Author's Note: My sincerest thanks to everyone who has read this. This is my final chapter for this fanfic and I hope very much that you all enjoy it. I've said it before but I honestly can't say it enough, thank you for your reviews and encouragement, they helped spur this fanfic on.

Casey didn't want to be broken.

Was that too much to ask?

She didn't want to be the quiet girl. Awkward, alone, more scared of her own reflection than she was her own shadow.

But Casey didn't want to be normal either. Normal girls never actually saw the world they lived in.

Casey wondered what that must be like, to be oblivious. To never really see the black.

Her father had told her she could be anything she wanted to be.

Her uncle had dutifully reminded her that bad little girls didn't deserve love. That she had carved away her chances of anyone wanting her.

But Casey didn't want to become someone else entirely.

Maybe she just wanted to be a little bit less broken. A little bit more normal.

A little bit less... her. Because she was certain, she knew that if she was a little bit different then that wouldn't be true.

But she didn't know where the line was, between Casey and a shell. Between happiness and a simple lack of pain. Casey knew better than to want too much.

But in the back of her heart there was a little voice whispering a childish, foolish hope that she tried with everything to pretend wasn't there.

Casey wanted someone to save her.

She knew it was ridiculous, life didn't happen that way. All Casey had was herself.

She was seated on her bed, arms wrapped around her knees, blinking into the shadows. They hadn't been there when she had come in. They had snuck in through the window as the hours faded away and took the sun with it.

The darkness had come so gradually she had hardly noticed it was there until it surrounded her, and Casey was too lazy to turn on the light.

She was comfortable, and just a little bit void.

She didn't move when the door opened, Barry sticking his head in.

"Hey, Case, you ok?"

She sighed a little, "Yeah, just thinking."

"Oh," he said, stepping in the room, "I was gonna take a shower, if that's ok?"

She had told him she had wanted some time to herself, and he was being so careful not to interrupt. Casey nodded, "Yeah, of course, Barry."

She heard him walk forward a few steps, felt him looking at her, before quietly heading into the bathroom.

Dennis was jerked abruptly into the light. He inhaled steam, coughing, taking in his surroundings. Barry must have been halfway through showering before growing too weak to hold the light on his own, leaving Dennis to be sucked into the gap. It was a role he had grown familiar with, filling sudden vacancies in the light when the others got scared or distracted. It was one he had thought he wouldn't have again. There was something steadying about that tiny piece of normalcy returning.

He finished showering, grimacing at the scent of Barry's body wash, applying his own. He stepped out on the cold tile, sighing when he realized Barry had not put a mat down. He would have to use his towel to mop up the water, and the thought irritated him.

He dried off, pulling on the sweats Barry had thrown over the hand towel bar. The steam was beginning to clear from the mirror as Dennis began collecting the clothing Barry had left scattered across the floor. How one person could be so messy Dennis never understood. One of his socks had managed to reach the far corner, and Dennis bent to retrieve it. His hand stilled as he noticed the small, metal object on the floor. His fingers found it, lifting it carefully.

It was cold against his fingertips. A small, sharp blade that fit into his palm.

He didn't really notice when Barry's clothes fell back onto the floor. His heart began pounding thickly, his body feeling what his mind hadn't fully grasped yet. It was moving him through the door, into the bed room beyond before he realized completely what he held.

Casey was curled on her side on the shadowed bed, and she blinked up at him in loose surprise.

"Nice shirt, Barry." She muttered in lazy sarcasm at Dennis's bare chest. Dennis couldn't respond, he was caught just looking at her. The pale edge to a careful face, each feature a silhouette against her skin. That expression that would be serene if it wasn't so empty.

She frowned a little at his silence, peering up at him and he watched recognition flutter behind her eye.

"Dennis?" she pressed herself up, staring at him with a look that hollowed out his chest, like broken hope.

Her eyes fell to his hand, recognizing what he held in his palm, and she sighed a little, waiting for him to ask, to demand answers, explanations, to force more words that Casey didn't want to say.

But Dennis was silent. There was no edge of anger, of unsteady rage. He was just looking at her as if he had stepped into a silent place and she was all there was.

Casey didn't have to ask if he was alone. She knew, somehow she knew that Dennis was the only thing behind those eyes.

It amazed her, in a way. There were times when she had needed Dennis to crash against her, and times when she had needed him to be still. How one man could hold so rigidly to two extremes was something Casey could never understand.

No one else could have held that razor with such gentle control.

Casey didn't want to see anger right now, or pained defense. She wanted silence. She wanted calm. It was the only way she would ever have been ready to do this. To tell him, the only way she knew how.

