AN: Warning for heavy focus on clinical depression and later, recovery. Each person is different, and experiences described are not universal.
Stalled
At first, she tries to sleep it off.
That's what it feels like. A weight between her eyes that makes her want to stop what she's doing and rest her head on her arms.
Caffeine does nothing to touch it. The amount doesn't matter. She moves from coffee to energy shots to high concentrations of the stuff packed into pills that she downs by the half dozen. Nothing but some blinding headaches and a tangle of dread in the pit of her stomach. Because it's more than just exhaustion and she knows it.
She can't focus. She can't sleep. She can't think. And it doesn't really faze her because nothing fazes her anymore. Not really. Nothing penetrates the fog. She'd be the first to admit that feelings weren't really her thing to begin with, but this. It's like her mind is covered in a layer of ballistics gel.
Induction motors stall when they're unable to rotate. Bearing seizure, mechanical failure, maybe a sudden increase or obstruction in the engine load. Rotational speed drops down to zero, stall torque kicks in, higher voltage and stator currents, then bam. Damage to the windings and the rotor overheats.
In motors, it's simple. What's making her stall is…complicated. Unknown. Not good.
She's broken. Useless. But it's not like she can scrounge up replacement parts for herself at the scrap yard.
Something is really wrong. And she doesn't think she can fix it.
The real kick in the gut is that she should be happier than she's ever been.
Work's going as great as it ever does. She sees her dad on a regular basis. And things with the Doc, they're…they're real good. Better than she ever would have thought.
He doesn't freak out when she takes his appliances apart...so that's kind of cool.
"Dare I ask what my toaster did to offend you so badly you had to vivisect it?"
He's too loud for the morning. He's too loud in general, but she's especially noticed it since she started staying the night and waking up to his mid-morning, psycho-babbling sleep talk.
She grumbles and twists to half dodge the kiss he aims for the crown of her head. "Replacing the bimetallic strips on this heating element. Make it work twice as well in half the time."
"Ah. Mediocrity. Yeah, that would do it."
Even with his coffee mug obscuring half his face, she can see enough to tell that he's not really buying it.
He shouldn't. She's lying. She couldn't sleep.
Happy shrugs. "Less toasting time, the longer we get to sleep in in the morning."
Like it always does, the vaguest implication of her wanting to spend time with him slowly pulls the mother-of-all-grins across his face like taffy being formed into a dumbstruck mask. "I like the way you think."
She sort of wishes that anything could make her as happy as she seems to make him.
Lately, work is hard.
Not hard like, they have to figure out a way to stop an entire city from imploding with two paperclips, some motor oil, and a bag of chocolate covered raisins. In a monsoon. But hard like, she has to walk across the garage to retrieve a tool. And talk to people. And sleep and shower and get dressed and drive to work and eat something and-
She'd just rather take the monsoon, okay?
In the monsoon, she'd feel almost normal. Whether it's the adrenaline or just that she's become so used to being forced into these ridiculous life-or-death situations that anything short of them doesn't make a dent in her nerves, she's not sure. But whatever it is about those missions, she wishes she could bottle it and use it to haul herself out of bed in the mornings.
Walt's pissed at her like 60% of the time. Sly could probably figure out the exact percentage, but she gets the gist on her own. She's not at her peak efficiency, which is the worst possible sin in Walter's eyes. Things she promises to fix around the garage sit untouched for weeks, and when she finally gets around to dealing with it, she does the minimal to get Walter off her back and none of the extra improvements she would normally tack on. And she's pretty sure he thinks it's because of…whatever's going on with her and Doc. So yeah, Walter's pissed a lot of the time. What else is new?
"Happy?"
He's frowning and using that tone of voice that usually means he's about to complain about something. She briefly considers ignoring him long enough to give him the opportunity to think about whether or not he really wants whatever he wants from her, but Sly and Ralph are sitting at the table to her right and she doesn't like to set a bad example for either of them. "What, Walt?"
"I thought you were going to get that possum down from the rafters. Preferably before it damages something more valuable than Sylvester's comic books."
