A/N: Hey again, here is the third chapter in which you can continue discovering Donna's story, thank you very much for coming back here. Hope you enjoy it!

Minutes are running. In the same way, the tears go down Donna's cheeks. Their bodies feel more and more rigid and numb. Not that they are getting younger and staying for so long on the ground is affecting their muscles.

"Hey…" Harvey mumbles and kisses her hair. "What do you think of getting up from here and going to bed?" he asks, dragging his thumb behind her ear. "I don't say going to sleep. We can keep talking if you want, or crying, or whatever you need, but a little more comfortable."

She smiles slightly and nods. "Yes, I think it sounds good." She responds after separating a little to look at him. Harvey dries her tears carefully with his fingers and is the first to stand, then offers both hands to her and helps her get up. When Donna is standing in front of him, he puts his hands on the sides of her abdomen and gives her a gentle squeeze there as he kisses her forehead. "Harvey..." she mutters.

"What?" he also murmurs, his lips resting on her forehead.

"Thank you for not running out that door."

"Hey..." he whispers, his hand going up to her collarbone, his fingers slightly holding her jaw. "I won't." She nods. "You're not alone now... Sorry if I couldn't see this before or–"

She interrupts him. "I didn't let you see it."

"I didn't let you see me either, and either way, you did."

"Harvey…" she whispers, grabbing the hand he has on her face. "I don't have to forgive you for this. I don't know if I was right or wrong, but I wanted it to be like that." She says and kisses his knuckles. "Thank you for being here now."

"You don't have to."

"I want to." She smiles at him shyly. "And you said we would go to bed, and I'm really needing my bed now." Harvey nods and after giving her a brief but sweet kiss on her lips, he wraps her by her shoulders to trudge to the room.

In silence, they take off their clothes and put on their pajamas. Harvey finishes first, so he removes the pillows from Donna's bed and opens the blankets on his side. Leaning against the headboard, he waits for her and opens the blankets on her side as he sees her approach. Donna slips inside the bed, also leaning against the headboard. The legs of both are under the blankets.

Donna sighs heavily and drops her face against her hands. "I don't know how to follow…" she snorts.

Harvey slides his hand from her shoulder blades to her lower back, where he stays still. "I'm here to listen to what you want me to hear."

"I feel like a big mess right now."

He turns far enough to look at her and takes her hands between his. "Do you listen to me?" she nods. "It doesn't matter if it's chaotic. Take away everything that weighs over you. I can help you hold it now. That's what I'm here for."

"Harvey…" she sobs, her lower lip shaking. She feels like he is grabbing his tired heart between his hands, giving her a place to rest. And that's what she has always wished, to have a place to rest. It's completely exhausting to live constantly hiding and controlling yourself every second. It's completely exhausting to spend life between dark walls, which drown you and your emotions, pushing you into a hole. "I have been entangled in this for too long, without a safe place to rest." She says with a hoarse voice, tears falling down her cheeks.

"Let me be that place for you." He tells her sweetly, holding their hands together to his lips to give her a soft kiss on each one. Donna nods repeatedly with her head and separates slightly from him to lean back against the pillows and the headboard.

"Are you sure you wanna be?" she asks, with a noticeable fear in her voice.

Harvey slides his hand from her knee to her thigh, where her hand is, and wraps it with his hand to give her a soft, affectionate squeeze. "It's what I always wanted to be, Donna. Now I know I can do it. I wish it was sooner. I'm sorry for that." Donna shakes her head, climbing with her thumb in his hand to caress him. "I promise to do the best I can."

"Please, stop apologizing for that, Harvey. May this be now and may you be here..." she exhales and closes her eyes. "It's all I care about."

Harvey smiles gently and leans toward her to give her a tender kiss. Donna grabs him by his two cheeks and lets his lips fall over hers. She needs more, and he responds, letting their mouths tangle for a few seconds. "I wanna be your safe place." He murmurs, his nose stroking hers.

