They're on their way back from the meeting when Charlotte, who has been silent for most of the car ride, suddenly speaks up. "Take this exit."

"What?" Amelia hazards a quick glance and Charlotte sits up straighter, wincing.

"This exit – right here! Take this exit," she insists again, and Amelia has to pull across two lanes of traffic to make it in time. She white knuckles the wheel and Charlotte inhales sharply next to her, but then they're on the exit ramp, hearts pounding just a little faster than before. "Thank you," Charlotte exhales, then, "Take a left at the bottom of the ramp."

Amelia follows the direction, and the next half-dozen or so after that, until they pull into the driveway of a house she doesn't recognize. The light is on over the door, and in the upstairs window, but otherwise the house is mostly dark. "Okay. What now?"

"Now, you wait here," Charlotte replies, a little gruffly, but she's still trying to pull herself together from the meltdown she had earlier, so Amelia dismisses it. It's hard to be cheerful when all you want is to get so stoned you can forget everything (forget being raped, Amelia thinks, and then she stops thinking because she doesn't want to think about that at all).

Charlotte surprises her a little (and not at all) by turning to her with a frown. "Amelia..."

"Yeah?"

She takes a deep breath, lets it out. "Thank you. For tonight. Cooper knows about the pills, and he tries to be supportive, but he doesn't know."

"Nobody ever does," Amelia agrees, letting her head drop back against the headrest. "Unless they've been there. You know anytime, day or night, you can call me, and I'll be there."

"Yeah." Charlotte nods shortly, tells her, "Me too." They share a small smile, Charlotte's more along the lines of a wounded grimace than something that's actually soft, but Amelia can see the gratitude in it nonetheless. "If he's home – if I go in – you can go home. He'll drive me back to my car."

"Okay." Amelia's about to ask who "he" is, but Charlotte is already pulling the handle on the door, and while she's certainly not fast getting out of the car – she's moving slower in general these days – Amelia's pretty sure she's already been dismissed for the night. Sure enough, Charlotte doesn't so much as say goodnight, just shuts the car door and walks slowly to the front door. She lifts a hand, rings the bell, and a minute later, Amelia sees the door open and smiles at the familiar face on the other side.

She puts the car into reverse just as Sheldon peeks over Charlotte's shoulder and offers a wave. Amelia waves back, pulls out of the drive, and leaves them be.

-/-

Sheldon is exhausted, emotionally more than physically. He'd never imagined, that night at the precinct, that the madman he was dealing with might be talking about his friend, his onetime-lover, his... whatever Charlotte was. And while he's still not one hundred percent sure, he can feel it in his gut that he's right on this one. That Charlotte was raped, and it was Lee McHenry who did it, and while she was being stitched and bandaged and casted, he was sharing a meal with the man who brutalized her, staring at her blood on his shirt, her bruises and scratches on his face.

The thought makes him sick.

So when the doorbell rings five minutes after he arrives home from visiting the precinct again, he almost doesn't answer it. He's beat, he wants a shower, maybe a drink, and then bed. Whoever is on the other side of the door can wait, he thinks. But then he thinks that it's late for visitors, that maybe it's important, maybe he should just check who it is and send them on their way as fast as possible.

He's very, very glad that he changes his mind.

Standing on the other side of his front door is Charlotte King, eyes puffy and red under the bruises she's been trying so hard all day to cover up, lips dry and cracked, looking for all the world like a lost woman.

"Can I come in?" she asks, and he tells her of course she can, before glancing past her to the car idling in his driveway. He sees Amelia in the driver's seat and waves as she pulls out, then steps aside so Charlotte can pass him.

She walks slowly, arms hugged around her belly, and he wonders what she's doing here, why Amelia had to drive her, but he knows better than to ask. She'll talk when she's ready; she always does.

She takes a look around, like she hasn't been here before, then turns her face back to him – there's a hint of mocking in her gaze, just about as much as she can muster when she asks, "You taken to livin' in the dark, Sheldon?"

He smirks at her, flips on the overhead lamp. "I was headed to bed."

"Oh." She looks almost regretful, almost apologetic, but only for a second before the corners of her mouth try to pull up a little (they almost manage it) and her eyes light up for a brief second. "Bedtime already? What are you, ninety years old? Gonna have some Metamucil before bed? DVR the late show so you can watch it in the mornin' before your stories come on?"

He laughs at that, just a little, and is delighted when he gets an actual smile – albeit a small one – in return. "Long day."

"Mm." Her brows go up, then back down. "I hear that."

He nods, and they fall silent for a few moments. He watches her face go from nearly-relaxed to uneasy, and knows the silence is lasting just a bit too long. "I, uh – I seem to have forgotten my manners. I don't have your great mixology skills, but would you like a drink?"

"God, yes," she exhales. "But considerin' I just came from a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, it seems a poor choice."

"Ah." Now the ride makes more sense. "You and Amelia."

Charlotte nods, hugs herself a little tighter. "She's a good kid. And I'm havin' a... bad day."

"I see." He realizes they're still standing in the foyer, and maybe they should change that, but Charlotte seems perfectly content here, so he's not entirely worried. "Did you want to talk about it?"

