Will you defeat them
Your demons and all the non-believers
The plans that they have made?
Because one day, I'll leave you
A phantom to lead you in the summer
To join the Black Parade
Her family is in a car accident when she is four years old. It was dark, and raining, like it always seems to be in the Pacific Northwest, and the truck didn't see them.
Her parents die instantly, but she miraculously survives with just some scrapes, and bruises. She doesn't know the meaning of the screams, and the sirens, but she knows something is wrong when her parents are being put into body bags.
Sometimes, she wishes she just died with them.
With no living family, she is sent to live at Haven Harbor Home for Girls, right outside of Seattle, Washington. Twenty minutes from the house she shared with her parents. Though it was called a family care, emotional counseling, and child support center, she was not blind to what it really was; an orphanage.
It was not like the orphanages you see in Annie, and Oliver Twist. The staff isn't evil. The food isn't bad, but she doesn't care for it. The walls are a warm, inviting color that seems false, and even though the lighting is good, the rooms still look dreary under the constant overcast.
She doesn't get along with the other girls her age, who are off in their own cliques, and exclude her from everything. The employees are exasperated with her, and try to get her to fit in. The girls ignore her, and, truth be told, she doesn't want to be friends with them, either. The staff just learns to ignore her, too.
So, she wanders. And wanders. And wanders some more. She's a curious child. Her bed is at the end of a long row, near the window, and she watches the endless rain as she tries to sleep. She doesn't understand why she doesn't fit in with them; she's not too tall, not too short. Not too thin, or chubby. Maybe it's because she doesn't like the same things as them, she thinks. They play with dolls, and color, and she would much rather be reading.
The girls grow up. They get adopted into nice, loving families. But not her.
Never her.
School changes some things, but not all. She likes school. She likes her teachers enough. She doesn't like the other children, however. She spends recess alone. Lunch, alone. The few other girls who haven't been adopted find friends quickly, but she's just viewed as a freak. She ages, like all of the others, and she is viewed as more and more of an outcast.
The days are repetitive, and soon, school becomes tiring. The work is too easy, and they don't move fast enough. She is ignorant to the major gap in intelligence between her and the rest of the class, the rest of the school. Her teachers notice, but they can't do anything – she is already in the most advanced classes, and it's not like she has the money to go to a gifted school.
It all starts off when her teacher finds a piece of paper on her desk – a wrinkled calculus worksheet from the high school that she must have found from one of the older girls at the home. It's on Leibniz's notation. Infinite smallness. It's filled out in her scrawled, yet neat handwriting.
All the answers are right.
She begins to be tested. She doesn't like all of these adults swarming around her all of the time, probing her and asking her questions like she's some sort of alien. They put math problems in front of her; to be more precise, calculus problems. L'Hopital's rule. The Taylor series. All abstract, all complicated. She breezes through them, not seeing the difficulty. She reads at a college level, and she scribbles papers for them, covered in Quantum physic equations, proving Einstein's theories, Newton's laws of gravity.
She's thirteen.
It is finally when her IQ is tested, and she lands on the extreme right hand side of the bell curve, and admitted into MENSA that she gets a letter in the mail from Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women in Roseville, Virginia.
Catherine doesn't like Gallagher Academy, but supposes it's better than Harbor Haven, or Harbor Hell as she affectionately calls it. Her courses are much harder, but she remains at the top of the class, only taking a few months to cover all the things they did the last year.
Still, she doesn't get along with the other girls. They are polite to her, but they are all like sisters, and they look at her like she's an intruder for coming a year late. Her roommate is a girl named Rachel Cameron, who's nice enough, Catherine supposes, but they don't talk. Rachel is popular, and everyone likes her. The opposite of Catherine.
She's good at P&E especially. She even runs laps around her instructor – she supposes it's the fight or flight attitude she's adopted, and she easily out maneuvers all of them, not even breaking a sweat.
When she's not spending time in the library, or studying, she wanders the mansion, finding many secret passages that haven't been used in years while she's there. The place that intrigues her the most, however, is the Gallagher family chapel with the beautiful stained glass window of a castle surrounded by green fields, with a small crest she can't quite place.
Her teacher's are tolerable, and they find her to be a respectful, if not quiet student. They know each of their students by heart, but they never quite know her.
Her summers are dull, and rainy, and she is ostracized even more by the girls she grew up with, but she doesn't care. She's grown up, into a very smart, beautiful teenager, going to a nice school, and she figures they're just jealous. She has more than they have – not much, but still, more.
She doesn't share about her summers with her classmates. They tell tales of going off to foreign countries, and meeting cute boys, while she can't help but thinking they have no idea what it's like to be her.
