Author's Note: I imagined this taking place in Season 1, broadly spanning the time from 'Bloodshot' (S1 E16) to 'Russet Potatoes' (S1 E18).

Grace Van Pelt sat in the foamy bathtub, surrounded by scented candles. She'd chosen this apartment because the shower was over a bathtub. She liked to shower before bed, wash away the grime and the crime, but she had always preferred the luxurious feeling of wallowing in a bath. Even as a child she'd loved taking a bath, pretending she was diving under the sea like Princess Ariel. The candles and scent and bubbles made the bath her happy place, somewhere she could truly relax, put the day's anxieties behind her.

Except now they didn't.

She was sitting bolt upright, tense, stressed and quietly fuming to herself.

Damn Patrick Jane! She'd been taking baths every evening since they'd closed the James Medina case. They'd help her get to sleep but she still woke just as upset the next morning, spent every spare minute of the following day thinking about it.

'You're deeply repressed and emotionally shut down.'

She'd never thought of herself as repressed or emotionally shut down until that moment. Oh she wasn't stupid, she knew herself, she'd called it "able to distance herself from the emotional fallout of the job" in her CBI interview. Whenever a boyfriend had talked about getting more serious she'd told him she "wanted to get her career established first." Cool-headed and ambitious sounded much better than deeply repressed and emotionally shut down.

'Because of a trauma in your past'

She'd gotten over Dan Hollenbeck pretty quickly. One date didn't make a relationship. She'd mostly felt embarrassment about being fooled by him. It took a while longer for her to get over her guilt about him beating up Wayne, but as the cuts and bruises faded so her feelings for him returned to their usual mix of friendship and attraction. Her horror and shame about Dan murdering James Medina, his attempt on Jane's life were all mixed up with her horror and shame at Jane's words. The confusion had made her angry with herself – with Jane – which only made her feel worse.

'That you've never spoken of'

The man had been blind at the time, she knew she ought to have felt sympathy but all she had been able to think had been thank goodness he couldn't see the effect his words were having. Though she was in no doubt he knew anyway. He'd apologised, said he was just thinking out loud. Oh, like that makes it OK then! Every time she thought she was starting to become immune to his mentalising crap he'd pull a stunt like this. He got under her skin all right, like emotional poison oak and she just couldn't stop scratching.

'To anyone'

He had confronted her about being cool-headed and ambitious – oh all right, about being repressed and emotionally shut down – and in saying why almost as an aside he had rooted out… something bad. She couldn't get it out of her mind, whenever she had a spare moment there it was, fragments and blackness and uncertainty. That was the worst part. She really had no idea what had happened and it was driving her crazy. From her current perspective as a cop with some experience of life's seedy underside she suspected it was nothing good and she couldn't leave the thought alone, like probing a painful tooth or picking at a scab. No, she'd called it: like scratching at a poison oak rash.

'Ever.'

She'd thought she had forgotten the whole sorry saga but no, Jane had effortlessly unearthed it with just a few choice words, said it explained her sad and sorry emotional life. The worst thing was that he was right. She had never made that connection but as soon as he'd said it she had realised that it did explain an awful lot of the last five years.

'Even yourself.'

Damn Jane! This was all his fault. The bath had made her sleepy but she knew that she would wake up angry again in the morning.