He was just watching her. Like he was waiting for her, for her permission to break. Casey was moving before she really even thought about it.

Barry's sweater came off her shoulders easily. Dennis's eyes never wavering as she shrugged out of the longsleeved shirt underneath. She could hear his breath, full and even, and she focused on it, one layer at a time.

A final tshirt remained over the short tanktop that would show the edge of her scars. Dennis held her gaze in a way that felt like heartache. She slipped the shirt over her head.

There were raised line of shadow on her skin, little rows now carefully exposed beneath the thin strap. Dennis had witnessed them once through the eyes of a beast, sharp and glaring in the light, surrounded by anger and pain.

There was nothing to prepare him to see her there in softness and shadows, secrets bare and still.

His breath hurt. His hands were shaking and he dropped the silver blade onto the bedside table. He was trying, he was trying so hard not to reach in everyway for this girl staring up at him.

Casey stared as his breath wavered, as his body was pressed from its rigid hold into the broken stance of a man. His gaze held hers, his eyes blinking into a sheen that gathered in eyes that held too much. Too much heart break, too much aching care. As Casey watched a single tear fall, tracing its path to the line of his jaw, she felt her entire world shift.

Dennis was crying.

For her.

It stilled every broken flood within her and wrapped her in something that felt like certainty. In that moment Casey fully believed, for the first time in her life, that everything was going to be all right.

Because this hard, impossible man that could withstand utter darkness cared enough to be softly broken for her.

"Casey, I-" it was new to Casey to hear strength waver in a way that could never sound weak. His hands were reaching and Casey met them, felt them press against her skin.

His thumb brushed across her cheek, so slightly. Then his body was shifting, moving as if drawn closer by a power beyond either of them. Casey curled into him, against him, her face buried in the hollow of his, cheek press against his bare chest. It was warm and right and his arms locked around her. She was tangled in him. She felt every touch as the pads of his fingers combed her hair off of her temple, in such a slow gentle way she didn't know it was possible for a touch to feel like that. It was beyond any care she had ever known. It was so rich and full and she sighed into it, letting her eyes close. His heartbeat sounded in her ear, a steady pounding that rocked everything else away.

Dennis breathed, letting his heart feel her. He would be careful. He swore it. He wouldn't hurt her. He could hold without taking. She was pressed against every part of him, warm and perfect and breathing softly, and Dennis let himself feel.

The hand that had curled against the back of his neck as she hugged herself against him. Her hair as it fell against his shoulder. The way she worked herself into the very core of him, and built a layer between him and the dark. He wished with everything he was that he could take this feeling, and give it to her. The safety of her touch, the light. He didn't feel like an alter, the hardened piece of a fragmented man. He felt complete.

They drifted off, neither willing to move. Casey would wake every so often, and listen to the heartbeat beneath her. She would feel his arms shift, pulling her that much closer, and she would know he was awake.

Sometimes she settled back down in silence. Other times words found their way out of the shadows.

"You know what I hated the most?" She whispered, and heard Dennis hum a little in question.

"When he was nice to me." She remembered sitting on shoulders in the airport, to spot her dad over the crowd. Remembered the times, before, when they would laugh. She felt Dennis stiffen, his fingers flexing against her.

"He's never going to hurt you again."

Casey couldn't stop herself, "You can't know that, Dennis."

His answer was a growl in the back of his throat. "Yes. I can."

And Casey believed him.

She fell back asleep effortlessly, believing him.

Dennis woke to tangled warmth. The feel of Casey crashing over him and he felt his stomach clench. She stirred, shifting against him, and mumbled against his shoulder.

"I missed you, Dennis."

Blank shock took him.

"I don't understand."

She blinked awake, stretching against him, peering up at him with sleep filled eyes.

"I missed you." she whispered again, pressing a light kiss to his shoulder.

Panic set in. Dennis's breath had sped out of control before he could manage it. He pushed out of the bed, feeling his thoughts spiral.

"That's not, you're not. That's not possible." He was glaring at her, eyes almost demanding her to take it back, and Casey pressed herself up in confusion.

"What do you mean it's not possible?"

Dennis stared her down, blinking chaotic thoughts back, and her gaze fell.

"Is it because you didn't miss me?" She whispered.

Dennis laughed, a strangled, sudden sound and Casey's gaze whipped up at him in shock. His hands raked over his head before he looked away, forcing his hands to his side.

"Why do you do this?" Casey asked, and his gaze flicked to her, body falling into that rigid posture.

"Do what." he clipped.

She shrugged a little, pulling her feet together as she crossed her legs, "Act like you care, then act like you... can't."

