A/N This chapter's title is named for the song Numb sung by Linkin Park. Please read and review; I love to hear what you think of the story!
Solas walked numbly into his house. Salem had given him a ride home after she had dropped Elyssa off. What had he done? He sat heavily on his couch and raked his hands over his face, staring at the ceiling. A faint remnant of Elyssa's perfume hit him and he tore his shirt off, throwing it across the room. He stood and went to his kitchen, pulling down a bottle of whiskey that Bull had given him for his birthday. He poured himself a generous amount into a glass, then began putting the bottle back up. After a second thought, he opted to bring the bottle with him. It was one of those nights. One of the worst nights he'd had in a long time.
He took the glass and bottle back to his living room, catching a glimpse of light from an upstairs window a few houses down from him from the smaller window behind his couch. I don't want to go back, I want this, I want you. Her words played over and over in his mind. He absently touched his cheek where her hand had brushed across it as if she truly loved him back. Ma halani, sathan, Solas! The way she had screamed for his help still tore through his ears. The wide panicked shifting of her eyes when she woke up in the clinic. The sharp rise and fall of her chest as she struggled to breathe. It all played over in his mind.
Solas was startled back to reality by the ringing of his phone. He pulled it out of his pocket and looked at the caller ID. He didn't recognize the number, but he answered anyway.
"Hello?" he asked.
"You are a hard man to track down, my love."
Solas paled as Andruil's voice came from the other end of the line. "What do you want?" he growled. He didn't have time for her games.
"Testy, testy. Can't a girl call and say hello?" she sneered into the phone.
"You aren't the kind of girl to just call and say hello. What do you want, Andruil?"
"You are in a mood. I'll call back when you've calmed down, Wolf." He hit the end call button forcefully and pressed his palm to his forehead. It did nothing to assuage the memories that surfaced with hearing her cold voice again and he threw his glass against the wall. He would need to change his phone number again. But that could wait until after the holiday. For now, he settled with cleaning his mess up and then getting another glass.
Several hours and half the bottle later, he finally climbed into his bed. He fell asleep quickly and dreamed of the one night of true peace he had felt with Elyssa in his arms. All too soon, the pleasantness of those dreams morphed into the usual nightmares that he still had about what he had suffered at the hands of Andruil. It wasn't long before he was waking up late the next morning in a cold sweat. He needed to talk to Salem. She would want to know Andruil had contacted him. With any luck, she would have an idea of what to do about Andruil and perhaps how to help Elyssa.
Hard. His grip was too hard. She opened her mouth to tell Solas he was being too rough with her, but no noise came out. The sound of cruel laughter wrapped around her, suffocating her. She opened her eyes to see that it was Justice, not Solas, over her. There were so much hatred and anger in his white eyes. How was it possible for one person to be that angry? Again, she opened her mouth, this time to scream for help. Again, no sound escaped. She was helpless to stop the painful onslaught to her body. She closed her eyes once more and let herself fall into the black abyss of her mind.
Elyssa jerked awake, her body covered in sweat from her nightmare. From downstairs, she could hear the shrill sound of her mother yelling.
"I don't need you telling me how to raise my daughter!" There was a feminine voice Elyssa couldn't quite make out from her room. Stealthily, she crept downstairs to see Mrs. Adaar in the front hall with her mother.
"Mrs. Alerion, I don't think you understand what I'm telling you," the qunari replied with a frustrated sigh.
"I understand that you think my daughter was assaulted last night," her mother scoffed, "but I highly doubt she was 'forced'. She probably just got too drunk and didn't remember exactly what happened."
"Mrs. Alerion, I don't care for what you're implying," Mrs. Adaar growled. Her lips and eyebrows were scrunched in anger. Her hands balled into fists at her side, her knuckles white with how hard she was squeezing her hands together.
"Maker's balls! You sound just like that fucking art teacher of hers! And I don't appreciate you practically busting down my door to tell me some fabricated story my daughter told you last night, just so she wouldn't seem like the little whore she is!" Elyssa's mother threw back.
You want to act like a whore? I'll treat you like a whore. Justice's words surfaced from the darkness of Elyssa's mind. She couldn't even deny it anymore. She had acted like one. She had kissed, and then seduced her teacher and cheated on her boyfriend. She didn't even regret sleeping with Solas. She was every bit the whore Justice and her mother said she was.
Elyssa's mother shooed the quite obviously pissed qunari out of her house. Elyssa ran back up the stairs as quietly as she could. She didn't need her mother yelling at her any more than she had last night.
She hadn't been able to come up with a good enough excuse for her why she was getting home at nearly 3 am. So, Elyssa had told her mother as much of the truth as she could. She had fallen asleep in Anders' dorm. She woke up with injuries she didn't remember receiving, so she was taken to a doctor. It had been sufficient enough for her mother to allow her to go to bed.
