's arm stopped rocking her cradle and her arm fell, she started crying out. She has listened that she was a complicated girl, who never knew how nor when to shut up. And although it seems an irony, as a child, sometimes her parents called her by the name of a very famous actress because she always cried inconsolably in all the movies she was in. And Donna was like her because she was always crying and screaming.

Her mother was so repetitive and incisive about the fact that she and her crying had been so unbearable, about how a psychologist had recommended her to lock her in her bedroom until she stops crying and calms down, that Donna had learned to control her tears, to cry in silence.

Even though she has never done therapy, she is pretty sure that her parents locking her in when she couldn't stop crying is completely related to not knowing how to cry in her adulthood. As well as the fact of her parents highlighted that her yells and her crying were so unbearable that altered the lives of all.

She doesn't want to blame her parents, because now she knows she's an adult woman who could be treating her traumas in therapy, but that thorn stuck in her heart still hurts. It hurts in every part of her body where she accumulates repressed emotions, where she accumulates tears that she never dared to share with anyone.

Also, she remembers her parents complaining about her laughter. "You are too noisy." "Don't laugh like that, do it like a lady." "That's not so funny." And she hadn't related it until Harvey told her. She always covers her mouth to laugh.

Donna feels agitated. Her heartbeat rumbles against every corner of her body and her muscles tremble. She wants to run out of there and hide from the world. She thinks Harvey believes her more courageous than she actually feels.

Her mother's words resonate again and again in her mind as if they are looking for a way out they can't find.

Harvey cannot stand to be far away and kneels back in front of her, his hands gently holding her elbows.

"I feel like an idiot now." She sobs. "I hate you seeing me like that."

"No, you're not an idiot, nor do you have to hate that I'm seeing you like that." He sits next to her and surrounds her back with his arm. "I don't want you to have to hide parts of you from me."

"I think I hide parts even from myself." She murmurs, turning her head towards him, resting her cheek on the cushion on her knees.

"I have a master's degree in that." He responds, putting her hair behind her ear, trying to sound funny, and she smiles without desire. "That's why you always insist on people's emotions?"

"I guess I can know how it feels to swallow everything." She shrugs.

Harvey's corners of his lips curl down and his fingers crawl behind her ear. "And we all thought you were a wonder-woman."

"It's what the world thinks I am."

"I'm so sorry…" he says with a knot of distress in his throat.

"No, you don't have to ask for forgiveness. I'm aware I created this character."

"Can I ask you not to create a character anymore? At least in front of me." His hand slides down her back, his eyes still resting on hers. "I'm not the most emotionally knowledgeable person in the world. But I promise you I'll be here to know what I lack from you, behind all those layers."

"I don't need anything more than what I know you can give me, Harvey." Her hand slides to rest on Harvey's hand resting on her knee. "If I'm telling you this, it's because I know you're the only person I can share it with. And also with the only one I want, at least now."

"I'm glad to be that person." He tells her honestly, and that calms Donna's heart a little.

"I'm also glad you are, even if I don't seem like it now." She giggles and Harvey smiles with tenderness.

"You want to keep telling me?" she nods and drops her head on his shoulder to keep talking.

"Donna, won't you cry again, right?" her mother tells her, seeing that her almost teenage daughter's eyes were flooded again.

"No, I won't, Mom." An 11-year-old Donna responds by holding her tears, her hands turned into two fists with all her strength.

"Remember that women in this family are not vulnerable."

"I know, Mom."

"You can see people's vulnerability and you know that's not at all pleasant."

"But it's nice to be helped if-"

She interrupts her daughter. "No, Donna, it is not! Any vulnerabilities you show will be used against you later."

"I don't do that."

"You are a good person, but you know that most people in this world are not. Besides, no one will come to you if you are vulnerable. People don't enjoy having to deal with the sadness of others, that makes you stay alone forever. And you don't want to stay alone forever, don't you?"

Harvey moves his hand in circles against her back, and that relaxes her a little. The words have run out, and her mind is too clouded to continue speaking.

Still trembling, now hugging her own legs and with her head upright and her gaze fixed on a point on the wall, she closes her eyes and remembers Harvey's words: she tries to see herself from the outside.

The first thing she can visualize is that girl crying secretly against the door of her room. Even though she seems to see her miles away, she can feel her pain. From the very point from where she is looking, a girl 3 years older appears, making herself a bun in the bed, drowning her tears against the pillow, while everything inside her trembles. If she turns her head a little more, one Donna, 5 years older, has learned to contain her tears and repeats, again and again, looking at herself in the mirror, her mother's words: Donna Paulsen is not vulnerable.

Donna wants to jump and be able to hug them, be able to contain all those past versions of herself, wants to let them cry in her arms and tell them it's okay, that it's okay if they need to cry and that it's okay if they need someone's support while they do it. She wants to repeat to them again and again that it's okay to be vulnerable and that nothing bad will happen if they show up like that.

So she does. She lets herself fall into the void and at first, letting herself loose is difficult. It's hard to let her hands and legs free from herself, but somehow she accomplishes it. Her grip on herself gradually loosens and without realizing it, the tears roll down her cheeks, without knowing what's the dividing line between what she is creating in her mind and reality.

She only realizes that everything is real when she is frightened. She is frightened of herself, of a sharp cry against that cushion, a cry that seems to be born from the depths of her being, a cry that is accompanied by infinite and successive tears.

She feels a little lighter as if she was really falling into free fall. Her body still shakes, and she is pretty sure that her soul is too, but she also feels invaded with something like the calm, the calm that when she reaches the floor, she won't be alone. He'll be there.

She doesn't know what happened, but Harvey is again in front of her, his hands gently wrapping her arms, giving her an anchor to the real world.

She is again scared of her own screams, but this time it's because he has removed the pillow. Harvey noted she was running out of air and worried that she will drown, and everything is reverberating throughout the apartment now. For a few seconds, her desperate eyes seek Harvey's, her pupils clinging to his, seeking an answer in his gaze, in desperation, while her voice is extinguished once again.

Harvey holds her arms with his hands and her soul with his gaze. Without hesitation for a second, he screams again, and she imitates him, letting that with that cry, the tears continue to multiply.

"Louder!" Harvey screams and she responds, her throat breaking, only to be able to pull off more shit from inside with that cry. "Yes, exactly like that." He says, rubbing her arms.

"Harvey!" she screams, but in the middle, she begins to laugh and laughter turns into even more tears.

"What?" he asks. His face is getting closer to hers.

"You hug me?" she sobs, drying her tears with the back of her hand.

He smiles at her tenderly. "Of course, come here." Harvey opens his arms as he sits against the wall, turning to her side, and she curls up against him, becoming a bun that Harvey wraps around. "It's okay, get all that out of the inside." He murmurs, his fingers moving over her head.

"Don't let go of me." She says, choking on her own crying.

"Never." He responds and kisses her head.

And Donna lets himself be wrapped around him, while she cries in a way she didn't remember possible. She is striving so that her habit of burying her emotions doesn't win her this time. Being in his arms gives her security and helps her relax, giving free rein to each of her tears.

"I think I'll fill your clothes with mucus." She murmurs after a few minutes.

Harvey chuckles and rests his lips on her forehead. "Don't worry about that now." She nods and hugs him a little tighter. "You see that the world keeps turning the same even if you cry?" Donna smiles a little and disarms even more against him.


If you've made it this far, I thank you for giving this story a chance. Please, would you be so kind as to let me know what you think?