Disclaimer: I don't own Mirrormask anymore than I own Jim Henson or Neil Gaiman. Le sigh.
When Morris found his daughter crumpled on the ground just outside the big top, his mind jumped back to the day, two months ago, when something very similar had happened to his wife and a thrill of terror rushed through him. He screamed for someone to call an ambulance and scooped her up off the damp ground.
"Helena, darling, can you hear me?"
"Daddy, I don't feel well." she mumbled without opening her eyes.
"I know, it's okay."
But, if he was completely honest, he had known for weeks that Helena was anything but okay...
"Helena, aren't you hungry?" her mother asked, offering her a bowl of soup.
Helena shook her head, her dark hair getting in her eyes. "No thanks, mum."
"But you haven't eaten in days!" Morris joined in. "Perhaps we should see a doctor."
Her eyes flashed, looking almost black, and, for a moment, Morris was frightened of his own daughter. "I refuse to see a doctor." she said cooly, standing up from the table and striding across the yard back to her own trailer.
That had been weeks ago. Now, as he watched his only child being loaded into an ambulance, he knew he should have insisited that she go.
For the first two weeks after her mother's recovery, Helena had been fine. She had stopped fighting with mum, helped come up with two fun new routines for the show and even befriended the new hand that he had hired, a young man named Jason. For a week, the two were almost insperable.
But after a few days, Morris had started to notice a change. Helena's face seemed paler and she shyed away from spending time with Jason. A few days after that, she started waking up in the middle of the night. By the end of the week, she could hardly sleep at all. He was really beginning to worry when, on the ninth day of her weird depression, she stopped eating. Just, stopped. Like it was no longer necessary.
And there were odd behaviors too. She refused to wear a mask when she performed, she threw her favorite bunny-slippers in the bin and every time she saw Jason headed her direction, she practically ran. Morris was beginning to belive that his daughter was going mad.
Now she was bound for the same hospital that Joanne had been in just months ago. As he followed in the ambulance in their beat-up old pickup, his wife babbled on concernedly. He was hardly listening. He just hoped his baby was alright.
A/N: Okay, I KNOW that I just started another fic and I REALIZE that I have like nine unfinished ones. But this will be a ficlet only, I promise. I just couldn't write a oneshot. Please R&R! (Oh, and, for the record "Jason" is Real World!Valentine.)
