TW for ableism, brief mention of abuse

The list of things to do on a normal Saturday morning at Phil and May's house typically consisted of the following in Jemma's experience: 1. Wake up. 2. Dress. 3. Brush teeth. 4. Go downstairs. 5. Eat breakfast. 6. Watch the Avengers on TV with Phil. 7. Variable. Some Saturdays they had errands to run, like the day they had to go shopping for coats, and others were slower, filled with board games, time for reading, or working on what Phil liked to call "little projects" around the house. It seemed to Jemma that Phil almost always had some small task to tinker with on Saturdays. Once it was changing the oil in his car. Another time it was fixing the leaky faucet in his and May's bathroom. A third time still it was putting a fresh coat of paint on the kitchen chairs. He never made them do the projects, the way a different foster father might have assigned tasks for a weekend, but he always let them help if they wanted to.

Skye had been fascinated by all of the parts and pieces under the hood of the car, and had grinned ear to ear when all of the old oil spewed out from the car and into the battered pie tin Phil had slid underneath. Bobbi had surprised them all by being rather handy with the basin wrench, and Phil had let her tinker with more than just the faucet after seeing her knack for it. Jemma liked to watch, but the tools always felt clumsy in her hands, and she wasn't strong enough to twist the different bolts and caps and nuts that most of the little projects involved. Chair painting had been more her speed, though, and she had been meticulous in her brushwork, ensuring an even coat with no noticeable streaks or blemishes on every chair.

This Saturday wasn't a normal Saturday. Because of the nature of the variable being introduced in step 7, there was no time to do step 6, and it was unlikely that they would have time for any little projects later on in the day, either. Not that she minded, exactly. She had known this Saturday was coming, and May and Phil had explained what to expect, so she'd had time to write a new mental list for this particular Saturday. 1. Wake up. 2. Dress. 3. Brush teeth. 4. Go downstairs. 5. Eat breakfast. She hadn't been all that successful with step 5 that morning, but that was okay. Nerves often affected appetite. 6. Gather things to leave. 7. Get in the car. 8. Go to the office of Dr. Andrew Garner. 9. Wait. 10… well, she wasn't exactly sure what to put on 10.

She knew plenty about psychiatry, of course. She had been taken to speak with psychiatrists before, plus one psychologist and one behavioral therapist. And she had read countless books on the subject, devouring texts on brain chemistry, neurobiology, developmental psychology, and the like. So, if it was a matter of basing her number 10 slot on past experiences and learned information, then she should have all the data she needed. 10 would likely be a stiff conversation in which she said nothing and her foster parent, frazzled and frustrated, listed off all the things she did that were wrong, or odd, or bad, bad, bad, while the doctor took notes. Then, when information had been gathered, the doctor would start to coach her on ways to act that didn't bother the people around her so much. The doctor would insist on eye contact, or refuse to let her sit silently, or force her to quiet her hands. When she did as she was told, the doctor would be happy. If she couldn't – if she didn't want to or if doing it made everything inside of her feel wrong and writhing or if she simply couldn't force her body to obey – then the doctor would be unhappy. When the doctor wasn't happy, her foster parents got bad reports about how difficult Jemma was being, and then she usually got in trouble at home. Trouble was bad, because she was bad, and trouble meant something was about to hurt. Maybe an external pain, like a punishment, or maybe just an internal one, like the on-fire feeling she got in her hands when she couldn't tap or the sickening feeling planted in her stomach by the knowledge that she couldn't act the way other people wanted her to.

