5 Seconds of Summer - One shots

Last Girl - A. Irwin

TW: MENTIONS OF PAST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, ANXIETY, AND PANIC ATTACKS. PLEASE DO NOT READ IF THIS CAN TRIGGER YOU

Getting to know Y/N was a challenge. An uphill battle that took longer than most would think.

On the outside, she was a bubbly woman. Always seen with a smile on her face and a bright eyed gaze that screamed joyful bliss.

On the inside, Y/N felt as if she were constantly living the life of a character in a horror movie. Specifically, the last girl.

Even now, as she stood next to Ashton at Calum's house, enjoying a birthday party for the latter, she couldn't shake the anxiety. Whenever she thought she was safe and free from what was haunting her, it reappeared. Sometimes in a new form, sometimes in the same form. Sometimes she had a break for a while until she was thrust into a sequel.

She had considered changing her name to Sidney Presscott just as her own macabre homage.

Ashton knew that if he could achieve only one more thing in his life, then it would be to allow Y/N to open up to somebody. Somebody she trusts.

Her life had been through ups and downs, Ashton knew that. It began when she was a teenager, through a cheating boyfriend.

Time and time again, relationship after relationship, she had her heart broken.

Betrayal, cheating, lying, and more recently, violence.

Her most recent ex, Matthew, was a kind man at first. He wooed her mother, earned respect from her father, worked his way into her heart and began to learn every soft spot that was left inside of the hardened muscle.

He knew where she was weak and he took advantage of it.

It started as emotional abuse, then financial abuse. She wasn't allowed to have control of her own funds. She couldn't pay for anything. Every purchase was made from his account.

He would call her names, degrade her. Remind her that he was all she had at that time. He plucked tunes from her heartstrings with the promise that if she left him, no other would love her again.

Then things became physical. It started as shoving and escalated to punching, kicking, choking.

Her fingers unconsciously grazed the fine scar that trailed through her left eyebrow.

Ashton smiled down at her, seeming to not notice the growing emotion in her features as he was getting more buzzed by the minute.

She didn't mind. He was her boyfriend, not her therapist. If she wanted him to know how she was feeling then she would tell him. For now, she was perfectly fine with sorting this bout of emotion into the neat filing cabinet of traumatic memories and outbursts that she kept within her.

She could always handle herself. She had been doing it for so long that independence was a second nature to her.

Ashton, on the other hand, knew something was wrong with his girlfriend. He could almost read her expression like a book, after a year and a half of dating.

She had left her ex almost three years prior, yet she still held much of the trauma inside of her.

If Ashton rose his voice too high, she would flinch. If he wanted to pay for something, she would meekly accept and wear a fearful expression the entire time. She would apologize profusely for the simplest of mistakes.

It broke his heart to think of what she went through. He knew not the extent, but he knew enough to feel his heart ache for the woman he had grown to love, and complete contempt for the man that hurt her.