Relief I
Slow morning. Almost not the morning. Nearing noon. The bed was made, but Clara was still in pajamas on the couch, sipping black coffee and answering messages from Jasmine.
“Did you eat breakfast?” Jen asked when she came in for more coffee.
“No,” said Clara, then added, “I’m not hungry.” It was reflexive, and not entirely untrue. She wasn’t hungry. She didn’t need food yet. And she had looked up the word enough times to know that its definition was about need.
But Jen wasn’t interested in semantics or any other argument. “You’re going to have at least one piece of toast, and an egg, and some of the strawberries.”
Clara glared at her hands in her lap instead of at her. She’d gotten away with not eating breakfast yesterday—sometimes, if she’d been good about it for a while, she’d get a day without the nudging. There was no standing rule. Trying to do it two days in a row, however, especially having barely touched dinner the night before, brought command instead of nudging.
“Clear?”
“Crystal,” she muttered, and did as she was told. She threw it up later—for the first time in a long time, and purging had never been her go-to unless she was forced to eat—but she hadn’t been told not to do that.
She made dinner that night, but pushed food around on her plate in a way that had fooled the kids enough for the right amount of years but had, even done far less frequently, only convinced Jen for a few months.
Clara had all but begged Ezri not to tell her—it wasn’t a big problem anymore, she pointed out, not a current danger, just leftover tendencies, little incidents, and it wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t something to lead with.
She’d meant to tell her, really. But Jen was not forthcoming about her past and Clara knew there were pieces she was hiding, and felt a little vindicated in keeping a secret or two of her own, right or not. She let Jen hide what she wanted, but she’d been baffled when she found the food supply in the bedroom closet while she was cleaning. Sealed non perishables, neatly tucked in two nondescript boxes she'd previously overlooked, nothing that would’ve been out of the ordinary in overflow kitchen storage, maybe, but why was it in the bedroom? She hadn’t gone straight to a connection to any of those secrets.
But she could see the defense walls fly up when she asked about it. “Why are there boxes of food in the bedroom closet?”
“Why don’t you tell me about your food issues?” was the counter.
Well, good opportunity if she’d ever heard one. “I was anorexic for a decade. Your turn.”
She kind of didn’t expect an answer, after that. The, “Okay. I just like to know there’s food in the house if something happened. Let’s go back to your turn," was a bit of a non answer, but more than she’d expected. But she was getting an idea of it, anyway, watching the reaction, and knew not to press. A history of a lack of food security and hoarding went hand in hand.
Later, months later, when she got basically the full truth, she’d realized that a lack of food security, in her head, had been a strictly poverty issue. But it hadn’t been that. A bit of a lack of money, but mostly neglect, not a well stocked kitchen, not food able to be cooked by a child, no help…
And, plenty of weekends Jen had been grounded, which meant being locked in her room without food. Escape attempts and hidden supplies were all eventually remediated.
Explaining the whole eighteen year old girl, self destructive personality, dancer, grieving her mother thing seemed practically casual at that point. It would’ve been all but straight up unlikely that she didn’t develop an eating disorder.
And about how as the near misses got too severe, too frequent, too close to—by then, only Jasmine, of the kids, or adopted siblings—realizing there was a big issue, she got her shit together enough—really, she let her now-ex make her get her shit together enough—to go to therapy and take her meds and stop purging and start eating more. It was a slow, painful process, and there were still bad days, bad weeks, but… she’d eventually stopped the therapy and the pills.
To her understanding, Jen had never willingly tried therapy and had entertained medication only briefly and only for sleep, though it wasn’t insomnia that plagued her (if you accepted that some humans woke up at four in the morning of their own free will) as much as the nightmares, and medication only gave them a stronger hold.
Everyone had their problems.
So, pushing food around on her plate.
Jen managed to sigh, “Clara, eat,” without stopping the sentence she’d been in the middle of, which was an impressive skill, but the vague command was less of an influence than the clearly disappointed look. Even then, she managed only two more small bites of food before she couldn’t force herself to continue.
It was a strange night that saw them apart after dinner; Clara cleaned up, did not throw up dinner, and told herself that some practice would be productive, not just calorie burning, and took to copying some dance sequences out of a queue of videos saved on her phone in the empty playroom, which had both ample space and a lack of mirrors—which it was important to practice without now and then, and then she didn’t have to look at herself and keep thinking about it. The focus required was distracting, and it was something she enjoyed; it felt good while she was doing it, but when she was losing concentration, she noticed that the tight feeling in her chest had only wound around itself even tighter while she was distracted.
Agitated, her mind went to another somewhat familiar outlet.