She hesitated to slot that prediction into the number 10 spot, though. Partially because she was hoping against hope that things might go differently, and partially because of May and Phil. They had been so different in so many ways, and they had a reassuring confidence that seeing Dr. Andrew Garner would be helpful for her, not just helpful for them. They trusted Dr. Garner, and as scary as it was to admit, Jemma trusted them. She had shown them the parts of herself that usually made other foster parents realize she wasn't the person they'd expected, she wasn't the child they'd agreed to let into their home, and instead of punishing her or sending her away before she became too much to handle, they'd been kind. They'd been quiet and calm and patient and understanding. They'd been soft and slow and steady. They liked it when she talked to them about the things that mattered to her and they understood her when she had to talk in ways that her voice alone couldn't capture. And above all, they'd let her stay. In fact, as far as she could tell, they wanted her to stay. No one had ever wanted her to stay before. No one besides her parents, who were gone, and Skye, who had no more say in the matter about whether Jemma stayed or went than Jemma herself did.

So number 10 stayed blank, awaiting more data to be filled in properly. It wasn't exactly the most satisfying way to complete her list, but it was the best she could do. Mark down the potential possibilities in pencil, a pair of hypotheses to be tested, and hold the space for the results of this new, unknown experiment. Somehow the scientific method made the vast variables held by the morning ahead of them feel less daunting.

Dr. Garner's office was nice – the wood on the arm of her chair in the waiting room had a good density for tapping – and Dr. Garner himself seemed nice as well. He spoke calmly and with a sturdy voice – deep, but still gentle. The sound wasn't too bad, as far as new sounds went. And he didn't insist on meeting her eyes in the waiting room or shaking everyone's hand, which she took as positive signs. She wasn't fond of touching people she had just met, and handshakes were one of her least favorite unspoken rules of polite society.

Skye had gone first. Part of Jemma was surprised, because she knew how nervous seeing a doctor made Skye. Skye had been subjected to just as many hostile doctors as she had, and Jemma could practically feel the anxious energy radiating off of Skye's body throughout the morning. The other part of Jemma hadn't been surprised at all. Putting on a brave face was one of the things Skye was best at, and Jemma knew she probably wanted to pretend everything was fine. That way she could prove to Jemma and Bobbi that she wasn't a coward in the face of something that spooked them all in different ways and that they needn't be either. She could also convince Phil and May that she wasn't as in need of help as they might assume that way, and she could camouflage the vulnerable gaps in her rough-and-tumble, devil-may-care exterior that she worked so hard to cultivate.

That was something Skye and Bobbi had in common, Jemma was starting to understand. They both hid themselves away, built up thick walls of tough nonchalance that masked the parts of themselves they didn't want other people to see. It did a good job of hiding their insecurities, their fears, their weakness – at least, most of the time. But it also did a good job of hiding other things, too. Their softness, their tenderness. Skye was gentle and careful with Jemma in a way she wasn't around other people, especially grownups. Bobbi was protective and attentive, but as far as Jemma could tell, not many people saw that part of her.

Jemma had never been good at concealing herself like that. She couldn't just flip a switch and turn off the things about herself that other people tended not to like. And she had never really wanted to, so she hadn't ever really tried. She didn't know where to start, to be honest. How was one supposed to decide which parts to peel away, which facets to polish and put on display, which pieces to break off and tuck into lockboxes deep inside? And why? For what? Curating yourself for other people felt an awful lot like a lie to Jemma, and not just a lie to the people around you – a lie to yourself. There was no use in acting like she wasn't Jemma, because she was Jemma, and Jemma tapped her fingers and counted the stars and wanted to understand everything there was to know about the world and how it worked. A girl who looked like Jemma but who didn't act or think like Jemma – didn't need to feel patterns on her skin or didn't see the universe as a shifting set of rules waiting to be deciphered – couldn't possibly be the real Jemma. And if she wasn't herself, who on earth was she supposed to be?

When Skye came back from her time with Dr. Garner, everything about her looked and felt tense. Her shoulders were rigid in that way that made Jemma think she bore the weight of the actual sky on them, and her jaw was set in stubborn defiance. Something hot flared up in Jemma's stomach and the muscles in her arms tightened, urging her to speed up the tempo of her tap from 1-2-3-4 directly to 1-2-1-2-1-2. Without thinking much of it, she started to lilt back and forth slightly in her chair, a small, subtle rock that matched the taps and reminded her that she wasn't trapped here, as much as Skye looked like she wanted nothing more than to escape.

