Make You Believe [Jerrie]

Chapter 1

A/N: As should be pretty clear from the content of this, I do not own Little Mix, or any other characters in this story that may turn up. To my knowledge, none of this has happened. If it has, they've hidden it very well. As a warning, this may cause problems for anyone with this kind of history, if that applies to you, you should probably not read this. Seriously.

She doesn’t like to think about it. It’s been seven years, after all. She’s grown, matured, healed. As much as she can, really. So she tries not to remember the way her father’s hands skimmed over her skin, touched her, opened her, pinned her down. She desperately tries not to remember the way it felt to have her father in her, terribly painful, like she was being ripped open. Or at least, she tries not to remember it as sex. She tries to define it as abuse, or rape, or just plain bad. But it’s difficult to do so, when the act was a punishment. It’s what is father always told her, whispered menacingly in her ear in a way that still makes her shiver. “You’ve been bad Jade, so naughty. I think daddy will need to punish you. You deserve it, don’t you?” And at first Jade was quiet, would shake her head and whimper. But she learned, learned quickly, that her father wanted a small “Yes, daddy.” so that’s what she gave. She learned a lot during those two years. She learned never to fight, never to struggle. She learned to be passive and submissive. She hated getting hit, hated getting it harder, painfully so. So whatever daddy said, she did.

Two years. It wasn’t a nightly thing, no, she was lucky in that sense. It started off as a monthly occurrence, one that terrified her. Then it steadily increased until it was once a week, sometimes more. Her dad wasn’t even drunk, and that was the worst part. He used to be, sure. The first few times. But then she was sober, and it got worse. Less sloppy, aimed specifically to get her father off in the way he wanted. He taught Jade to give him handjobs, blowjobs. Taught her to lay there and take it, not to cry, not to scream like she did in the beginning. He taught her that sex, fucking, whatever you want to call it, was a bad thing.

And Jade understood that. She understood that if her dad came into her room at night, she hadn’t been perfect. She’d missed a spot while vacuuming, or not gotten good grades in school, or simply spoken wrong. Done something wrong. So she tried her best to be perfect, immaculate, smart, whatever. She tried. But it was never, never enough. Some days she thinks back and comes to a resolution that her father was wrong, her father was looking for small things she could use as an excuse to punish her. But the next day she’s back to being the Jade that hates herself, tries so hard to be perfect, but can’t.

When Karl found out, Jade was a wreck. She’d been so ashamed, always tried her best to hide it because what kind of eleven year old wasn’t able to fight off her dad? Or didn’t have the courage to tell someone? Jade. So the night Karl walked in on them, found their dad pinning Jade to the bed, eyes dark and pants half undone, he’d screamed. And their father flipped, of course. He covered his mouth and threatened to do the same to him. He (Jade’s personal angel, she was and still is convinced) simply threatened to tell their mum, or maybe the police. Their dad moved out the next week, never to be seen again. Her mum was less surprised than she’d expected, but that was probably because she had no idea about the abuse and besides, their marriage had been dwindling anyways.

Jade healed. Karl calmed. Their mum moved on. Everything went back to normal. Ish. Jade still had nightmares, terrible nightmares that had her thrashing and crying out. Karl moved into her room for two months to help her, wake her, cuddle her. Eventually, she stopped flinching when someone touched her, stopped being scared to go to bed, stopped feeling so filthy all the time. She convinced herself that she was fine. She wasn’t. But she pretended.