Happy scowls and looks down at her project before anyone notices the redness creep up her neck to bleed into her cheeks. As if she didn't feel bad enough about that already.
Defensive, she levels Walter with a glare that makes him step back a pace and blink –puzzled and maybe vaguely uneasy- back at her.
"Are you under the impression that I'm an exterminator?"
She says it slowly, like she's talking to a dog that's recently learned a very limited form of English.
(Probably, Ralph's too smart to need a good example anyway. And Sylvester's seen her do much, much worse.)
Walt bristles and looks around for support from the others. He doesn't get it. "No…just someone that said they would do it."
From across the room, Paige has apparently been monitoring the situation, waiting for the right time to step in (which comes when Happy drops her wrench and makes like she's going to come around from behind her workstation).
"Okay!" She claps her hands, looking more cheerful than she probably feels. "Walter," Paige explains kindly, "I know you don't mean to, but Happy may feel like you're invalidating her talent as a mechanics expert when you ask her to do something beneath her capabilities."
She's looking at her oddly, which Happy sort of understands because she can normally muster a little more patience for Walter and the other guys but that skill has been on its way downhill for a while now.
Walter awkwardly clears his throat into his hand. "Happy is a remarkable mechanic. But she's also…we need…"
"She's tougher than us," Sylvester announces, cutting straight to the point.
"That," Walter agrees.
Toby catches her eye from across the room and winks.
She can remember a time where that kind of approval would curl deep in her gut and make her face flush from either embarrassment or pride depending on what she was in the mood to mentally cop to that day. But now she just feels…
It feels like it's too much strain to keep her eyes open, and it takes everything she has to keep from sitting down at her desk and burrowing her head into her crossed arms.
Because she has nothing to lose and not because she actually expects it to work, Happy grabs the bottle of caffeine pills from her jacket pocket and dry-swallows two, wincing at the bitter taste they leave in her throat. Too late, she notices the Doc watching her with a deceptively blank look on his face, like the little medical gears in his head weren't grinding themselves to dust.
She forces a half smile at him, knowing anything more would be out of character for her anyway, and pockets the pill bottle. Later, she'll tell him it was a headache. Maybe one brought on by Walter's complaining or the possum in the rafters or both.
The caffeine makes her jittery and gives her a real headache, which could be chalked up to karma if you believe in that kind of thing. (Happy doesn't.)
She fakes a phone call and slips out to curl up in the back seat of Toby's car where she leans against the window and rests her forehead against the cool glass , breathing deeply and dreading having to pick her head up to go back into the garage.
The fog doesn't lift.
They're both in bed when the call comes- Happy three hours into a Mythbusters marathon and the Doc flipping through his stack of unread psychiatry journals and making disparaging comments about his peers, their research, and the 'petty impractical nature' of the subjects they studied. It's Happy's cell phone that goes off but he's closer, so seconds after he reports that it's Walter's name on the screen, she waves for him to answer it himself.
They have an assignment, and not a very exciting one, from the sound of it. A practice run basically. Trying to break into a secure homeland facility to see if it can be done and if so, what can stop it from being done.
Toby's on his feet in seconds, groaning theatrically as he pulls his sweaty t-shirt over his head. He deliberately stalls as he picks out a new shirt, giving her the chance to appreciate the muscles that wrap from his back around his sides.
Idiot.
She can't say it's sudden because it's never sudden. It's always there. But as soon as it becomes clear that they're expecting her to get up and go to work and function like a freaking human being, it creeps up her spine and wraps around her brain. Happy frowns.
She buries her head in the warm spot Toby left on his pillow and breathes deeply, letting her limbs melt uselessly into the mess of sheets.
"Happy?"
And then he's crouching down next to the bed, arms crossed on the bed in front of her and that dopey, lovestruck grin on his stupid face. With all the energy she has left, she resists the urge to groan.
"Hey," he half-whispers. "As often as I suggest it, from a purely medical standpoint, I don't think we can stay in this bed for the rest of our lives."
