Chapter LI

"Cora..." Frannie looked nervously up at her friend. The whole house knew what happened. All the Littles were awake, and none of them were feeling very little anymore. Etta was in shambles, wracked with guilt. But Frannie felt guilty too. The only reason Cora and Frannie emailed about Natalie in the first place was because their situations were so similar...

"I'm so sorry this happened..."

"I can't talk about it right now, Francine. I... don't know if I'll ever be able to talk about it. This is probably it, this was everything we had to put into this. I can't go through losing another little again, not after this."

Cora wiped under her eye with the back of her thumb and went into the playroom for the teddy she'd bought. She picked her out special… so much work down the drain, so many dreams just... shattered. Broken. She couldn't blame Etta, though... because it wasn't Etta who did this - it was her. Her husband warned about this, about pushing too far, about rocking the boat. But that advice was, to be honest, reductive at best. "I gotta go, she's waiting by the car. Hopefully."

The car ride home was awful. Silent. Agonizing. I didn't know what to say that hadn't already been said. I didn't know where I was angry or where I was sad. It felt like my whole life was a combination of both. And when we got back - after almost an hour's drive - I went inside without a word and went straight to my room. And when I was alone? I cried. It was worse than any breakup...

Cora was trapped. She couldn't leave, for the fear that she'd be abandoning hope. She couldn't stay, because her house felt like the scene of a crime. So she took to the wine cellar and she selected a bottle of thirteen thousand dollar red, and she sat on the sofa in the living room that she'd only recently committed to rearranging for a girl she'd come to love. A girl who would very soon be gone. She wanted to destroy something, but what was the point when everything she created was just a form of destruction anyway? Her husband would find out soon. Sam probably already knew. It was over. Fuck.

* * * * *

"Natalie...?"

It was Sam. The only person who dared knock on my door anymore. I'd stripped myself of the diaper and wore nothing but a plain t-shirt and shorts I found in my bottom drawer. Leftovers of a previous life. I didn't know what to do. What to tell her. She was right all along, wasn't she? It was just a trick...

"What's going on, are you alright? Mrs. Gladstone said you two would be gone all night, and you're... well, you're dressed like you used to be?" Obviously, something had happened, right? Sam wasn't dumb.

"Go away," I muttered. But if anything, that was indication for Sam not to go away. She closed the door behind her and sat down on the edge of my bed. Even from there, she could tell I'd been crying. Tears stained my pillowcases. No point hiding it...

"You were right... this whole thing was just a setup... to make me a little girl. The job. The bedwetting. Everything..." To some degree, I already knew that. Cora had told me. Or she'd eluded to it, at least. But I didn't know it went so deep. I didn't know she had sabotaged me...

"Um. Yeah. I know." Sam didn't know how much was actually going on, but again: she wasn't an idiot. "When your best friend starts acting like a completely different person, you kinda start to figure some crap out." Which was a nice way of saying 'I told you so'. But that's not quite all that Sam said.

"For a while I wanted to just wake you up in the middle of the night and have us leave and just... figure all the money stuff out after. I saved every penny I ever made here, just to do that." She laughed once, and sighed. "But...." Sam didn't agree with her best friend being fucked with, that wasn't it, but it was hard to deny how fucking happy she was nowadays. How safe and secure and serene. Ignorance was bliss, right?

"Don't say 'but' like there's a good reason to do that! You don't even know half of it, Sam!" I sat up in annoyance and balled my hands at my sides. Before I started to talk, tears filled my eyes. "I was spanked every single morning by my boss! Because of a purchase order I didn't even screw up! It was basically abuse! And I was so scared of it that I started to wear padded underwear! I was so scared to leave my office that I pissed myself in my chair! I was so scared to stand up for myself with Cora that I let her buy me diapers and training pants, and..." I could hardly speak around my sobs.

"She promised Sam! She said she would never do anything to hurt me, but all that hurt so much! She promised!" And that's what this was really about. I knew she'd orchestrated my downfall - I wasn't an idiot. But I never thought she would hurt me... not intentionally.

"Jesus..." Sam had some ideas, she knew that none of this was above board, but to hear it all laid out that way was just... well, it was easy to just say 'fuck it, lets go, lets leave and never come back'. And her best friend looked at her like that's what was going to happen, too, like she expected Samantha the Fucking Firecracker to set off a chain reaction and burn this whole place down. But Sam was quiet. She was quiet long enough for her best friend to stop waiting for her to reply, to put her head back down and start crying again. And when she spoke, it was soft.

"I dunno... Nat... she doesn't deserve you. Not after what she did, you're not a prize to be manipulated and won, she shouldn't.... she should hurt for the rest of her god damn life. So how do I reconcile that with the fact that I've seen you happy for the first ever? Not... acting out for attention. Not leaving a hundred things unfinished, not failing at relationships, not sabotaging your own life. How..." Sam rubbed tears from her eyes with the backs of her hands.

"How do I tell my best friend that the thing that's finally made her happy after all this fucking time is also the woman she should never ever ever talk to again? How does that work? How does those things coexist..."

"I dunno," I muttered, pushing my face into my pillow. I'd been running through the exact same scenario for hours. What was I supposed to do? I didn't blame Cora. Not really. She was scared and she did what she had to. I knew what that was like. To be scared. To do what you have to do to be happy.

I'd figured a lot of it out on my own. The bedwetting was Cora's fault. The safe feelings. Maybe even my job. I was only offered the role because Cora wanted a Little, right? And I was okay with that. But all the fear she caused me... how could the Cora I knew, the one that would sacrifice everything to make me happy, coexist with the one who had caused me to suffer?

"I don't think she ever wanted to hurt you, I truly believe that." Sam said, sighing, before she cuddled up behind Natalie and put her arm over her. "If she was unhinged, if she was... malicious, evil, bad... she could really have hurt us. And she's given us everything, I... I don't think she's a bad person. Rich people just... see things differently to normal people. Maybe she thought she was helping, I don't fucking know. I'm just... gutted that your happiness is gone, Nat. I've known you forever... and she brought out a you that I hated, at first. Until I realize it's what you could be if you were unburdened, able to be you. And I didn't hate you, I hated that it took that long for you to get to be happy."

"Thanks Sam," I said with a sigh. I put my forehead against hers and closed my eyes. "Maybe I just need to sleep on it..."