"Andrew said he'd be out in a minute for you and Jemma," May said quietly to Phil as she took her seat. Her eyes never left Skye, though, and Jemma was simultaneously worried for Skye (her specialty) and comforted by the fact that she wasn't the only one.

"Okay, sounds good," Phil smiled. "Do you think you'll be ready to go back in a minute, Jemma?" he asked her. Jemma paused, tapped seven times – a prime number; a culturally significant number; a lucky number, if you believed in that sort of thing, which Jemma didn't, but still – and nodded. "Great."

They didn't have to wait long for Dr. Garner to reappear. He didn't wear any of the unease or unhappiness that May and Skye had emerged from the office with, and in fact looked just the same as he had the first time.

"Jemma, are you ready?" he asked. A small smile crinkled the corners of his mouth, but that didn't do much to settle the nerves in her fingers or slow the rapid thumping of her heartrate. Still, she knew that this was what she was supposed to do – it was step number 10, after all, and she needed data for her experiment. She nodded and rose to her feet, and Phil checked that she still wanted him with her before doing the same.

Once they had followed Dr. Garner back to his office and settled themselves (Dr. Garner in a chair, Phil and Jemma on the couch), Dr. Garner took out a folder and a pad of paper and poised himself to begin.

"Well, Jemma, first let me say I'm very pleased to meet you. Mrs. Hinton spoke very highly of you in the referral she sent to my office, and Skye told me a little bit about how important you are to her."

Jemma felt her cheeks grow warm with bashfulness, but she didn't lift her eyes from the carpet, where she tracked the little lines that crisscrossed over and back on themselves, creating tiny squares in the material. She wanted very badly to count the squares in front of her, but she wasn't sure Dr. Garner would appreciate that, so she stuck with tapping 1-2-3 discreetly on her thigh.

"I usually start with a few questions," Dr. Garner continued, "but I actually want to check with you about something first before we start with that. Okay?"

She nodded. She hadn't meant to, but her eyes had already scanned over the area of carpet in front of her, and she knew that the space was twelve squares long and wide, so there had to be 144 squares at her feet. There were likely more in the places she couldn't see at the moment. Before she could stop herself, she approximated that there were probably at least three other sections of carpet unseen of a similar size, meaning there had to be close to 576 squares across the whole room. 576 was an unusual number, 24 squared, the square root of 331,776. 576 seconds was 9 minutes and 36 seconds, which meant that if each square on the floor was a second of her time with Dr. Garner, she would have to get through 6 rooms worth of squares before her time was up.

"Great," said Dr. Garner. Jemma blinked hard, reminded herself that she wasn't supposed to be counting or doing math right now. She was supposed to be minding Dr. Garner. She gave herself three quick, hard taps to remember to stay-fo-cused. "I wanted to check and see how you felt about answering questions from me. That's usually how I spend my time with patients – I ask questions and then the person who is working with me answers them. But if that's something you're not comfortable with, there are other ways we can spend our time."

"Questions are okay," she murmured. She wished Skye was here. Skye was always good at answering questions for her, at knowing what Jemma wanted to say and putting it into words. But Phil was here, and Dr. Garner didn't make her feel quite as nervous as some of the other specialists, so she figured she ought to at least give it a try his way. She twisted her tapping hand up under her leg, so Dr. Garner wouldn't think she was being distracted or not paying attention.

"Okay," Dr. Garner said. She wasn't looking at his face, but his voice sounded breezy. "We'll start that way, and if we need to change it up or take a break, you let me or Phil know, all right?" She nodded again. "The first question I like to start with is why. As in, why did you decide to come and see me today?"

"Mrs. Hinton thought it might be helpful to look into a diagnosis," Jemma said softly, after a deep breath. "There are accommodations I can get at school if I'm autistic, like her daughter. Things that are supposed to help me."

"And do agree with her? That it might be helpful?"

