I began to pull my own clothes free, wincing as the material pulled against the dried blood from the wounds on my abdomen and breast, briefly my mind flashed back to our struggle earlier and the dangerous glow deep set in her eyes as she drove towards me with a shard of glass… the thin wound still ached with a glowing heat from the furrow it sliced through my pale skin… but that ache seemed frail as compared to the deeper ache from the darkness she had drawn from me… I dropped my top in the compartment for incineration and my jeans quickly followed this as I peeled them from my legs. For a moment I painfully aware of being naked… it wasn’t the actual act of being exposed to her… but rather the interlaced scars that crossed my pale body, I knew it would speak of a painful legacy for those who knew how to read it… And I knew that she could, I remembered her scars, her own imperfections, that, if anything made her more perfect in my mind…

I glanced back at her as I entered the shower, watching as she quickly shed her clothes… revealing her body completely to me; I was at once struck by a deep and tangible ache for her raw beauty that made my desires cry out for her… and she was so beautiful… I quickly turned my head away as she lifted hers, desperate that she wouldn’t see the unmasked need reflected in my eyes…

I was aware of her as she padded in behind me… I ducked under the steaming spray of warm water, my head back as it hit my face and cascaded down neck and body, trickling round the shallow curvature of my breasts… my eyes closed and my mind lost to thought as the humid spray peppered my skin. What had happened out there… I had felt everything in my mind come crashing down around me, for so long I had held my past at bay… now I felt so helpless… and yet… yet, something more than that…

…"Don’t run Celine… You KNOW it will only make things worse!!!”…. even now I feel him… reaching for me… a rage boiling over….

My eyes bolted open, I gasped and spun around… but only to be faced with her mortified look, my mind reeled as the fingers of memory pulled from my mind and reality once more asserted itself… I continued to glance at her as we washed, watching the traces of the outside pooling in the shower and washing away, revealing more of her tormented form…

I watched as she withdrew deeply into herself, fists clenched, her soft eyes crushed shut… her mind gripped by the recollection of something disturbing, something that had left its own legacy on her slender body… I felt a need to run my fingers over her body, to feel the history of her pain and draw it into myself… I felt a tear well in my eyes as I watched her, but safe in the knowledge that the flow of water would hide it. Her eyes opened and after a moment a small smile passed her lips… with it I caught a glimpse of a unique tenderness… I couldn’t help but smile back…