Looking to the Past
Dominic had let Tia pick out where he was taking her to lunch, and he was more than happy to oblige her with a never-ending bucket of shrimp at the Cajun place on the boulevard. How much she could eat astonished him; she'd finished a bucket and a half before he'd finished his first. Now she was on her third bucket, and was slowly picking away at it. Something was still bothering him though.
Tianna, who had become accustomed to picking up on different vibes from people, questioned it, "What's wrong, Dominic?"
"Can I ask you a question, Princess?"
"Sure. As long as I can ask you one," Tia replied as she peeled the hard shell off of a shrimp and popped the spiced meat into her mouth.
"Where do you put all that food?"
"Doctors said I have a high metabolism." She arched a brow at him, "Now, what's the real question?"
"What made you so afraid of your father, I'm assuming it was him in the Porsche. Your not as old as you said are you?"
"That's two questions," Tia said as she took a sip of Dom's Corona, "and I never said how old I was."
Dominic frowned, Tianna had obviously chosen which question she was going to answer, "Your question then."
"Why do you call me 'Princess'? You have to answer honestly"
"So you wouldn't believe it's some thing I call all females?"
"No, not at all. I can hardly see such a girlish term coming out of your mouth all the time. Now give me an answer I can accept."
"Okay, This morning, when you were sleeping on the couch, you reminded me of Sleeping Beauty."
"Really?" Tia grinned, "Does that mean you think I'm beautiful, Toretto?"
"Hey, now who's asking multiple questions?" Dominic laughed low.
"All right, next question."
"Why are you so scared of your father?"
Tia scowled, "You just aren't going to let me avoid that question are you?"
"Not at all."
"Fine," She huffed angrily, "but you don't want to know."
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know."
Tianna contemplated on this for a moment, then as she spoke her voice was weak, lacking the conviction it did all other times, "I guess I'm not really sure where to start...the beginning is usually the best place, but with Aidan there were a lot of beginnings. I suppose I can start with him, my father. Rather, my step-father, Aidan O'Brien. He's the president of O'Brien and Company. Rich, arrogant, fucker. My mother and I never saw a penny of the money he made. Well, that's wrong. We did see it-- in the car he drove, the suits he wore to work, and in the liquor he drank. Always the expensive kind, and always the highest proof he could get his greedy hands on."
Dominic watched as Tia thought about eating the shrimp in her hand, then frowned when she looked at it as if she might be ill. He let her toss the shrimp back in the bucket and waved for the waiter to take the food away, and bring the check. Once the waiter was gone he nodded to Tianna, "Go on," he beckoned her.
"The alcohol never mixed well with Aidan; he had a nasty temper. He got violent when he drank too much, really violent-- he always drank too much. It scared my mom and me. The night I ran away, when I finally went, and stayed, with Romeo, Aidan had thrown a chair at me. I don't know why it took a chair for me to leave. I've been thrown into the dining room table, down basement stairs...but for some reason having a chair thrown at me was what helped make the final decision.
"Anyway, I left, and I didn't go back. So, now, my dear father has cops and cooperate spies out looking for me. He'd kill me if he knew where I was. He would come find me, and beat me until I was limp as a rag doll." Tia noted the skeptical look that Dom was giving her, and elaborated, "I'm not lying. Aidan was always very violent with me and very neglecting. I eat as much as I do because I remember not being fed, I'm obsessive about staying clean, because I remember being covered in filth and rank stench." Tia's voice dropped an octave, and seemed a little distant, "I don't even know what Christmas looks like...I always spent it locked in the attic."
Tia shook her head and continued in a more audible tone, "I didn't mind that so much though. You get used to it after a while, and learn to occupy your time. It was the beatings I couldn't handle. I couldn't stand having his hands on me."
"He hit you?" Dominic's hands clenched into white knuckled fists beneath the table, and his eyes grew dark.
Tianna offered Dominic a calming smile before she continued, "He didn't just hit me Dominic, he beat the holy fuck out of me." He voice got quieter, as she kept going, "No one ever believed me though. They thought I didn't like him because he wasn't my real dad, that I was only saying the things I did to try and get rid of him. Then, I think when I was fourteen, it's hard to remember it seems like it's been forever, one of my teachers did finally listen. The cops came, I was almost excited. Then I realized that they weren't arresting him. They had come for me. They had this thing called a green warrant...they took me to a hospital for the, how did they put it, mentally challenged.
"They gave me over to the doctors, and the medications, and the treatments..." Tia shivered visible as he mind went back to that time, but she shoved the thought away quickly and pressed on, "I didn't understand it then, I was too young. Aidan owns the cops. All he had to do was offer him enough money and they'd do whatever he wanted."
