Lean on me when you're not strong, and I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on

Rose wasn’t good at the whole “comfort” thing. She was more used to being comforted than extending a kind hand to others. That wasn’t to say she lacked empathy, she just lacked experience and skill. For Rose, she tended to prefer talking about lighter subjects.

Helping someone heal after a violation like this was difficult.

But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

“Dawn,” she said softly, placing her hand over the other girl’s. “I think you know what we need to do right now, don’t you?”

Dawn winced. She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes, sniffled, and nodded.

“…Yeah,” she admitted with a begrudging nod. “Yeah, I do.”

Her ears drooped and her tail brushed against the ground. Really, there was only one thing that they could do in a situation like this.

Dawn had to face her issues head-on, and talk to Dani.

She rose from her seat and summoned her courage.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve been violated by my transformations,” she said firmly. “It happened before, when Dakota grabbed my tail, all the way back in the first challenge. I was stricken with orgasms against my will. And I’ve been in situations like that since then, too. If I can make it through that, then I can make it through this.”

Rose felt that now was not the right moment to bring up how hilarious she’d found that stunt of Dakota’s at the time.

It was clear that Dawn was trying to put on a brave face. Regardless of what she said, this situation wasn’t the same as the ones she’d went through before. She’d had sex with Dani, in a body she couldn’t control. And while they hadn’t used strap-ons or done any major penetration or anything like that (it had mostly just been rubbing and finger stuff) it still felt violating.

Right now, though, Dawn had to be very strong. Very strong, and very brave.

She could do that. She could move past that moment for the people she cared about.

“I’m right here with you, Dawn!” Rose said, giving her a thumbs up. “Just think of me as your personal cheerleader and tell me what I need to do to help!”

Dawn smiled a little at that. It was nice to have some support, even if it was Rose.

Still…

“You don’t have to go that far for me,” Dawn said, shaking her head. “I helped you because I thought it was the right thing to do, for both you and Holly. You don’t owe me anything.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Come on, I’m not helping you out because of that! If I considered myself indebted to everyone who helped me in the past, then I’d just be like some indentured servant or something! Just forget about all that stuff!”

Dawn raised her eyebrow. “…Oh. Well. How… convenient for you, then.”

“Yup!” Rose smiled without a hint of self-awareness and Dawn rolled her eyes.

“Then why are you helping me?” Dawn asked curiously. “You don’t even know what really happened between us.”

“Because you’re my friend,” Rose said so bluntly that Dawn nearly fell out of her chair.

“Uh… what?”

“Friend. You know, chum? Pal? Buddy?” Rose shrugged. “We’re friends, aren’t we? And friends help each other out!”

Dawn didn’t know what to say.

Her first instinct, though, was to regard Rose’s words with suspicion.

“…You’re just saying that because you want to reap the benefits of friendship from me, don’t you?” Dawn asked, narrowing her eyes.

Rose’s jaw dropped. “I would never-!” She gasped, shaking her head. “Can you really not imagine me doing anything purely out of the goodness of my heart?”

Dawn stared at her.

“…Look, Rose, it’s not about me not trusting you-”

“There was a pause! You paused just now! I totally felt that awkward pause for a moment you lying cat!” Rose exclaimed, puffing up her cheeks.

“…I was kidding. It’s just… really? Friend?”

Dawn looked down. “I just thought, well… that you’d be wanting something from me, I guess.”

Rose sighed and rolled her eyes. “Come on, really Dawn? Even now? Even after all the progress I’ve made? What’s it gonna take to show you I’ve changed, huh? That I’m not working an angle? Because frankly, this doubt of yours feels a little… Dawn?”

Rose noticed that Dawn had started to shake again.

“Friends… we… we’re really… friends?” She asked quietly. Rose saw tears dotting the cat girl’s eyes as she looked up at her. “You’re really not trying to get something out of me?”

Rose gasped. “Oh, Dawn…!”

Dawn wiped frantically at her eyes, trying to beat the tears to the punch before she started crying. But it was a losing battle.

“Sorry, I just… I’ve always… I’m not good with friends,” she said softly, sniffling. “I always wanted friends, but whenever I made them… I just…”

She let out a choked sigh.

“…People don’t like feeling stupid,” Dawn said sadly. “And I’ve got a pretty nasty habit of always being the smartest person in the room. Believe it or not, that behavior doesn’t exactly lead to positive relationships forming.”

Rose could believe it.

“Eh, I mean, I know I’m not going to win a million bucks on jeopardy or anything like that,” Rose shrugged. She was very well aware of the limits of her intelligence. “But even I’m smart enough to tell I’m not exactly beloved either.”

She offered Dawn a well-meaning smile. “I’ve got a bad habit of rubbing people the wrong way, too. But I still do the best I can. And Dawn… I think you’re just swell! And I’m not the only one. I’m sure the other girls think of you as their friend too. Like Morgana, right?”

Dawn nodded. Morgana probably did think of her as her friend…

“And Mary invited you to her bachelorette party, right?” The blonde pointed out. “Didn’t you have fun there?”