The girls at Gallagher Academy, her supposed sisters, find it odd that she wears constant long sleeves when she comes back from summer break after their freshman year. Even in P&E. Their uniforms have long sleeves, but most of the girls roll them up, except for her. She tugs on the ends of them occasionally, pulling them farther down.
She begrudgingly attends all of the Saturday 'fun' events at her teachers' insistence. At a late summer bonfire, she sits a little away from everyone else. She's wearing shorts, and a sweatshirt, even though it's in the seventies.
"Just cold." She explains when someone cares to ask her.
It's mid winter, and she's sitting on her bed in her dorm room, now sixteen and a sophomore, reading. Her hood is up on her tight fitting sweatshirt, the sleeves pulled all the way down like always. All the other girls are in another room, having a movie marathon. She respectfully declined their information. She hears laughing from down the hall, and someone padding towards her room.
"Hey, Catherine." Rachel grins as she walks in, wearing a white tank top and long pajama pants, her hair in a ponytail. She looks up from her book briefly, and smiles quickly in recognition. Rachel begins to grab some things; socks, another pillow. "Are you sure you don't want to join us?"
"No, thanks." Catherine says. "I need to study." Rachel knows perfectly well that it's a lie, and that someone as smart as Catherine would never have to study in advance for anything, but she just shrugs.
"Okay. Can you pass me that brush, please?" She looks to her left, seeing the dark purple brush that Rachel left on her night table. She grabs it, and throws it to Rachel, who catches it, but the smile has left her face. As Catherine had thrown the brush to her, her sleeve had inched up just a little.
Rachel crosses the room to her in a few swift strides, and before she can protest, the other girl is yanking her arms forwards, pushing up the sleeves. Rachel's heart begins to beat in her chest rapidly, but she doesn't show her inner panic. She just keeps her eyes on Catherine's pale arms, covered from wrist to elbow joint in long, deep, bright red cuts that haven't healed.
Her green eyes meet her dark ones for a split second, before Catherine lowers hers.
"You should get back to your party." She whispers, and tears her arms away from the other girl. Rachel stands slowly, and leaves the room without another word.
She thinks she's off the hook until she hears Rachel speaking to the other girls down the hall.
"I'm not feeling so well, guys. I think I'm just going to head to bed now, okay? Tell me how the movie is." Rachel says slowly.
"Are you okay? Do you need to go the infirmary?" A girl asks.
"No, I just need some sleep. See you tomorrow." She pads back down the hall to her room, and locks the door behind her before turning to face Catherine, who won't even look at her. She sinks slowly onto the bed next to the redhead, who doesn't say anything.
"I just started in August, a week before I came back." Catherine whispers, feeling the need to explain to Rachel, who's staring at her, waiting for her to continue. "I don't do it all the time. It doesn't concern you." Her voice cracks. "I'm fine."
"It does concern me because we're sisters." Rachel insists. Her voice drops. "Why are you doing this to yourself, Catherine?"
"You wouldn't understand." Her voice is low.
"I would, I know I would." Rachel insists. "Is it for attention, or-"
"You think this is for attention?" Catherine cries, and the only emotion Rachel can see in her dark eyes is fear. "This is the most embarrassing thing I've ever done."
Rachel doesn't say anything, but feels her eyes well up with tears.
"I want to help you." She whispers finally.
"I don't need your help." The other girl bites back.
"Do you even want to stop?"
"Of course I do." Catherine says through her teeth. "You know, that brief three seconds of pleasure you get when the knife digs in to your skin is not worth a lifetime of humiliation." Tears are now streaming down her face, even though she hasn't cried since she was five years old.
Rachel does what she does best; comfort. She leans forward, and wraps the other girl in a hug, smoothing her hair gently. Catherine is tense is her arms, but finally throws herself around the other girl, holding her as tightly as she can.
"I'm going to help you, okay? Everything's going to be okay from now on." Rachel whispers.
"You can't tell anyone, alright? No one can know." Catherine murmurs a reply.
"I promise. We're friends, after all."
"Are we?" The redhead whispers.
"Of course." Rachel laughs sadly. Catherine smiles gently back.
"It's funny."
"What?"
"It's just…I've never had a friend before."
She graduates, the happiest she's ever been. Somehow, Rachel saved her. She becomes good friends with the other girls thanks to her, and quickly, her cutting ends for good. She's inherited her family's money, and is finally free from her past at Harbor Haven, a place she never, ever told Rachel about. She and Rachel become best friends, and after a brief stint at Princeton, she meets up with Rachel again at the CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia to begin their new lives.
On her first day, Rachel meets Matthew Morgan, and Catherine becomes friends with him, as well. She feels awkwardly like the third wheel as she eats lunch with them, Rachel discussing how often her younger sister gets into trouble at school, even though she's only a seventh grader.
