AN~ This is a really long chapter, guys. I wanted to explore an emotionally abusive relationship, and figured this was a good place to do it. Also I wanted there to be at least one fic that specifically points to things and says 'this is BAD' because there are a lot of fanfics that sort of glorify abusive behaviors and try to make them 'cute.' I couldn't get the whole story into a normal length chapter, though, so it's long and probably not well done because it's the first time I've ever tried to do anything like this and I feel like I was kind of heavy-handed. So tell me how to improve.
Next chapter is the last chapter!
Pretty soon after Pinocchio breaks up with her, Lauren moves out officially. Daphne's a little hurt, but she understands. After all, Lauren's going to be doing a lot of traveling, and it doesn't make sense to keep paying for an apartment she won't be using.
Still, Daphne isn't looking forward to getting a new roommate.
She posts an ad in the paper and waits, wishing Red had been able to take up her offer to move in, instead of staying to keep Mr. Canis company.
The first three people who show up are not at all what she's looking for, or she's not what they're looking for. And that's totally fine. She's got other callers. It's tiring, this process, and Lauren was so much easier. But she can do it.
Person four, a guy named Nate, seems like a pretty good fit, though. And she jumps on the opportunity, because she's so tired of this whole mess. Nate it is.
He moves in; she doesn't pay much attention. She's got classes, and all she notices is that her financials are a little less tight (she can afford fruits and vegetables when she buys food, now, not just ramen and canned goods), and there's weird music playing in the next room over while she studies. She doesn't see much of Nate for the first month. He stays in his room most of the time she's home. She can't tell that he has many friends. Then again, her friends don't come over all that often (all busy themselves, with school or work or family or going to freaking Argentina) so who is she to judge?
Then spring break rolls around and suddenly Nate's everywhere. He's in the kitchen when she stumbles out of her room at ten thirty for breakfast, and he's made her coffee. When she gets home from work, he's in the living room asking if she wants to join him for a B-rated horror movie marathon. Dinner, he's there. He's waiting outside the bathroom while she showers.
For the first time in the month and a half they've been living together, they actually talk.
He's a pretty cool guy, all things considered. A little needy emotionally, now that they're something more than people who live in the same space, but he tells her he's just recently moved down here and doesn't know a lot of people. Daphne gets that. And she's used to people who latch on after they let you in. She grew up with Sabrina, after all. And her best friend spent centuries not even knowing how to make friends. Her whole life is misfits, and even though she herself has never had any trouble making friends, she understands, on some level, people who do. Sabrina. Red. Pinocchio. Puck. They're all on the clingy side, once you get past whatever hurdles there are to being their friends.
She shouldn't be surprised that she finds herself crushing on him, really. He's cute, and Pinocchio moved her past her 'I don't want to date' thing that happened after Peter. Plus, unlike certain people she could mention, he's around.
They don't really start dating, exactly. They just sort of... Well, they're watching a movie on the couch, and then she's not sure what happens, but he's kissing her, and the movie suddenly seems a whole lot less interesting.
Daphne kind of assumes they're an item after that, because the kisses keep happening. She's back at school, now, and she's a little too busy to be bothered with little things like labels when she's involved in big things like master's degrees.
He takes her to meet his family one weekend. She doesn't really want to go, but he bundles her in the car despite her protests, and speeds off two states over. He gets them there by dinner. If Daphne hadn't been raised by a woman who thought every road was the site of a demolition derby that she was determined to win, she'd have been kinda freaked by how recklessly he drove. As it is, she points out that if she'd had some warning, he wouldn't need to go so fast to get her there and back without missing anything. He just laughs and drives home even faster.
"You should grow your hair out," he tells her one day, looking at a family photo from back before she sliced her braids off into the spiky bob she's got now.
"Why?" Daphne asks. "I like it like this."
He shrugs. "Your mom's got such pretty hair. I just think you'd look better with your hair long."