"I suppose." Jemma thought for a minute. "I like to know things. I like to be sure, and I like to learn. So if I am autistic, then I can do research and understand what that means about me."

"A scientific approach," Dr. Garner said thoughtfully. She heard the sound of his pen scratching across the pad of paper. Against her will, she felt the muscles in her arm tighten. She wished she hadn't forced herself to stop tapping.

"I like science. Astronomy and biology. Zoology, too." Listing things she liked helped a little. She liked lists.

"Jemma knows all kinds of things about science," Phil glowed beside her. "She's got a real knack for it." Jemma blushed, leaned over slightly so that her shoulder pressed lightly into Phil's arm as a way of thanking him for the compliment. When she risked a quick glance up at him, he was beaming down at her, and the tightness in her arm slackened off somewhat.

"I'll have to have you give me a lesson sometime." Dr. Garner sounded impressed. "I went to medical school, so I know a few things about biology, but I'm afraid my astronomy and zoology are a little rusty. Like, I can never remember the difference between a meteor, a meteoroid, and a meteorite."

"A meteoroid is a small bit of comet or asteroid when it's out in space," Jemma said shyly. "Once it enters the atmosphere it becomes a meteor. If it reaches earth it becomes a meteorite."

"I knew you could help me out," Dr. Garner chuckled. "I'm wondering if I can return the favor. You told me you came to gain a better understanding of yourself, and I'd like to help with that. That's a goal that I set with a lot of my patients, actually. Does that sound like a good goal for us today?"

Jemma nodded. She squirmed a little, clenching and unclenching her fingers out of sight, trying to keep the urge to tap at bay. The prospect of uncovering new knowledge was tantalizing, to be sure, but they were now coming upon the part of the process that felt the most uncertain to her, the most unpredictable. She couldn't help but feel nerves seize up inside of her stomach. She glanced back down at the carpet, counting quickly. Still twelve by twelve, still 144 squares. Numbers were certain, math was predictable. Twelve squared would always be 144, no matter what variables the universe tossed at her, no matter the tumult inside of her or the helter-skelter around her.

"All right then, let's get started, shall we? I'd like you to tell me what a good day looks like to you, Jemma. Describe to me what happens on a good day for you."

She thought for a while, considering how much detail she wanted to go into. Eventually, she settled on as full a disclosure as possible, reasoning that the best way for Dr. Garner to provide his insight was if he was armed with all the facts. He might be a stranger, but he was still a man of science, and there was something reassuring about the way he walked her through the steps of his process. It was like he understood how much easier it was to think about things if they were broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces that she could assemble later.

Jemma described her daily list – her steps for getting up and getting ready for school. She made sure to include all the important details she could think of, like the cereal texture being just right and not having to add addendums for worrying about things (or Skye) or looking for misplaced items. She told him about meeting Fitz before school, and about going to her classes.

"I learn new things on good days," she explained, when Dr. Garner asked for clarification on school. "The best days, really. Those don't happen as much. A day can still be good even if don't learn something new, like if we talk about interesting things in science or I get all my math problems right."

"Does that happen often?"

"Yes," she blushed. "Once you understand the theory behind a mathematical principle, it's hard to find the wrong answer, unless you're careless with the numbers. The numbers are never wrong, it's just human error sometimes."

"Would you consider yourself a careless person, or a careful one?" he wondered.

"Careful," Jemma decided, after a moment of deliberation. "I don't like to rush, and I don't like to make mistakes. It's better to be right than fast, I think. Other people are different, I suppose. Skye likes to be fast and to try lots of different things until she gets it right. But I like to think about my choices and then pick the right one, so I only have to do things once."

"What do you do if you aren't sure which choice is the right one?" Dr. Garner asked.

Jemma opened her mouth to speak, then realized she wasn't sure of her answer. She had never thought to describe the paralyzing fretfulness of indecision out loud before, or really even to put a name to it all, beyond just the overwhelming feeling of being stuck.

