A/N I thought I was starting a new story until 1 sentence in my author's note changed and I realized I had just continued on….. I guess this story isn't as finished as I thought, and they couldn't make a 6 hour episode for 'Forgiving Rollins'. This chapter details Amanda's rape so may be triggering, but horrible as its subject matter is it helps complete the picture of her suffering…..

How did I end up here?

Amanda, what are you doing?

I never planned on taking this time off…

I was just going to keep going as I had been….

I had made it through the trial….

I told Liv I was "ok", but I found that after the trial was stopped and the plea was being prepared, I had nothing left to focus on. I had nothing left to do to keep it all at bay.

I know everyone meant well but I couldn't cope with this and be looked at with pity and doubt.

I decided to do what has always worked for me, I took time off and I ran away.

I now find myself here, on a yoga-retreat desperately searching for the 'inner peace' the online brochure promised, but it has been elusive.

Fin has been texting and calling. I know he cares. I never said the words to him, but he knows. I think he knew before I really did. The way he came looking for me in the bar after he heard Dodds interview Patten, asking, "I want you to tell me what went on between you and Patten?", he knew something. Sometimes I can talk to him, and I do, a little anyways, but I can't tell him everything. I need him to trust me. He needs to know I can handle myself, and that he doesn't need to worry about me, I can do my job.

He doesn't need to know that it feels like I'm drowning in the quicksand of my own thoughts. None of them do.

Even after everything, Nick has been calling, and I definitely don't deserve that. I don't know what he knows. He keeps telling me he's there if I want anything, but I don't know what he thinks happened. He's as perceptive as the others. He was sober in the bar when I drunkenly railed against how we forced Paula Martin to become a victim by sending the case forward to prosecution. Goading him, trying to force him to admit I don't know what. Roaring, "some of us don't want to be victims". I ruined whatever was between us that night. He won't have forgotten those words. He didn't understand the venomous words then, so he won't have forgotten them. He tried to ask me about my reaction to "the good old boys", even before Reese was assaulted, and he heard what Patten implied when Dodds interviewed him. When we heard about Reese's assault he asked astutely, "Hey, you know Patten, is he good for this?".

Even after all of this they keep calling.

I don't deserve any of them.

So I find myself here, in a nice hotel, lying in another foreign bed trying to stop my brain from starting its grueling nightly torture marathon.

Somehow the nights are the worst. It's like the self-doubt I can keep in the shadows during daylight swallows me whole, when the light fades into evening.

It feels strange to be suffocated by an event I remember so clearly in some ways and so unclearly in others. I clearly remember everything I confessed to Barba….but some bits are missing.

I don't remember what he was wearing but I do remember my clothes. I never wore them again, even those that weren't ripped or marked all went into the trash. They were tainted beyond fixing.

I remember every detail of the picture on the wall I stared at while he…..while he did it. But I don't remember the color of the motel bed.

It's as if the passage of time has started to blur the edges of my mental pictures like ageing photos but the feelings are still there in full force, if I let them in, as strong as I felt them that night.