Daphne rolls her eyes and says with a small smile, "Sure. I've been meaning to change my hair for a while now." She has. She just figured she'd go for something a little more bold than 'long.' Silver streaks, maybe. Or shaving one side like the style that's gotten popular recently. Not braids, though. She had enough of that as a little kid, and she's trying to shy away from the 'stereotypical Native American girl' look that they give her. She looks so much more like Veronica's side of the family than Sabrina and Basil do, she wants to be careful. It's not even like she's officially part of a tribe, since her mom got dragged off by CPS before she could join one. She feels like a poser when she has braids. Not quite a real native girl.
So Daphne starts to grow her hair out and goes back to class and work, and things are normal for a while, until she gets invited to a fancy dinner for one of her friends' celebration about an important internship.
When she gets back, she finds Nate moping in the living room, sitting in the dark. He drapes himself over her as soon as she flicks on a light. "I missed you," he says.
Daphne peels herself out from underneath him with a little laugh so she can take her coat off, and says, "I was only gone for like three hours."
Once her coat's away, he's right back on top of her, saying, "I know, but you're out of the house so much with work and school I barely get to see you. I was gonna do something special tonight."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Daphne asks. "We could have worked something out."
Nate shrugs. "I was going to make it a surprise."
"Your surprises almost always come at really inconvenient times," Daphne notes with a small smile, trying to remind him that she's told him that he should check with her before he plans things. It works so much better, with how busy she is.
Nate pulls back, and he looks upset. His eyebrows are drawn in tight, and his lips are pinched into a thin line. "I'm just trying to do something nice for you," he mutters. "You don't have to attack me about it."
Daphne drops her smile and says, "Nate." When he turns and walks off, she says, "Baby, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I just... I'm really busy, you know? And I don't have the best schedule for surprises right now."
Nate storms off to the room that's technically his, which he hasn't really been using for a good month, now (it's a bit soon to be so... intimate, at least sooner than Daphne would have liked, but Nate pushed, and she couldn't think of a good reason to say no).
"Don't be like that," Daphne says. "I'm sorry, okay? I wish I could have spent tonight with you."
Nate turns around in the doorway, and now he just looks sad; defeated. "I never get to see you," he says. "I hate it. I wish you didn't have a job."
"I can't quit my job!" Daphne says with a baffled laugh. "I need the money to pay my half of the rent! And to pay for school!"
Nate shrugs. "My job can cover rent all the way. And utilities. And weren't you telling me you thought you had enough saved up for the next semester, and about how you were lining up that paid internship for spring?"
"I might not finish in two years, though, and there's no promise I'll get the internship," Daphne points out.
"We can take out a loan, then," Nate says, as if it's that easy.
"We?" Daphne asks, a little disbelieving.
Nate nods, and he walks towards her. He looks excited now. "I know it's really soon," he starts, "but Daphne, I-" he takes a breath. "Together we definitely have good enough credit to get you a loan that'll cover everything you need, and I can help you pay it off. Daphne, I... well, I care about you a lot. I might be in love with you. And I want this to last. But I need to spend more time with you if this is gonna work, you know?" He's holding her hands to his in front of him now, his eyes sparkling.
Daphne can't help but be caught up in his enthusiasm, a bit. "I'll see if I can work it out," she agrees, not promising anything.
Nate grins at her and says, "I want to be able to provide for you, Daphne. I don't want to have to watch you work yourself to the bone every day."
Nate is very sweet, and Daphne might be in love with him, she decides, as the semester wraps up. He's a bit... touchy, sometimes, but everyone has their flaws. She just has to walk carefully around him sometimes. He's sensitive, is all. His feelings are hurt easily, particularly if he thinks she's spending too much time away from him or not listening to his opinions (even if it's just about stupid stuff like whether or not she should buy a dress). She takes to calling him between classes, just so he knows where she is and that she's not ignoring him. But she knows she loves him because she's never felt like it was this important to make one of her other boyfriends happy. So she can put up with him being a bit needy. Lord knows she has her flaws.
