This story was inspired by a request from faithful fic-reviewer Strawberry1, who finds it “odd and unifinished” that John seems to be unaware that Marlena is a rape survivor. She asked me to try to fill in that gap, and I gave it my best shot.
Author’s Chapter Notes:
Trigger warning: This story deals with the aftermath of Marlena’s rape. The event itself is viewed through the lens of thirty-five years of history and isn’t graphically described, but if this is a touchy issue for you, you might want to give this fic a pass.
As such, this story is RATED NC-17 FOR POTENTIALLY DISTURBING CONTENT, not for the usual reasons our fandom tends to deploy that rating.
I should have expected the nightmare.
I’ve counseled rape victims before, and it’s been years since it triggered anything personal for me, but there’s something about working with Ciara that’s different. Partly I’m sure it’s the fact that she’s family–that’s always harder–but it’s also the details of what she went through. She was brutalized by someone she knew in a place where she’d always felt safe, and listening to her talk about it has been even more difficult than I expected it to be.
Not that I regret agreeing to counsel her. Not for an instant. She needs help, and she’s begun to trust me enough to open up, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
But the opening up has been traumatic for both of us. A lot of patients won’t talk at all at first. Others try to minimize their pain. Ciara’s so honest about what she’s going through that listening to her is just gut-wrenching. I don’t let that show, of course–the last thing she needs is to feel guilty over talking about it–but it’s taking everything I have to maintain my professional detachment.
After our last session I was so unsettled that I had to postpone another patient’s appointment, which should have been a clue that I needed to make an appointment of my own. Any of my colleagues would have been glad to help me deal with what I was feeling. But I did the stupid thing and tried to tough it out. I should have known better.
I also should have warned John, but that was a conversation I really didn’t want to have. So I convinced myself that there was no need to tell him. After all, I hadn’t had a flashback since before I even met John. It wasn’t as if that was ever going to happen again.
What’s that proverb about pride going before a fall?
I came up out of the nightmare screaming and thrashing and crying, and what I was seeing and feeling was so absolutely real to me that I had no awareness of my actual surroundings. The voice saying my name was Kellam’s, and the big hand on my shoulder was Kellam’s, and I fought him like a wounded, cornered animal. I fought so viciously that I actually got away, and I was off the bed and into the bathroom with the door locked behind me before I woke up enough to think, Wait, where am I?
It took most of a minute, probably, for my mind to accept that what had just happened had really happened thirty-five years ago. That this wasn’t my old apartment and that the man in my bed wasn’t–
Oh, my God.
I threw the door open, and there was John, sitting on the edge of the bed looking stunned, the heel of his left hand pressed to his eye, blood trickling from his nose.
The first thing he said was, “Are you okay?”
Am I okay? I thought, and all that kept me from slipping over the edge into actual hysteria was that the sight of blood awakened my inner doctor, and she took over.
I fully expected John to flinch away from me–I had just attacked him, after all–but he sat still for me to look at his nose. It wasn’t broken, thank God, but I didn’t doubt it hurt like it was. He had the beginnings of what promised to become a spectacular black eye, too, and I was horrified. I brought him a damp washcloth and stood there feeling awful while he wiped the blood from his face and prodded gingerly at the bridge of his nose.
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve had worse,” he answered mildly, and dropped the cloth on the bedside table to return his full attention to me. “You want to tell me what that was about? You were swinging like you thought I was trying to kill you. Must’ve been some dream.”
I moved to sit next to him, knowing he had a right to the truth.
“Not kill,” I said, looking down at the carpet. “Rape. And it wasn’t a dream–it was a flashback.”
Dead silence.
“It was a long time ago,” I added after a moment, not wanting to make him ask. “Before we met.”
“Oh, my God,” John whispered. “Doc–”
“His name was Kellam Chandler. I worked for him. He came into my apartment and…and that’s what I was re-living just now. I’m sorry. I should have warned you.”
“Honey…”
I still couldn’t look at him, but out of the corner of my eye I saw him move, and I knew he was going to touch me, and my throat closed up so quickly that I couldn’t tell him not to. So I waited, trapped inside myself, for my body to react the way it always had after a flashback.
But John’s arm settled gently around my shoulders, and instead of panic I felt…solace. It was so unexpected that I swayed a little, and John gathered me fully into his arms, and it was fine. Genuinely fine–no fear, no flinch, no fight-or-flight reaction. I pressed my face into his neck and closed my eyes and focused on my breathing until the shaking subsided.
And John just held me. He didn’t ask me any questions. He didn’t rush me. He didn’t demand to know why I’d never told him this before. He held me and rubbed my back and let me settle back into myself at my own pace. By the time I pulled away I felt calmer than I’d ever dreamed it was possible to feel so soon after a flashback.
I had to force myself to look at him, but when I did there was no pity in his eyes. No judgment. Nothing but boundless compassion. He looked devastated, yes, but he was still looking at me like I was me–the same me I’d been before he knew.
