Surviving
By Woman of Letters
A/N Tag to Season 3 Episode 16: No Rest for the Wicked. Several chapters of this story contain dialogue from that episode. Warning: Triggers for depression; suicidal tendencies in this story.
Can't leave you guys with no hope whatsoever... This is the light at the end of the tunnel. :)
Chapter 4: Therapy
"Miss Fremont, you came to me because you said you couldn't take it any more, that you needed to be free of your guilt."
"I know," she admits, because she did. Yesterday, when the memories of that party, long-ago but still alive in her, welled up in her head in the middle of class, she seriously considered slitting her own wrists. Desperate, she ran out of class, ran all the way home. Snuck her mom's phone book out of her purse, finding the number of the therapist she'd been to when she was much younger, right after the whole thing happened.
It had seemed like the answer. But now she feels it's a waste of time. How the hell can she talk about this? The guy will lock her up. He'll think she's crazy. Sometimes she thinks she's crazy herself. It had been Lilith who murdered her family. Lilith...using her body. So technically, she was the murderer.
Of course they'd never told the whole story. Her parents put together a feeble lie, but they swore up and down it was true. A vagrant had broken into their house, holding the family hostage. Killed her grandparents and her baby brother. Finally, her parents were able to overpower the vagrant and call the police, but the vagrant got away.
If only her guilt would go away as easily as their mythical vagrant.
"It's just...I keep dreaming about them."
"Your grandparents and your brother?"
"Yes."
"How long have you been having these dreams?"
"Ten years."
"Since it happened."
"Yes."
Dr. Django looked at his case notes. "I remember talking to you about those dreams when you were younger. You claimed they were getting better, that by the end of the six months of therapy, you weren't having them any more."
For a long moment, she almost makes some excuse, gets up and says this was a mistake. But then, nothing else has helped.
"I lied," she admits, pointedly not looking at the doctor's face. She blushes a little, but then, why should she care what he thinks of her?
"I thought so," he sighs. He waits expectantly.
What does he want me to say?
"So why now?" he asks.
"It's just...it's getting harder to push it off." She looks down at the floor. Don't tell him you want to kill yourself.
"Do you blame yourself?"
"What do you think?"
"But why?"
She looks up at him. "I've never told anyone this before."
He just waits.
"She killed them for me."
It's the first time she's ever said this out loud. Not even her parents know. They don't know that Lilith picked targets based on her own emotions, that if she hadn't been annoyed with her brother, whom they'd nicknamed Freckles because of the spattering of freckles across his cheeks, then maybe he wouldn't be dead.
That's what Lilith kept telling her.
And it's a relief to say it. To share it. Even though the doctor probably won't understand.
But maybe...it's a beginning.
Maybe.