And the fact that he made it so she didn't have to work anymore... well, she can't argue that it's not really sweet of him. She finds herself spending nearly all her time that she's not in class at home with him, and she sort of misses going out, but she wouldn't really be seeing much of her friends if she was still working, so she sort of feels like she owes it to Nate to stay with him.
Daphne kind of wants to go visit her family once the semester's over, since she doesn't have to worry about a job, but the last time she brought it up to Nate he got so upset at the thought of her being away for a week or more that she hasn't mentioned it since.
When the semester does end, most of her friends go home or work full time, so it's just her and Nate. He takes her for another surprise visit to his family, and this time they stay for a week. It's nice to spend time with other people again, even if it just makes the ache of missing her own family worse.
But if she just spent a little more time with Nate, maybe he wouldn't be upset if she left. Or- he could come with her, probably. Except he doesn't really like Manhattan. Maybe her family could come to them.
When she suggests it, though, he wrinkles his nose.
"There's like seven of them, aren't there?" Nate asks. "More, if you count that ex and your old roommate. And we've only got two bedrooms. We couldn't fit them all."
"Yeah," Daphne cedes with a sigh. She's too tired for the emotional roller coaster that'll happen if she pushes the issue.
"Aren't I enough for you?" he asks, wrapping his arms around her. "You're not lonely, are you? I love you so much, baby."
"No, I love you too," Daphne assures him. "I just... My family and I are pretty close."
"You could go visit them," Nate says, looking heartbroken about saying it. "I'd miss you a lot, though. I don't know if I can live without you anymore."
Daphne wants to say yes. But she also doesn't want to see the pain in his face if she leaves him. "It's fine," she promises. "I'll stay here."
He grins at her. "Great. We're gonna have the best summer."
"You know," she says as an afterthought, "You might have to live without me someday."
The look he gives her is somewhere between confused and horrified. "Why?"
"Well, I mean, something might happen. People die. Break up."
He shakes his head. "I couldn't do it. Without you, I'd just- I don't know. Kill myself, maybe."
"No," Daphne says, eyes going wide. "You couldn't."
He shrugs. "Without you, there wouldn't really be much point to being alive."
Daphne argues against this, pointing out all the reasons killing himself would be an awful idea, but his only response is that she'd better make sure she doesn't give him a reason to kill himself. It's not very satisfying, but Daphne can't push him any further, and she doesn't want to upset him by starting a real argument.
This is the beginning of a turning point, though Daphne doesn't notice it right away.
In fact, she doesn't notice it at all. She just starts treading more carefully around Nate without it even registering. He's insecure, so one time when she's emailing Pinocchio, and another time she's on the phone with Wendell, he accuses her of cheating on him with an ex. It's no big deal, but she stops letting him see her talk to her guy friends, and he's around so much that as the summer progresses, that turns into not really talking to any of her male friends at all.
And he gets so upset when he wants to spend time with her and she's got something else to do that she stops really planning her schedule very much. She just lets him make the decisions, and she waits for it. She doesn't go out much. And it's not like she's really in much of a position to go out. She has to save all her money for the fall semester, so she already has to get money from Nate to do things like buy groceries. She'd hate to make him uncomfortable by asking for more money to do things just for herself. How selfish that would be!
Daphne can't seem to do anything right anyway, though. She's always upsetting Nate somehow, and she's got an ever-growing list of things that she probably shouldn't do around him. It's not like he's angry all the time. He's sweet so often, and he's always sorry after he gets upset. But little things bother him, and she doesn't know how to be good enough for him, because she's always doing something wrong. Sometimes she wonders how her other boyfriends put up with her. If she was good enough, they wouldn't have left her. Pinocchio obviously saw what a mess she is. She's lucky she's got Nate, that he puts up with her.
