Scenario 20- ''When I Was Little, He...''
''I'm not ready yet.''
That's the response that Kel always gave Neal whenever he broached the subject of making love. Whenever she gave it, she gave it with a sharp voice that clearly communicated that she did not want to broach the subject further.
She always was more aloof to him afterward. She became skittish whenever his touch went below her waist, or above it. A look of panic would enter her eyes and she would vigorously shake her head and say, ''Not today, Neal.''
And sometimes, she simply became that way at random, unpredictable moments. There were moments when she was cold toward his romantic advances, and he could not act like anything more than a friend to her.
There were times when she asked him why he wanted to be with her, and there were times he felt like he didn't know. He knew that he loved her but he just didn't know if she really loved him.
After all, before him, she would often have multiple lovers that were frequently changed.
That was why he didn't understand why she couldn't be with him.
But Kel wanted to be with him. She wanted to make him happy; she wanted to love him properly and she wanted to show her love properly.
She welcomed his kisses; she basked in how beautiful they made her feel. But whenever it extended beyond that Kel would feel her body tense.
Her mind would race back to fourteen years before, fourteen years before when another man's hands had went in places that they never should have, places she never wanted them to go. Fourteen years before when her brother's would rove over her undeveloped breasts and the laces that would undo her dresses. Fourteen years before when Conal would drive her to the darkest of darkest holes, a place where she was helpless, inferior and no longer innocent.
She did not want to visit that place again, but she could not help it. If she could tell anyone, she would tell Neal; she wanted to tell Neal but she couldn't.
''Why won't you love me?'' he asked her one day in frustration, as she refused to let him touch her once again.
The question was a slap in the face to Kel. The ache to tell him, to tell someone, consumed and suffocated her, cutting off her ability to speak.
When she tried to, the words froze on her tongue. Her words were choked off by the sutures Conal had used to cut off her voice. So instead she let out a cry.
That was followed by a series of cries, cries that had turned into sobs in a short amount of time.
It had unnerved him to watch her fall apart so quickly, when she was so strong. Immediately guilt coursed through him and hit him like cold water thrown on a sleeping self.
He had embraced her and she didn't stop him. Her sobs drenched his tunic; they reverberated and ached within him.
The absolute agony that was within them broke his heart, especially since he had caused them.
''I'm sorry,'' he whispered, as he held her tight.
She was sorry, too. She was sorry beyond what words could say. She wanted to love him to the depth she knew she should; she just didn't know how. She would have told him how sorry she was, but the tears had blocked her capacity to speak.
In that moment, she was filled with disgust at herself. She was ugly; any beauty she could have ever had he had defiled. She felt weak; any strength she had was dashed by him before it had the chance to grow. She felt so scared; any bravery she possessed had fled at his touch.
It was then that Kel had decided that she would make Neal happy, or at the very least try. She would show him how much she loved him, because he had showed him how much he had loved her.
He had stayed with her for so long, for reasons that Kel could not even begin to understand. He had stayed with her- a girl who was ugly, strange and constantly aloof. He loved her so much, gave her so much, and yet she gave him nothing.
She knocked on his door. ''I'm sorry,'' she said, as he opened the door.
''For what?''
She hated how he looked as if he honestly had no clue. She knew he was pretending, and that he once again was trying to hide his own hurt.
Once again, she felt a flash of anger at herself for once again being the cause for that hurt.
''You know what,'' Kel said, looking down.
Neal instantly felt a flash of guilt consume him. ''You shouldn't be sorry,'' Neal said. ''I should be. I pushed you too hard.''
''Why are you with me?'' she asked him, for what seemed to him like the millionth time.
He stroked her cheek and painfully shut his eyes. ''Kel...''
''Do you even know?''
He opened his eyes and looked directly at her. ''I'm with you because you are the most beautiful, most selfless, strongest girl I ever knew in my life, and I love you.''
The earnestness in his eyes was so bright that hurt her to look at, so she looked away. His compliments were undeserved, as his lavish words were so far from the truth. ''Why? Why would love me?'' she asked him, her voice hoarse with her own self-disgust.