"I…I'm not feeling so hot, Doc."
Toby frowns and cups a hand to her cheek, rubbing his thumb across her forehead. "All of a sudden?"
It feels like someone poured ice water down her spine and it's pooling in her stomach. He's concerned, and it hurts because she's not sick, she's just lazy or selfish or some other terrible trait that she's somehow managed to suppress until now. And she shouldn't be…
He just shouldn't care so much.
"No, not really." She shrugs. "Just…stomach stuff, I guess."
Hesitantly she drops a hand to her lower stomach to hint further, and Toby smiles, like he understands.
He doesn't understand. She doesn't understand.
"If it's that bad, you should stay here. Get some rest?"
It's such a goddamn relief to have him be the one to suggest it, she can barely stand it.
Toby waits for her to nod, and when she does, he kisses her temple, and her cheek, and her lips until she gently shoves him off, pretending to be irritated. "I have something for that in the medicine cabinet, I'll get it before I leave." Then, grinning wickedly, "do you need your toolbox?"
Groaning, she hits him with her abandoned pillow, one arm thrown over her eyes to hide the blush that may or may not come. He'd excite himself into a conniption fit if he knew she was already keeping a box of tampons under his sink.
Her relief is short lived because the guilt keeps churning in her system as she watches him get ready to go into work, to back up his team, their team. Like under the surface Toby is expecting her to rally and get her ass out of bed. Because that's exactly what she should be doing.
He puts a palm to her forehead one more time before he leaves, and if Happy were at her full processing power, it would hit her that checking her temperature is not something he would do if he really believed that she just had cramps. But for now, she doesn't read too much into it.
Paige calls three times. Sylvester twice. Once a piece from Cabe and Walter, though they present weak excuses for why these are very important professional calls and not them checking up on her.
Toby…should never be allowed to text again. Or leave voicemails.
For a while, she lays in bed and watches Mythbusters until her tablet feels too heavy in her hands and she has to stop. So she pulls the covers up to her neck and fields phone calls from the team she let down.
When the guilt gets to be too much to handle and she feels it catch in her throat, Happy tamps it down and promises herself that she doesn't have to think about it. It will all be okay.
As long as it doesn't happen again.
Toby has the decency to lie about her lie and say she's been down with the flu, so when she returns to work, Sylvester is freaking out, as expected. He quarantines himself upstairs, away from Happy and her (probably aggressive, just like their host) germs. He's a good sport about it, blaming his own overcautious tendencies. And he frequently shouts down that it's nothing personal. "Just a precaution!"
Finally, she takes pity on him (because it's not like she actually had the flu) and trades places with him, sequestering herself away so Sly can rejoin the rest of the world. He'll enjoy it more than she would anyway.
She's stays five days just to be cautious. And then another five because she tells the team that her current project is too hard to move. In reality, moving her stuff would take a lot of energy that she doesn't have, and it's private upstairs and easier for her lay her head down without feeling like she's being stared at. It's oddly soothing, up there alone with no pressure from the others to act normal. Soothing isn't the right word. It feels like she's wrapped in cotton. The guilt and the fatigue and the numbness and the feeling that nothing is ever going to make her remotely close to happy again- it's still there. It's all still there. But it's muffled.
Muffled is good. Muffled doesn't make her want to lay down and never get back up.
And then something weird happens.
When she bites the bullet and moves back downstairs, it's still muffled. Her team comments on how quiet she is- how unlike herself she is- and instead of cutting right through her, it slides off the surface of the fishbowl encasing her brain. It frustrates her, but not as badly as it should. Because she can't care as much as she should and she doesn't know why and she can't figure out why because she can't care enough to figure out why and-
Sometimes it creeps up on her, fast and from behind so she never sees it coming -maybe because it's so unfamiliar to her that she doesn't recognize the signs- and she has to get out of there (wherever there is) before she starts to cry in front of her team.
Her. Happy Quinn. Crying.
It's…terrifying.
And she can't fix it.
So she stops trying.