"I… I don't do anything, maybe. If there's not a right choice, then there's no where to move that doesn't have risk. It's… it's zugzwang."

"Zug…?"

"Zugzwang. In chess, when there are no moves you can make to improve your position. Anything you do will only make things worse."

"So what do you do then?" His eyebrows knit together in curiosity. Jemma felt like her arm had suddenly gotten three times heavier than normal, aching with the need to tap. He didn't understand her, didn't like what she was saying. He was going to tell Phil that she wasn't behaving correctly, and Phil would be upset with her. She squeezed her hand shut, pressing her thumb against her fingers. She didn't know how to explain herself.

"I just don't. It's better to stay still than to step into something bad. I don't move. I can't. I wait until something else happens. Someone else decides or the situation changes." The universe was in constant motion, nothing was ever truly fixed in a permanent place. Usually if she was stuck, she could just wait long enough for someone like Skye make a decision for the both of them, or for the world to crumble and reassemble itself around her. As unpleasant as it was to wait for bad situations to pass, they always did. She waited long enough to finally be able to leave the Williams' house, and the Walker's. She waited for bullies to tire of her, for teachers to grow impatient and just place her in whichever class they wanted her in, for social workers to pluck her up, cart her here and there. When there was no good move for her to make, Jemma had no problem in letting the world move around her instead.

"How does that make you feel?" Dr. Garner wanted to know. "To let other people have control like that? To leave your fate in the hands of those around you?"

Jemma's face felt hot, and it wasn't just her arm that hurt now; her shoulder and her sternum and her stomach were all tight and tense. She didn't know how it made her feel. Bad, maybe, but it didn't really matter. Other people would always have control no matter how she felt about it. She fought hard to be in control of herself as much as possible, but she had long since accepted that virtually everything beyond her own self (and sometimes even including her own self – her body, her mind) was at the mercy of forces far greater than herself. St. Agnes. Social Services. The entire cosmos.

Unable to stave off the feeling any longer, Jemma swallowed her trepidation and relented, slipping her hand back out to her thigh and tapping faintly. 1-1-1-1. The quick beat loosened her muscles and made her chest unlatch. She took a deep breath, deeper than she'd been able to manage a moment ago. Dr. Garner must have noticed, because he made an apologetic sound.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to push or upset you. You can ignore that last question, by all means. I should probably confess to you that I'm a curious man. I ask a lot of questions – too many, sometimes. You can always ignore the questions that you don't want to answer, Jemma. You're allowed to choose when you want to talk and when you don't. I'm sorry if I didn't make that clear earlier."

"It's okay," Jemma murmured reflexively. "Maybe we should go to the next question, though."

"We can do that," Dr. Garner said. "I was wondering if you could tell a little bit about what a bad day looks like for you."

Several minutes passed as Jemma tapped and thought about how exactly to answer Dr. Garner's question. To his credit, he waited patiently for her and didn't seem to be bothered by the fact that it was taking her a long time to figure out what she wanted to say.

"When low mass stars die," she finally said, "they expand first. A star like our sun will turn from a yellow dwarf into a red giant as its dying. It gets big and hot and unstable and it feels like everything is expanding faster than you can hold onto. Eventually the red giant can't sustain itself anymore, so it collapses in on itself and makes a white dwarf. The weight and the pressure become too much, and the star runs out of fuel, so there's nothing left to do but fall inward."

"And that's how it feels on a bad day?"

Jemma nodded timorously. "Something bad happens. And I get… out of sorts. Everything gets bad and… out of control… until there's nothing left to do but…" she trailed off. It bothered her that she didn't have the language to describe the sensation properly. Frustrated, she pulled her hands into her lap, locked and unlocked her fingers. She wasn't like Skye. When Skye got upset, she veered close to a supernova, the way a massive star ended its life. A blinding explosion of light and heat that eventually all got sucked up into a black hole, never to be seen again. Jemma was different. She got nervous and things got tight and hot as she expanded, but she never exploded. She imploded, and she left a dim white dwarf in her wake, a trace of her self, her problems, her light still visible as it cooled and shrank towards nothingness.