"No," she answers. "I just... I look like hell. I know I do, and if I go home, Cooper will ask questions. Or he won't ask questions, he'll just hover around me, tryin' his damnedest not to ask the questions, and it'll drive me crazy."

"Well, he cares about you. We all do."

Charlotte shrugs a shoulder. "I get that. And I appreciate it, I do. It's just... sometimes it's suffocatin'. Everyone wantin' to help, everyone wantin' to act like things are okay, or not okay, or... whatever. Sometimes it's like I... can't breathe. Under the weight of everyone, y'know?"

"Sure," he answers easily, because she likes ease, she likes casual. It's comforting to her, he knows. They fall silent again, but it's comfortable this time. She studies an art print on the wall next to the door; he studies her.

"You know how you said you'd do nothin' for me whenever I needed?" she asks, finally, her gaze still tracing the contours of color on paper.

"Mmhmm."

She looks at him, again, finally. "I need somewhere I can just sit for a while before I go home. Somewhere quiet. No talkin', no questions, no pityin' looks, or awkward avoidance, just... quiet."

"Okay." Sheldon gestures toward his living room, knowing this is his cue to move them further into the house. "You can stay here as long as you want."

She follows, then folds herself into the corner of his sofa, her body looking impossibly frail against the full cushions. She looks up at him, tells him "Thank you," with such sincerity it makes his heart ache a little.

"Of course. I'm going to take a shower, if you don't mind?"

Charlotte shakes her head, dismissing him. "Do whatever you want. As long as it's-"

"Quiet."

A ghost of a smile crosses her face. "Yeah."

He's headed for the stairs when she calls out to him again, "Sheldon?"

"Yeah?"

She doesn't quite manage to push the vulnerability from her voice when she asks, "Did you lock the door?"

He didn't, he realizes, so he makes his way back to the foyer. Charlotte turns her attention to something else, or nothing else, more likely, content to trust he's doing as she asked without having to see it. He locks the front door, then checks the back door for good measure before he finally heads upstairs.

-/-

Charlotte isn't sure how long Sheldon takes in the shower; the dull sound of water from upstairs just becomes white noise. She's focusing on the brickwork of his fireplace, tracing the grout lines, creating invisible steps and blocky diamonds and trying not to flinch at the flashbacks that have been plagueing her all night. The last few nights. Every night since.

She'd been doing okay this afternoon. Okay, considering. And then Violet had shown up, and told her things she didn't want to (and desperately needed) to hear, and all that carefully constructed control she'd managed to build up for herself had come tumbling down and left her a mess. A crying, jonesing, terrified mess.

Thank God for Amelia Shepherd and her lack of any kind of nosy questionin'.

The meeting had been good, and Charlotte felt a bit more steady on her feet now, but she just... she just... she just didn't feel like herself anymore. Lookin' in a mirror was like lookin' at a Picasso painting. All the pieces were in the wrong places, like she'd healed up wrong. And it was like nobody else could see it but her.

Which was fine, it was good, it was the way she wanted it.

Let everyone think she's the same old Charlotte, and then what happened never happened and she can move on.

And when she can't, at least she knows now that she can call Violet.

She thinks of the shambles she left her office in, and sighs. Someone had clearly gone to great pains to straighten everything up for her arrival back at work. Not a pen out of place, and she was glad for it at first, because everything looked just as it should. Just the way it did before.

But nothing is the way it was before, and she can't just pretend none of this ever happened now. Not now that someone else knows. Not now that Violet knows. Now the secret's out, and now her office – her neat as a pin, tidy, air-freshener-scented office – screams of falsehood and cover-ups and a stifling, heavy secret.

Tearin' it to pieces was just puttin' everything back the way it ought to be. Just exposing the truth of that ugly, ugly place.

But now, she's embarrassed. Now, she's going to have to admit the hell she's going through if she wants someone else to clean that place up again, and Lord knows she can't do it on her own with two bum arms. She'd rather cut off one of those arms than have to call hospital maintenance for a clean-up job, and she cannot – absolutely cannot – tell Cooper, so she bites the bullet and reaches for her phone.

It rings once, half again, and then Violet answers. "Hello."

"Hi."

"Hey, Charlotte." She sounds tentative, like she's talkin' to a small child or someone particularly "special." "Is everything okay?"

"Don't. Don't treat me with the kid gloves after tellin' me you understand. Don't you talk to me like some poor hapless victim."

Violet clears her throat, and tries again, "I'm sorry. What's up?"

"After you left, I trashed my office. Guess I had some, uh, rage..."

"Yeah, I get that," she says in a way that makes Charlotte believe she really does.

"I don't want anyone to know I did it."

"Okay..."

"There's a spare key to my office in my desk at the practice. Silver key in the pencil drawer. Do you think you could... Could you go to the hospital and straighten up for me? I know it's a big favor to ask, and it certainly doesn't have to be perfect, just-"

"Of course. Anything you need."

Charlotte nods a little, hears the creak of the third stair from the bottom as Sheldon descends. "Thank you." Out of the corner of her eye, she watches him head into the kitchen. "I'm at Sheldon's; I have to go."

