Home

The diminutive figure stood in the doorway, leaning against the door frame with her head tipped to the side so that the top of her head rested against it above her shoulder. Light bathed her from behind, but the room itself was dark, leaving her face in shadow framed by a blue halo of unkempt hair. She watched the sleeping figure on the bed with a solemn air about her without fidgeting or shuffling her feet - something that would strike anyone who knew her as unprecedented for the usually hyper-active sugar-fueled spacer who once flitted around Carrick with an infectious grin.

Every time she'd given in to exhaustion, she'd fallen asleep beside him only to wake up a few hours later, screaming about how her father was still alive and that there was no escape from him, reliving the trauma she ran away from in her childhood. She hadn't slept in two days this time, waiting each night for him to fall asleep before creeping out of the bed and wandering the large house that had been his family home. 

He'd brought her to Chandrilla to heal. 

He'd called it home. "It will all be okay Kel.  I'll get you out of here, back to our home.  I'm going to take care of you.  I'm not leaving you ever again, I promise."

To fix her. 

She wondered if this time, there was no fix. At the very least, she wanted to run away again. And again. And again.

It was too quiet, too peaceful, and she needed to stop replaying the attack over and over in her head. She needed to remember how to be a survivor, because her mysterious assailant had made her a victim again. She needed her family.