A/N:

Minki, my muse, my flame. You are perfect. You're absolutely right about breaking up the lengthy dialogue. And SONOFABITCH I did it again. Well, I can't make any promises about the future of the past/passed issue because I just don't pay that much attention but I will definitely try.

DISCLAIMER: This story will contain mentions of abuse, self harm, and suicide. It will also contain mental health issues involving anxiety, depression, PTSD and other mood disorders. This fic is largely based off of my life experiences and I hope to do justice to what I and so many other people have gone through.

Special disclaimer note as well: This chapter will contain the memory of a character getting raped. It's not super graphic in my opinion regarding the description of the act itself. It's very graphic regarding the thoughts and feelings of the character so if you're sensitive to that (as I am) you may want to either skip or mentally prepare yourself.

It's important for me to write something like this out because, while this specific instant didn't happen to me, this is based off of multiple instances in my life. I feel that you can talk about assault and rape and people will assume they understand but they truly will not ever until the details are shared. Yes, it is difficult to share, yes it is hard to hear, but it's supposed to be both. The more difficulty there is in hearing it means that you should be that much more active in preventing sexual crimes and learning how to protect yourselves and helping to inform others.

Ignoring my trauma has not helped and sharing it has done very little because I'm too embarrassed to give specifics. I'm at a point where I believe specifics are important to truly understanding what terrors someone has been through. So, with that said, I apologize if you are in any way upset or hurt by this chapter.


Chapter 5 - SPECIAL DISCLAIMER ABOVE

This is the Way That I Am

I looked into the stands even though I knew they weren't there. I'd been looking for them since the beginning but they had never arrived. 'I guess Haru's game went longer than expected.' It was pretty unusual for neither parent to be in the stands at one of my matches, at least near the end. My team had ended the match swiftly, in two sets, and my parents must have misjudged how much time it would take for us to win. I never blamed them for choosing to see more of his matches than my own. He was in his final year of high school and my volleyball career was just starting so naturally his games would be harder to miss.

Despite their absence I had been excited about the win. The chatter of the team never ceased as we grabbed our things from the locker room and headed to the bus that would take us all back to the school. I usually rode home with my family but it would be fun to right back with the team and feel the giddiness of the win for a while longer. Reaching for my phone in my duffel bag I was surprised to find it missing.

"Machan, have you seen my phone?" My closest friend on the team turned around and shook her head.

"No, it must have fallen out when you were changing." She suggested and I grimaced.

"I'll go back for it. Please tell coach that I'm coming." I asked and turned around, bolting back to where we'd come from.

The room was empty as expected and I headed to the general area of where I had changed. There was nothing on the benches so I checked the lockers, already forgetting which one I had used. Closing them dramatically when they proved empty I cast an angry glare downward and saw a light flash from under the bottom lockers. Crouching on hands and knees I pressed my head to the ground and saw the light flash again. 'There you are.' I wiggled my fingers in the tin gap and tapped my phone out, raising it triumphantly once it was out.

I slid open the lock and saw the message from Hinata:

"If you're reading this then I'm sorry we're late but SURPRISE it's because mom and dad had to pick me up from the bus stop. We're on our way now and I hope you're still playing so I can cheer for you!"

I smiled and immediately called him back. I heard a faint click and turned around. In front of the door was a man I'd never seen before. My heart stopped for a moment and then rapidly picked up its pace. He said nothing and I began to feel uncomfortable. In my other ear I heard the click of the call connecting.

"You're in the wrong place. This is the girls lockers." I said awkwardly. 'It should have been obvious once he walked in and saw me.' I told myself to relax, he might have been embarrassed and froze up.

He said nothing though and the seconds stretched by. The faint ringing of the call reached my ears and I wondered how many rings there had been.

"Are you looking for someone?" I asked, becoming desperate for my brother to answer. The man was creepy and unresponsive and I was hoping it was due to my imagination. Quietly he reached toward the wall next to him.

It happened so fast. Hinata answered the phone the moment the lights went out and I had time to scream, HEL-', before the man slammed into me. The phone fell out of my hand on impact and clattered to the floor. My head hit the ground hard and I barely registered the hard press of a hand over my mouth. I blinked tears from my eyes and tried to focus.

