Returned to Sender - Scarlett Johansson

Part 16

Scarlett's POV

I-I am actually at a loss for... everything right now.

That was unlike anything I had ever seen.

I knew we should have just stayed in the trailer and had a chill night, I knew she only agreed to the movie night for me, and while it was sweet of her, it broke my heart that she couldn't just tell me what she wanted to do. I'm pushing her too far too quickly. I am asking for way too much from her, and she is quite literally breaking herself trying to please me. I suck at this parenting thing.

Today has been an overload of people and experiences for her, and I should have known that.

I shouldn't have pushed her to go shopping after the hospital, never mind the movie night. Yet when I watched her not only touch but initiate touch between her and Lizzie, I thought that this evening would be good for her and cheer her up after this afternoon's episode.

However, I could not have predicted the attack she had after meeting Aaron and Paul. Robert had told me he had warned the boys of Sawyer's 'rules', I guess you could call them, and they had stuck to them, so her episode surprised me.

But not nearly as much as what she was yelling.

Daddy? I mean, I know that she never called him Daddy, so perhaps Aaron calling her darling had triggered some other memories. The fact that she had terrible memories past her time with her foster father just breaks me further. From what Sawyer was yelling, I was starting to think it wasn't just him who had hurt her in the past. My insides twisted when she offered to take the beating instead of her adopted mother. Then there was the yelling after she had punched me in the face. I had tried my best to get her to settle down, but she was clearly sucked too far into the memories this time.

I don't blame her for hitting me; it didn't even hurt. I only dropped her from the shock. The blood just made it look worse. I would have cleaned up better, but the force with which she was banging her head made me worry she was going to knock herself out.

The way she was yelling after that, though, I know what memory that must have been, and it made me sick, and by the look of the others, they had figured out what she must be reliving. Miss Smith had mentioned that her foster father was charged with sexual assault of a minor. Still, a big part of me wished it wasn't Sawyer he had assaulted, and when she started screaming that she was only six, it took everything in me not to throw up at the thought.

The pain she had in her eyes when she looked at me after it was over made my eyes cloud with tears. And when she jumped away from me and called herself a monster, my heart shattered. At least, I thought it was destroyed until she picked Robert to help clean her head over me; she would rather have someone else. A man, no less, touched her over me despite her fear of them.

Just when I thought we were back to square one together, maybe even worse than where we started off, she turned and told me she needed me to make my whole body hurt a little. She has had such a hard life, and it hurts me that I'm not helping her. I'm just pushing her to her breaking point, and I just don't know how to help her.

She spent the whole ride to the hospital apologising, and that broke my heart more than I thought possible. At this point, it is safe to say my heart is completely destroyed. I don't even think she had realised we had moved or that Robert was driving us to the hospital. I know what was happening as soon as the apologies finished; she was shut in on herself.

I'm terrified she will close in on herself completely. She wouldn't even look at me or the doctor as she was stitched up, which would have concerned me if I wasn't already worried to the max by the lack of flinching. She didn't so much as move as she was sewn up. I'm not even sure if she knew what was happening, and that cornered me more than I thought was possible.