“…I fell asleep like almost immediately though, after I got super drunk,” Dawn pointed out. She didn’t even LIKE drinking. But she still did it because she felt that if she was drunk, she wouldn’t ruin anybody’s mood.

“Still, you were invited. And I don’t think anyone thought less of you or anything like that,” Rose assured her. “And like I said, Morgana certainly thinks of you as a friend, and I do, too. And Mary, well, Mary’s as sweet as tuxedo cake,” she said, cracking a smile. “I bet she thinks of you as a friend, too.”

The smile slid off of Dawn’s face as she remembered what happened to Mary. Suddenly, the thought of confronting the people that her other self had hurt seemed a lot more daunting.

“Hey… Dawn…”

“You know, it’s odd,” Dawn said, shaking her head and sighing. “I always thought that I was cool and brave and not afraid of anything. But you know… Morgana had the courage to come down for breakfast today. Even after all the bad stuff her other self did, even after giving us all bad dreams… she was still able to face her fears. Morgana. A week ago, that girl would have locked herself in her room and never come out again. And now she’s even braver than I am.”

“Well, in Morgana’s case, she’s made everybody mad so many times at this point, she’s probably used to it by now,” Rose said, trying to crack a joke. It went over like a lead balloon.

Dawn just sighed again.

“…I’ve gotta do it, though,” she said. “I’ve gotta go to Dani and see if there’s anything I can say to make this right.”

“If you need moral support, I’m right there with you!” Rose said, offering Dawn a thumbs up. But the cat girl shook her head.

“Thanks. But this is something personal. Something private. I… I need to do it on my own,” she replied, rising to her feet. “…But thank you.”

Dawn turned and walked out of the Banquet Hall, her tail swishing behind her. In spite of her short stature, Rose thought she looked incredibly tall.

If anyone wanted to find Dani in the early morning, the best place to check was the gym. And lo and behold, that’s where Dawn found her, drenched in sweat and pumping iron. It was an impressive sight to behold, a girl who looked as soft and fluffy as cotton candy lifting what could have been four times Dawn’s body weight.

It also didn’t make her feel any more confident about confronting the other girl with the truth, that was for sure.

She waited until Dani finished lifting weights, feeling the fur on her tail bristle with fear. But she knew Dani. Sure, the tomboy would probably be mad, but there was no way she’d actually hurt Dawn, right? They’d been through too much together!

And yet, Dawn kept getting flashbacks to the second challenge, when Dani overpowered her and stole her card just to get ahead.

They weren’t exactly besties.

Dani sat up and wiped her face off with a towel. Then she looked up and saw Dawn, and her eyes widened like saucers.

“Dawn!” She gasped.

Dawn froze, her tail sticking out behind her like a straight line. She started to tremble and her voice cracked in her throat.

“D-Dani,” she said weakly, taking a step back out of reflex as the other woman got off the bench. But she fought off her instinct to run.

After all, Dawn was all of five foot nothing and Dani had super strength. It wasn’t like she could actually get away.

Dani must have sensed Dawn’s worries because she approached with her hands up, to show she wasn’t planning anything. “Hey, it’s okay,” she said softly, taking a few cautious steps forward. “I’m not mad. I just want to talk.”

Dawn relaxed a hair. But just a hair. She didn’t know if she had the reflexes of a cat, but she sure felt on edge like her cats usually did before their shots.

“We, um… we missed you at breakfast,” Dani said lamely. “It was kinda awkward.”

Dawn swallowed, her throat incredibly dry. She could imagine that, alright.

“I-I see…”

“Look, can… can we talk?” Dani was still coming closer. But since she was treating Dawn like a skittish cat, she was moving at an acceptable pace for the other girl’s risk assessment.

“Yeah… talk… we need to talk…” Dawn mumbled, her eyes repeatedly shifting over to the door and back to the tomboy.

“I’m not angry, Dawn,” Dani said gently. “Really, I’m not. I’m actually a little worried about you.”

Dawn’s eyes widened and snapped back to Dani. She hadn’t expected to hear that. “Worried? About me?” Dawn shook her head. That was supposed to be how SHE felt! “But… but I…”

“You didn’t do anything,” Dani said quickly, knowing exactly where Dawn was going to go with this. “You didn’t. So just cut those thoughts out right now, okay? You’re a victim, Dawn. It was your transformation doing all those things, not you.”

“I… I…” Dawn’s voice broke, and she cried for the second time that morning. Or maybe they were the same tears. It was really hard to say at this point. “I’m so sorry… what I did to you, it’s… it wasn’t right, Dani…”

“Hey, what did I just say?” Dani chided her gently. “It was your transformation. I’m the one who should be apologizing. I was under those horny pheromones, but… I still should have been able to control myself. It’s not like this was the first time I was under the influence of aphrodisiacs.”

Ignoring the moment on the beach, Dani’s first “date” with Nick had involved them going to a massage parlor at the spa, where they were lathered up in aphrodisiac lotion and then dropped into a sauna that was pumped with more aphrodisiacs.

“When I was with Nick I was able to control myself just fine,” Dani pointed out. “But I wasn’t able to do that with you. I gave into my impulses when I knew I should have fought them. And that’s not right. It’s sick. You had a whole other personality dropped inside of you. But I don’t have any excuse like that, I just messed up.”