"You said something bad happens that triggers the… star process. Something bad like what?" Dr. Garner asked.

"Like when Skye was gone. I was worried about her, and I didn't want to get in trouble, or get her in trouble, and my principal… reminded me of some people I don't like. He was loud and sharp, and I got upset. Or in the store our first weekend here. There was too much going on and too much new and different and I couldn't get settled."

"That sounds like it could be challenging."

Jemma nodded, but didn't elaborate. She wasn't sure she had done a very good job answering Dr. Garner's question, but she didn't really have anything else to say. There was no other way she could think to describe herself, but Dr. Garner didn't seem to be fishing for more. That was a relief, at least.

"Unless there's anything else you'd like to talk about at the moment, Jemma, I was thinking we might move onto something else. Something with a little less conversation," Dr. Garner smiled and waited for Jemma to nod. "Great. I have an assessment that I was hoping you could fill out for me. Not like a test – there's no grade – but something to get a sense of the way you navigate the world and what things look and feel like to you on a day-to-day basis. I have a version you can take with pencil and paper, or a version on the computer, whichever you prefer."

Jemma selected the pencil and paper option, and spent the next twenty or so minutes picking her way through a variety of questions. A few were open-ended, but most asked her to rate the accuracy of various statements on a sliding scale. It was a little difficult to settle on a number for some, but Jemma appreciated the familiarity of being quizzed, the rhythm of going from question to question and marking down her answers, the stillness in the room as Phil and Dr. Garner sat and let her focus.

Eventually she reached the end (It is important to me that everyone follow the same rules. Rating: 9. There were a few times were different people needed a different set of rules, or where someone, like Skye, might break a rule for a good reason, so it wasn't a true 10, but definitely still a high number for her…) and set down her pencil.

"Very nice work, thank you, Jemma," Dr. Garner said encouragingly. "I think our time is about up. Is there anything you'd like to ask me before we end?"

Jemma hesitated, not sure if she should ask the question that had been pestering the back of her mind for some time. She glanced briefly up at Dr. Garner and decided that he might not get upset with her. And if he did, they were about finished, so she could just leave right away. "Where did you go to medical school?"

Dr. Garner looked a little surprised by the question, but he chuckled good-naturedly once he had processed her request for information. "I went to the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine. I had done my undergraduate work in psychology at UW as well, so I was happy to continue studying there. I worked at a larger practice near Madison for a few years before deciding to strike out on my own a little closer to where I grew up."

"Was it a good school?"

"I certainly thought so," Dr. Garner smiled. "I enjoyed my time there and learned a lot. Why do you ask? Thinking about studying to be a doctor someday?"

"Maybe," Jemma said shyly, ducking her head and allowing a bashful smile to peek through. "I think it would be interesting to study medicine. Or biochemistry. Or astronomy."

"All very good choices," Dr. Garner agreed.

"You know, Dr. Jemma Simmons has a nice ring to it," grinned Phil. "I can see you changing the world one day, if you wanted to."

Jemma blushed furiously, but the smile on her face didn't dissipate in the least.

Why was she here? Bobbi stared hard at the face of Dr. Andrew Garner, open and waiting for her to answer his first question. Why was she here? Why was she here? Bobbi didn't have the faintest clue what foolish notion had possessed her a few weeks ago when she'd agreed to come. Maybe it had been Skye's generosity, or the fact that she had been so off-kilter from the freak-out she'd had at the soccer game that she'd agreed without realizing the full implications of her decision. She was regretting it now. Sitting here, in Dr. Garner's office, May across from her on the couch, Dr. Garner to her right in his chair, all of them sitting and waiting, waiting for her to have an answer. Why was she here? She didn't want to be. But maybe she needed to be.

Her hands twitched a little, and she flexed them slightly to stave off the longing for her batons. She'd been nervous enough to bring them in the car with her, but she wasn't about to take them straight into a psychologist's office. That would have been like asking Dr. Garner to slap a "whack-o" stickynote right on her forehead. What 15-year-old kid uses big wooden sticks like a security blanket?

