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Cathy didn’t understand it.
Of course she knew that everyone coped with trauma differently; she’d done a fair bit of reading into mental health since her reincarnation, mostly prompted by Kat’s evident PTSD that regular counselling had done wonders for. She knew that everyone needed different approaches and different types of support to deal with their pasts.
But Anne didn’t seem to be dealing with it at all. Everything was a joke to it seemed, from what they did on a day to day basis to what she sung about every night. That detail was what worried Cathy the most.
She and Kat had both been dragged through hell and back during their past lives and both of them liked to make light of it at times, but when Kat told her story she took it seriously. She knew that what she’d been put through was wrong. And unlike their first couple of weeks the retelling wasn’t hard for her anymore, she had accepted how wronged she’d been and taken steps to move onwards from it.
Anne, however, never dropped that façade for more than a moment. There was always a split second during her song when the cockiness was replaced by deep rooted fear, and Cathy always made sure that she was looking towards Anne when that happened. The others probably believed it was part of the act, but Cathy could see the haunted look in her eyes as she begged the auditorium to understand her point of view. With how fast she covered her nightly slip up with a new joke Cathy might not have believed anything was wrong, if not for the fact that she saw the same hint of desperation creep into her voice every show. And when dark circles started to appear beneath Anne’s eyes first thing in the morning she was determined to try and help her.
It was only the two of them in the house when Cathy decided it was time for her to take action. They were both in Anne’s attic bedroom, Anne writing at her desk and Cathy sat reading on her bed since her window was jammed shut and it was far too hot in there to concentrate. A comfortable quiet had settled between them as they worked, punctuated only by the occasional page turn and the scratch of pen across paper, before Cathy sat up and asked “Hey, do you mind if I ask you something?”
Anne paused in her writing as she looked over at Cathy, smiling with a shake of her head. “Course not, ask away.”
“Why are you doing this to yourself?”
There was a look of confusion on Anne’s face as she blinked at her for a moment, but Cathy was sure she could see slight wariness there too. “Don’t know what you mean,” she said, the cluelessness sounding more forced than ever.
“I mean this,” Cathy pushed on, gesturing to the full page of notes that Anne had amassed. “Look at what you’re doing. You’re brilliant, but you won’t let anyone else know it. I read your poetry in our old lives and I know you’re still the same person deep down but I can’t understand why you’re hiding it.” Her words were chosen carefully, circling around the real question she wanted to ask for fear that Anne would clam up if she was too direct.
Anne didn’t move for a moment, and Cathy briefly wondered whether she’d already pushed too far. But then she shrugged. “It’s easier,” was all she said dropping her gaze back to her page of prose.
Cathy shook her head. “It’s not,” she argued gently, shifting to sit closer to Anne with her legs hanging off the bed. “You shouldn’t feel like you have to hide part of yourself. No matter what happened before. We’ve got a new start, why not use it to do everything you never got to do then?”
“It is a new start,” Anne agreed, clearly avoiding meeting Cathy’s eyes. “That’s why I’m doing this. I don’t have to think about what happened back then, I tell the story during the show and that’s it. No point wasting time focusing on all that.”
It was closer to the answer Cathy was really searching for, and she gave Anne a minute of quiet as she sorted through her own thoughts. Anne didn’t give her a chance to speak first though, a false smile on her face and hint of laughter in her tone as she looked over and asked “Why’re you bothered anyway?”
“Because I care. And I don’t like to think that you’re bottling things up without telling anyone what you’re feeling.”
The smile dropped from Anne’s face at her words, looking intently at her hands. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not like it matters anymore,” she muttered. “Kat went through worse, you should be worrying about her not silly old me.”
“We can worry about both of you, y’know,” Cathy countered lightly, the corner of her lip turning slightly upwards before she was serious again. “And Kat’s been dealing with everything she went through, she’s learning to accept it and move on,” she said, breaking off to sigh before continuing hesitantly. “Look… please don’t throw me out for this. But I’m worried that you’re just pretending nothing happened to try and make it go away. You’ll never move on if you don’t acknowledge that it happened and you can’t do that if you keep joking about it.”
Anne flinched backwards when Cathy went to take her hand, standing up and taking a few steps away from her across the room. “Can we talk about this another time?” she said, but the attempt at false cheeriness was broken by the dangerous wobble in her voice and how much her hands were trembling. A second passed before she was suddenly doubled over, hands around her neck as her shoulders convulsed with sobs.
Cathy was on her feet in an instant, wrapping her arms around Anne just as her knees buckled and guiding her as gently as possible to the floor. Anne’s hands were clawing desperately at the clasp of her choker but it snapped off before Cathy had a chance to unclip it, fluttering down to reveal the thick white scar that encircled Anne’s neck. Cathy’s stomach dropped like a stone as she saw it uncovered for the first time, though her frozen shock was short lived as Anne continued to scratch at her skin as panicked tears streamed down her cheeks. “Cathy- Cathy my neck-,” she choked out between shallow breaths.
Not entirely sure what to do but knowing she had to do something, Cathy grabbed hold of Anne’s frantic hands and held them tightly in her own to keep her from hurting herself. “It’s not real, you’re safe in the twenty-first century, he can’t hurt you here,” she repeated firmly, squeezing Anne’s trembling hands in the hope that the physical touch would bring her out of her panic even if the words didn’t get through.
Anne’s head jerked in a slight nod. “It hurts so much,” she said in a pained whisper, making Cathy’s heart ache and wish there was more she could do. She was alarmed for a moment when Anne snatched her hands back but she only clutched her throat this time, rocking back and forth until Cathy pulled her into her chest with Anne’s ear over her heart.
She’d comforted Anne’s daughter like that countless moons ago. Now she could only hope that the sound of her heartbeat was enough to bring Anne back to her just like it had always been for Elizabeth.
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” Anne broke the silence after a couple of minutes, sounding less panicked but still utterly distraught.
Knowing that words of logic would fall on deaf ears until she was calmer, Cathy just murmured “I know love,” as she held her tight and let her cry for as long as she needed to. When Anne’s sobs turned into quiet sniffs she murmured “You have nothing to be sorry for. Please don’t ever think that anything was ever your fault.”
Anne hummed quietly at that, dropping her hands from her neck to wrap them around Cathy’s back instead. Other than that she showed no signs of moving from where they were sat in the middle of her carpet, seeming calm at last in Cathy’s arms and listening to her steady heartbeat. “This is why I don’t like thinking about it. Hurts too much,” she said, her voice completely empty.
“I know sweetheart,” Cathy repeated, the term of endearment slipping out before she’d even noticed. “But that’s why I’m here. I’ve got you, always.” A soft murmur of thanks answered her as some of the tension left Anne’s shoulders at last.
She was starting to wonder if Anne was starting to fall asleep as her panicked adrenaline faded, when her head tilted up to meet Cathy’s gaze with red-rimmed eyes. “Do you really think I’m brilliant?” she asked, hesitant as if she was expecting to be pushed away.
Cathy just looked down at her for a moment, at her flushed cheeks and the raw honesty and hope in those beautiful eyes. Then she smiled softly and whispered “Maybe moreso than anyone I’ve met in this life or the last.”
Fresh tears pooled in Anne’s eyes at her answer, seeming suddenly embarrassed as she buried her face in Cathy’s shoulder. There were many things they would have to talk about, but there would be time later for that. For now, Cathy just held her tighter and pressed a gentle kiss to the top of her head.