Sometimes when he gets angry, he breaks things. He's extra sorry right after, like the crash reminds him that he's a person, but there are still things broken like that snow globe Red gave her for Christmas or Granny's salt and pepper shakers from Saudi Arabia or Basil's ceramics project from school. Usually he just shouts, but sometimes he breaks things.
This makes it sound like everything's bad, but it's not, really. Nate's convinced her to give up a lot of the foods she really likes, and she's losing weight. He says she looks almost as beautiful as his second-to-last girlfriend, who was a model. They have fun. They watch movies together, and they play games, and they tease each other when they cook.
Daphne has to be careful when she teases him so she doesn't hurt his feelings, but it's still fun. Even if sometimes his jokes really hurt.
The summer is good, though. Nate loves her. That's enough to help her deal with all the difficulties. All relationships are hard, after all. She's a big girl. She can handle this. She just has to prove she's good enough.
One day, towards the end of summer, there's a knock on the door.
"Did you invite someone over without telling me?" Nate asks, looking at the door.
Daphne shakes her head vehemently. "I wouldn't do that, baby, I promise."
Nate lets out a humph and gets up to answer the door. Daphne doesn't watch. She hears a familiar voice from the kitchen, and the sound of what might be an argument. She doesn't want to get involved. Especially not if Nate's angry. He gets kind of scary when he's angry.
Nate pokes his head back into the kitchen from the living room and says, "There's a blonde chick here who says she's your sister. Wanna explain that to me?"
"Sabrina?" Daphne asks, getting up in surprise. What's Sabrina doing here? She hasn't even called her in weeks, let alone talked about any visiting.
"You knew she was coming?" Nate asks, and his eyes spark.
As Daphne shakes her head, Sabrina comes into the room and snaps, "Of course she didn't know. She hasn't called me in a month. So I came to see what was wrong."
"If she didn't call you, then she obviously didn't want to talk to you," Nate says, and his voice is colder than Daphne's ever heard it; sneering, almost. "So why don't you just head back to wherever you came from?"
That would send Daphne cowering. But Sabrina's apparently braver, because she just glares at him. "Daphne could talk for herself, last I checked. So how about you skedaddle and let me talk to my sister without you sticking your nose in Grimm family business?"
"Anything you'd say to Daphne you can say in front of me," Nate says, moving so he's half between Daphne and her sister.
"Fine," Sabrina says with a shrug. She then proceeds to tell Daphne that, in all of the five minutes she's spent with Nate, she's decided that Daphne's most recent boyfriend is the worst she's ever picked. She calls him several nasty names that Daphne won't repeat, and then she turns her lawyer on and starts listing things that she doesn't like, which include the fact that Daphne never came to visit this summer, that she's lost at least thirty pounds and looks sick, that she hasn't been calling, that none of the family was ever invited to meet Nate or even talk to him, and that Sabrina's worried because the more Sabrina talks, the more scared Daphne looks.
All of this is true. Especially that Daphne's scared. Sabrina's making Nate angry, and it's... Daphne doesn't want to see that. She doesn't want to be around when Nate shouts like he's gearing up to, when he starts breaking things and punching the wall inches from her sister's face.
Nate gives her an expectant look, and when she doesn't say anything, he asks, "Is that what you think of me, then?"
"Of course not!" Daphne says hurriedly, eager to turn that anger away from herself.
"Then why didn't you defend me?" he asks, and now he looks hurt as well as angry.
"I- um," Daphne starts. She doesn't really know why.
Nate gets closer, but before he says anything else, Sabrina cuts in, standing between Nate and Daphne. Daphne hasn't felt this safe in- months, really. She's missed her big sister's protective shadow, short and slight (and she was worried about Daphne's thinness) and the strongest thing Daphne knows. Sabrina pushes Daphne into the bedroom and shuts the door behind them.
Daphne falls into her sister's hug and half-sobs out an "I missed you so much."
"I missed you too," Sabrina says, giving her a squeeze and looking the room over without letting go.
