"There is nothing to interfere in..."<br/><br/>That one line repeated in her head over and over as he closed the door and left her with his dog, unable to move from her spot as the feeling of absolute loneliness settled in. Now that she didn't have Vincent in here to talk to, her mind had begun to wander and was immediately filled with thoughts of Ana that she'd desperately tried to keep at bay. The guilt of what'd happened, the pain of it, of knowing what she'd gone through and then not knowing the fullest extent at all... Then those thoughts were replaced with thoughts of Rafe and everything went sideways.<br/><br/>The walls were closing in as she slipped from the bed and laid on the floor beside it. Sheba sensed her distress and came over to calm her, but her mind was miles away, as she drifted off into a troubled sleep with memories she couldn't escape.<br/><br/>Tossing and turning, over and over she saw visions of Rafe getting into places he shouldn't have. She felt those hits colliding with her. Her face, her stomach, her back, her chest, none of it was offlimits. Then came the nights where hitting wasn't enough and he demanded more from her...those nights where she tried to stay at work functions late, or at meetings, but he'd come there to collect her and then her terror would start the moment the car door shut. He'd isolated her, wouldn't let her drive so he kept her car, had to pick out her clothes so she wouldn't appear too "slutty"...Looking at the ground became the norm so as not to make him think she was looking at anyone else.<br/><br/>More often than not, he thought it anyway. "Your peripherals were too high," was one of his favorite lines. It got to the point where she'd wondered if being blind would've helped at all.<br/><br/>But the worst night of her life...that's the night she remembered with painful clarify and the last thing she saw before she could finally pull herself out of it and force herself to wake up. The beating was so brutal, fist and foot colliding with her broken form over and over until he left her to "run an errand". Laying in her own blood, just trying to catch her breath, she finally got up the courage to call the cops with the last of her coherence before beginning to slip off into oblivion.<br/><br/>And then...he saved her. Vincent had come in and saved her, bringing her to the hospital...<br/><br/>The pain she'd felt that night didn't compare to the pain she'd feel when the realization and knowledge hit that her sister had fallen to the fate she'd avoided that night.<br/><br/>Waking up with a stifled scream, tears staining her face as the rest of her body was covered in sweat, she tried to push the thoughts to the back of her mind. Her body was sore, stiff from sleeping on the floor and from all the tension her body had held while asleep, only then remembering she wasn't at home. The startling reminder she was in someone else's house had her jumping to her feet as the world slowly filtered in.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">That's right...that's right, I'm here...with Vincent...</span>Sheba dutifully at her side, she followed her out of the room, only to stop in the hallway. He said it was her house, to think of it as hers, but even just wandering around by herself, she felt like she was intruding. Forcing herself to keep going, Sofia went down the stairs into the kitchen, looking for coffee and, potentially something stronger to go with it, wanting the memories and dreams to just silence for a while so she could pretend she was leading a normal life.