The dark shape above me was still for a moment before he pressed his body on top of mine. Terror ran through me as I felt something against my leg. I couldn't bring myself to think the word. My heartbeat spiked and I began to scream. His hand muffled the scream but if someone was walking by they might have been able to hear.

His other hand pulled up the hem of my shirt and thrust underneath, pulling at the sports bra I wore. More tears came that had nothing to do with the pain in my head. I could barely feel that anymore as his hand found skin and grabbed aggressively. My muffled screams were interrupted by sobs and my chest heaved from the intensity. When his hand left my shirt I found I still had enough innocent naivety to hope that he would stop there.

But he didn't. The hand moved below and my screaming began anew. The initial shock faded and I suddenly remembered to fight. My body thrashed under him and my hands worked frantically to do something, anything, to get him to stop. I tried to pry his hand off but the weight of his body fused it to my face. Reaching for his face I found it too far away. 'His arms are longer than mine.' My fingers swiped uselessly at his clothes and I screamed in frustration and fear.

My fists pounded into his arm, the only target I had left, and my legs kicked out, flailing and doing no damage. His legs were on either side of me and he sat on my thighs. His hand invaded my underwear. My eyes stung with tears and I felt myself losing energy. I hadn't even slowed his attack. 'I'm so weak. It's getting hard to breathe. I want to pass out. I want to die.' The thought came as his fingers pushed roughly into me. There was pain again and the horrifying realization that every woman's worst fear was about to happen to me.

I still screamed against his hand. Still lashed out where I could, moving on instinct and will alone. I entered a new state of being where my survival was at stake. My pants were falling down. 'Not falling,' I thought and my stomach sent bile rushing up my esophagus. I sputtered and choked on my own sick and a zipper was being undone.

I was choking. 'Finally.' I started to feel peace as my thoughts began to gray. 'Let me die.' His fingers were gone and something new violated me but I was no longer there. I was floating away into the darkness where I could no longer feel touch. I no longer needed to breath or fight or think. I could just keep floating.

A light intruded the darkness and a weight was lifted from me and I was sure I had finally reached the afterlife. But I was still choking. Something turned my head to the side and the bile spilled out of my mouth and throat. My insides were on fire and I wondered why I felt so much pain after death.

"Himari! Shit! Please call the police!" The voice sounded so familiar but the words they spoke were so foreign. 'Huh, mom sounds funny when she curses'.

Something awoke in me and my brain kicked on like a computer out of sleep mode.

"Mom?" I tried to speak but my throat hurt so badly.

I coughed and released some of the slime lodged in there and spat in disgust. I tried to call out to her again and her face swam into view. Tears were pouring down her face but she remained beautifully composed. She pulled me toward her and whispered a constant stream of comforting words as she helped cover my naked lower half.

I looked around with squinted eyes, pained from the sudden light surrounding me, and saw the horrified faces of my father and my brothers and my coach. They all looked so sad. My father was struggling with something on the floor and I recognized the mass as the man who had raped me. Humiliation consumed me. My family had witnessed how unbelievably dirty I had become and no matter how much time passed I knew the look on their faces would be seared into memory.


I woke with my own hand covering my mouth to muffle a scream that never came. Sweat covered me and I rolled off my bed to open the window and breathed in the fresh morning air. The dim light teased the arrival of the sun and created a pleasing skyline of the city around me. I took another deep breath. It had been a while since I'd had that dream, nearly six months. The last one had been brought on by a boy confessing to me. My reaction still confused me. Why should a confession spark that terrible nightmare again? 'Because he was a stranger?'

Sighing I remembered my promise to Hinata. He let me wait to tell them about my panic attack until this morning to give us both time to recover. I grimaced and fell back onto my messy sheets thinking about the past, the better parts to chase away the bad.

The next months went by in something of a blur. Our request to keep my identity anonymous kept anyone else from knowing what had happened. I had to give my statement over and over and by the time my testimony was recorded for the trial I was able to get through it all without breaking down in the middle. I never had to face the man who did it and I never wanted to. I didn't understand how my father had been able to go to the hearings.

