A/N: Ok, I'm back. I think. This has been an idea on the back burner for about 5 years and every now and then I'm reminded of it. And this weekend, well, it was raining and I decided to get my laptop out and start writing. I'll explain more in the next chapter's AN but for now, I'd be curious to know if anyone thinks they know where I got my inspiration! This will be a dark story. Trigger warnings for drug use and sexual assault/abuse from chapter one.

She woke, sweating. The dim room was stuffy, the cloying summer heat had woken her and would make it impossible to sleep any longer, even though she'd discarded the thin duvet some time during the short night. The hair at the nape of her neck was damp, sticking to her prickling skin. Well, that sensation might have been caused by something other than the heatwave.

Lying on her back, she gazed, unfocused, at the ceiling, listening to the bustle of the London street four storeys below her open window. A car honked its horn. Someone, a pedestrian or a cyclist maybe, shouted angrily as an engine revved and sped up. She closed her eyes, the dull throbbing behind them already too much. She wished she could go back to sleep but she knew she wouldn't. Rolling her head to one side, she squinted at the clock on her bedside table.

Or, she would have done if the pile of dog-eared books hadn't been blocking her view. She reached out and pushed them to one side, the movement causing the top tome to teeter for a moment then fall to the floor with a dull thud. It was ten-thirty. She groaned. It had been light by the time she climbed into bed at five in the morning, collapsing into the unmade tangle of sheets and allowing sleep to claim her exhausted body.

Another hour. Or two. She just needed to rest. Her body needed to rest. But not today. She knew there was no point lying in bed now she was awake but she also knew she couldn't get up. Her legs were aching, the muscles already protesting even though she'd barely moved. Maybe another hour of sleep, she thought to herself, rolling onto her side to try and find a cool piece of sheet.

"Fuck," she cried as pain exploded in her jaw. She pulled away from the pillow at once, the contact unbearable and her vision swam. A mixture of pain and the comedown meant it took several moments before she recognised the dark stain on her pillowcase as blood. Her blood.

Tentatively, thin fingers reached up to touch her face. She hissed as they came into contact with broken skin, the damage rough and messy where her face had split open. The memory came back to her in fragments, blurry images of a Mercedes, a man, a fist.

Groaning, she dragged herself out of bed, stumbling a little as her body struggled to hold itself upright. Making her way over to the poky bathroom, she hesitated before pulling the cord to switch on the light. She knew what she was going to see and wanted just a few more moments before she had to confront what happened last night.

Well, it wasn't as bad as she thought. Oh, hang on, no, it was bad. She edged her way closer to the grimy mirror, mottled with fingerprints from where she'd swiped the condensation away. The extractor fan had been broken for months. She turned her head slightly to the side and took in the three inch gash which ran from just below her right ear down the length of her jawbone. Dried blood caked the side of her face and down her neck. Maybe it would look better cleaned, she reasoned.

No, that didn't help. The wound looked even more unpleasant now the skin around it was clean. She tried opening her mouth slowly, testing to see how much mobility she had. It hurt like hell but she could just about open her mouth as wide as usual. Almost disappointedly, there wasn't a corresponding sound inside her head to accompany the agony the move caused her. But, she guessed, the jawbone probably wasn't broken. Which was one positive. One tiny positive in her miserable life.

She hung her head, dark tendrils falling in front of her face as she began to cry. Her head throbbed, both from the assault and the fact that her body needed another hit. Her tears dripped melodramatically onto the porcelain sink making their slow descent towards the stained plughole as she sobbed. She knew she couldn't ignore that cut. It needed stitches. And soon, otherwise it would scar. More than it already would.

That said, it wasn't as if her body wasn't already scarred. She looked up, glaring at herself in the mirror, anger suddenly flooding her veins. No, her body was far from what it had been when she arrived in London last winter. Her eyes drifted down to her forearms, track marks visible on both sides from those early days, before she learned to be smarter about where she injected. She'd need to wear a long sleeved top when she went to the hospital. She didn't want to invite questions. They'd be inquisitive enough as it is. She turned her head slightly appraising the placement of the cut. Maybe she could tell them she got hit by a door. Or walked into a door. Yeah, like they'd believe that. But she needed to tell them something. If there was any suspicion, if the authorities were alerted … it didn't bear thinking about. Do-gooders poking their noses in would fatal.

No, she had to reassure them that she was fine, that there was nothing to worry about. And that started with looking as presentable as possible. Slowly, gingerly, she washed the rest of her face, then brushed out her hair.. Every brushstroke on the right side of her face made her wince. But at least she'd washed it the day before and didn't have to shower. Make up was out of the question; the split skin would not only protest but also simply stain any coverup with blood in moments. It hadn't quite stopped bleeding, she'd discovered. She tried to brush her hair so that it covered the cut but failed. The Whittington wasn't far anyway, she'd just keep her head down and avoid eye contact.

Returning to her bedroom, she stripped out of her pyjamas and looked around for some clean clothes. The floor was barely visible thanks to the shorts, tops and dresses strewn on top of the dark blue carpet. She bent down and picked up a pale yellow dress, the thin fabric wrinkled beyond belief. Maybe not. Instead, she opted for a random t-shirt and her black cardigan to cover her arms. She wriggled into some denim shorts, glancing down her long, tan legs to make sure there were no other injuries she had missed which might arouse suspicion.