He scoffed, shaking his head as he looked away.

"Because I can't Casey."

Casey frowned, moving to the edge of the bed. "can't what?"

Dennis growled in frustration, pacing. "I can't not want you, I can't not care. I can't have you."

His words echoed in Casey's mind. I can't not care. I can't not care. It flooded her with an almost heady type of strength.

"How do you know you can't have me?" she asked, remarkably calm despite the way her body shook.

The look he sent her was raw and it sent shivers up Casey's spine.

"I know that I want to hurt you."

Her eyes swung wide and momentarily frozen to his, before she blinked, shaking her head.

"You don't want to hurt me, Dennis." she refuted quietly, but there was more confidence in those words than Casey was sure she had ever felt before.

Dennis would not hurt her. She knew it in the place of her soul that the warmth of his strength had filled. Her life had been a series of agonizing uncertainty and fear but here with this one man Casey knew what it was like to be certain. She knew he would protect her.

"You don't want to hurt me, Dennis." She repeated, surer now, standing, and his gaze snapped with anger,

"You don't know what I want, Casey."

Her chin raised and she stared him down defiantly. It was the most she had ever stood up to anyone and she tried her best to mask the tremble in her lips. "Then show me."

He faltered back, eyes blazing with heat even as his head shook adamantly. "No. Casey. Stop."

His chest rose and fell with shallow panic and something inside Casey moved at the look in his eye, that driving, raging need, and she found herself taking an impossible step forward. She wanted to fight, for the first time she wanted to fight for something. She wanted to laugh and cry because of course it was him. Of course this broken, frantic, overwhelming man was the only stable thing she had ever found.

"Kiss me, Dennis. The way you want to kiss me, and I swear I will stop you if it's too much."

"I won't stop," his head was still shaking, breath panting, and Casey smiled.

"I know you will."

She was staring up at him, trust and fire, and something so impossible tender in her eye and Dennis felt his walls caving, his control spiralling away. He knew suddenly what it was like to drown, and instinctively he knew that she was his only chance of coming up for air.

And in that moment, Dennis let himself go.

His expression fell into solid steel and Casey gasped at the intensity of his eye. His hands found her hips and he spun her roughly, pressing her back. His forearm shot out, slamming into the wall behind her head and she fell against it. He felt larger than she had ever seen him, the expanse of him blocking out the light and she was caught in the heat of his shadow.

Her heart was pounding almost painfully in her chest and her body was screaming in a thousand different ways as heat and pressure and need surrounded and she was gasping for air before his lips ever met hers.

His kiss was rough and demanding and something trembled inside.

She shoved off of the wall, pressing into him, arching into his touch, as he pressed her back, no space, no room for anything but heat between them.

She didn't know her own body, it panted against his. He pushed back from the wall, a desperate curse falling from his lips and Casey loved every sound as his grip tightened and a groan was ripped out of him.

"Casey," it was hot and strangled and he lifted his head to stare into her face and she crashed her lips against his, tasting him as her body vaulted into a heart racing high and he moaned into the kiss, his body shuddering beneath hers.

He stumbled against the wall, sliding down to the floor as Casey still clung to him

She stayed pressed against him, her knees resting on either side as her lips traced his beneath hers. The aching need calmed as something deep and warm replaced it.

She kissed him with every ounce of longing and promise she had and she felt him tremble, felt his breath shudder as he began to break. He pulled back, gasping, and his eyes searched hers, wide with an almost terror like he knew better than to believe.

"Do you really want me?" It was a strangled whisper, and she felt tears well at the sound. She was nodding before she could find words, nodding as she kissed him again and again, and he held her, so carefully, locked in a moment he was afraid to even breath from for fear it would vanish and she clung to him, too full of this moment to let fear decide.

Casey knew in that moment what it was to love.

As impossible as it could ever seem, she had felt it in every aching touch that same searing need that filled her to be near him, to feel him. She had known her whole life that she could never be wanted but his hands had pushed that jagged fact away, smoothed into a shadowed lie. She clung to that feeling, that certainty inside that faded far too easily the longer she strayed from his touch.

She wanted, needed to tell him, and Casey spelled out her love the only way she knew how. She pressed it into him with the trace of her lips, and let him feel it in every part of her. She felt it then. Casey knew in that moment what it was to be loved.

It echoed from Dennis in every burning, careful touch, wiping every doubt away. She knew he couldn't say it, couldn't believe it, and she swore she would show him every day until he was ready. Ready to tell her what Casey already knew. Casey could have been convinced in that moment that every other belief she ever held was a complete and total lie...

Except for the truth of the way he had kissed her.