Sometimes I wonder what my brothers would think if they could see my life right now; if they could see through my eyes, even for moments. This isn't the little Roo they know. Babes called me while I was down on my knees obeying a woman in black lingerie covered with whip marks. I didn't fancy her at all until she emerged from those clothes like a swan.

Instead, I wound up sitting in the bathroom trying to sling my laughable weight as a low-grade Hathian cop at a real precinct in San Antonio where he was arrested for a DUI, his second. Of all of us, Babes is the most like our father and sometimes I feel convulsed with fear for him. He's only 24, the Batman to my Robin, it was always the two of us against the others, but on the phone he sounds scared, younger and I can't get the image out of my head of him at 18 coming into the bathroom with his eyes full of his heart. "I think dad is dead."

I don't really recognize myself now; when I look in the mirror I see a string of circumstances that led me here. I see a snapshot of someone I don't really know with her big, startled eyes and wild fringe of black hair, her mouth slightly too big for her face, her whole being crying use me... love me. Who is that vulnerable girl, it isn't me. It isn't.

Dani took my shirt at the party; I was drunk again, I don't even remember how it happened. But Tony and Molle took me home and I woke up split through dry and my head pounding like a drum. Dani was gloating, she had my shirt, apparently she left me topless on the beach hugging an inflatable bouncy castle. I am not yet sure if she is really my friend or if she just thinks I am too cute to kill and hopes to instead see me broken by others with a few helpful shoves from her devious hands.

I walked to work feeling like someone stuck an axe in the back of my skull and Molle stepped out of the motel with Van and said I had forced her to have sex with me. I couldn't remember a thing but the more I stared at her the more I could taste her in my mouth, smell her sweat salt on my skin. Her eyes were full of mirth, she didn't seem angry, just... amused, little cat trying to get me in trouble with Van.

So we went into a motel room, the three of us, I and my splitting head maybe made it four, but they wanted to punish me. So punish me, everyone does.

I never really wanted Van. Domme isn't my thing, if anything I tend to be the aggressor in bed. Her hard as nails look, her skin covered ankle to neck in black with her white face and severe expressions, not my type. I like them little, meek, soft... I want a girl I can pin down and sink my teeth into. But she emerged from that hard shell like an angel and suddenly all I wanted was her taste in my mouth.

And then the phone rang. Damn you Babes.

When I got home I looked in the mirror, there was that vulnerable girl with a bite mark on her shoulder like a brand, like I'm owned. I traced each healing purple dimple with my fingertips and remembered who put it there, and why. I have work to do. A fine to pay. But I feel emptied, overturned. Sometimes I think I should just go home, but I can't.