off kilter, chapter 7: exit strategy (beginning of part 2)

Author: yankee306
Pairings: Mary and Marshall, bien sûr
Spoilers: Very general season 1

Summary for part 2: Mary decides to remain at WITSEC, but that doesn't mean everything stays the same between her and Marshall.

Summary for chapter 7: Shelly tells Mary she can help her find a way out of her trap.

A/N: Picks up where part 1 left off. Thanks to snerkyone for the beta! This story is going very slowly, so if you hate waiting a long time between chapters, you may want to hold off until I've got a few more ready.

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In our last chapter . . .

She didn't have to choose between two of the things she loved the most. Mary's shoulders relaxed and a small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Sleep well, Marshall. I'll see you tomorrow.

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Chapter 7: Exit Strategy

Sometimes just knowing that there's a way out of a trap helps lessen the distress of being caught. As the panic ebbs and the mind quiets, the escape route becomes easier to find.

Mary had been thrashing around inside a trap that seemed to have no escape route, at least not one that would leave her without deep scars. But now that she saw that there might be a way she could remain partners with Marshall without endangering his life—more than the danger inherent in their jobs—Mary felt calmer and a little less fearful. Hope was not quite such a stranger as it had been.

Not that she was sanguine. Mary would still have laid odds that what might look like a light at the end of the tunnel was probably an oncoming train, but she was ready to accept that the chances of disaster might be less than 80/20. Some days, 70/30 was starting to seem within reach.

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"Have you called Shelly yet?" Marshall asked Mary one morning when they were sitting at their desks, each engaged in various administrative tasks for their witnesses.

It had been a week since Mary had agreed—well, agreed to consider—calling a psychologist to address what Marshall believed were her PTSD symptoms.

While she didn't relish revealing herself to anyone, Mary actually liked Shelly. She was smart and no nonsense and sometimes insightful. Even so, before Marshall raised the idea, it hadn't occurred to Mary to talk to Shelly about her increasing anxiety about Marshall's safety. Asking for help wasn't the sort of thing that ever occurred to Mary.

"No, but I will. Stop nagging." Mary turned back to the report on her desk and tuned Marshall out.

Marshall didn't say anything, just picked up the phone to make a call. "Hi, it's Marshall Mann. I'm fine, thank you. How are you? Do you have a few minutes? Mary wants to talk to you." Marshall put the phone on hold and then said to Mary, "Line 1's for you."

"Who is it?" she asked.

Marshall just shrugged.

Mary picked up the receiver. "This is Mary." A pause. "Oh, Shelly, hi." She glared at Marshall, who smiled and went back to his paperwork.

"Yeah, it has been a while. Well, I, uh, wanted to see if we could talk. No, in person. Tomorrow? I guess so. OK, ten o'clock at your office." Mary hung up and again glared at Marshall. "How does she have time to meet so quickly? Probably a lousy shrink and no one else is stupid enough to see her. I don't need you to be my personal secretary, you know." Marshall snorted at that. "But . . . thanks."

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Shelly welcome Mary into her office the next morning. "Hi, Mary. Come in and have a seat. What do you want to talk about?"

"Skip the pleasantries and dive right in, huh? OK, I can work with that. A few weeks ago, Marshall and I got into it with some fugitives. Not anywhere near the worst we've faced, but dangerous enough. I'm usually good at times like that. I can shut out everything that's not critical to the situation and see the whole picture, how different options could play out, like looking for a pass on a basketball court."

"But?" prompted Shelly.

"But I just . . . . couldn't do it that day. I kept seeing him . . . seeing Marshall . . . dead on the ground, lying in a pool of blood." Mary paused as the gruesome scene played itself out in her mind yet again. "I got so scared that I couldn't think straight."

"You both made it out without injuries?" Shelley asked.

"Pretty much. Marshall's calf was grazed by a bullet and he sprained his wrist wrestling one of the fugitives down. We had help from another team of marshals who came in behind us. Any other time, I would have told you that Marshall and I didn't need any help. That time, I'm not sure we didn't."

"Did you make any mistakes?"

"I lost track of the bullet count on both sides; couldn't even keep track of my own. Other than that, I don't think so, but I know I wasn't thinking rationally. I'm afraid that losing my concentration because I'm afraid for Marshall is going to end up getting him, or a witness, killed."

"In other words," Shelly said, "the thing you fear is fear itself."

"You got it, Franklin. Marshall thinks it's some form of PTSD from when he got shot. Is that it?"

"I don't know that it matters whether or not it's PTSD in a clinical sense."

"Right," said Mary ruefully. "Whatever you call it, it goes back to the fear of being abandoned by my father, just like every other damn thing seems to, right?"

Shelly shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. No matter what we're dealing with, it's not going to be helpful to start with a conclusion already in mind. Besides, we don't necessarily have to delve into the past looking for causes. We only need to deal with your symptoms."

Mary was surprised. "Really? I thought shrinks always went right for early childhood, like moths to the repressed memory of a flame."

"Not always."

"Still, can't you just picture all these tiny little shrinks flying right into a bonfire? That'd be cool."

Shelly smiled and went on. "In a case like this, we don't have to understand the cause in order to isolate a specific problem and devise a real-world solution for it."

Mary looked quizzical. Shelly continued, "Think of someone who's deathly afraid to drive over a high bridge. Examining everything from infancy forward might yield some insights, but the patient might benefit just as much by learning deep breathing techniques to keep them from panicking while driving over the bridge. Even if they never know how they came to be so afraid, they've already made it across the bridge."

"Huh."

"My goal is to get you to the other side of the bridge. In your case, that means preventing your irrationally large fear for Marshall from crippling your judgment in a dangerous situation. Our goal is to remove that limitation, no matter what's at the root."

"No dredging up every last thing my parents ever said? OK, sounds good. So, how do we fix me?" Mary looked expectantly at Shelly, who gave a little laugh.

"It's different for different people. We'll figure out what will work for you. For now, just tell me what happened that day."

Mary launched into a detailed narrative of the day, beginning with the tip that led them to the suspects' location, their narrow escape, the car chase, the gun fight, and the capture. Along the way, she identified points where her fears for Marshall had threatened to overwhelm her training and instincts.

Shelly listened with a minimum of interruptions or questions, then said, "Good. That's enough for today. Let's set up a regular schedule for the next several weeks. Monday, Wednesday, Friday at this time work for you? We'll rearrange if you have to leave town."

"Screw that. I don't have time to be a professional patient," Mary protested.

"Make the time. The more often we meet, the more quickly you'll conquer this."

Mary wasn't thrilled, but she really wanted the carrot that Shelly was dangling. "Oh, all right."

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"How was it?" Marshall asked when Mary returned to the office after her session with Shelly.

"Surprisingly ok, actually."

"Let me guess: She's taking a cognitive behavioral approach?"

"How the hell would I know?" Mary snapped, with her I-can't-believe-you're-asking-me-this face.

"Unlike what you probably think of as generic 'therapy,' with its focus on digging into the emotional and psychological roots of dysfunction on the premise that understanding is required for, perhaps even tantamount to, change, cognitive behavioral therapy seeks to develop specific strategies to transform dysfunctional behaviors, thoughts, or emotions, regardless of their origin."

"Yeah, that's more or less what she said, though she managed not to sound like a walking textbook, dorkus."

Marshall looked pleased that he had accurately predicted Shelly's approach. More than anything, he was glad that Mary was accepting help.

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