A/N: Look ambition! Allison put up the song lyrics!

Chapter 5 – Shackled by Vertical Horizon

For so long my life's been sewn up tight inside your hold
And it leaves me there without a place to call my own

I know now what shadows can see
There's no point in running 'less you run with me
It's half the distance through the open door
Before you cut me down
Again
Let me introduce you to the end

And I feel the cold wind blowing beneath my wings
It always leads me back to suffering
But I will soar until the wind whips me down
Leaves me beaten on unholy ground again

So tired now of paying my dues
I start out strong but then I always lose
It's half the distance before you leave me behind
It's such a waste of time


'Cause my shackles
You won't be
And my rapture
You won't believe
And deep inside you will bleed for me

So here I slave inside of a broken dream
Forever holding on to splitting seams
So take your piece and leave me alone to die
I don't need you to keep my faith alive

I know now what trouble can be
And why it follows me so easily
It's half the distance through the open door
Before you shut me down
Again
Let me introduce you to the end

Though you know you care

And my laughter
You won't hear
The faster
I disappear
And time will burn your eyes to tears

            For half the month of June, Tori lay crying on her bed, wrapped in a Penn sweatshirt (untouched until that night, fourteen days ago). Sam had stained her mind with memories and the places she used to seek for solitude had now been tainted by him. She no longer slept; rather she lay awake at night remembering how it felt to have Sam's weight on top of her and Sam's voice breathing euphemism in her ear. But the physical ache for him seemed dull compared to the emotion need that was again void.

            The tragedy wasn't that their secret was discovered; that was inevitable. Tori wasn't bed ridden because she believed Sam had lost his need for her, she knew that he needed her as much as she needed him. Tragedy came down with cupid's arrows and made two people who should never be together need to be together. Tragedy lit the flames and stirred the passion; tragedy started a war between desire and responsibility and forced her to side with desire and him to side with responsibility.

            Tori was crying because she thought that the tears could drown the silence and flow into the empty places causing them to fill to the brim. The knowledge that at times she was just a slave, walking in some dream that was fueled by her need for affection, made her long to see the end, to see this misery that always struck her down finally leave her alone. 

            Of course, the devastation did not go unnoticed by Josh, who was at a loss of what to do. For two weeks straight Tori floated through the apartment, gray and shadowed. Josh had seen her bruised soul and damaged heart before; it had appeared to him nearly 19 years ago in a hospital bathroom mirror as he vomited his misery into the sink.

            "Is there something wrong, Josh? You seem a little down." C.J. asked, leaning on a table in the Roosevelt Room. The senior staff was waiting for Leo to start a meeting.

            "I'm fine, just a little worried about Tori. Some guy she's liked for three years broke up with her or something. She's just been crying and stuff for like two weeks. I don't know; teenage love and broken hearts I suppose." Josh grinned though it was forced. No one noticed when Sam shifted uncomfortably in his chair as Toby threw him a glance or that Sam hardly spoke during the meeting, his blue eyes unfocused and constantly being averted as if keeping them occupied might stop them from watering. It was a feral little and Sam knew that Toby wanted to keep it that way for as long as possible.

             By the end of June, Josh knew that Tori wouldn't be able to keep up with her own depression. The rapture she was feeling now would have to subside before she started at Penn; entering into college without a stable mind was like walking into a lion's den.

            "Tori?" Josh entered in her room, at first a little stunned by the setting sun clothed by sheer red curtains. The golden oranges of sunset was cast blood red throughout her room, reflecting off her mirror, playing off the colors of her masks making them look sad and alive. Tori was curled up on her bed, her face ruddy from her tears, though empty of them for now. As Josh crossed the room to her bed, Tori bearly moved; he had tried to coax her out of this state before, but how could she trust him when she felt like it was partly his fault that she couldn't be with Sam?

            Josh sat on her bed, and brushed her hair away from her face, now lit a crimson gold by the sun. He sighed deeply, he felt like there was nothing he could say to mend her broken heart. It took him seven years before he could see beyond his own misery into the face of his daughter, his daughter who looked exactly like her mother in every way but the amber eyes that stared back at him with the same devastation he once knew.

            "You're lucky, you know, getting everything from your mother but your eyes. Those are mine, I suppose…" Another sigh and he looked up, trying to turn from this mirror of the past, as a reflected sun beam caught his eye, illuminated the golden frame of a picture that sat on the window sill. Josh reached out and picked it up, staring into his own visage, arm wrapped around Roslyn, exuding a happiness he hadn't felt in so many years. Tracing a finger along the form of Roslyn, Josh's heart was a tangled mess of remembrance and devastation. Why couldn't he ever feel that joy again, even when the image of Roslyn had been growing up with him for nineteen years?

            "I know you think I don't know what you're going through, but I do. I really do. I mean, I've lost a lot of people in my life…lost a lot of people for forever. I lost your mother…" Gripping the picture frame, Josh felt the renewed anguish and with it came the renewed joy. "But I got you. And I'm determined not to lose you.

            "Do you know why I named you Victoria?" He asked her, moving his eyes away from the picture down to Tori's. She shook her head weakly. "I named you Victoria because I knew the night that you were born that with every miracle there comes tragedy and with all triumph their must be loss. I guess I was hoping your name could give you strength because I knew that I could not." The red light was making Tori's new tears glitter golden.

            "That's not true." Her voice was broken, stumbling through the words, "You're giving me strength now." A smile forced it way through the past devastation, the recent heart ache just as the sun forced its way around a red curtain, allowing a small ray of clean light to shine pure in the room.

            "I think I just know now what the darkness is like, and I don't like the idea that I'm going to fall into it again." Tori said as she and Zoey walked downtown together.

            "But how do you know that you will?"

            "I can only fly so far before the wind whips me down. My family doesn't exactly have a track record for long periods of happiness. I was born out of tragedy; I don't think I can escape it that easily. It follows pretty closely to our heels."

            "I don't think that's true. I mean, you're here, right?" Zoey's smile was luminescent but Tori's remaining pain cleared out any optimism she might have.

            "You mean downtown shopping with you or here at this stage in my life, heading off to a university I don't want to go to and leaving the only people who I ever felt truly cared about me?"

            "No, I meant here, as my best friend." Zoey's smile faded just a little, her tone becoming more serious. "Just think, if you're mother wouldn't have died, Josh would have become a lawyer and he would have never worked on Hoynes' campaign and wouldn't have worked on my dad's. And then we never would have met. So, I think that even though there may be painful, difficult situation in your life, I think they each lead you to something better."

            "Well, this theory has proven true once. I just hope that it proves true again."

Months came and went; Tori moved into the dorms in Penn; Zoey moved into the dorms in Georgetown. The new situation was a blessing for Tori, the anonymity of a large school gave her more freedom she hadn't known in all of years she'd lived in D.C. And, now she had almost broken free of the place where she was sewn up in so many painful memories, now she could almost start new and fresh.