"Bobbi?" That was May. Bobbi cut her eyes over and took in May's stoic face. May was good at keeping her expression blank, hard to read. Bobbi envied her talent. "Did you hear what Dr. Garner asked you?"

"Yeah." Bobbi managed to wrestle the word from her mouth. It came out sounding gruffer than she'd meant it to, but there was no taking it back now. "Sorry, um…"

"It's okay, there's no rush," Dr. Garner said. "It's also okay if you don't have an answer. Like I said, that's just a place I usually like to start."

"I guess…" Bobbi trailed off. She knew she needed to say something. There was no point in coming if she wasn't going to talk, but it was so hard to focus and so hard to figure out what exactly she was supposed to say. "I guess I'm here because of some of the stuff that's happened to me. I'm not… handling it very well."

"How do you mean?"

Bobbi took a sharp breath, squeezed her hands into fists. Just say what she told May and Phil. Just start there. "I can usually get a grip. Keep stuff inside and deal with it on my own, but… I don't know, after the fight at the soccer game, I just wasn't… I couldn't stop myself from freaking out. Like, I couldn't breathe and I kept repeating stuff, which, I mean, I do in my head all the time, but I don't usually say it out loud. But I couldn't help it, it just slipped out. And I… I have trouble with my dad." She explained briefly about how she heard his voice ringing in her ears, even when he wasn't around to shout at her anymore. About how, even though she knew it wasn't real, it still felt real, like he was still right there in front of her, about to take a swing. Dr. Garner said nothing as she spoke. He nodded along, like he was tracking what she was saying, and took a few notes, but otherwise just listened.

"So would you say, then, that one of the reasons you decided to come see me was to find a different way of 'handling' the ways your body and your mind react to stressful situations, like the fight at the soccer game?" he finally asked, once it was clear she had finished.

"I guess so, yeah," Bobbi agreed. Her neck felt a little warm, and she turned her attention to the woven bits of Velcro crisscrossing back and forth on her knee brace. Dr. Gambhir had said at her last appointment that she might be able to take it off before too long. Maybe another week or two. The thought both excited and daunted her, and focusing on her knee somehow made it easier for her next words to come. "I just don't want to be freaking out over stuff like that anymore. It's not like I can just start twirling or repeating stuff out loud any time I get upset. So I need to get better at keeping stuff in check until I can be alone and deal with it on my own."

Dr. Garner made a thoughtful noise, marked a couple things on his notepad. "Twirling and repeating. Are those some of your current strategies for staying calm?" Calm. She was a little proud of herself for staying as calm as she was, despite how uncomfortable the whole situation made her. Still, she wasn't sure she'd use the same language that Dr. Garner was suggesting.

Bobbi shrugged. "I mean, it's not strategic or anything. Those are just things that I've done since I was a kid. Things that make me feel… grounded, I guess. Like, twirling my batons gives me something to focus on and helps my muscles relax. The repeating… I don't know, I can't remember why I started. I guess I just liked the way words felt and sounded, or it would help me process what I was hearing. It used to drive my parents crazy, though, so I learned to just think the words instead of saying them."

"Do you have a preference?" Dr. Garner asked. "That is, if there were no repercussions, would you choose to repeat audibly, or do you find that internal repetition works just as well?"

Bobbi thought for a minute. "Internal's fine, I guess. I've gotten used to it, and it's easier to do without people noticing. Some people are fine about it, like my friends at school, but other people… the less different you are, the better."

"It sounds like you have good friends," Dr. Garner smiled.

"Yeah," Bobbi agreed. The corners of her mouth poked up a little at the memory of how cool Natasha, Mack, and Clint had been when she tried to explain herself to them. "My friend Mack said I was like a mockingbird. I liked that."