And as we sat there and looked at each other, John’s left eye slowly swelling shut, he simply asked, “What do you need?”
I said the first thing that came to mind. “I won’t be able to go back to sleep.”
“Okay.”
“And I’d like to…not be in here for a while.” The bedroom was never a good place to stay after a flashback.
“Okay,” he said again, and stood up. “Walk with me to the kitchen? I have a feeling this eye could use an ice pack.”
I nodded and let him lead me to the kitchen, where he pulled out a chair for me at our little breakfast table. I sat, and as he quietly went about the business of making an ice pack for himself and a cup of tea for me it gradually dawned on me that he really wasn’t going to ask. His silence was an invitation to talk if I wanted to, but he wasn’t going to demand any more details than I’d already given him. It was an extraordinary gift.
He sat down across from me, and I sipped my tea, and John held a dishtowel filled with crushed ice to his battered face, and our free hands found each other in the middle of the table, and for a good while we just sat there, neither of us saying a word. Until finally, to my own honest surprise, I set my cup aside and began to speak. I told him the whole story from beginning to end, from the details of the rape itself to that awful day in the courtroom with Don to the therapy I went through in the aftermath, and he sat and listened and held my hand and didn’t interrupt me once.
I even told him how afraid I was afterward, how it took me a long time to be able to trust a man again, how I’d been terrified right up until–
I caught myself, finally realizing what I was saying. And to whom.
But of course John had already figured out where I was going with that. “Until Roman.”
I nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to–”
“It’s all right. I’m glad he was there for you when you needed him.” He squeezed my hand gently. “I assume you told him what had happened?”
“Yes. I didn’t have much choice, really. It was obvious that I was scared. He was…remarkably patient with me.”
“And I’m guessing that tonight isn’t the first time you’ve ever had a flashback?”
“No, just the first time in a long time. I used to have them…not often, exactly, but pretty regularly. Roman learned not to touch me. That’s what I meant when I said I should have warned you. I knew all of this was stirred up again, and I should have seen it coming. I’m so sorry I hurt you.”
John shook his head. “I’ll be good as new in a couple of days. I’m a lot more worried about you. Please tell me you’re planning to talk to somebody about this?”
“Yes. Making that appointment just became my top priority. But don’t sell yourself short because you’re not a therapist–talking to you has helped a lot.”
“Good. You know I’ll listen anytime you want to talk, right?”
“I do know that, and I appreciate it.”
“Is there anything else I can do? Or anything I shouldn’t do?”
I thought about that carefully, then shook my head. “I don’t think so, no. You don’t have to handle me with kid gloves or anything. In fact, I’d prefer you didn’t.”
“Okay.”
“I do want you to know that I didn’t…that I haven’t kept this from you deliberately. At first I didn’t tell you because I thought you knew, because I thought you were Roman, and Roman knew. And then later it just never… I never had a flashback with you, so I never needed to tell you. It wasn’t because I didn’t trust you or because I was afraid of how you might react.”
“I understand,” he said softly, and fell silent again.
“What are you thinking?” I asked after a couple of minutes.
“That I’m glad he’s dead.”
“So am I,” I admitted. “I always was. If I’d had to see him again… I can’t even imagine.”
“I wish–” He stopped abruptly.
“What?”
“I wish I’d known you then. Even if I couldn’t have stopped him, I wish I could have been there for you.”
I thought back to that night, to how horribly alone and abandoned I felt, to how badly I needed someone to comfort me. What if, instead of calling Don and getting Liz, I had been able to call John? How good would that have felt?
And even as I asked myself the question, I realized I already knew.
“You were there for me,” I said, and tried to explain. “Flashbacks aren’t like normal memories. For the person they’re happening to, they’re really happening. Here and now, not then and there. So for me, tonight it felt like you were with me just a few minutes after it happened. And what you did was exactly what I needed.”
“Did it help?”
“God yes. I’ve never been this calm in the aftermath of a flashback. Look–my hand isn’t even shaking.” I held my free hand out between us, steady as a rock. “And I’m, what, an hour out? I should still be a blubbering mess. You never saw me before, so you don’t know, but this is amazing. I might even…”
“What?”
“I might even be able to go back to sleep.” The thought of going back into the bedroom didn’t thrill me, but–
“We could try the couch,” John offered, apparently reading my mind.
It ended up being John on the couch and me more or less on top of him, but he swore he didn’t mind being used as a body pillow. I fell asleep with the sound of his heartbeat in my ear, and the dream did not recur.
Nor has it troubled me again since that night. The only way to banish that sort of nightmare is to deal with the underlying emotions, and with a renewed course of therapy and John’s quiet support, I’ve been able to do just that. I’m not cocky enough to assume the flashbacks are gone for good–I made that mistake before, and look what happened–but I’m confident that if I ever have another one I’ll be okay.
Because John will be here, and together we can handle anything.
The Jarlena Journal 