She had thought, for years, that healing would mean the scars fading, the past erasing itself, some future morning when she would wake and not remember.

She understood now that it did not work that way, and that it did not need to.

The marks would not fade, and the ten years would not un-happen, and there would be nights — there were still nights — when a closed door or a certain tone of voice sent her heart racing before her mind could catch up and remind her that she was safe.

That was not failure.

That was simply the shape of having survived something.

What had changed was not the scars but what they were allowed to mean.