(Emily)

I go over to Sera's house on Saturday afternoon. Her parents are at work, and she told me that she didn't want to be alone; evil thoughts will run through her head. I understand that feeling because it's happened to me before.

I knock on the front door, and my lovely girlfriend opens the door. She's been crying, and I hug her immediately. She hugs me back, her body racking in sobs. She's skinnier than I remember and I faintly remember her old habit of riding an exercise bike to lose weight.

"You started the habit again, didn't you?" I ask her, knowing the answer already. My eyes burned with tears that wanted desperately to fall. My body started shaking slightly, and I knew that I would start crying soon. We walked into the house and flopped down onto the couch.

"I'm going bad again." She had mumbled that one sentence so quietly that I barely heard her.

"Riding the exercise bike?" I ask. She nods, body trembling again. "What else?"

"Remember when I said that I had self-harmed?" she asks me. I nod, dreading the worse. She pulls up her shirt sleeve, and I realize that dreading the worse had done nothing. There were five small scars placed on her pale skin.

The three scars from her first time were fading away and healing nicely. The new five self-harm scars look recent. The tears fall from my eyes, and Sera rolls her sleeve back down.

We stay in each other's embrace for most of the day. These scars were why she didn't want to be alone: She didn't want to keep going bad. She wanted someone here that she could be herself around. She can't talk to her parents, not after they found out the truth.

"What am I supposed to do? I'm far too broken to be fixed," Sera mumbles, hiding her face in my breasts. I keep her close to my heart and say, "we're damaged, really damaged."

"That's true," she says.

"Everyone is damaged. Those that want to change find ways to help themselves and make it a goal to help others like them. Those that have given up resort to violent endings and become a forgotten person who committed suicide." I keep talking. Anything to help her.

"Are we okay? Truly okay?" Sera asks me, her gorgeous crystal-blue eyes full of tears. I nod.

"We're okay. We won't always be okay, but we're okay for now." We stay in a hug all day. Sera falls asleep pretty soon, and I tuck a blanket around her, putting her into a cocoon like a butterfly. Leaving the house, I make sure that the doors and windows are locked.

Precaution to make sure that she's safe. I hope that I'm not too paranoid when we get married. If we get married, that is.