"Alright. I'll call you when I'm finished?"

"Just text me and let me know it's done. And Violet?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't you breathe a word of this to anyone, you hear me? My business is nobody else's business."

She hears the hesitation on the other end, but hell, it wouldn't be Violet if she wasn't tryin' to meddle, right? Still, she finally answers, "Okay. I'll keep your secret."

"Our secret," Charlotte finds herself saying.

"Our secret," Violet confirms.

Charlotte hangs up on her then, secure in the assurance that her secret is safe, and her meltdown will be erased, and nobody will be any the wiser.

Then she peels herself from her spot on the sofa, pads silently to the kitchen and manages to make Sheldon jump just a little when she comments from about a foot behind him, "Thought you were headed to bed."

He shakes his head, chuckles a little. "You startled me."

Charlotte just smirks at him, then nods her head toward the pan he just dropped two chicken breasts into, and the pot of water boiling on the stove. "What's all this?"

"I was feeling a bit peckish. I thought I might make myself dinner after all. And since you're here..."

"I'm not hungry," she tells him, and she feels like she's said it more in the last few days than ever before in her life.

Her stomach betrays her a second later, though, rumbling just loudly enough for Sheldon to hear over the sizzling of the meat in the pan.

It's Sheldon's turn to smirk at her, before pointing her casually toward the kitchen island. "Your stomach says otherwise. Go ahead, sit down. I won't tell anyone you let me make you dinner."

For once, Charlotte does as she's asked, and it takes the glint of light on a curved vase – and the moment of panic it induces – for her realize she's gone a whole three minutes without seeing her attack in front of her eyes.

It's almost a record.

-/-

Lucas is asleep in his car seat on Charlotte's office floor, in the only patch of clear space not littered with pens and books and everything else she'd flung to the carpet. The place doesn't look nearly as bad as it did on Halloween – the violence is much less sinister this time.

Charlotte had managed to only really break one thing, although considering the fact that most of her breakables had already been shattered and removed and cataloged as evidence, that's not too much of an accomplishment. It's less a crime scene now, more evidence of a life thrown into disarray.

Pete picks up the heavier things – binders full of paper, the potted plant that fell to the floor and spilled dirt everywhere. He's on call again, but on break right now, so Violet enlisted his help. The less time for Lucas to wake up in a strange place, the better, right?

Charlotte would hate Violet if she knew Pete was here, but what Charlotte doesn't know won't hurt her, Violet figures, and she's pretty sure Pete has known – and kept – Charlotte's secret longer than anyone else.

Violet arranges things the way she knows Charlotte likes – neat-as-a-pin, right angles, nothing out of order.

"We'll need to vacuum up this dirt," Pete tells her quietly, and Violet nods. "I can do it after you take Lucas – I'll make sure it's taken care of before I leave for the night."

"Okay," she tells him, her eye catching a glint of metal in the dark pile of dirt on the floor. "Thanks."

When Pete turns his back, she bends to pick it up. It's a key. Damp earth clings to the grooves, and smudges over the face of it as she wipes her thumb across it in an attempt to clean it. All it really does it get her own hands dirty. She wonders what it was doing in the potted plant, wonders (thinks she knows) what it opens. She resists the temptation to snoop, to find out what's hidden in that locked drawer.

Instead, she drops the key back into the planter, wipes her hands together to get rid of the dirt and turns back to her task.

Together, Violet and Pete right every overturned piece of Charlotte's office.

-/-

It's done.

Charlotte reads the text message just before she plugs her phone in to charge for the night. She exhales slowly, turns her phone face-down on the nightstand and eases herself into bed. She's exhausted, bone-tired, and her body still aches in ways she didn't know it could.

She wants a pill more than she can describe, but the urgency of the craving has waned into a dull, throbbing undercurrent in her veins. She can't ignore it, but she can handle it.

She shuts her eyes, sees the dark and shattered landscape of her office, opens them again.

Cooper climbs into bed next to her. Her nerves tingle, body on high alert at someone being so close.

She stares at the ceiling, just like always, and he doesn't try to kiss her this time.

Instead he asks again, "What do you need? What can I do?"

Charlotte lets her gaze slide across the ceiling, down the wall, over the window, then onto his face.

"Hold my hand," she offers, and the way he smiles at her bolsters her enough to push down the anxiety she feels when his hand wraps around hers and squeezes.

She exhales, he relaxes his grip, and she forces herself to feel the warmth of his palm, the weight of his wrist against hers. The weight of his... the weight...

Charlotte tears her hand from his suddenly and swallows hard, then reaches for him again with one small difference – "I'm sorry, I just – I need my hand to be on top."

"Okay," Cooper tells her, and he's trying so damned hard for her that it makes her ache.

"You know I love you. Right?"

"I know," he tells her. "I love you too."

"I know." She smiles at him, and it's not entirely forced this time. "Now, get some sleep."

"You too," he tells her, shutting his eyes.

She lays there in the dark for a long, long time. Feeling the warmth of his palm against hers, feeling the sturdiness of his wrist underneath hers, until her anxiety eases a little, until the sweat between their palms is from heat and not nerves.

Progress, she thinks.

She's making progress.