helpless Cate simp

Five weeks. You counted the days every morning. 

You had been carrying a gun everywhere you went for the last five weeks. There was not a single place in which the gun did not accompany you. Even in your own house, it was always by your side, and sneaking it into the drawer of the bedside table before bed had become a part of your routine. 

It hadn’t stopped at the gun. You kept knives as well, though they were much less practical and you had to position them just right or else you felt as if you would unintentionally stab yourself. 

Lilith hadn’t noticed – you didn’t think she had noticed, and this was one of the few comforts you still possessed. 

She had not noticed, either, that you had been having panic attacks every so often, their onset quick and unstoppable. If she was home, you would hide away in the bathroom, you had even resorted to a closet at one point, though that had only made the whole situation worse. 

Anything to keep your pain from her. For in addition to your fear, you were overridden with guilt. 

She had been the one to be strangled.

She had been the one to be attacked in her office. 

She had endured the unfathomable, and yet you were the one packing daggers and hardly making it through each day. 

You still believed that you should have been there, five weeks ago in her office with Stan Carlisle, for you know he would not have walked away with his life. 

Your daggers, your gun, were not for your own protection. Not in entirety. 

Your episodes of unceasing panic were not due to fear of your own unsafety, but that of Lilith, for if an attack had happened once, surely it could happen again, and again you would not be there to stop it. 

On this day, however, you would be present, and it exhilarated you. The previous night, Lilith had taken home the file of one of her patients, studying it a bit, and had not remembered to take it back to work this morning in a rush of being late. 

Little did she know that you had purposely broken the alarm clock in an attempt to keep her home, or that you’d hidden the file underneath the sofa. 

You knew your mental state was worsening. This truth had not escaped you in the slightest. Yet the pull of your quest for safety, and the guilt you felt due to such a pull had roped you in with a force you could not counter. 

You were alone in the shadows of the abyss. 

No one was with you in the maze. 

No one could see through the darkness. Not even Lilith, who you thought could see through the lies of Satan if she looked hard enough. 

Yet it did not matter, for you were almost there, almost to her office, and from there it would all be just right, for you would be there to guard the two of you. 

Finally, after what seemed to be hundreds of hours, you reached the building that held her office. 

You hadn’t expected it to feel so fucking terrifying. 

You had not visited Lilith at work since the day of the attack – fresh in your mind was the memory of her voice on the other end of the call telling you that she had nearly been strangled, that she needed you with her, that you needed to remember to take a gun with you incase you ran into unpleasantries on the way. 

You remembered stepping through the threshold and making your way into the building, all of the fucking stairs leading up to Lilith’s office, the blood staining the walls and pointing you in her direction. 

How petrified you had been, how utterly panic-stricken you were at the prospect of the blood being hers. 

Ripping yourself into the present, you started slowly up the stairs. 

Everything was a threat. The way a secretary had gazed at you when you came in, the way the lights bore down at you like rifles, the silence of the building holding your senses captive as you listened for any sound of danger. 

The trek to her office could not have lasted any longer. 

When you finally made it, however, you did not immediately knock, did not immediately go in. 

You needed a moment to compose yourself. Every sense was on fire. You knew that if you entered in this state she would surely notice, and you knew that if you spent another moment in the hallway you would go into a full episode of panic. 

Part of you wanted to die right there and then, to sink through the floorboards, to simply cease to exist all together. 

You knocked rapidly on the door to her office. 

Lilith shouted that it was open, and with a shaking hand you twisted the handle and entered her office. 

Upon seeing you, her expression lightened, and in her gaze you felt like you had been brought back into the protection of her love. 

Yet even her protection could not save. 

It took you a moment to remember how to speak, and when you did, your voice was raw. “You forgot your file.” 

She eyed you closely for the briefest of seconds. “Well, it’s nice to see you too,” she said airily, taking the file from you. You did not realize it, but Lilith noticed how your hands shook and the way your gaze flitted rapidly all around the room. “Darling, are you alright?” 