I remember lying down stiffly on the bed, nerves bubbling at what I had agreed to. I was more nervous then, than the first time, all those years ago, I had ever approached the physical act. I remember the first feel of his hands on me, pawing at me, his calloused hands stroking, ineptly pulling at my clothes. My delicate black lace top ripping as he yanked it. His drunken breath on my face as he tugged my pants open. His clumsy movements as black denim was dragged down my legs, and kicked to the floor. My remorse at having consented to this, now bubbling to the fore, a signal to the ever growing queasiness rumbling through my stomach, as my scared little voice asked him to "slow down". Then, a stinging, followed by a dull ache on my left cheek and jaw as he slapped me. Quickly followed by the pinch and sharp pressure of his teeth on my neck, then the dizziness and sudden pain that accompanied the thud of my head on the headboard. I remember my voice pleading, "no", as I strained to get out from under him. I can still feel the blood, hot and sticky, oozing from my head sullying the sheets. The terror when he said, "Amanda, you know I don't take 'No' for an answer". I remember how my wrists burned from the friction of me trying to pull them out of his grasp, pushing against him frantically, as I realized he wasn't going to stop. I fought with every muscle and sinew at my command, to push him off me, to get up off that bed. I remember my muscles protesting angrily as my arms were twisted up above my head instead. How I got one arm free for a second, only to be punished with another slap that smacked my head against the headboard again, lighting up my whole head, an explosion of white light pushing from the inside out, blinding me, deafening me, only to recede away into an eerie darkness. Immediately to be shaken from the comforting blackness by him telling me I wasn't "going anywhere" as my free hand was recaptured and heaved up above my head to join its twin. I can't forget how he pulled my two hands together seizing both wrists in his one hand, his weight pinning them, my shoulders screaming for relief, my burning wrists twisting uselessly in his grip. I can't forget his teeth sinking into my shoulder as he lifted his body to open and push down his pants. I could hear my voice saying "no" so many times the word lost all meaning. I cannot forget the feel of his free hand roaming my skin, squeezing, twisting, as he told me "no-one would believe you anyway".The sound of my own blood pounding in my ears as I felt his naked erection against my thigh, was thunderous. As IT got closer to where he wanted it, my panic became so intense it was as if a switch flipped in my mind. All my small struggles stopped. My body stopped responding to my screeching mind. My only struggles now, my sobbing and my constantly mouthed "no". I found myself lying uselessly still, as he swiped my legs further apart with his knee, my hips wrenched unnaturally, he settled himself between my outstretched legs. I remember the never ending streams of tears as he found his mark, …..then the burning, tearing, agony as he pushed….."NO".

I can feel this as if he were in this room now. It feels so real I look down expecting to see the bruises, the cuts, the marks, littering my skin. I can feel it happen, but it still disturbs me the things time has dimmed, sometimes to nothingness. How can I not remember what he said after? Or how I found my clothes to be back on me? Or what he was wearing? I remember the rough scrape of denim against my bare legs, so he must have been wearing jeans but I don't see them. I don't remember buttons digging into my front so was he not wearing a buttoned shirt? What color were the walls? Why do the feelings not dim with the silly detail?

Even after, it's the feelings I remember. The need to not be naked, the penetrating vulnerability of this state, too much, even when he was gone from the room. I remember the cloying feeling of filth on my skin, even after I had showered and dressed.

I remember the sensation of the water pummeling me as I showered, my sore, used, body reveling in its soothing heat while my mind sunk deeper into its abyss of wretchedness. The stinging of the soap I scoured into my aching body to cleanse myself of him, of what I had allowed him to do. The pain of the soft towel scraping my reddened, abused, body dry. But then I just seemed to magically be clothed. How do I not remember dressing?

I have no memory of him dressing, speaking, of him leaving. My last memory of him on that night, is of him pulling IT out of me, the trail of my blood and his enjoyment marking the bed sheets, further spreading the filth that contaminated my whole being. His hand releasing my wrists from their imprisonment, then his body crawling off me as his weight no longer pinned me to the ruined sheets. I lay there unmoving, the screaming of my battered body not enough to counter the anguish of my mind.

It would be bad enough if these were the thoughts that filled my nights, and prevented me from sleeping until exhaustion claimed my body, switching then to torturing my short, unsatisfying sleep.

But they are not what haunt my waking and sleeping mind. Those feelings are even more nefarious, more perverse. It's like what happened with Patten isn't really the problem anymore. In an odd way what he did to me isn't important. I put myself in this position. I allowed it to happen. I don't deserve to say I was raped, because I invited this incident. It was easier to spend five years believing nothing really happened because the alternative is worse. The alternative means that something did happen and I can't protect myself from exactly what I am paid to prevent. I was so naïve that I didn't even think for a second, that I wouldn't be able to control the situation. The alternative means that I am worth so little that no one, including me, thought what I suffered was worth pursuing. It means that I have betrayed every victim I have ever encouraged, persuaded and cajoled into filing charges against their attacker. I am a hypocrite. I am weak.

