You didn't think it was going to be this hard.

Her door is ajar, and you can hear sounds coming from inside. She's definitely in there. The urge to hide in your own room rises in your gut, and the guilt that follows feels like a sucker punch. So you stand there awkwardly, trying not to double over with the imaginary pain.

Sure, watching someone jump off of a building not just once, but twice, would have fucked anybody up pretty seriously. But you figured the real outcome would have smothered those- what would you even call them…alternate timelines? Erased them from your head like they were erased from existence because she's alive. That the simple – yet insanely powerful – act of Kate stepping away from that edge and grabbing your hand would be enough to overwrite the feel of your stomach dropping into your toes as you watched her fall towards the cold, hard concrete. The sickening crack as one of Newton's Laws – you don't really give a fuck which one it is, that's Warren's thing – snuffed her out without mercy. The taste of the blood in your nose mixing with the bile in the back of your throat as you desperately try to rewind, but your head is pounding and you're too dizzy and then the gasps come again as Kate tips forward-

"Hi Max," A gentle, unsure greeting. Almost a question with the slight upward inflection. You grimace, shoving as many of the intrusive thoughts as you can into the place in your mind where you keep everything that's wrong. Where Nathan kills Chloe and the lighthouse crashes into the sea and a tornado wipes out the entire fucking town.

"Oh…I'm sorry. I thought- I'll just leave you alone." She turns, about to slip through the crack between her door and its frame.

Shit.

You take two long strides and catch her wrist. She spins around to face you, tears already pooling in her eyes.

"Kate, no. I'm- don't go," you stutter lamely, quickly releasing her wrist when she glances at it. "Sorry." You step out of her space, fiddling with the strap of your camera bag. "I was just thinking about…" you falter, almost being honest. Almost telling her you saw her die. Twice. "About homework," you finish, unconvincingly.

Kate nods once, brushing at her eyes, clearly not believing you. She knows what you were thinking about. It's all anybody is thinking about when they look at her.

You hate lying to her.

So you don't. "That's bullshit, I'm sorry Kate. I was thinking about you."

"I know you were," she responds, quietly. "Everyone is." She gives you a watery smile. "Guess I'm just destined to be the centre of attention here, huh?"

You can't help but smile back. "I bet Victoria's spewing about the fact that you're more popular than her right now." That earns you a soft giggle, and your heart skips a beat. You haven't heart her express any kind of happiness in over a month, and it makes you strangely proud that you managed to find some in her on her first day back at Blackwell.

A slightly uncomfortable silence creeps between the two of you, and you feel yourself panicking, not wanting anything to stifle this fragile little link you've just created with the girl who's made a dangerous habit of hiding all her pain.

"I like ginger tea," you blurt out, mentally smacking yourself before the words have even registered with her. She blinks, brow furrowed, drawing a breath to respond, but you get there first. "Uh, what I meant was that I like to get ginger tea after class sometimes. At this place down the road. It's pretty comfy and no one will bother us there."

You realise you're assuming she has nothing else to do than get a stupid cup of tea with you. Or that she even wants to be around you. Christ, every single time she looks at you probably reminds her of the worst day of her life. "Oh man," you sigh, looking down at your shoes. "I am just fucking this up so hard, I'm sorry."

A soft hand on your bicep makes you aware of the fact that you've been picking a hole in the worn grey fabric of your sleeve. "You're not," she assures you. "Max…" she hesitates. The way she says your name with that sweet voice makes you want to cry a little. "You're not fucking anything up."

Your eyes snap to hers, surprised. You've never heard the girl say a single curse word. "Sorry," she says, blushing. "I just wanted to know what it felt like. To say that, I mean." You chuckle and the corners of her mouth turn up a little.

"How'd it feel?" you ask, half-teasing. "Do you think they'll kick you out of church for it?"

The budding smile disappears from her face. "Ah fuck," you mumble. "Kate-"

"I tried to end my life, Max," she says, voice wavering. "I'll be lucky if they don't chase me down with pitchforks." She pulls her hand away from your sleeve and wipes at her cheeks, and you realise then she's really crying. "You're the only person in this entire town who thinks of me as more than Make Out Kate or That Girl Who Tried To Kill Herself, you know that? You're the only one who makes me feel like I'm not some freak who came back from the dead."

You bite your tongue at that, because for you, that's exactly what she's done.

"You've been so sweet to me this entire year, and I repaid you by making you responsible for talking me down off of that roof." She angrily wipes her eyes on her sleeve. "Now you're inviting me out for tea?" She questions, her tone so accusatory you recoil, confused as hell.

"Should- should I not have?" you ask, tentatively, unsure what's going on. You briefly entertain the idea of rewinding, but this girl is finally getting a chance to express herself, and erasing all that from her memory seems…wrong somehow. "I thought you liked tea?"

Kate throws her hands in the air. You didn't think it was possible, but now you're even more confused.

You start damage control. "If you don't really want to be around me, that's okay, I get it. I can just bring you back something and leave it outside your-"

"Who are you, Max Caulfield?" She barks, shoving you. You take a step backwards, and for once in your life, your clumsiness doesn't fuck you over as you remain standing, staring incredulously at the girl in front of you.