Blessedly, her mother said nothing more about the previous night nor that morning with Mrs. Adaar. Elyssa did her best to stay out of the way, avoiding her mother when she could. She helped clean the house for Thanksgiving the next day. She couldn't remember who all was coming. It didn't matter, her mother would want the house clean regardless, and Elyssa was pleased to have something to distract herself with.
Elyssa woke the next morning, once again drenched in sweat from the same nightmare. Her cat looked disdainfully at her for the way she had jerked upwards, disturbing its sleep. Was this her life now? Moving from one nightmare to the next, never able to catch her breath? What kind of life was that? What was the point in a life like that? All she had ever wanted was to find someone who wasn't going to hurt her. Someone who wasn't going to use her with no regard for how she felt. Someone who wasn't going to judge her for the things that had happened in her life, things that had been completely out of her control. Most of all, she wanted someone who was going to love her for who she was and not what she could do for them. It seemed that wasn't a possibility in this lifetime for her.
She dressed carefully, everything still so sore from Justice. She opted to wear a long black skirt to avoid the added pain of putting each leg into pants. Pairing that with her best long sleeve shirt, which also happened to be black, he looked almost as if she were dressed for a funeral. A harsh half-smile formed on her lips. It was fitting considering she felt as if a part of her - the part that was capable of being happy - had died. She wore very little makeup, just enough to halfway hide the dark circles under her eyes and the bruises that weren't completely hidden by her clothes. She let her hair fall around her shoulders in her natural soft waves. She didn't have the energy to do anything more with the locks of ash-white hair. Upon closer inspection, she noticed that her roots were beginning to show. She would need to dye her hair again soon. Then again, what was the point? She had only kept it dyed because Anders had liked it that color. He had hated her natural auburn, so she had changed it for him. At first, she had thought the white hair suited her. Now it was just another thing hiding who she truly was.
The smells of turkey, potatoes, and pumpkin pie wafted upstairs. Normally, Elyssa would enjoy the scents of her mother's cooking. Today, it just made her stomach churn. The thought of sitting down, eating like everything was okay, made her feel anything but okay. Every day for almost eight years, she'd had to act like everything was okay like she understood why everything had happened as it did. She was getting so fucking tired of pretending she was alright when she was far from it. Of plastering fake smile after painful fake smile on her face, using art as the only means to truly express herself. She was tired of the games. What was the point of pretending like she was fine when it changed nothing?
She made her way downstairs to join the rest of her family. Her stepdad was sitting on the couch watching football, resting the shoulder he'd recently injured at work. Her sisters were helping set the long antique dining table her mother had found at a yard sale once. She remembered that yard sale, the fun she and her mother had singing in the car. How happy they were with their treasures. It was one of the few good memories she had with her mother. Pain ran through her chest at the memory. She wished she could understand why her mother got so angry with her so often. Why she always called her a bitch or a whore when she yelled at her. Why she found any reason to be displeased with her. A mother's love was supposed to be unconditional, but her mother's seemed to be full of nothing but conditions and expectations.
The doorbell buzzed, signaling the arrival of one of their guests. Elyssa opened the door to see her grandparents standing there with a foil-covered dish. She tried her best to smile politely, stepping as far away from her grandfather as possible as they came inside. It had been eight years, and while he'd never attempted to touch her again, she still wasn't completely comfortable in close proximity to him.
They settled in, her grandmother going to help in the kitchen, and her grandfather going to watch football with her stepdad. Before long she was again answering the door, this time for her uncle and newly-made aunt. Another fake smile, another too-wide margin of room, another door opened for a man that had hurt her. She just had to smile, make polite conversation, and eat like she didn't want to empty the contents of her stomach. She could make it through today and then on with the rest of her life. She could handle one day with two people that had hurt her so many years ago. It was years ago, and she had already been dealing with it for this long. What was one more day?
Elyssa was thrown off by the doorbell ringing once more. Who else was coming? She had thought her uncle was the last person they were expecting. She opened the door to see who it was. She was greeted by a pair of hard brown eyes, a cocky smile, and tied back blonde hair. "Anders?" Her entire body tensed up as the man with the hatred-filled blue eyes from her nightmares stepped from around him.
"Nice to see you again," Justice greeted, a cruel smile on his face. Elyssa felt her knees begin to shake, her arms barely staying upright to hold the door open. "What are you doing here?" she whispered, terrified.
"Your mother said I could bring him when she invited me months ago," Anders replied dismissively. He began to take a step towards the door, also taking a step towards her. Her body went rigid. She couldn't move. She couldn't do anything but attempt to breathe, something that was not that easy to accomplish. Then he smiled. His mouth formed that cocky smile of superiority she always hated. She had hated how he always thought he was so much better than her. She had hated how he used the fact that she was his first but he wasn't hers over her. It wasn't as if she had chosen to lose her virginity in the manner that she did. He was the first one that she had chosen. And now she was thinking she couldn't have made a worse choice.