You nodded with a smile. 

“Thank you, love, for bringing me this. You’re a lifesaver.” 

You felt like you were going to vomit. 

Everything was all so wrong. 

No one was with you in the darkness, the maze was empty, it was closing in on you, the sea was swallowing you in a storm. 

Lilith’s hand came to rest on your shoulder, and you jumped. “Are you sure you’re feeling well?” 

“I’m fine,” you assured her, “I think I just… I think I just need a second.” you continued into the bathroom that connected to her office. The small space suffocated you, and you were thrown into a deeper sense of panic. All you wanted to do was stop moving, yet to stop moving would be to die. 

Everything was wrong. 

Everything was so, so wrong, and there was nothing you could do to fix it. 

You were alone in the darkness. 

The sea swallowed you in a storm. 

You didn’t like the way your reflection was looking back at you – and you didn’t realize you had smashed the mirror above the sink until it had already happened. 

Lilith shouted after you, yet her words were incomprehensible. 

Tears were streaming down your face, blood seeping from the gash on your hand from the mirror’s glass. 

Before you could comprehend her presence, Lilith was at your side, carefully taking you into her arms. 

You could not stop your sobs, your guilt resurfacing and deepening when you realized that your blood was seeping into her clothes along with your tears, which only caused you to sob even more. 

Yet she continued to hold you – through everything she held you. 

Until the sobs subsided, she held you. Until you realized that you were safe. 

You pulled away from her after a few minutes, using your unharmed hand to take the gun out of your purse and throw it in the sink. You followed suit with the knife strapped to your thigh, the knives in your sleeves, and the knife you had attached to the inside of your jacket. A sizable collection of weapons filled the sink, and Lilith’s curiosity was soon replaced with realization as everything pieced together. 

“You are safe with me. You’re safe here, I promise,” she assured you, moving closer to you. 

“I never feel safe anywhere. I haven’t since…” you trailed off, yet you knew she understood. 

She understood you more thoroughly than anyone ever could. 

“Darling, listen to me – I will never let any harm come to you, not ever. What happened was a rare occurrence, the act of a madman–”

“I’m not worried about myself,” you interrupted. “Every day you leave and I wonder if you’ll come back. I’ll never forget the way you sounded on the phone, Lilith, the blood on the wall when I came in… what the hell happened that night? It came out of nowhere.” 

Lilith was silent for a while before she spoke. 

“There are many things I haven’t told you,” she admitted, noticing how you froze under her touch, “things I’ve hidden from you. I will tell you everything, but as of this moment, I need you to understand that I hold every power over Stan Carlisle. We will never see him again, I promise.” 

You weren’t quite sure how to respond. You knew that Lilith had a way of falling into risky ambitions, and you tried to avoid it as best you could, yet nothing like this had ever happened during your relationship. “You promise to tell me everything?” 

“I promise.” 

And you realized in this moment that you did not carry the world on your shoulders, and that you did not need to. 

You were not alone in the darkness. 

Her danger was protection — her fury was never yours to bear. 

“Why didn’t you come to me?” She asked.

You sighed. “I felt guilty. I still feel guilty. After everything you went through, I shouldn’t be the one that’s stockpiling weapons.”

“Never feel guilty. Never. You have every reason to feel just as you do, and I never want you to think otherwise. I love you more than you will ever know, and I will protect us with all of my strength.” 

“I love you so much.” 

“And… darling, do you realize that you’ve fallen for a psychiatrist?” she asked quietly, her tone laced slightly with humor, as if she herself were not quite sure if the remark had been a joke or not. 

“Yeah, that’s the fucking tricky part, isn’t it?” you grinned. “Why couldn’t you be, I don’t know, a baker or something?” 

“I love you very much, but you will never see me in an apron.” 

“No? Not even for me? It would surely get my thoughts away from weapons and murder…”

“Your thoughts should be on your hand at the moment – let’s go, we’ll get you sewn up.”