On her first mission with the CIA, she goes to Sao Paolo, Brazil. There, she meets her partner – a tall, gorgeous man with dark brown hair and big blue eyes and when she sees him her heart skips a few beats. His name is Brian Goode.
And this encounter changes everything.
He evokes this strange feeling in her stomach that she's never felt before. It comes around whenever he looks at her, smiles, or kisses her.
She quickly realizes it's love.
And she loves him more than she's ever loved anyone in her entire life. He's the one person who knows everything about her, from her parents to the orphanage to the cutting and every dark detail in between, and he's never judged her for it. He makes her feel on top of the world, and she's so glad that she gets to curl up to him every night, and know that he'll always be there.
They marry a few years after they meet, and a year and a half after that, they have a son. Zachary Alexander Goode, who she treasures with all of her heart. He's the most adorable thing she's ever seen, and she and her husband dote on him constantly. Brian goes on a mission to Sarajevo, and never returns.
He dies six months after Zach is born.
"Mommy," Zach meets her eyes from the back seat of the car as they are coming home from his day care. He's four years old, and she still loves him more than the world.
"Yes, honey?" She smiles.
"Where's my daddy?" Her heart stops and shatters in a split second. The truth is, the older he gets, the more he looks like Brian and sometimes she finds it hard to even look at him.
"He's gone, Zach." She whispers, the smile slipping off her face. "And he's never coming back."
Just a few days later, she is approached while on her lunch break by a man she's never seen before.
"Catherine Goode." His smile is oddly fake, and she is annoyed by him from the first words that leave his mouth. "It is a pleasure to finally meet you."
"And you are?
"Dr. Steve Sanders, but everyone just calls me Dr. Steve." He gestures towards a table. "Please, sit." She sinks down into the chair next to him, not terribly thrilled to be there. "Now, do you know why I'm here?" Sadly, she does.
"The Circle of Cavan." She whispers. Right after Zach was born, they offered her a spot with them. She promptly told them to shove off, but for some reason, never told her superiors – she was busy with her newborn son, after all.
"Our offer still stands." His smirk is deadly, and she shivers. The only reason she's still at the CIA, she thinks, is for Brian – but he's dead, after all. Rachel and her have grown apart, with her and Matt moving to Maryland with their daughter, and she doesn't see her anymore.
"Alright." She can't stop the word from flowing from her mouth even if she tried. "Okay." His smirk grows.
"Excellent."
She rises through the ranks quickly, leaving her old world behind and taking her son with her. She becomes more and more powerful, more and more influential, but she absolutely hates that she isn't in control of every decision. And that she doesn't know who is. So, she gathers Dr. Steve, who she regards as a total twit but he is a necessity, and a few others to throw a coup. It's well thought out, and each step is painstakingly planned. The first thing, however, is to identify who they are going to overthrow. So, they need Gilly's list.
She knows it's in Gilly's mansion, which means a lot of trips to Ireland for her and Zach, who begins to know what's going on. He knows what the Circle does, and he's scared. Her son is little more than an accessory now, because every time he looks at her, or speaks, all she can see is Brian, and she feels so guilty that she even joined up in the first place.
Her son eventually leaves, absolutely horrified and disgusted with what his mother has becomes. She doesn't even have a chance to tell him she loves him. He goes to Blackthorne, but the moment he realizes the Circle recruits there, he leaves again. She made sure that Zach never knew that Dr. Steve was involved in anything with the Circle, and she isn't too concerned with him anymore.
It seems like all she's been doing lately is chasing Cammie Morgan, Rachel's daughter, around the globe, and the girl is so stubborn that sometimes she just wants to shove her off a cliff.
But eventually, she gets that list on her own, shares it with her group, and now she's after Samuel Winters. Once you chop the head off the snake, she figures. She's still unsatisfied, though.
She stands knee deep in the snow in the Alps of Italy, a few hundred yards from a dilapidated house where both Cammie and her father were tortured. None of which she was a part of, because to her, torture has always been too cliché.
The snow falls hard, but she doesn't wear a coat. Her arms, face, neck are all bare, and a dangerous dark red color from the cold. She can't move her face, and the wind blows her cold red hair around her with the snow like a blizzard. Snow keeps falling, but she still stares at the ground in front of her – Matthew Morgan's grave. He was a friend of hers, and she can't believe that he had to die for all of this to happen. Part of her whispers that it was only a small price to pay, but she keeps asking herself if it really was. Killing off her friends, torturing teenagers – is that what the Circle was really about? Even more so why she needs to take over, she supposes.
Standing there, she remembers something she's tried to forget. A lullaby her parents used to sing her. She's surprised she can still recall it.