"You already are." She responds in a very low voice and kisses him again. "I'll try... To share my burdens with you." Harvey nods and kisses her one more time. "There are some parts I remember and others that I don't because I was a kid…" Harvey listens to her, sitting next to her, but with his torso turned enough to be able to look at her. He covers her hand resting on the mattress with his, intertwining their fingers. "When I was 6 years old, I suddenly stopped talking. And I spent several weeks in silence. They took me to the doctor, thinking it would be something on my vocal cords, but of course, it wasn't." She shrugs. "It's called selective mutism, and it often happens in children when they don't feel safe in their environment. And although with my 6-year-old mind, I couldn't realize that, it's what happened to me." She says and drops her head on his shoulder. "My house was always chaos, Harvey." She pauses, biting the inside of her cheek, and he smooches her forehead. "I never doubted that my parents love me, but I always felt invisible to them. I feel there is too much of me they don't know, that I never had space to share with them." She raises her head again, and a tear rolls down her cheek, which Harvey captures with his thumb before it finishes falling down her face. "It's as if they had always believed that I could just by myself, with everything. What you told me... everyone believes I'm a wonder-woman. Well, it's the same thing my parents believed and still believe about me." She pauses, trying to tidy up her mind. "I know our stories are completely different, but I guess you can understand what it feels like to not be able to trust your parents."

"Of course." He responds with a hint of sadness in his voice.

"The doctor sent them to take me to a child therapist, but we know that the therapy wasn't the same as it's today. There was too much stigma, plus the sessions were too expensive. I think I went only 2 times. The only thing I did of all the therapist's advice was the piano lessons."

"That's when you started playing?"

She nods. "Yes, according to my parents, I had always liked music and been attracted to the piano, and the therapist recommended some artistic activity, which helps me express myself, and so I began playing. I guess it helped me, quite a bit. But I don't remember too much of that time of being in silence. I remember later times, they weren't too long periods. The longest period was the first separation from my parents. It was as if I suddenly felt that my voice and what I had to say were worthless. Especially with my parents."

"Have you never done therapy? I mean, besides that therapist?"

"No, but I should. I know that. Don't tell me." She giggles against her will.

"It has helped me."

"That blond, right?" she frowns her face with disgust and he can't help giggling.

"I'm talking to you seriously."

"I know…" she sighs.

"I think I now understand a lot more why you are like you are." She twists her mouth and her forehead falls on his shoulder. He surrounds her with his arm. "You always worry about the feelings of others first and hide your own. All the time."

She nods, she knows. "I was always terrified that you could never express yourself." She murmurs, wrapping his arm with her hands. "You're the most important person to me, you know that, and it's not just now that we're together. You've always been." She meets his brown eyes again. "And I didn't want you to lock yourself in as much as I did. You didn't deserve it. You don't deserve it." Harvey wants to talk, but she doesn't leave him. "That's why I wasn't able to go away by your side because just thinking about you being as locked up as I was… It destroyed me." She sobs.

"Donna..." he also sobs, leaning his forehead on hers. "I've never felt alone since you came into my life."

"When I went with Louis and—" She sighs and pauses for a second. "I never realized how much I was destroying you, not until I knew about your panic attacks, Harvey. That's when I knew how much I had hurt you."

"I hurt you first, Donna."

"Yes, but I never told you how much it hurt me to have left you, and know that when I left, you started having those attacks. I immediately felt it like my mutism when I was a kid. It's so hard when you suddenly stop having a support network to fall on. I'm really sorry for that."

"Hey…" he whispers sweetly and kisses her on her temple. "These attacks weren't your fault. They resulted from everything I accumulated over the years. And for better or worse, they pushed me to seek help, and that's all that brought me here now. Okay?" she nods and curls against him, her cheek resting on his chest, her arms surrounding him, taking the shape of his body. Harvey also wraps her in his arms and rests his chin on her crown. They stay there for several minutes, Harvey combing her long hair while dragging his fingers on her back. "Hey... Do you wanna keep telling me?" he murmurs. He doesn't want the conversation to change, and he becomes the main character.

