A/N: Boy am I glad you still like this story up until this point! Because I'm pretty sure it's all gonna go downhill from here... oh well, I'll let you be the judge of that!

Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.

'Light years away'

Chapter 5

Sitting across from her, separated only by a plain table, he wanted to tell her so many things. He wanted to hold her in his arms, comfort her, promise her the entire world, tell her exactly what she needed to hear. But he couldn't. He couldn't lie to her anymore. Judging from her facial expression, she couldn't take an awful lot anymore anyway.

Then, she opened her mouth and explained.

"He, uh… from the beginning of our relationship, he had only been loving and sweet and everything I needed at the moment… but he wanted more and he moved too fast for me. And when I told him, he… he wouldn't accept it. So that night, when I came home from work and just wanted to sleep, he wanted to, to have sex. I refused. He got angry." She averted her eyes, looking down at her lap. He could see tears were streaming down her cheeks now. Then suddenly, she looked up at him again.

"Jane, he scared me so much… I was so scared. He reminded me of my father when he was about to beat the crap out of me." She reached up, wiping away her tears. "When he reached out for me, his eyes were pure rage. I thought he would kill me. I just… I freaked out."

And there it was. He had thought this was the explanation but he hadn't wanted it to be true, didn't want to think about the fact that he had accepted her to be in that relationship even though he had felt something was off. He shouldn't have pushed her into his arms.

"I'm so sorry, Lisbon," he whispered. He wanted to say he had no idea what to do now, but it wouldn't calm her down in the slightest, he knew. So instead, he kept it at that, and watched her shake her head, clasping her hands together again.

"You didn't do anything."

They were silent for a while after that.

"He didn't hurt you, did he?" Because if Pike had hurt his Lisbon, Jane would personally go back to the morgue and kill him all over again. But then slowly. And painfully.

"No."

He wanted to reply, but the officer in the corner of the room told them that their time was up, and he made Jane stand up and leave the room.

"I'll get you out, Lisbon!" he was able to yell behind him, before the door closed behind him with a heavy thud.

~…~

He hadn't been able to sleep the entire night, which wasn't a surprise for him anymore. Yet instead of worrying about her, he sat at his improvised desk for hours, thinking through her options. There had to be a way of getting her out of this mess, and he was destined to find it. Even it would force him to stay up for the rest of his life, or until he broke down from exhaustion, whichever was longest.

It was Fischer who found him the next morning. He felt her warm hand on his shoulder.

"Have you even slept?"

He didn't grace that question with an answer.

"He was scaring her," he told her. He could feel her frown, even from this distance. "Kim, he was emotionally abusing her."

It was quiet behind him for a while.

"That's sad."

He turned around in his chair.

"No, you don't understand. He was abusive. We can use this in her defense, right?"

She seemed to think this through while pulling up a chair, sitting down beside her. Yet eventually, she merely sighed.

"It's emotional abuse. We can't prove that. There are no bruises or scars."

"Can't she take a psychological assessment or something?"

She shook her head, sadly. "No physical evidence."

He suddenly hit his fist on the desk. "Dammit!" As he got up to show his clear frustration, he only saw black for a few moments, until his head met the cold floor.

A/N: I'm gonna speed up the story a bit... not too much yet, don't worry. But it's just a fair warning. Let me know, please! Thanks for reading so far!