"Leave," she demanded, her voice hard and filled with anger.
"Come on now, babe, don't be like that," Anders laughed, taking another step towards her.
"I said, leave," she repeated.
From behind her, she heard the small creak of the floorboards shifting from someone's weight. "Elyssa, who is it?" her mother asked, coming to see Anders and Justice being blocked by Elyssa. "Oh, Anders," her mother smiled pleasantly at him, "did you two have a safe trip down here?" She turned her hard brown eyes to Elyssa as if to tell her to move so they could come in. After a few moments in which Elyssa still couldn't move, she frowned. "Elyssa, you weren't born in a barn," she sighed, "move so they can come in and close the door."
Elyssa looked at her with defiant eyes, "No."
"Excuse me?" her mother asked her tone stating that she was not pleased with Elyssa's response.
"I'm not letting them in," Elyssa told her, "they shouldn't be here."
"Maker's breath, Elyssa," Anders sighed, "are you really going to ruin a whole day because of one little fight?"
Elyssa rounded on Anders. "It wasn't a little fight!" Her voice rose as she began to unload her anger onto him. "You left," she growled, "you left and you let him hurt me!"
"Babe, I really don't think now is the time or place to be arguing," he rolled his eyes, an apologetic smile cast towards her mother.
"You're right," she agreed, "so leave."
"Elyssa!" her mother gasped, "stop being so rude. Anders come in." She pried the door from Elyssa's hand opening it wider so they could step around Elyssa.
"Mom!" Elyssa protested, "you can't let them in!"
"And why the hell not?" she asked angrily.
Elyssa took a deep breath. She needed to tell her mother what happened. She needed to trust that her mother cared about her enough to take her side on this. To not welcome in the person responsible for hurting her just a few days ago. "Justice was the one who hurt me that night I came home late," she admitted.
"What do you mean hurt you?" she asked with a roll of her eyes.
"I mean what Mrs. Adaar said yesterday is true," Elyssa whispered. She stared pleadingly at her mother, begging her for once to just believe her. Hoping that she would listen to her and not let another one of her abusers in. Praying that she would just do like Elyssa always thought mothers were supposed to and protect her.
"Really?" her mother growled, her anger directed at Elyssa, "are you really going to sit here and tell me that Anders just sat by while his best friend supposedly assaulted you? Why would he do that?"
"He didn't sit by, he left," Elyssa clarified, "I don't know if he knew what Justice was going to do or not, but he certainly wasn't there to stop him!"
"Why would he just leave you alone with his friend if he knew something like that was going to happen?" she asked, her tone indicating that she believed nothing Elyssa was saying.
"Because I cheated on him," Elyssa admitted. Maybe telling her mother the truth would help her believe what she was saying.
"Elyssa, I don't have time for this bullshit," her mother growled.
"I'm telling you the truth!" Elyssa protested, "why won't you believe me?"
"Maybe because you're a whore?" her mother threw back.
"How?!" Elyssa asked incredulously.
"You just admitted to cheating on your boyfriend of three years and now you're claiming that his best friend raped you," her mother answered, "and I don't believe Justice would do something like that."
Elyssa lifted up one of the sleeves of her shirt, revealing the bruises that were still a clear sign of Justice's abuse of her. "This is his fucking handprint!" Elyssa cried, "will you believe the physical evidence?!"
"Mrs. Alerion, I didn't mean to bruise her," Justice defended, "she was just being so hysterical after she admitted to Anders that she cheated on him and he got rightfully upset. I was just trying to hold her still until she calmed down. I didn't realize I was holding her so roughly." His coverup was smooth, his delivery flawless. He had turned around what Elyssa admitted and made it seem as if she had been the reason she had been hurt. But she had been, hadn't she? That was something he had made clear when it happened. That it was her fault. That she did it to herself.
"Of course," her mother smiled warmly at Justice, her tone apologetic, "I understand. Elyssa has a tendency to be a bit overdramatic." She stepped to the side to let them in. Elyssa stood there, frozen once more. She couldn't believe how easily her mother had believed Justice. Her own mother had refused to believe her, but immediately accepted the excuse of the man that had hurt her.
Elyssa waited until they had gone into the dining room and her mother had shut the door before speaking again. "How can you just disregard me like that?" she whispered, "Do I not matter to you?"
"When you act like a whore, you get treated like one," her mother responded, somehow repeating the same words that Justice had growled at her, "you probably deserved it." she pointed to the still exposed bruises on Elyssa's arm. Elyssa knew that was what she was talking about because she refused to believe Justice did any more than bruise her a little bit. Still, Elyssa felt as if she were telling her she deserved the rest of what Justice did as well. It was her punishment. The burden she was meant to carry because of the sin she had committed against Anders. The life she had to live for everything that had happened. And it was a life she was getting really tired of living.