When Tianna grew silent, Dom studied her for a moment, then stood. He moved around the table and pulled Tia up, and wrapped his arms around her when she was standing. "Let's get out of here, you don't have to tell me anymore if you don't want to." After she nodded her agreement, Dominic paid for the food and they headed on their way.
They had been walking for about ten minutes when, Tia started talking again, "I got out two years ago." Tianna took they had Dom offered, and pulled what strength she could from it, "Three years I spent in that place, but every week felt like it had years within it. Years with pills, and drug laced gruel forced down my throat. Years of needles being pushed through my flesh. Years suffering through what the doctors like to call, 'therapy'." Tia grew silent for the span of three or four minutes, "It's odd, the feeling of laying in a few inches of water, just enough to cover your ears, and watching them turn the knob above your head, and being so incapacitated by these straps, that you can't do anything but scream as the electric currents tear through your body. It's not something easily forgotten."
"Shock therapy?" Dominic looked as surprised as he sounded, and stopped to face Tia. "That's illegal in the states isn't it?"
"At the intensity they were using on me yeah. It's illegal. You have to understand, that didn't stop them from doing it, because they knew they wouldn't get arrested. Aidan owns the cops, remember?"
"How did you survive?"
"I don't know, but certainly not easily."
"What happened when you got out?" Dom took Tia's hand again, and laced his fingers through hers, and started them walking again.
"I was put back into Aidan's custody. For about a half a year, I was placid, and obedient. This over course still wasn't good enough for him, and he still did the things he did, but I couldn't do anything about it. After that though, I became my usual defiant self, and the beatings started again. I wasn't going to stand for it though. I wasn't just going to let him beat me. So, I fought back-- as much as I could, as hard as I could." Her face contorted into an expression of thought as she decided the words she'd use next, "It didn't do me any good though. He just beat me harder, and more often. As soon as I could fight back, you know, once I was weakened, he would...," Tianna took a shaky breath, "He would rape me. He always made it my fault. 'Look what you made me do, baby. Baby, why do you make me do these things?' Bastard." Tia cursed quietly, but tears threatened to fall.
Dominic growled, "Why didn't your mother do anything!" He took his anger out verbally on the mother, "Where the hell was she?" He was severely pissed off. Just the thought that, that man-- that anyone-- would do those things to Tianna, his princess, enraged him. He'd only been this angrily violent once before, when his dad died.
"Mommy?" Tia's voice carried a childish under tone, "Mommy left...when I was little." One tear fell and Dominic wiped it away with his thumb before it reached the corner of her mouth.
"Why did she leave you with that man!" At the tormented look he was getting from Tianna, Dom forced himself to calm down enough to talk to her, "Where did she go, Princess?"
"She went to..." Tia sighed, her voice even quieter, "She died. Aidan killed her...smothered her with a pillow...in the bed they shared." She was silent for a moment, "He made me watch. I was four when he killed her, four when he started to...touch, me...four when he started neglecting me. We had barely been living with him for two months."
"I'm sorry, Tia, I didn't know," Dominic spoke quietly once he realized she was done telling her story. He had an understanding know of what Ro said early about having insight into a life that wasn't expected to be understood. Sure, he still didn't have all the pieces put together, but at least he'd been given a couple more to had to the puzzle.
"Of course you didn't," Tianna smiled softly up at Dominic, "You would not have asked, if you already knew the story. But that's the story of my life. In a nutshell at least." She managed a quiet laugh, "I don't think there's enough time in this world, or the next, for the complete telling."
"Why did you tell me your story?"
"Because you asked me too."
"Do you always do what other people ask?"
"Almost never actually."
"Then why--"
"There's just something abut you, Toretto. Something in you that I can trust. Something that just makes me want to tell my life to you, to just hand it over, and feel that it's being protected, and sheltered, and loved." Tianna sighed, and smiled warmly, "There's something about you that make's me feel safe, Dominic. I've only ever felt safe with one other person, but it took him dying for me, before I realized that safe was what I was feeling." She gave a quick moment of silence to that remembered part of her life, then continued, "I can sleep with you.... That came out wrong, let me try again, I can sleep when your near. I can laugh, I can throw all my worries away, at least for a few moments when I'm with you.
"I know that we've only known each other maybe seventy-two hours, but I knew all that the moment you came back for me. I knew it even when you were digging the bullet out of my bleeding flesh. I didn't admit it though, until I started telling you about my past." Tia turned her gaze down to the ground, and took both Dominic's hands before looking back up at him, "Dominic?"
"Yeah, Princess?"
"Thank you," She whispered, but knew he would hear, "for making me feel safe."