It was impossible to go far in the house without finding something sharp; she picked up the nearest knife, a little flip to open one with a curved blade, already most of the way through the mental justification that if she knew what she was doing and wasn’t intending to go too far, it wasn’t endangerment worth violating their second rule—safety, sometimes with an emphasis on the protective you’re of no use to me dead and sometimes with an emphasis on the sadist’s possessive you are mine alone to hurt, not even your own.
This wasn’t her first choice mode of self destruction; let her starve or let someone else do it. But she wasn't allowed to starve now. She’d self inflicted pain like this only once, and at first it had been under orders and supervision—that part, less atypical now, she could handle it now—but that first time, she'd continued not under orders and supervision, immediately after, and that had ended—shit. Jen had specifically forbidden it then, hadn’t she? If you need that, you'll come to me.
Yes. She had said that.
Slow exhale. Fingers closing around the knife.
She wasn’t fully aware of finding Jen in her office, didn’t think there had been a decision, knelt next to her in a helpless gesture of defeat. Surrender. Kneeling had always felt best to her when she was psychologically helpless to do anything else. She offered the knife on upturned palms, resting in Jen’s lap, and whispered only, “Please.”
Jen didn’t take it from her. “What did I tell you to do this morning?”
Clara bit her lip. “To eat breakfast?”
“And what did you do?”
“I did eat breakfast.” But there was a helpless whine of protest in her voice. She knew what was coming.
“Yes. Bare minimum. And then?”
“And… then I purged it.” Stupid to think Jen wouldn’t notice.
“And what did I say at dinner?”
“To eat. And I did,” she added, same tone.
“Did you?”
“A little.”
“Clara.”
Squirming.
“And then?”
“And… then I tried to burn off calories. I know—I know. I just need… fuck.” Hung her head a little farther. “Please. I know I don’t deserve it.” A whimper. “But… please.” She was at Jen’s mercy here. Pain was an addiction like any other, the rush as easy to control someone with as any other drug of choice. To control her access to pain was to control her. She knew that. She’d understood since day one that Jen’s unique ability to give her the depth and types of pain she needed in the long term was an addicting and key factor of control.
“You’ll eat breakfast and dinner every day for the next week, no purging. I’ve tried not to make any of those demands more than one meal at a time; I know it’s hard; but I can’t have you needing both that and this.” She took the knife from her, finally, held it up. “It’s too much to be good for you. If you ask me again, I’ll say yes, because it’s safer than leaving you alone to do it, but you’ve gotta work with me on the food.”
Clara swallowed, nodded. “And if I don’t? Mistress?” It was not the brat’s make me but the slave’s request for clarification, soft, head lowered, the title on the end.
“Then you’ll be getting back in touch with your psychiatrist, and remaining ‘in touch’ until I see fit. Look at me.” Clara did. “It’s not a punishment. But if you can’t control it for a week at a time when I’m giving you other outlets, I want a professional involved. I won’t even ask you to see a therapist. I know that’d be complicated now. But.” She sighed, stroked Clara’s cheek; Clara tensed when she reached for her, but quickly melted into the touch. Noticed the tears on her cheeks for the first time as Jen brushed them away. “I’ll hold your hand every time if I have to, but you need to eat. Deal?”
“Deal.”
Jen slid one of Clara’s sleeves up. Offered one slow, careful, shallow cut across her arm. Paused, let her feel it, the stinging pain that hit a moment delayed. Another, above it. Pause. Another. Clara’s breathing came ragged, but she felt relief watching the lines appear on her skin. The pain was a sharp point of focus that drew her out of the vague wallowing that had been sucking her back in all day. It felt like the tightness in her chest loosening up and tension winding through her unwinding itself and nausea fading and headache dulling and relief. Feeling just where the knife was. The rest of her body surrendering to that point of focus. Another line. Fixating on the contrast of the red on her skin seemed to almost enhance her teary vision.
“You get one more.”
She nodded; it would be enough.
One more, then. The red dots of blood at the thickest parts of the line all smearing together. A shuddering sigh of relief.
Jen let her enjoy it for a minute, breathe, then said, “Go get some antiseptic wipes and come back.”
Clara did. Jen cleaned up the wounds with a gentle touch. Clara slept with strange ease that night. Breakfast in the morning was not so easy at first. Jen held her hand as promised and offered both a lover’s gentle encouragement and an Owner’s firmer command. “It’s part of your job to take care of my property,” she said, the word carefully chosen. “To make sure that you’re as valuable as possible.”
Why some of the emotional edge seemed to be taken off after that, vague distraction replacing distress, nudging back to the task a reminder but not more, Clara wasn’t sure, but obeying Jen had always been easier than merely taking care of herself, and she liked doing it. It felt nearly subspace inducing to do it now.
Jen smiled at her and shook her head to herself a little. Let it not be said that those hypnotic triggers didn’t have kind uses.