Disclaimer in the first chapter.

A/N: Tristan is going to be slightly harsh in this chapter. So be wary. I know I said this last chapter and it could have been a hell of a lot more brutal than I wrote. So I'm really not kidding this chapter.

Started: 6/17/05

Finished: 7/23/05 8:34 pm

Chapter 6: Daddy's girl

Trista was always a fighter. From the day she was born she fought for everything. She fought to stay alive after being born early, and she would fight with society to see her as an individual and not an heiress to a successful family business. But she was always daddy's little fighter.

The sun rose, shined, and set on her in Tristan's eyes, she was his first born and looked so much like her mother it scared him. If it wasn't for her jaw being shaped like his, she would be the splitting image of her mother. He spoiled her as much as he could, which was a lot since it seemed that her mother barely had any say in her daughter's life was to be like. And even though she had little say, Trista spent more time trying to make her mother happy than her father.

You see, though she was young, she wasn't ignorant to the way things were in their house hold.

Trista sat in the library in her mother's lap as she listened to her mother read her, her favorite story, Alice in Wonderland. Her mother wasn't feeling to well and by the look of the bruises on her arms her parents had gotten into another fight last night.

No wonder nana stayed with me all last night. Mama was to hurt to move.

Drifting to sleep due to the gentle lull of her mother's voice she heard a door slam which was as common as a bruise on her mother's arm and a blood stain on the carpet.

Rory looked down to her daughter's still small form. It seemed like yesterday she had woken up in pain in a hospital room listening to the sounds of her mother telling her and her daughter to get well, but then again her mother did call to tell her to get better yesterday.

Staring at the golden brown hair of her daughter she sometimes wished he treated her as well as he treated their daughter. The acrid twinge of jealousy tore through her chest. Sighing she continued to rock her little girl, silently hoping she would be enough to soothe whatever anger that was about to be taken out on her. She Gently lifted her daughter and placed her on the couch in the room.

She walked over to the book on the table near the bookcase and put it back into its proper place. It wasn't above him to pick up the heaviest book in front of him and hurl it at her. Her last broken wrist was proof of that. Walking over to a chair that gave her a chance to look at her daughter as she slept, she wondered if her daughter understood what was going on with her and her father. She may have been five but she was far from innocent on the going ons in that house hold. Her nightmares were becoming more prominent and frequent.

Wiping a useless tear away from her face, she could feel him behind her. She could feel his anger as if it was a presence of it's own. So many times she wanted to run away from his home and live her life the way she was supposed to with her daughter. But after her first attempt she knew he would always find her.

She could feel herself flinch as he placed his hand on her shoulder. She knew it was going to upset him but at the moment she really didn't care. All she could see was her beautiful little girl in front of her, and wondered if she'd make her mother's mistake or her own. She could feel his hand tightening on her shoulder. Lowering her eyes, she waited to see what he was going to do. She learned a long time ago that when she acted without waiting could spurn whatever kindness he had in his soul.

"I told you to stop reading her to sleep. That's what fucks up her sleeping habits. Why do you think she's always up all night? God when you were in high school I could have sworn you were a hell of a lot smarter, I guess that was just a front you put on so you could fit in . . . "

His belittlement chipped away at whatever patience she had. She silently mused about the last time she felt like she did, it was funny how the one time she hits him back he ended up with a black eye that lasted for longer than normal. But then again the fact that she broke the bone on the side of his eye didn't help. And also the fact that he had to have surgery and was indisposed for a good month, didn't help much at all. But that one little victory caused him to come back with a passion, which explained the bruises from the night before.

A harsh cutting sensation across her cheek brought her out of her musings. She could feel herself being tossed onto the floor. Gently placing a hand on her cheek, she could feel the blood that was beginning to seep from it.

Fucking bastard and his gosh damn love for sharp edged rings. Staring up at the man she called her husband she couldn't mute the hatred in her eyes. Closing her eyes she waited for the next blow and wasn't surprised when it came in the form of a kick. Biting through her lip, she forced herself to swallow her scream of pain to spare Trista from waking up to the sights of her beating.

A sharp piercing scream broke through the fog of sleep for Trista. Opening her eyes, she focused on the design in front of her. The swirls of the print on the couch told her she was still in the library. She could Faintly hear a continuous sound of flesh being hit. Sitting up and looking around she couldn't find the source of the screams and the hits. Standing up she followed the sound to her father's desk.

She stopped in front of the desk. It had always scared her for the simple fact that it was the darkest and heaviest thing in the room. Staring at the ominous desk in front of her, she vaguely realized that she no longer heard any screams.

Rory couldn't breathe. She wanted to scream, but his hands were blocking her air passage. He's hit, kicked, and pushed her down a flight of stairs but he's never gone as far as to strangle her.

She could feel herself beginning to black out when she heard Tristan scream, and her daughter's arms around her neck crying. Forcing her self to sit up, she could hear her daughter whispering into her shoulder. She looked over to her husband to see him trying to stop his bleeding nose. Getting up she grabbed her daughter and ran into her room, thankful that she put a lock on the door.

Sitting in the rocking chair she rocked her daughter to try and calm her down. Was this the way her daughter was going to grow up? Watching her mother almost being killed by the man she called daddy?

Laying down in the bed with her daughter, she watched her daughter sleep and wondered how this would change her relationship with her father. If only she could look into the future, if only...

A/N: I will TRY to finish the next chapter, but with spanish 3, AP Eco, and 2 English classes i shall see what i can do.