Dominic had let Tia pick out where he was taking her to lunch, and he was more than happy to oblige her with a never-ending bucket of shrimp at the Cajun place on the boulevard. How much she could eat astonished him; she'd finished a bucket and a half before he'd finished his first. Now she was on her third bucket, and was slowly picking away at it. Something was still bothering him though.
Tianna, who had become accustomed to picking up on different vibes from people, questioned it, "What's wrong, Dominic?"
"Can I ask you a question, Princess?"
"Sure. As long as I can ask you one," Tia replied as she peeled the hard shell off of a shrimp and popped the spiced meat into her mouth.
"Where do you put all that food?"
"Doctors said I have a high metabolism." She arched a brow at him, "Now, what's the real question?"
"What made you so afraid of your father, I'm assuming it was him in the Porsche. Your not as old as you said are you?"
"That's two questions," Tia said as she took a sip of Dom's Corona, "and I never said how old I was."
Dominic frowned, Tianna had obviously chosen which question she was going to answer, "Your question then."
"Why do you call me 'Princess'? You have to answer honestly"
"So you wouldn't believe it's some thing I call all females?"
"No, not at all. I can hardly see such a girlish term coming out of your mouth all the time. Now give me an answer I can accept."
"Okay, This morning, when you were sleeping on the couch, you reminded me of Sleeping Beauty."
"Really?" Tia grinned, "Does that mean you think I'm beautiful, Toretto?"
"Hey, now who's asking multiple questions?" Dominic laughed low.
"All right, next question."
"Why are you so scared of your father?"
Tia scowled, "You just aren't going to let me avoid that question are you?"
"Not at all."
"Fine," She huffed angrily, "but you don't want to know."
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't want to know."
Tianna contemplated on this for a moment, then as she spoke her voice was weak, lacking the conviction it did all other times, "I guess I'm not really sure where to start...the beginning is usually the best place, but with Aidan there were a lot of beginnings. I suppose I can start with him, my father. Rather, my step-father, Aidan O'Brien. He's the president of O'Brien and Company. Rich, arrogant, fucker. My mother and I never saw a penny of the money he made. Well, that's wrong. We did see it-- in the car he drove, the suits he wore to work, and in the liquor he drank. Always the expensive kind, and always the highest proof he could get his greedy hands on."
Dominic watched as Tia thought about eating the shrimp in her hand, then frowned when she looked at it as if she might be ill. He let her toss the shrimp back in the bucket and waved for the waiter to take the food away, and bring the check. Once the waiter was gone he nodded to Tianna, "Go on," he beckoned her.
"The alcohol never mixed well with Aidan; he had a nasty temper. He got violent when he drank too much, really violent-- he always drank too much. It scared my mom and me. The night I ran away, when I finally went, and stayed, with Romeo, Aidan had thrown a chair at me. I don't know why it took a chair for me to leave. I've been thrown into the dining room table, down basement stairs...but for some reason having a chair thrown at me was what helped make the final decision.
"Anyway, I left, and I didn't go back. So, now, my dear father has cops and cooperate spies out looking for me. He'd kill me if he knew where I was. He would come find me, and beat me until I was limp as a rag doll." Tia noted the skeptical look that Dom was giving her, and elaborated, "I'm not lying. Aidan was always very violent with me and very neglecting. I eat as much as I do because I remember not being fed, I'm obsessive about staying clean, because I remember being covered in filth and rank stench." Tia's voice dropped an octave, and seemed a little distant, "I don't even know what Christmas looks like...I always spent it locked in the attic."
Tia shook her head and continued in a more audible tone, "I didn't mind that so much though. You get used to it after a while, and learn to occupy your time. It was the beatings I couldn't handle. I couldn't stand having his hands on me."
"He hit you?" Dominic's hands clenched into white knuckled fists beneath the table, and his eyes grew dark.
Tianna offered Dominic a calming smile before she continued, "He didn't just hit me Dominic, he beat the holy fuck out of me." He voice got quieter, as she kept going, "No one ever believed me though. They thought I didn't like him because he wasn't my real dad, that I was only saying the things I did to try and get rid of him. Then, I think when I was fourteen, it's hard to remember it seems like it's been forever, one of my teachers did finally listen. The cops came, I was almost excited. Then I realized that they weren't arresting him. They had come for me. They had this thing called a green warrant...they took me to a hospital for the, how did they put it, mentally challenged.
"They gave me over to the doctors, and the medications, and the treatments..." Tia shivered visible as he mind went back to that time, but she shoved the thought away quickly and pressed on, "I didn't understand it then, I was too young. Aidan owns the cops. All he had to do was offer him enough money and they'd do whatever he wanted."