Donna nods, but she doesn't let go of him. "The last time I was silent was when my parents split. I was 10 years old. I don't know if I ever told you they had separated before when I was a child. I never felt so invisible to them as I did at that time." She says, and the pain is clear in her voice. "They never worried about how I felt about the situation. I was a little older already there, and the first thing I said after weeks of silence was that I wanted to take theater classes. I continued with the piano, and then when we moved to Connecticut, just the musical theatre classes." Donna sits back, because she feels she lacks air and he imitates her, doesn't want to be far away. He needs her to feel she isn't alone anymore. "Theater helped me, more than the piano, I guess. There I had a very good pretext to shout, cry, laugh… everything was allowed. And yes, that's what made me fall in love with theater."

"Can I ask why you haven't continued to insist on it? I mean, at least as a hobby, continue with classes?"

"It's true that when I started working with you, my intentions were still to become an actress and be able to make a living from it. Maybe if I hadn't fallen in love with my boss..." the two giggle. "I would have insisted more, but I don't regret that I didn't. While I love the theater, it gave me a place of belonging and it was my refuge… It's also what ended up isolating me from my emotions outside the characters. I mean, it's not that I don't have them, but I never allowed myself to reach the limit of my emotions outside the theater." She pauses and sighs. "I never realized that I was covering my mouth when I have an orgasm." She says, ashamed. "If I can't express myself at a time when my body lets itself be carried by instinct, a time when one is supposed to lose control of her body… how am I supposed to be able to do it with the rest?" she dries her own tears. "Actually, it's the first time I cry in front of someone, Harvey. I know you've seen me shed some tears over all these years, but never cry. I have always controlled myself with you, and with everyone… with myself as well." She murmurs with shame. "I never allow myself to cry, cry for real. Not even being alone in this bed, hidden from the world."

"I'm concluding that we're more alike than I thought." Both smile with sadness and, as if they could read it in their eyes, they both lie on the side of their bodies, face to face. "Hey… I won't go anywhere, and I know you won't either." She denies it with her head, the hands of both of them going up their arms. "This can be our safe place. Don't you think so?" she nods. "I don't expect it to happen quickly, because I'm still working on it… But I would like, at some point, we can be just Donna and Harvey, without all these layers and filters, laughing, crying out, or waking neighbors because we are having a very good orgasm." Donna can't help laughing at the latter. "You deserve to have a chance to heal. I'll be just right here to support you."

Donna nods, with a slight smile on her lips, and drops her forehead on his. "Yes, I like the idea that this is our safe place." She says with the corners of her lips slightly twisted upward. "But... at this moment, I feel too overwhelmed. This is the first time I put all this into words, and… it's weird. But it also helps me to know that I can say it and that you are the person I told it to." She mutters, pressing her body against his. "Just... Now I need you to hug me and be silent for a while. My mind is a whirlwind."

"Of course, come here." He murmurs, lying on his back, luring her against his body delicately. Donna tangles her whole body to him and enjoys the feeling of him holding her strong enough and soft enough against him. "I got you." He says with a smile and kisses her forehead again, and Donna slips a genuine smile from her lips.

"I know." She responds, clinging harder to him and after a long sigh, closes her eyes and tries to put focus on the feeling of security she feels. This is the first time that she feels that security. It's the first time she feels safe about everything that happened to her (and still happens to her). Because it's the first time her inner girl feels safe, because it's the first time someone hugs that inner girl, and what brings her to cry this time is that, the sense of security that surrounds her, what invades her with peace. For the first time, her tears come out without permission, without effort, as if it were natural and irremediable to leave her eyes. Harvey's hands move affectionately, running down her back, massaging her nape, his fingers gently sticking into her scalp, and that just makes her cry even deeper.

Harvey validating her feelings that way shocked her. She realizes she isn't losing her mind, and that what she feels is right and real. And that there is also a way to fix it. Although it will take time, she now has a place to take refuge, and that changes everything substantially.

And it isn't just that, it's that Harvey also said everything she thinks about how she had built a personality from her wounds. And that made her feel even more validated by him. Many times it hurts too much that the only thing people are looking for from her is her unconditional support and her words of encouragement. But finally, someone isn't seeing her as a wonder-woman. Now she realizes that's exactly what she had always wanted. What she had always needed.