"Lullaby, and goodnight, in the sky stars are bright, round your head, flowers gay, set your slumbers till day." She sings softly to herself. Everything was so much simpler back then, and sometimes she wonders what life would have been like if her parents had never died, if she never went to Harbor Haven, if she never went to Gallagher Academy. She would not be standing in front of her old friend's grave, regretting his death like she is now.
A car pulls up, far away behind her, and she doesn't move. Someone's walking towards her, but she makes no move to leave. Finally, the person from the car falls into place besides her.
"You're going to freeze to death out here." He says, and she shrugs feebly.
"Maybe that's sort of the point." She's waiting for what's left of her conscience to freeze over, so she won't have to feel pain, and guilt, and disappointment every time she does something.
"You're Zach's mom, aren't you?" He asks, and she nods slowly. "Do you know who I am?"
"Preston Winters." She whispers, looking over at him.
"And you know my dad-"
"Yes." Preston nods.
"He told my everything, you know. About him. About the Circle of Cavan. About the whole incident on the roof." Preston sighs, his breath showing up in the air. "He's going to try to kill you, and the rest of your splinter group."
"Wouldn't be the first time someone wanted to kill me." She says drily.
"Are you going to kill him?" Preston whispers.
"I don't know." She says honestly. "I don't know."
"Are you going to kill me?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't kill children." She says, the wind blowing her hair wildly.
"I'm not a child." He says stubbornly. She laughs.
"Yes, you are. Very much so." He nods vaguely, then turns around and leaves. She hears the car engine start, and it drive away.
Silence reigns once more.
It all ends where it began; Greece. The world seems to be crumbling, and the fire is raging around her, smoke staining the dark sky. She's surrounded, but she has the advantage, because she has a gun, and they don't.
"Catherine, put down the gun." Joe Solomon says, and she just rolls her eyes, and points it at him. "Can't you see it's not worth it now?" She shakes her head, refusing to believe the Circle of Cavan is finished, that all her hard work has been destroyed.
She looks at group around her – Cammie Morgan, her son, Zach, who she can't even look at, Cammie's friends, including a blonde one she recognizes from Ireland, Preston Winters, Abby Cameron next to Edward Townsend, Joe Solomon, and her former best friend, Rachel Morgan.
"Catherine…" Rachel takes a step forward tentatively, and her family and friends are yelling at her to stay back. "You're not this person." She struggles for words, and she can't believe she has a gun pointed at her best friend. The harsh wind that makes the fire grow also whirls their hair around them like a storm. As Rachel crosses the space between them carefully, taking cautious steps, Catherine can see the unshed tears in her eyes.
"I don't want to have to hurt you, Rachel." She chokes out slowly, but Rachel keeps walking.
"That place – that's why you hated Gallagher so much, isn't it? It reminded you of Harbor Haven."
"Don't mention that place!" She cries angrily, and Rachel just stares at the woman in front of her sadly.
"Why didn't you ever tell me?" Rachel asks softly. She's right in front of her now, and she knows is she panics for a second her friend will be dead.
"It wasn't important. I didn't want you to feel sorry for me." Catherine whispers, shaking her head.
"This isn't you, Catherine." Rachel says, taking another step towards her, her fingers ghosting over the thin, white scars that have never quite faded on her arms. "This isn't you."
Her knees feel weak; her eyes are filling with tears, and it's this same loss of control that had her cutting in the first place.
The gun falls out of her hands, and Rachel gathers her in her arms, closing her eyes.
"It's okay." Rachel whispers to the trembling girl in her arms.
"I'm sorry." She sobs softly. "I'm so sorry. This never should have happened."
"I know, I know." Rachel holds her out in front of her.
"I've ruined everything." She says slowly, shaking her head.
"No, you haven't." The other girl says, smoothing the hair of her friend. Footsteps sound behind them, and they turn to see Zach walking towards them. He's covered with dried blood, and dirt, but he just stares at his mother. Her heart breaks, and she takes a tentative step towards him. He's a few inches taller than her now, and she looks up at him.
"Zach…" Her voice is low, and he just stares at her sternly, but she hugs him tightly anyway, the tears staining his shirt. "I'm sorry for everything. You don't deserve it."
He slowly hugs her back, in awe that this moment is happening.
"I'm so glad you didn't turn out like I did." She says, looking up at him. She fixes his hair gently, and places her hands on his shoulder before telling him something she should have told him a long time ago. She smiles as she says,
"Your father would be so proud of you."
Do or die, you'll never make me
Because the world will never take my heart
Though you try, you'll never break me
We want it all, we wanna play this part
- 'Welcome to the Black Parade' by My Chemical Romance