You Promised | Mark Sloan ✓

53┃new york

"I thought you fucking ran away again," Timothy explained with a relieved sigh.

Norah cocked a brow at him. "I run away from problems, but now my problem is dead," she stated, "Why would I run away this time?"

"I don't know, the last you quit your internship in New York, wrapped up everything and moved across the country," he rambled while shutting the office door behind him. "And then when Sloan told me you broke up with him-"

"You broke up with Mark?" Derek questioned loudly, staring at her like she had grown five heads.

"I-what?"

Sounded like it, didn't it? I just had to mess up everything, don't I?

Norah dropped herself onto the couch in the office, staring between the two men. Timothy frowned at her seemingly collected look, he knew that it was fake-a mask she was hiding behind-he just knew it.

"What really happened in New York?" Derek asked, noticing her look as well. Her mouth gaped open, but she did not know how to speak about it.

"You look like you're about to fucking explode, Nor," Timothy added sharply, "I believe that right now, you'd rather talk to Shepherd than Sloan. So talk, or I'll get you checked into psych again, then you can talk to a therapist stranger."

"Again?" Derek looked more confused than ever.

Norah sent his brother a hard glare and he raised his arms in surrender. "Hey, I'm just trying to help," Timothy defended himself, "I can't risk you snapping again..."

She sighed, "I know... and sometimes I hate you for it."

He returned her with a small grin. "Nor, you can't fucking hate me even if you try."

Kicking her legs up on the couch, she exhaled heavily. The two people in the room with her were people she trusted, yet opening arm was never her strong suit.

"Hanson was actually a friend of mine before everything went wrong," she started, hugging the pillow with a lack of stuffing in her arms. "He was a great friend. Fun, charismatic before I wrecked his face... He was nice.

"He guided me to climb up a mountain. He helped me, he really did..." she trailed off, shaking her head, "before kicking me down a cliff and continued shoving me at the bottom." Derek frowned at her sentence while Timothy stared back at her.

"And everything was downhill after that, but I didn't know how to escape from him." She remembered the nights where she would lock herself in the bathroom just so she could have some 'alone time', but Jeffrey would pound at the door until she unlocked it.

"He became controlling, and it scared the crap out of me," she grimaced at the memory. The hair on her hand stood up at the thought of it. "It was torture with him, you know? He wasn't quite physically abusive, but mentally? It was the deepest layer of hell. And I just... There was one thing I could think of that can spare me from him for good..."

"By... taking your own life?" Derek guessed carefully.

Bingo. Norah let out a dry chuckle, staring at the magazines on the rectangular table in front of her knees. "When you're really down there, it is the only thing echoing in your head," she spoke, her voice was smaller this time. This was her first time speaking about it, except for her therapist that she had quit before leaving the East Coast.

"The sleeping pills did not work the first time," she gulped, it was as though she could feel the bottle of pills in her hand. "And then... I uh... I..." She lifted her eyes to Timothy who had his arms folded in front of his chest as he leaned against the wall.