My brothers and I missed too much school before the doctor told us we had to get back to some semblance of normalcy. That we had to continue with our lives and doing so didn't mean that nothing happened, but that we would still survive. Hinata cried when he left to go back to university and Haru held my hand when my parents dropped me off for my first day back to school. A few key administrators and teachers were told of what happened in order to help me re enter school more smoothly. My assignments were different. Not easier, but less time consuming than what the other students got. Somehow my grades were good enough to land me in one of the higher classes at Aobajousai. I suspected it was due to the lack of club activities.

A few weeks before my first year of high school I attended a trauma support group. Most of the people were older than me except for one angry looking boy. He never spoke so I didn't know his age for sure but he seemed closest to me in years. No one used their family names there for anonymity and I began to know him as Hajime. I never quite got used to strangers addressing me by 'Himari' and it took a long time before I shared my story. I told them that I had hurt myself whenever I had bad or painful memories; that it helped keep me in the present instead of on the floor in that locker room.

The day I shared Hajime approached me before I left and spoke two short, blunt sentences: "Don't hurt yourself. It's stupid." His surly face barely turned to me when he spoke but for some reason I smiled. It had been months since the last time I had smiled.

Second week of my first year I saw him in my school. He was on the volleyball team and a first year, like me. I could barely focus on my cleaning duties out of nervousness. Rationally I knew he wouldn't go spouting my story to anyone but the fear was still there. He was talking to a brown haired boy with expressive eyes who was moving his hands animatedly and making what looked to be some profound statement I couldn't hear. Hajime seemed unimpressed and his friend pouted like a child. Turning away from the whining he cast an irritated glare in my direction. Recognition alighted his features and I turned away mortified that I had been caught staring.

That was the day I heard the name Oikawa Tooru. The light that shone from him as he played got brighter with every movement and I wondered how the people closest to him weren't blinded. He put his whole self into the game, somehow always more than others, and even though it was practice he tried as hard as if it had bee nationals. Through that intensity and desire to win was the purest joy. It was incredible and so alike my brothers that I struggled to complete my cleaning duties that day.

At the next trauma survivor meeting Hajime shared his story. His younger sister had been greatly depressed, not through abuse or trauma, but due to a chemical imbalance in her brain. She tried so hard to be happy but it was always just out of her reach. In middle school he had caught her cutting herself in the bathroom and she begged him to keep it a secret. She swore she would stop and for a while, Hajime believed she did. She seemed to feel better although, Hajime said, it was probably for his benefit. He knew now that she had been hiding her depression. Knew it because he had come home from practice to find her alone in her room laying in blood.

I knew then that he had approached me out of the guilt he endured after his sister's death. I was yet another young person damaging themselves and he, having made the mistake before, had not been able to remain quiet. Running to him after the meeting I grasped his sleeve tightly. 'He needs to know.'

"It was never your fault." The hard lines of anger on his face collapsed in shock and then crumpled in pain. He turned away and I let him leave. He had to know that it wasn't his fault.

We began to sit next to each other at meetings and at some point we had started carpooling. Eventually we spent much of our Sunday's together going to either his place or mine. We never met in public, that wasn't our space. Our space was anywhere away from prying eyes where just each other's company could dull our wounds. There was no talk about our lives or our feelings. Instead we would argue over the details of books we read too long ago to decide the winner. Or cook our favorite foods (he insisted that his tasteless fried tofu was better than okonomiyaki). Many times we just studied quietly.

There were some moments when either he or I would become distant, trying to work through a difficult emotion. Those were the moments that truly brought us closer together. We realized that we wouldn't have to explain what we were feeling or hide it because the other would just know. We had both experienced different trauma but in the end it affected us in similar ways.

Padding footsteps in the hallway told me that Hinata was up. They faded away as he walked downstairs and I stretched again, feeling better after reminiscing over my friendship with Hajikun. The stress and anxiety of the previous day had been hard to bear but as I remembered it I couldn't bring myself to regret it. I felt my fingers absently trace the palm of my right hand as I wandered around my room, dressing for the day. My hand felt slightly sore from playing. The skin was tight and still pink and reflected the effort I had put in during the game that my aching muscles could not.

