A/N: This is Serena's step towards a life she considers adequate, and though her problems are far from over, she is starting to see a little bit of sense here. Thanks as always to everyone who has read and reviewed so far :)

Sarah x

"We need to talk," Serena heard her husband announce.

She had been sitting on the bed for the entire quarter of an hour he had spent in the shower. Anya was long asleep by now; it was after ten o'clock at night. In silence she looked up at him, seeing him trying to break through her walls again. She wanted to drop all her defences as he stood before her, pulling his t-shirt over his head. She wanted to just run to him, to spill to him everything she had ever felt, and show the scars of every blow she had ever taken, but it was so much more difficult than she had ever imagined.

There were so many things she was too terrified to tell him.

"Do we?" she sighed. "I thought we talked earlier."

"We need to talk some more," he amended. Serena felt Henrik's eyes boring into hers relentlessly, and the intensity frightened her to death.

She felt tears building up in her eyes and her throat, tension cracking her chest open. "Please don't do this," she whispered. "Please." He sat down next to her and took her left arm into his hand, pushing up the sleeve carefully. She immediately looked away from what he revealed; he didn't seem to understand how he was making her feel.

She felt his fingers trace the scars, and it was all she could do not to recoil from him. "I had a suicidal mother," he told her quietly. "Now I have a suicidal wife. I'm starting to wonder if there's something wrong with me." She turned her head back around to stare at him. How could he possibly think that they way her mind was working was his fault? It was nothing that he had ever done that had put her like this. He had done nothing but love her even when she earned his condemnation.

"Don't you dare think that," she said. "You didn't do this. I did this." His expression was one of confusion and pain, and it dawned on her that her pain hurt him as well. "And I am so sorry, for everything."

He stared at her for a moment before he asked her the dreaded question. "Why? Why did you really do all those things? I know it's because of what Adam Cross did, but there's more to it," he said. "I can see it in your eyes."

"You call me 'beautiful,'" she explained gently. "But all I see is ugliness and weakness. I see everything I've done wrong and every horrible emotion I've ever felt," she confessed. She looked straight into his eyes, finding that doing so was having the opposite effect to what she had been expecting: it made it easier to say. "I can't see anything redeeming about myself, because everything I see means I'm barely human. He did that to me, Henrik. He made me feel like I'm worthless and useless. I can't think of myself any other way anymore."

She could feel his stare making her and breaking her, her heart sinking as she realised she shouldn't have told him. The chances were that he always knew she was barely human, and she had just reminded him. But if he had always known what she was, why was he still here? What drew him to her after all these years of watching her quietly kill herself?

"You're my wife, Serena," he reminded her quietly. "To me, you will always be beautiful." She smiled slightly when his fingers traced her jaw and she heard the truth in his voice. "But I can't understand you at times. You run and hide until you've cornered yourself. Can't you see that? Can't you see that you do this to yourself because you don't speak to me?" he demanded of her gently. "I can't understand what you don't let me know even exists."

She put her hand in his and linked their fingers together, squeezing his hand tightly. It was a comfort she didn't want to admit she needed; her head fell onto his arm, and he wrapped that arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. Was this progress? Was the fact she sat here, still in his life by choice, progress? Could she stop breaking her own heart now, or was she doomed to live the rest of her days with the same poison in her mind?

She turned her head and looked into his eyes, reminding herself that, if she achieved nothing else in her life, she had managed to show a cold, broken man how to love and how to be loved. She couldn't discount that, because she knew he had made as much of a mess of a life as she had, even if he didn't let it slowly destroy him. Somehow she had brought some kind of happiness to his previously frozen heart; it was just unfortunate that it had taken rape and assault to bring them together.

In the months between that attack and Anya's birth, she couldn't remember much. It had been a haze as she had learned to cope and survive, and Henrik had been quietly by her side, giving her a reality check when she needed it. Three months pregnant and panicking because of her bump revealing itself, she remembered snapping at Henrik on Keller, only for him to follow her to AAU and apologise to her, even though he hadn't really done anything wrong.

She could remember the shock of him allowing her to kiss him in front of the entirety of AAU, and his arms tight around her as he had cautiously kissed her back. She had looked down and her heart was gone – he had it. That moment, when he had put her above his own pride, privacy and security, was when he had stolen her heart, and she had given it to him.