She had spent so many nights in this same bed, struggling to cry, to being able to get all the crap out of the inside. She had really tried and never could. And although she had never done therapy, she had done some research on the subject. She had learned that the inability to cry is because of an emotional blockage, which occurs when you have many emotions accumulated, and she had decades of accumulated emotions. She had also learned that by its own survival, our mind creates an armor that disconnects us from our emotions so as not to suffer. And that for this reason, certain people sometimes keep a disconnect from their emotions and their mind even for decades. So what is sought is to reconnect so that eventually the release and relief happen.

And that is what was happening to her now, for the first time she had been allowed to connect with what had happened to her and the emotions that had been locked in her body for so long, allowing herself, for the first time, to start pushing the walls she had built around her pain, using all her forces to make them fall. She feels that being vulnerable isn't a weakness for the first time. Even though she feels it new and strange, she feels safe, and it seems that she has just taken a ton of weight off her back.

She doesn't know how much time has passed but considers that it has been too much because her body already feels numb, but Harvey's hands seem tireless in their movements on her.

"Hey.." Donna gets up a little, resting her hands on his chest so she can look at him.

"Hey…" he murmurs, removing a lock of hair that falls on her face, discovering her little eyes because of the swelling that the crying caused.

"I'm not crushing you?"

Harvey can't help but giggle. "Are you thinking about that now?"

"My body is getting numb. I guess you are too."

"A little, yes… but I like to be close."

She smiles a little. "I'll go to the bathroom, anyway. Are you waiting for me here?"

"Always." He tells her with a smile, looking deeply into the eye, and Donna can read in his eyes that "always" is literal. She smiles back at him, gives him a tender kiss on his lips, and goes to the bathroom.

Donna closes the door just behind her and is surprised at herself when she encounters her reflection in the mirror. She's not just surprised by how she looks, but how everything has turned 180° in the last few hours. She clearly hadn't planned this day like that the night before, nor when her alarm rang that morning. She feels as if a very strong gust of wind pushed her without notice several miles ahead of her safe area, to discover a new safe area: Harvey.

Her hands are on the cold sink and her eyes are stuck in the reflection of the mirror, watching as tears fall from her eyes... it feels like a victory. It feels liberating.

She was supposed to have come to the bathroom to wash her face and find some peace to sleep in, but she's not quite sure it's working. She's just crying more and more.

The sound of Harvey's knuckles against the door makes her startled. "Hey... Are you okay?" he asks from the other side. "It's that you've been in there for almost half an hour."

Half an hour?

She immediately opens the door, and his face of concern makes her heart squeeze. "Sorry, I didn't realize it was that much." She responds, drying her tears. "I was watching myself crying in the mirror?" she giggles because she feels stupid. "And thinking."

"Okay.. I'll leave you if you want."

She shakes her head. "I promise you that in less than five minutes, I'll be there."

"Whatever you need." He responds with a tiny smile on his lips to her and leaves her alone again.

Donna washes her face with plenty of cold water several times and, after using the toilet, she washes her hands and goes in search of some water in the kitchen. In less than 5 minutes, as she promised, she's back in bed. She lies down by turning her back on him, and he knows what that means, so he moves to be the biggest spoon that night. Donna's knees are slightly bent. He puts his knees bent behind hers. His arm wraps under her breasts, fitting to the shape of her body, while Donna's arm wraps around his. The heads of both are on Donna's pillow, Harvey's warm breath hitting her nape.

"Try to sleep, Donna..." he murmurs and kisses her neck. "And thank you for trusting me."

"Thank you for listening to me." She also murmurs, her thumb stroking his arm.

"Always."

"I love you, Harvey." She mutters. They haven't said it too many times yet, so to say it still has too much weight. But it's what she feels. It's the truth. And she needs to say it out loud.

"I love you, Donna." He responds with the same depth in his voice as she, stroking his nape with his nose.

Neither of them says anything else. They don't have to.

Donna falls asleep quickly. She feels too tired after the emotional earthquake that had just crushed her, and for the first time in a long time, she feels safe with those walls falling around her.

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