I have allowed one night's misadventure to ruin my life. I nearly gambled my way out of my career. I can't trust anyone, even when they consistently give me every reason to trust. I either completely cut myself off from men, from sex, or I stumble blindly from one unfulfilling sex-capade to the next. Never letting them in, never letting them last for long enough to have to call it a relationship, to have to open up. I can't truly open myself up to anyone, because if I can so badly misjudge Patten's intentions, I evidently, am no judge of character. I just thought he wanted to leverage my sister's situation, for an easy night's extra marital sex. I didn't see the predator.

Oh god, I shouldn't even be a sex crimes detective if I can't see that even if that were all that he was doing, that alone would make him a predator. Amanda, where is your judgment?

I wish I could be like Olivia. She went through so much worse with Lewis. She has scars. She had a broken wrist. She fought for herself. Even dehydrated, drugged, starved and tortured she fought. Maybe if I had fought like she did it wouldn't have happened.

Don't be so stupid, Amanda, Olivia would never be stupid enough to have been in that situation to start with.

I wish I could be like Olivia, but I'm not, I'm just broken, easy, stupid Amanda Rollins.

She tried to help me even when she knew how stupid I had been.

"Amanda. I'm sorry. Sorry for what Patten put you through, that you had no one to help you, at the time, in Atlanta. We are here for you. We want to listen, to help, in anyway we can. Amanda, you are not alone. Barba will fight to get your testimony admitted, but know that we HEAR you. We BELIEVE you. Regardless of the outcome here, we are here for you. The boys will be too…
Amanda. It's ok. I'm not going to tell them. They know enough unless YOU want to tell them more. It's your choice. I won't take it away. You have to know that they just want to help you. They understand…they don't….judge…. I know."

I couldn't have spoken if I had tried. She had heard my shame and hadn't found me disgusting. And for a short second I felt valued, safe. I replay this conversation so often in my head…... She had only compassion for me, not pity or judgment.

But then I can't help replaying our conversation in her office after the trial was stopped…..

"Amanda, what Patten did to you, you've been pushing down for years and if you don't deal with this now, it's going to keep you trapped,… or stuck more than it already has."

"Ok"

"You have an opportunity here"

I know she was only trying to help. Why did I open my stupid mouth?

"I've gone through it…..You're only as sick as your secrets and….And, I'm going to meetings"

"yeah, for gambling…"

This barbed response reminds me how I'd already let her down so much that she wouldn't have kept me on the squad if she hadn't been so short staffed. That she didn't trust me. What was I thinking? Do I want to lose my job here, with the only people who have ever really cared for me?

"I know you don't like feeling sorry for yourself, I get it, but can you go back to that detective that you were five years ago and feel compassion for her?"

"I walked into it,….you know, I put myself into that position…"

That's why she was so nice to me, she doesn't understand.

"You gotta stop blaming yourself. Amanda you can move past this"

"I'm ok"

"Look I know that you think that therapy is paying someone to talk about your problems….."

Why the hell did I ever say that to her? I said it in the heat of the moment in a fit of jealousy. After all she had been through she was still…whole.

"I shouldn't have said that…"

"Then make it up to me…."

She wanted me to go speak to her therapist.

How could I do that? I got as far as the waiting room before I realized how bad an idea it was. He knows all of her secrets; he would probably have thrown me out of his office when he compared my shit to her. I wouldn't even deserve his help. Or worse, he would recognize how broken and hopeless I am.

I didn't need to see the look of disappointment I knew followed me out that door.

It feels like I can never get out from under this. It's like five years later I am still lying under his body, trapped. How can I feel compassion for the idiot that put herself there?

Hell, even the court didn't validate me. I know I left it late, but I wasn't even worth the jury's time to listen to, not even to evaluate how my experience corroborates Reese's assault.

How did I get to this point again? Why did I let it all come out? If I had been stronger, I wouldn't have reacted. I wouldn't have invited all of these questions and I wouldn't ever have sat on the stand prepping with Barba. I would never have said those words….

He. Raped. Me.