The self-disgust in her voice broke his heart. He wondered how she could be so strong and have so much of it, and why she had so much of it in the first place. ''I just told you.''
She looked at him with a look of intense sorrow. ''You don't deserve me, Neal.''
''Don't say that, Kel.''
''It's true,'' Kel said. ''I don't give you nearly as much as I should, and you give me so much.''
Neal looked down, and both of them knew that he could not refute what she had said. He had wanted so much for her to love him and to love him freely and unthinkingly; while part of him doubted Kel's love for him, the other knew that she loved him and was expressing it in the only way that she knew how.
''But I'm going to love you,'' she said. ''I'm going to love you now, Neal, and I'm going to show it.''
Suddenly, she placed her lips on his and shoved him back. He kissed her back, absentmindedly closing the door as she pushed him onto the bed.
She unbuttoned his shirt, and he started to unbutton hers.
She felt the bile collect in her throat as her shirt came off of her. She did her best to enjoy the anticipation of what was to come, but could not.
She could not bring herself to see that sex was a good thing, and that you did it with the men you loved. She could not bring herself to see past the image that when someone you loved did that to you, it was the deepest, blackest sort of betrayal.
Kel had done this plenty of times before, as a woman. She had done it in the attempt of trying to make her see it as something as good, as enjoyable. She hadn't loved those men; they hadn't loved her. She knew they didn't want anything from her but an escape from their sorry lives (because she knew they hadn't done it for her body. She wasn't pretty enough for that) as she tried to do the same. In the end, she had always felt numb not afraid.
The idea of doing it with a stranger was different than doing it with someone she had loved. It made her feel sick all over again, betrayed all over again.
She couldn't help but see Conal's hands all over her again, pushing her down and invading her. Neal's hands felt cold and heavy on her body; she felt as if she could not breathe with their obtrusive presence. Little things had made her feel snippets of it, but something as big as this was making her feel as if she was living the whole thing once more.
She started shaking, and whimpering. Tears and broken sobs fell from her cheeks and out of her mouth in a rapid torrent, as she feebly pushed away his hands.
''No,'' she said, her voice broken with her sobs and desperate fear. ''Please don't.''
She felt his hands jerk away, and then reappear on her shoulder. She screamed, and desperately began shaking her head.
''Kel,'' he said, his voice shaky.
She looked up at him, and her reverie quickly broke. His green eyes were full of shock, horror and concern; his clothes were on. It immediately hit her that this was Neal not Conal.
The fear still reverberated within her, but it was now accompanied by a wave of shame. She had not been able to show how much she loved him; she had not made him happy.
''I tried,'' she said, her voice breaking.
''I'm sorry…'' he said again, his self- disgust burrowed back to the surface. ''I didn't mean to…''
He had never meant to hurt her. He had never wanted to hurt her. Her reaction was the last thing he had expected from her; if she would show him fear, he expected her to be afraid of her first time but it seemed she had been afraid of him. He would never have forced her, and he had thought she knew that.
Was that what this about then? Was this really not about her lack of love for him but of her abundance of fear?
But why was she afraid?
A knock had sounded at the door. ''What's going on in here?'' someone asked.
Ducking her head in shame, Kel hastily put her shirt back on and ran out the door.
''What happened?'' a man asked, his voice suspicious.
''I don't know,'' he answered, his voice filled with the self-disgust he was feeling inside. ''I don't know what I did.''
The ever-present pain in Kel's heart sloshed inside of her. The feelings of hurt, of fear, of shame, of being absolutely alone in this, brewed cataclysmically to create a hurricane of emotions. They were all of the emotions that she had done her best to internalize, and to bury away.
She had revealed them all to Neal. She had showed him her hurricane, and then she had left him.
She debated whether or not she should leave him. It became so clear to Kel that he had deserved so much better than her. That he would be so much better off without the mess of a woman that she was.
And then another thought occurred to her. Maybe she should tell, and let him decide for himself.
The first thought she had to this was an absolute refusal.
He couldn't know. He wouldn't understand. He would finally see the ugly, naked truth that was Kel and he would leave, finally realizing that it was so stupid of him to stay with this stupid, ugly, dirty girl.