Daphne hasn't noticed until now, but the room shows very few signs of being shared. Most of the things scattered through the room are Nate's, and if it weren't for her clothes and books and a single picture of the Grimms, she wouldn't be surprised if Sabrina assumed she'd brought them to Nate's room by accident.
"I want you to come back east with me," Sabrina says suddenly.
"I can't," Daphne says automatically.
"Why not?" Sabrina asks. "You're not working. Classes don't start for two weeks. I checked. I've been calling everyone you know since you stopped picking up your phone."
"I- I can't," Daphne says. "Nate-"
"Nate can deal," Sabrina says. "And if he can't, then I'll kick him in the jewels."
Daphne lets out a small laugh, then immediately feels guilty. She shouldn't think it's funny that Sabrina wants to hurt Nate. This is why he gets mad at her so often, why he loses it. If she was a better girlfriend, this wouldn't happen.
"Just for a few days," Sabrina says. She gives Daphne a searching look. "Do you want to come with me?"
Daphne gives an emphatic nod that she hopes tells Sabrina just how much she wants to see her family again without words.
"It's settled, then," Sabrina says.
"But Nate-" Daphne starts.
Sabrina cuts her off and says, "I'll take care of Nate if you want, okay? You just pack what you need."
"Um, can you, uh," Daphne says, not sure how to tell her sister that she doesn't want to be left alone to pack.
Sabrina gives Daphne a smile that's not very happy, but she pulls a small bag out of her back pocket and says, "I came prepared. Stole it off Uncle Jake. Just stuff whatever you need in here. Nate doesn't even have to know you're leaving for more than dinner, if you want."
Daphne does want that, so much. How does Sabrina know all this?
Packing goes quickly, and Daphne realizes all she really wants is either already packed up or within easy reach. Sabrina unlocks the door at long last and leads Daphne out, and arm around her waist.
Nate's talking by the time Daphne's through the doorway, but Sabrina's talking right over him, insisting that Daphne goes and gets food with her. It's a relief having someone else there to stand up to Nate, someone who won't have to deal with the heartbreak or anger that comes of upsetting him.
Then they're out of the apartment. It's the first time Daphne's had her face bared to the sun in weeks.
Once she's settled in Sabrina's house, it becomes so obvious to Daphne that her relationship with Nate was unhealthy. She's a lot more hesitant than Sabrina is to label it 'abusive'- he never hit her, after all (Sabrina says that doesn't mater. Still, she feels happier, lighter, freer than she ever did when they were together.
She feels kind of dumb about it. She studied stuff like this, and she couldn't even get herself out of an unhealthy relationship without help. She couldn't even see it coming.
Sabrina says it's common. She talks about emotional manipulation and how abusers sometimes never actually get around to hitting their victims. She mentions resources offhand and proceeds to tell Daphne that most people don't realize a relationship is abusive until it's too late. Then either they're too scared to leave or too dependent on their abuser. She says there are helplines, and that eventually Daphne might have been able to call one. She says that she just didn't want to wait. She's helped enough people get away from abusive spouses as a lawyer that she was pretty sure she saw it coming. She knew the warning signs and she could see it clearly, so she came in to help Daphne get out.
Daphne's grateful. So grateful. She feels fragile, somehow, now. She's not afraid to go out alone or anything, but she's afraid to trust her own judgement, and she's sort of forgotten how to make decisions. She can see that Sabrina's upset about this, but her sister doesn't push her.
Daphne takes the semester off of school. She doesn't want to go back to Arizona, and she definitely doesn't want to go anywhere near a place where Nate is. For a while, she stays with her sister. Then she goes back to Ferryport Landing and stays with Red and Mr. Canis. Sabrina's house is nice, but Red's house is quiet and peaceful, and she's got a lot of friends there that she can trust. It's a place she can start to go back to being herself.
Plus it's got enough magic there that she can defend herself if Nate ever finds her.