"'Mimicking and elaborating, he sings with humor and bravado, so I have to wait a long time for the softer voice of his own life to come through,'" Dr. Garner recited. Bobbi raised an eyebrow at him, confused, and he chuckled. "It's a line from a poem about the mockingbird. One of my favorites. You should look it up sometime. It speaks to how difficult it can be to share your true voice, your true self with the world, especially when you've masked it for a long time." Masked. Masked. Masked.

Bobbi knew something about that. She shifted uneasily in her seat. Masking. Hiding. She was good at those things, as much as she wished she wasn't, didn't have to be. She was getting better at allowing glimpses of herself to see the light of day, but it was still so hard to let her guard down, to find the right people to trust. She cut her eyes over to May for the briefest of moments, took in the faint smile and steady eyes on her face. A calm face. Maybe even a proud face. She liked it when May looked at her with pride in her eyes, like when Bobbi had walked on her own for the for the first time, like she might be doing now.

They talked for a while longer, Dr. Garner giving her suggestions to continue using her old tricks to help keep herself even-keeled, but to be more intentional about them.

"Try not to think of them as urges you have to fight, but rather as tools you get to use to ground yourself," he offered. "You can modify them as needed to fit a given situation, which it sounds like you already have some experience in, but I want you to see what it feels like if you actively seek out those techniques when you feel yourself getting stressed instead of delaying your use of them until you give in."

He gave her some tips for how to measure her breathing, some of which reminded her of some of her old breathing exercises she learned ages ago for soccer – how to maximize the air coming in and sustain her breath through exertion – and a new thing to try if she was having trouble distinguishing the lines between reality and memory when they blurred.

"Four things you can see, three things you can touch, two things you can hear, and one thing you can taste or smell," he said. "Use your senses and focus on what's around you to help anchor yourself in the present world. Even if it doesn't fully reorient you to where you need to be, it can at least break the feedback loop of your memory long enough for you to get help or get somewhere safe while you process what you're thinking and feeling."

It sounded like a tall order to Bobbi, but she didn't want to admit that to Dr. Garner, not after he'd been so nice and patient. He asked her a few more questions about her day-to-day life, about what was different between her old home and her new one, whether she liked where she was now. That question made Bobbi blush, but she found herself nodding and answering in the affirmative. She did like where she was now. She liked pretty much everything there was to like about May and Phil's, even in spite of the fact that she knew it wasn't a long-term solution and she shouldn't be letting herself get so attached.

She had told Miss Hand at their last check-in that she was happy where she was, and Miss Hand had seemed pleased by that information. She had told Bobbi that she would do her best to keep things from changing for as long as "circumstances allowed," which Bobbi took as a good sign.

"Well, Bobbi," Dr. Garner said, after they had exhausted their final topic of conversation, "I think we're nearly at the end of our time. Is there anything else I can do for you before we finish? Any other questions I can answer?"

"No. Thank you," Bobbi shook her head and eased herself to her feet. Walking was getting easier every day, but getting in and out of chairs was still tricky sometimes.

"Thank you," Dr. Garner reiterated. "It was lovely to meet you."

"You too."

Skye and Jemma looked up at her expectantly as she and May came back into the waiting room. Bobbi crooked a half-smile their way to let them know that things had been okay. And they had been. Really, for all the worrying she had done, all the nerves that had grated on her, Dr. Garner was a pretty okay guy. He hadn't acted like she was weird, or like it was messed up of her to have trouble with her memories or her nerves. He hadn't pushed her too hard to talk about her dad, either, which she certainly appreciated. She still wasn't sold on some of his suggestions, but she was willing to at least give them a shot, and she definitely wanted to check out that poem. There might be more to being a mockingbird than she had once realized.

The poem referenced is "The Mockingbird" by Mary Oliver. I do not own the poem, although like Dr. Garner, it is one of my favorites :) A professor of mine showed it to me ages ago and ever since it'll just pop into my head from time to time! I'd highly recommend giving it a read, especially since I couldn't just put the whole thing in the chapter haha. Thanks for being here :)