Severed [GB + SB]

One: ...And So It Begins

This entire story is for @roxandsand. I wouldn't be doing this without you. 

MONDAY NIGHT

Do you want to know how I spent that night?

It started out well enough: my fourteen boyfriends and teammates gathered around in my house — and with my father and stepmother removed from the premises, it really was my house. We were in the middle of a meeting to discuss a new mission we were taking on, my first as a semi-official member of their teams, and someone tried to get into the house through the front door. Of course It was my parents. Of course it was.

Apparently "being held indefinitely in a medical care facility" after almost killing me means approximately three days. That's how long the Academy was able to keep her locked away, and I can assure you that is not enough time. But somehow they let her go, and Victor and Corey left my house swearing they'd find out how and why.

All of them left, actually. Every one of them. They left me there because my stepmother was in a hysterical rage, going off about rapists and abusers, screaming about what a whore I am in front of them. I believe they were trying to spare me the embarrassment. They left, too, because my father was threatening to call the police on them, claiming they were trespassing on his property. But really, when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter what the reason was for them leaving, what matters is that they left. They left me there, and went off to regroup at their own places, and I was alone.

My father raged at me — over the changes to the house, over the new car in the garage that he forbade me to drive. Over walking in on fourteen men in his living room surrounding his barefoot and "barely covered" daughter — regardless that my dress was relatively modest and covered more than shorts and a tank top would have. And despite all of that, despite that for more than a year and a half I'd been paying rent and living without any intervention or supervision on their part, let alone care or affection which I'd never had, my father thought it was appropriate to ground me, telling me to go to my room and he'd deal with me later.

As if he didn't know that she had called it "grounding" when she inflicted a terrible humiliation on me, making me believe the abuse was somehow acceptable due to semantics. That is how he would manipulate me, believing me to be unconscious of his tricks. Hoping I would have internalized that humiliation, that powerlessness and that shame, so that he could wield it as a weapon when needed. I wanted to laugh at him, but thought it might be useful to let him think it worked.

Once in my room, I realized that all of my personal items taken with me from the hospital were still in the trunk of Victor's car, including my purse contents. I had no wallet with ID or cash unless I tapped one of my emergency stashes, and I had no phone. I was cut off. My head hurt so I let down my hair, and I was tired, and that made me act without thinking — the very thing that always gets me into trouble in this house — and when someone knocked on my bedroom door, I answered it assuming it was my father. It was not. And when she grabbed hold of my hair and yanked, and I felt my neck muscle pull as she wrenched my head around, I also felt one or more of the sutures in my scalp tear, and a wash of blood begin to run down over my ear.

I would have yelled for my father if I had a voice. I'd like to think he would have come to my aid.

Instead I broke away from her and, for the first time, I physically resisted one of her attacks: I pushed back. I was desperate because she was easily twice my size — thick and sturdy even after years of illness wearing at her — but I forced her out of my room and slammed the door, and — thank you Owen Blackbourne! — engaged the deadbolt on my upgraded door. The upgrade also included a new, large egress window to replace the old, slightly warped wooden sash window that had previously been in place. My men apparently thought of everything.