"Oh God," she breathes, eyes widening. She clamps a hand to her mouth, shaking her head quickly and retreating. Her hands fall to her sides. "I'm so sorry, Max. I didn't-" She backs into the wall, looking every bit the terrified animal as you continue to stand there, mind completely blank.

The silence stretches into minutes before she finally speaks again.

"I just don't understand," she says, defeated. "Do you feel sorry for me? Is that why you're asking me to hang out?" Her voice catches, "What do you want from me?"

Your heart squeezes painfully, and the sensation jumpstarts your brain again. "I don't want anything from you, Kate," you reply. "I just want you to be okay."

And suddenly Kate is off the wall and falling into you, throwing her arms around your neck and sobbing like every emotion she's buried over the last few weeks is crushing her with such overwhelming force you swear you can feel it too.

No wait. That's just the force of Kate's forward momentum propelling you both into the opposite wall of the hallway. The breath is stolen from your lungs and you're not sure if it's the impact of your back against the solid surface that's responsible, or the way Kate's fingers dig tighter into your shoulders as you slip an arm around her waist, bracing yourself against the wall with the other to keep you both upright.

Either way, you're wincing and she's crying and Victoria or Taylor or someone is going to appear soon to investigate the noise and the last fucking thing you want is to give anyone another reason to make fun of the sweet, vulnerable girl in your arms. So you half-lead half-carry her towards your dorm not having a damn clue what to say, so you settle for a mantra of 'it's okay, you're okay', until you finally manage to haul her inside the room and kick the door shut behind you, gently depositing her onto the bed.

"I'm sorry, Max, I'm so sorry," she repeats, hiccupping, before abruptly standing and trying to push past you to get to the door you just closed.

You want to rewind. Hold your tongue instead of blurting out some stupid line about ginger tea. Or was it because you lied to her? Should you just rewind and sneak into your dorm so she doesn't even know you're there? What if that upsets her even further and she goes back to the roof?

You bite the inside of your cheek. You know that's not fair. Assuming she's going to try and off herself at any slight offence from you or anyone else at the school. But it does worry you. It makes you want to go everywhere with her. Hold her hand and walk next to her and give everyone the stink eye for making this soft-hearted girl feel like she had no other way out. You want to hold her until your soul seeps through your skin and into hers, burrowing your way into her heart so you can shield it with everything you are.

But she's still trying to get past you and you're still standing there, dumbfounded, like you've never seen a girl cry before – you haven't…not like this – as panic rises inside you. Your brain and heart are screaming at you in unison to stop her before she disappears, so you grab her around the shoulders, a little more roughly than you meant to, and pull her against you.

"Stay with me, Kate," you plead. "Stay with me."

You both know exactly what you mean by that, and her arms come up around your sides, squeezing the air out of your lungs but it's okay because you're pretty sure you've been holding your breath for the last twenty seconds anyway. Fingernails dig into your shoulders again and the tears are making the sensitive skin of your neck kind of itchy and you have so much on your plate right now that you're not sure how you're going to be able to handle it all, but your hand moves to gently stroke messy hair without a second thought, and the action seems to calm you as much as it does her.

Soon you're sitting against the slats that make up the headboard of your bed, Kate curled into your side, back pressed against the wall because the tiny single is hardly big enough for you, let alone two people, even if Kate is only about a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet.

You feel her speak before the words register. "It scares me," she mumbles into your shoulder, the soft vibrations making your chest reverberate strangely. You wait for her to elaborate, because there are a multitude of things that she could be talking about. The video, Victoria's malicious vendetta against her, Mr and Mrs Marsh, how close she came to-

"It scares me how much I think I need you."

Oh.

That one never crossed your mind.

But now that she's made you aware of it, it scares the shit out of you too. Because both of you shared something on that rooftop, where not even the pouring rain could wash away her tears or your nosebleed. And it definitely couldn't wash away the fact that even though it was ultimately Kate's choice not to jump, it was your adamant promise to help her that made her see she even had a choice.

'Your life is still yours,' you told her. But if you're being honest with yourself, that's only half true. Because now you feel like her life is also yours. Not because you she owes it to you, but because you need it. And now people are calling you an Everyday Hero for saving a life that you're not sure you could have lived without.

The words swell up and build a pressure in your chest that you've never really felt before. It's uncomfortable, so you let them out.

"I need you too, Kate."

There's no tightening of her arms around your waist, or soft gaze turning to look up at you. No sharp inhale or other affirmation that you've said the right or wrong thing. Just Kate, chest rising and falling steadily against your side.

You realise then that she already knew. Even when you yourself didn't know. You didn't know you actually needed her until you risked an aneurysm to get up to that roof before she gave herself over to gravity. In this messed up place where fathers die and girls disappear and boys wave guns around in bathrooms and creepy security guards spy on students, you need her to remind you that not everything is fucked beyond repair. That it's not just you and your fledgling powers against the almost unstoppable force that seems determined to rip this town apart from the inside.

You want to ask her when she figured it out. How she figured it out. But she shifts and sighs against you, relaxing slightly, as if your admission has alleviated her fears somehow, because if she's not the only one who needs another person that badly, it can't be too dangerous, right?

So you hold her a little tighter and breathe a little deeper. "We can be scared together, okay?"

"Okay," she replies. "We're okay."

Your voice is an echo to hers. "Yeah, we're okay."