When Tianna grew silent, Dom studied her for a moment, then stood. He moved around the table and pulled Tia up, and wrapped his arms around her when she was standing. "Let's get out of here, you don't have to tell me anymore if you don't want to." After she nodded her agreement, Dominic paid for the food and they headed on their way.
They had been walking for about ten minutes when, Tia started talking again, "I got out two years ago." Tianna took they had Dom offered, and pulled what strength she could from it, "Three years I spent in that place, but every week felt like it had years within it. Years with pills, and drug laced gruel forced down my throat. Years of needles being pushed through my flesh. Years suffering through what the doctors like to call, 'therapy'." Tia grew silent for the span of three or four minutes, "It's odd, the feeling of laying in a few inches of water, just enough to cover your ears, and watching them turn the knob above your head, and being so incapacitated by these straps, that you can't do anything but scream as the electric currents tear through your body. It's not something easily forgotten."
"Shock therapy?" Dominic looked as surprised as he sounded, and stopped to face Tia. "That's illegal in the states isn't it?"
"At the intensity they were using on me yeah. It's illegal. You have to understand, that didn't stop them from doing it, because they knew they wouldn't get arrested. Aidan owns the cops, remember?"
"How did you survive?"
"I don't know, but certainly not easily."
"What happened when you got out?" Dom took Tia's hand again, and laced his fingers through hers, and started them walking again.
"I was put back into Aidan's custody. For about a half a year, I was placid, and obedient. This over course still wasn't good enough for him, and he still did the things he did, but I couldn't do anything about it. After that though, I became my usual defiant self, and the beatings started again. I wasn't going to stand for it though. I wasn't just going to let him beat me. So, I fought back-- as much as I could, as hard as I could." Her face contorted into an expression of thought as she decided the words she'd use next, "It didn't do me any good though. He just beat me harder, and more often. As soon as I could fight back, you know, once I was weakened, he would...," Tianna took a shaky breath, "He would rape me. He always made it my fault. 'Look what you made me do, baby. Baby, why do you make me do these things?' Bastard." Tia cursed quietly, but tears threatened to fall.
Dominic growled, "Why didn't your mother do anything!" He took his anger out verbally on the mother, "Where the hell was she?" He was severely pissed off. Just the thought that, that man-- that anyone-- would do those things to Tianna, his princess, enraged him. He'd only been this angrily violent once before, when his dad died.
"Mommy?" Tia's voice carried a childish under tone, "Mommy left...when I was little." One tear fell and Dominic wiped it away with his thumb before it reached the corner of her mouth.
"Why did she leave you with that man!" At the tormented look he was getting from Tianna, Dom forced himself to calm down enough to talk to her, "Where did she go, Princess?"
"She went to..." Tia sighed, her voice even quieter, "She died. Aidan killed her...smothered her with a pillow...in the bed they shared." She was silent for a moment, "He made me watch. I was four when he killed her, four when he started to...touch, me...four when he started neglecting me. We had barely been living with him for two months."
"I'm sorry, Tia, I didn't know," Dominic spoke quietly once he realized she was done telling her story. He had an understanding know of what Ro said early about having insight into a life that wasn't expected to be understood. Sure, he still didn't have all the pieces put together, but at least he'd been given a couple more to had to the puzzle.
"Of course you didn't," Tianna smiled softly up at Dominic, "You would not have asked, if you already knew the story. But that's the story of my life. In a nutshell at least." She managed a quiet laugh, "I don't think there's enough time in this world, or the next, for the complete telling."
"Why did you tell me your story?"
"Because you asked me too."
"Do you always do what other people ask?"
"Almost never actually."
"Then why--"
"There's just something abut you, Toretto. Something in you that I can trust. Something that just makes me want to tell my life to you, to just hand it over, and feel that it's being protected, and sheltered, and loved." Tianna sighed, and smiled warmly, "There's something about you that make's me feel safe, Dominic. I've only ever felt safe with one other person, but it took him dying for me, before I realized that safe was what I was feeling." She gave a quick moment of silence to that remembered part of her life, then continued, "I can sleep with you.... That came out wrong, let me try again, I can sleep when your near. I can laugh, I can throw all my worries away, at least for a few moments when I'm with you.
"I know that we've only known each other maybe seventy-two hours, but I knew all that the moment you came back for me. I knew it even when you were digging the bullet out of my bleeding flesh. I didn't admit it though, until I started telling you about my past." Tia turned her gaze down to the ground, and took both Dominic's hands before looking back up at him, "Dominic?"
"Yeah, Princess?"
"Thank you," She whispered, but knew he would hear, "for making me feel safe."
