Author's Note
I do not own the Gifted.
I also do not own the song that inspired the title and summary.
This is a companion piece to the Debt Owed, so if you haven't read that, you'll probably be confused by this in some places. It's mostly short drabbles and oneshots from different perspectives or unseen moments from the show that were altered in the Debt Owed because of... reasons. Also, this is a quiet beginning, but I'm trying to keep things as chronological as I can, which is why this is first and not something more dramatic. This one is set in the first half of chapter one.
She was worried about Lauren.
Andy, he had always been a loner with one or two close friends, but Lauren was always a people person, one of the Popular Girls, along with being an almost straight A student.
Caitlin wasn't sure when that had stopped being true.
She seemed down recently, and had got a D on one of her recent reports. She spent long hours shut up in her room, and often Caitlin heard crashes from in there. She'd tried a few times to speak to her, but Lauren brushed her off. Sometimes it was like she wasn't even there. The lights were on but no one was home.
Caitlin had always tried to care for her children, to be there for them, to love them, but recently Lauren had been… distant, and Caitlin wasn't sure how to start fixing that. She could only hope it was just normal teenage girl stuff and not something deeper.
Maybe the cookout this weekend would help.