Of all the moments between them, that was the one she could remember falling for the man she married. She didn't know why – to most it probably would not have taken much significance from it – but that was what she recalled from years ago.

The day she married him, she made the same vows as he did.

Love. Protection. Understanding. Honour. Truth.

With the sting of guilt she realised that she had not upheld that last one in the past couple of years; she had fell down the slippery slope and lied about it. She hadn't told him the truth when she had started to feel the sadness of her heartbreak setting in, and maybe if she had, she wouldn't have been sitting here with all these thoughts in her head. He was right. She should have told him when she first felt so awful, when the first of these wide, deep cracks had appeared. How could he know when she had never actually explained everything to him?

"It's like I'm drowning," she murmured to him softly. "And I can't feel anything but the pressure of the water and the pain of hitting the rocks. And I can't for the life of me figure out how to get to the surface," she explained to him. She was finally telling him the truth about her fear and pain, how the world around her was muffled as she was blinded to all the beauty that surrounded her.

Henrik looked down on her. "Maybe you don't have to get to the surface." She sat up straighter and gazed into his face for an explanation for his idea. "Be a mermaid." She raised an eyebrow at him and she couldn't help but smile at the glint that had returned to his eyes. "Just keep swimming." He smirked and she let out a laugh, even though she was still feeling the pain in her heart.

He hugged her close and kissed her hair; she felt closer to him, in every sense, than she had done for quite some time. She was starting to let out her dark side in the hope he spoke the truth and would love her regardless of her demons.

She looked up at him and repeated, "Just keep swimming." He smiled and kissed her, his hand caught up in her hair. "I think," she began, "that if you go with me, I might just be able to manage that. It won't be easy, but I'll live." It had to be the first truly positive thing she had come out with in months and months. "I can live," she realised. That had been her biggest fear – that she would not live, only survive. A life where she just survived was not a life at all. It was an existence she had endured for too long, and it left her with two options: end her existence or let those who loved her actually get near her for once so they could show her how to live again.

"Yes, you can," he agreed. "You can live."

"We can live," she added. Upon the realisation, she couldn't stop her smile breaking across her face. She was exhausted and wounded still, but she had somehow found her light when she remembered the moment she had fallen in love with her husband. She had found her light when she remembered the vows she made on her wedding day and made an effort to uphold them. Her light was her husband. Her daughters. Her stepson. Her friends. Why had she never tried before, even for them?

She felt his lips crash into hers, and he said, "I love you, Serena Hanssen, but if you ever do this to me again, I will kick your arse until you see what you're doing to yourself."

"I love you," she replied. Her eyes locked onto his, and she saw now everything she couldn't before. She saw that all this time, her silent self-loathing had an effect on him. It hurt him; he loved her enough for it to hurt when she was in pain. "I'll never stop loving you."

His hand fell onto her shoulder, her blouse slipping slightly, and he kissed her yet again, but this time slower and with more purpose. He natural instinct was to put her arms around him and pull him in, falling back to lie on the bed. The kisses her left on her throat loosened the paralysis the pressure of the ocean put her in, and she could feel the heat of his body against hers. For once she was completely away from the brink of madness and suicide, Henrik the one to keep a tight hold on her for her own protection.

She moaned slightly as his hands drifted under her shirt against the skin of her abdomen, resting for a moment on her waist. He trailed his fingers over her chest and pressed his hand flat against her heart; she moved her own hand until it found his and they were both pressing gently against her heart. "I'm alive, Henrik," she promised him. "I'm alive."

His smile said it all as she unbuttoned his shirt and let her hand fall against his heart, feeling it beat against her palm. Their hearts beat in time once more, and it was almost a relief to find they were still the same people they were before their world had started to fall apart.

She was still Serena. Henrik was still Henrik. Anya was still Anya. Eleanor was still Eleanor. Edward was still Edward. Fredrik was still Fredrik. Jac was still Jac. Jonny was still Jonny. Flora was still Flora.

It was only now that she understood that her foundations were still what they had always been. It was only the structure she had built a bit wonky and weak in places, but Henrik was able to strengthen what she impaired, at least until it was relatively safe for her.

He smiled and fell into her kiss as her confidence began to grow and her doubts crawled back into the depths of her mind, still there but not in front of her to provide the obstacle she could never dodge. At least not on her own.

Hope this is OK!
Please feel free to drop me a review and tell me what you think!
Sarah x