Pulling on the cardigan made her groan, her skin protesting at being covered up. "Hey google, what's the weather like today?" she asked her phone. The sound of her own voice made her realise she also had a headache.

There was a pause before a familiar voice told her that the weather forecast in London that day was expecting a high of thirty four degrees. It followed that fact up with the fact that it was already thirty. So not cardigan weather. But she would have to grit her teeth and sweat. The hospital at least should be cool. As she picked up her phone, the illuminated screen told her she had a text and a calendar alert. The preview of the message told her that her mother had messaged saying:

Happy 21st Birthday! Call me after …"

She swiped the message away without reading the rest of it, barely registering that it was indeed her birthday. It didn't feel like her birthday. There certainly wasn't going to be a party. Or cake. The calendar alert was reminding her of an appointment at the clinic in two hours time.

It was her monthly appointment that she was expected to go to. To check she was healthy. No, that's too generous. It was to check that she wasn't going to give any of her punters anything nasty. So far, she'd only had to take a course of antibiotics for chlamydia. She still wasn't sure how she got that. Her pimp, to be fair to him, was strict about everyone using condoms.

She'd have to call and reschedule it for another day. Slipping the phone into her back pocket, she grabbed her keys from the chipped bowl by the door and headed out of the room. The corridor beyond was empty. She was glad. This wasn't a morning for making small talk with the other occupants of this crumby bedsit. A clatter from the kitchen at the end of the hall told her someone was around though, so she locked the door and hurried towards the exit.

The air on the street outside was even hotter than inside. She exhaled into the stagnant heat before setting out towards her destination. Every conversation she passed was about the weather. What was it with the Brits and their obsession with talking about the fact that it was too hot or too cold or too wet? The weather seemed to be not small talk here but their favourite topic. She had never understood that, especially since the small island didn't actually get extreme weather, not really. Not like at home. Although, to be fair to London, even she recognised that a hot day here was far more clammy and oppressive than she'd ever experienced in Puerto Rico.

By the time she walked three streets over to the Whittington, she had rescheduled her appointment at the clinic for the following Tuesday and was sweating profusely. Again, she couldn't tell if it was the weather or the comedown. Her decision not to shoot up before she left the house had been firstly because she figured that was ill-advised before entering the hospital and secondly because she had run out. The walk had also given her the opportunity to text her dealer to see if he could meet her later.

The doors to the hospital slid open, welcoming her into the unpleasantly bright whiteness of the A and E reception area. She narrowed her eyes slightly, her headache ratcheting up a notch. She made her way across the pristine floor and hovered by the desk, looking around to judge how long the wait would be.

"Hi love, can I help you?"

She turned back to the reception where a woman in her late sixties was smiling at her. "Um, hi, yeah, I need to get some stitches," she said, stepping up to the high desk.

"Oh dear, that looks painful," the receptionist sympathised as she caught sight of the wound. "Take a seat and I'll bring over some paperwork for you."

Nodding, she cast around for an empty seat which was out of the way. Spotting one in the corner, she headed over and sat down on the cool, hard plastic. Seconds later, the smiling receptionist appeared in front of her.

"Right, so you'll need to fill in this, this and this," she explained, pointing to various forms. "Um, do you have an NHS number?"

"Yep," she nodded.

"Oh, great. Well, add that in there too then. It'll be about half an hour. There's a canteen and a tuck shop just down the corridor there." She pointed to the far side of the room. "You can give all this paperwork to me when you're done and the nurse will let you know if there's anything more we need. Keep an ear out for your name. The nurse will call you when they're ready."

Mumbling her thanks, she set about filling in the forms. She had to pull up the photos on her phone of her visa application, reminding herself of the lies she'd been told to write on there in order to get approved. Well, they weren't lies, exactly. At least, she'd hadn't known they were lies at the time.

Paperwork done, she returned it to the reception before sitting back on her chair and tucked her feet up. It was a little awkward but her knees acted as a pillow of sorts and she rested her uninjured jaw and cheek on them, wondering if she could catch a few moments of peace.

"Excuse me, Regina. Miss Mills. Excuse me!"

Regina jolted awake, wriggling away from the sensation of someone's hand on her shoulder. "Get back," she spat before she had a chance to take in where she was and who was peering down at her. "Oh, sorry," she hastily added as she recognised the face of the receptionist. "Must have fallen asleep."

"It's alright, love. Sorry to wake you. The nurse is ready if you are?" She offered a tentative smile but Regina could tell that her reaction had set off alarm bells. She silently prayed the receptionist wasn't one to probe into other people's business. She suspected, however, that the opposite was the case.

Nodded, she slid from her chair and followed the receptionist towards a young woman who was reading over, she presumed, her paperwork. "Here you are, Nurse Swan. This is Regina Mills."

A/N: Ok, any idea what inspired this? I mean, the story isn't original by any means but there are details in here which are very specific if you know what it is to which I'm referring...