Even with the foreboding thoughts of the inevitable consequences of the game a large part of me was pushing to play again. It felt so natural and right that I was beginning to think that I had broken off an entire piece of my identity to avoid any form of sadness. As I headed downstairs I explored that feeling, wanting to hold onto it to give me strength in the coming conversation with my parents.

I entered the kitchen making enough noise to alert Hinata to my presence but said nothing as I opened the drawer that held my pill box. He was shuffling around the kitchen with a grumpy look on his face that made me smile. 'He's still just as cranky in the mornings.' I tossed back my medication and sat down at the table to watch him. Pans were clattering around noisily as he prepared breakfast and I carried out a request for a rolled omelet with seaweed. My parents entered then, smiling, ever entertained by Hinata's mannerisms.

"Good morning!" I greeted and failed to sound natural.

My father looked at me sharply and Hinata turned to give me an impatient glare. 'I get it, I'm telling them!'

Looking sheepishly up at them I unceremoniously blurted out, "I played volleyball yesterday!"

I immediately looked down at the hands clasped together in my lap but I heard my mother slowly pull out a chair to take a seat. I saw my father's feet remain still as he stood next to the table. As soon as I dared peak at them my mother spoke.

"What were you thinking?" Her exasperated, pained tone made me wince.

"Well, I wasn't really. It just felt so fun…" My eyes slid over to my father whose face remained impassive and then to Hinata.

"This isn't my conversation." He said and turned back around as I let out a small noise of irritation.

"Fun." My mom repeated. She stared at me with scrutiny in order to, I assumed, figure out if I was being truthful.

"Yes. It was exciting and I felt happy." My voice was urging them not to be upset. I felt my pulse quicken when my father opened his mouth to speak.

"How did you do?" His question was quiet but held a monumental amount of support. A greedy smile stretched across my face.

"I beat Hinata." At that my brother turned around.

"She had the two best players on the team with her!" He glared at me and I suppressed laughter.

"A win is a win." There was a small smile on my father's face after my rebuttal but my mother was still unsatisfied.

"And what happened after?" Her gaze was still piercing. She was always too observant. She probably already knew the answer but wanted me to say it outloud.

"I had a minor panic attack." Her hand smacked the table.

There was little force behind it but the gesture was louder than the sound it made. Of course she would be mad and worried.

"But overall I was fine! I might have pushed it too far in one day but yesterday was the first time I've ever enjoyed playing volleyball that much!"

I looked over at Hinata who pretended he hadn't heard anything. It probably hurt him to hear that when I'd spent my entire life until high school playing with him and Haru. 'You're on a roll. First Oikawa, now your own brother.' My mother put a hand to her forehead and reached for me with the other. When she found my hand she looked back to me.

"Do you need to see the doctor?" My next therapy appointment had been rescheduled because of the holiday week. She squeezed my hand gently and I could see her looking at me like she did back then. I tried not to cry. 'I'll never be whole in their eyes, will I?'

"No. I'm doing well today. I took my medication at seven and I have the support group this afternoon. I'm fine." I emphasized when her hand tightened around mine. "Papa, I'm fine." I pleaded with my father who was watching me in the same way my mother was.

He cleared his throat and we all looked at him. He spoke only when he thought there was something worth saying.

"Take care of yourself."

His words hit me hard and then wrapped around me like a security blanket. He was trying his best not to show the same intensity as my mother but I could tell from his tone that he was just as concerned. The words he chose, however, were infinitely more comforting than worry. He wanted me to take care of myself. He was trusting me to gauge my mental and emotional stability. He wanted me to be independent.

I jumped from my chair and hugged him tightly and his arms slowly wrapped around me in return. The air had suddenly lifted and I felt my heart slow down to its normal pace. I saw my mother's strained face and hugged her as well, whispering that I was okay. I had the feeling that I would be saying that many times over before she felt it was true.

"Is it over?" Hinata asked holding a plate with my omelet. I reached out light a child and grasped at the air and gave a small whine to show I wanted it.