When they warn you about these cases, they never talk about the fear. They talk about the press that will drag your words through the dirt in front of the whole world. They tell you about the lawyers who will twist your mind into impossibly knotted balls of yarn that you can't begin to unravel. They talk about the whispers that flood your ears and never leave you alone, even in the dark. But never, not once, do they mention the fear. The painstaking terror that pierces your soul when you see him across the court. The face that stalks the peace that you can even manage to get, with a smirk and a wink, calm as an untouched lake of pure moonlight.

I am not allowed to show my fear. They think I am weak enough as it is. The world has deemed my horror story a tale of true love. They all choose to see forced, unrequited touches as soft, caring caresses. They celebrate my attacker. They call him my hero. He claims to have saved me.

I didn't realize I was in need of saving. 

The press has renamed me. Aurora White was a victim. She was ignored by the world. She was laughed at, pointed at, and ridiculed. She seemed delusional. She was forgotten.

They have named the new me Sleeping Beauty. The beautiful princess in the fairytale of our time. The lucky one. The terrified girl, prisoner to a nightmare she will never wake up from. 

An entire lifetime trapped within the cold confines of the orphanage walls. Fifteen years of pure hope, two of bottled anger, and one year of accepting the world does not love those whose name it never got the chance to learn. The first day of his eighteenth year, he got his first choice. The naive took their first free steps out the door. He chose the window. Gone and lost forever. Just another name to be forgotten.