But he deserved an explanation. Maybe, by telling this, she might even help herself by finally releasing this internal hurricane (even if the results were negative, they would still know and she wouldn't have to wonder how they would react).
So with shaking hands, she knocked on his door the next morning.
Her eyes were bloodshot and her hair was disheveled.
''I'm sorry,'' he said immediately, his voice breaking with remorse, ''I never meant to…''
She looked away from him. ''It's not your fault,'' she said. ''It's mine.''
''No, Kel, I…''
She took a breath of air before she finally began to tell him the truth. ''And his.''
A sick feeling shot through him at the implications of her words. He remembered how she had acted the day before. He remembered how hard she had trembled and whimpered at his touch, how broken and desperate her pleads had sounded, the amount of terror in her whimpers and in her shriek as he….
He would never, ever hurt her, especially in such a sickening, abominable way. The fact that anyone ever could, the fact that someone did, made him sick to his stomach.
He felt weak to his knees, and knew that if he stood here any longer he would fall.
''Come in,'' he said.
She complied, anxiety all over her face.
They both took a seat at the bottom end of his cot.
''I love you, Neal,'' she said, ''and I'm sorry that so many times I don't show that to you.''
''I figure I owe you an explanation for yesterday,'' she said.
''You don't have to, if you don't…''
''I do,'' she said.
There was a brief silence.
''It started when I was three,'' she said, her voice trembling. ''My earliest memory is of him taking my dress off. He started…touching me.''
Neal flinched, and part of him wished he didn't have to hear this.
Three years old? Three? That was… horrible beyond words.
''But he didn't do anything more than that then,'' she continued, '' I remembered how it felt wrong and how it hurt, but I thought that if he was my brother then he wouldn't do something like that.''
''Which brother?''
''Conal.''
Neal felt a flash of anger course through him. ''Wasn't he the one who held you over the balcony?''
''Yes,'' she said, looking away. ''Because I refused him. The balcony used to be the only thing that gave me peace after everything he did and he ruined that too.''
Neal saw tears well up in her eyes, and it broke his heart. She continued on anyway, though, even though her voice trembled. ''My parents saw him. They were so angry at the fact that he was holding me over the balcony, that they didn't even see where his hands were.''
Neal shuddered. He was sickened and angered by this; he had the urge to find this Conal now and make him pay for what he did.
''They said they would disown him if he did it again,'' Kel said, her voice started to shake again. ''But he did, every time he visited us.''
''You never told anyone?'' he asked, his voice breaking along with his heart.
''No,'' she said. ''I was too... I didn't know how, even when it got worse.''
''Worse...how?'' He couldn't help but ask; he didn't see how it could be any worse than what she just told him.
''He would rub up against me, sometimes, when I didn't have my dress on. At first he had his breeches. But.. then he didn't. He would force me on the bed and...''
By this point, she was sobbing again and harder than before. As Neal put his arms around her, she started to sob even harder. For a while, they sat like that as Kel continued to sob.
''I'm sorry,'' Kel said, as soon as she was able to speak.
''What could you possibly be sorry for?'' First and foremost, it was Conal's fault. But he was sorry, too, and rightfully so. He, after all, had had such angry thoughts about her in her aloof moments.
''For what I ever did to you.''
''Kel, you didn't...''
''I didn't love you hard enough. I wanted to... I still want to. I just don't know how.''
''I know.''
She looked up at him, her eyes boring right into him. ''I thought... I thought you would break up with me after I told you.''
''Why would you think that?''
''Because you would realize how much better you are without me.''
''No,'' he said, shaking his head and taking her hand. ''I would never, ever think that, Kel.''
She looked away from him. ''I love you, Neal.''
''I love you, too, Kel. Things will get better for you, not completely all right but better... I'm going to help you get better.''
''All right.''
Okay, so there was a lot to write about here and I don't know if I wrote it completely and accurately as I should have. I am proud that I wrote it so quickly, though, especially considering the length and the In Her Darkest Hour I was working on. Please read and review.