Dawn winced. That was the painful part. Dani’s words hurt, because they were correct. Of the two people involved in that twisted moment, the tomboy had more agency than the cat girl. Dawn had been piloted by someone else. And while that “someone else” had been the aggressor, Dani was at least still herself.

Whether that made it better or worse for Dawn was kind of hard to say. But it certainly made things a lot more complicated.

“…I can still feel your hands on me,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself and shivering. “The places you touched… I remember them feeling amazing… I remember liking it so much. But that… isn’t that twisted?”

Dawn had never had to deal with sexual **** before. But she hadn’t kidded herself. The notion that “I can’t be attacked because nobody would be attracted to a scrawny thing like me” had never once entered her mind- she had a greater chance of being targeted, because people would perceive her as weak and ****.

But she had a good head on her shoulders and avoided getting into positions where something like that could happen. So until the incident with Dani, she didn’t have a good sense of what being a victim like that was actually like, or how horrible it could be, even though she knew that it wasn’t uncommon for a victim to experience arousal or even orgasm when being assaulted.

With this, though…

“It’s so confusing!” Dawn cried, tugging at her hair frantically. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel! All my memories of what happened, they have me loving it! I enjoyed it so much, I wanted more! It didn’t FEEL like I was victimized, but… I know there’s no way that the real me would have consented to something like that, and I just… I-!”

It was the kind of violation that could never have occurred in the real world. Dawn was a victim, and yet she felt nothing but ecstatic bliss whenever she played those memories back in her head.

How aggravating! It felt like she should be offended, but couldn’t find any target (besides the show of course) to direct her outrage!

Dani could only look at her with sympathy.

Then, she offered Dawn her hand.

The cat girl stared at it with wide eyes.

“What… what is that?” She asked, her tail swishing back and forth. “Why are you offering your hand to me?”

“I know what it’s like to be in your position,” Dani said quietly. “To have your transformations overwrite common sense and how you’re supposed to feel. Every night, I have those dreams about Nick. And last night… the nightmare Morgana gave me… where I was the center of an orgy with the three of you, and you were both holding me down while Nick was taking advantage of me… I should have hated it. And I did, I really did. But even now… Nick looking at me, or touching me… those things, things I know that I should hate… I don’t. Because of my transformation.”

Her eyes were watering. She looked at Dawn, who bit her lip in sympathy.

“It’s kind of like that for you, right? You know you shouldn’t be okay with something… you know that the real you would never be okay with it… but because you’re not that person, because the show has changed you so much… you can’t even feel like you were abused.”

Dawn’s eyes widened. That was exactly how she felt!

“I’m sorry,” she croaked out. “For making you go through all that yesterday, Dani. Even if it wasn’t me… even if I couldn’t control myself… it was still my body doing those things…”

She shook like a leaf, while Dani remained motionless.

The tomboy’s first instinct was to pull the smaller girl into her arms and give her a comforting hug, to let her know that it was okay, that there were no hard feelings.

But she couldn’t do that.

She had no idea if her embrace would bring Dawn comfort, or hurt her even more. Not after what had happened.

So Dani just said what was on her mind.

“Morgana came down to breakfast this morning, to apologize. She told us that you didn’t want to come,” Dani said. “And she was filled with regret and remorse, just like you are. Especially for all the nightmares she gave us…”

Dani sighed. “Those weren’t fun, believe me. But you know, none of us were upset with her. We all understood that as bad as yesterday had been, that wasn’t you guys. You were being controlled by those other personalities from the mirror.”

Dawn sniffled, and looked at Dani with amazement. She’d always categorized the tomboy as a rambunctious hothead who looked before she leapt. She never would have imagined that Dani could be this wise, this understanding.

“Dani…” She sniffled, wiping her eyes. “Dani… you’re really not mad at me?”

Dani shook her head. “Nobody is,” she said gently, taking another step forward. Now she could touch the other woman, if Dawn let her. But she didn’t try. “We all just want what’s best for you, Dawn. And… look, I don’t know if this will make you feel any better… heck, it’ll probably make you feel worse. But honestly, I didn’t mind.”

“Huh?” Dawn’s eyes widened and she stared at the other woman.

Dani looked away and blushed.

“It, um… it’s been a long time since I ever got… pleasured. You know, like that. And yeah, it wasn’t what I wanted, but… I’m not exactly feeling violated by it, either. I know that’s not the best thing to say given how you feel, but… I’m really sorry I took advantage of you, too. I knew that it wasn’t you in there, and I just let you pleasure me anyway. Because I was horny and I wanted to get off.”

Dani stared at Dawn, waiting anxiously to hear what the other girl had to say.

“So… if anyone took advantage, it was definitely me. And I’m so sorry, Dawn, I didn’t mean to-”

Dawn leapt forward and hugged Dani tightly. It was rather awkward given that she was the perfect height to bury herself in Dani’s large chest, but at the moment she was just grateful for the cushiony comfort.

“It’s okay,” Dawn said, letting Dani know that she would be fine. She was going to move past this, and hopefully they could be friends. “It’s going to be okay.”