TW for discussions surrounding anxiety, death of a parent
To say that the next morning got off to a rocky start would have been generous, in Bobbi's opinion. It should have been simple – get everyone up, dressed, fed, and in the car to Dr. Garner's office – but apparently today was an off day for everyone, because it seemed like something hung them up at every step. There was trouble getting everyone out of bed, trouble finding something Jemma would eat for breakfast, trouble getting Skye to actually look for her misplaced left shoe instead of just sulking around the living room halfheartedly. Even Bobbi herself could feel her stomach writhing at the prospect of leaving the house for the first time since coming home. She was getting that pinched feeling in the back of her neck that often accompanied frayed nerves, and was already halfway to exhausted by the time she poked her head around Dr. Garner's door.
"Hi Bobbi," Dr. Garner greeted her kindly, as Bobbi stepped into his office and settled into the soft chair across from his. "By yourself this time?"
"It's better if May and Phil stay with Skye and Jemma," Bobbi explained. Not that she wouldn't have appreciated having one of them with her, of course. She was used to having May's steady presence or Phil's warm smile with her in sessions at this point, but she knew Jemma and Skye needed those things more than her right now, even if she was having a hard time keeping her hands from shaking as they cradled her batons in her lap. May had given her a funny look when Bobbi had said she was going back alone – a face Bobbi wasn't able to quite label – but she hadn't pressed Bobbi on the matter.
"Whatever you're comfortable with works for me," Dr. Garner smiled. "Are you ready to get started?"
Bobbi nodded. Ready. Ready. "I guess you probably want me to talk about what happened to us, right?"
"I want you to talk about whatever it is you feel like talking about. I'm here for anything that might be on your mind today."
"Oh. Okay." Bobbi fell silent. She wasn't exactly sure what was on her mind today. A million things, of course. The memory of Skye's too-pink cheek after Bobbi had walked in on her yesterday. The fact that Jemma had counted out exactly 144 cornflakes this morning before drowning them to mush with the milk, only to decide later that she still couldn't eat them, and had nearly started crying when she'd found a brown spot on the half a banana Phil offered her instead. The fact that Bobbi herself hadn't been able to take a proper deep breath since she'd gotten up that morning, not without agitating the shards of glass that felt like they were crystalizing in her lungs with every passing hour. A million things, but also not one single thing at the same time. It was like all of her thoughts were buzzing around the fevered hive of her brain, but there were so many of them that they just became an undefined blur of tv static and white noise that made her whole body feel tense without any good, discernable reason.
"Would it be okay if I asked a question?" Dr. Garner wondered. "'Anything on your mind' is pretty open-ended of me to ask… plenty of room to be overwhelmed by choice. Maybe I can help narrow our focus a little bit."
Bobbi ducked her head to stare at her still antsy hands as her fingers worked up and down the wood grain of her batons. She wished the feeling would help a little more, but her hands were itching for something stronger than just holding on. "I don't really know where we should start, I guess."
Dr. Garner made a thoughtful noise, sympathetic. "Feelings are usually a good place to start. How are you feeling right now?"
"I don't know." Her answer came too quickly, too sharply. She winced and squeezed harder on her batons. It was true; she didn't know, not exactly. Everything felt wrong, but it was all too hard to pin down and decode the way she knew she was supposed to when they talked about feelings.
"Let's figure it out," Dr. Garner encouraged. "Break it down for me. Where do we start?"
"Good or bad," Bobbi recited dutifully.
"Right. So which is it right now, do you think? Good or bad?"
"Bad." That at least was something she could tell.
"Okay, that's a good start. Now, can you narrow it down further? Which type of bad? Listen to your body," he suggested, nodding towards her jittery hands.
"Bad-scared," Bobbi decided. She probably should have known that, but sometimes it took something like Dr. Garner walking her through the steps to make it all click. She thought for another second and clarified further: "Scared like anxious, though. Not like afraid."
"Is there something in particular that's making you feel anxious right now?"
"I don't know," she said slowly. "There's not really anything. At least, as far as I can tell. Which is part of what's so confusing about it, I guess. It's happened a couple times now this week. Instead of something making me nervous or setting me off like before, I just… I just keep feeling bad for no good reason, and sometimes I have a really hard time turning it off."
"Is this one of those times?"
"Yes," she admitted. Her pulse was practically thrumming in her hands as she held on tighter to her batons, but she couldn't for the life of her figure out why. There was nothing scary about Dr. Garner or his office. She wasn't worried about being separated from the rest of the family like Skye was. There had been no shouting, no cracking knuckles, none of the usual things that set her off – triggers, she was supposed to be calling them. She kept forgetting to use the words Dr. Garner had given her.
"What strategies have you been using to try and ground yourself?" Dr. Garner asked. Bobbi shrugged and her face flushed. "I noticed you've been holding your batons, but you haven't twirled them at all. Is there a reason why you're keeping yourself from doing something you know feels good to you?"
Bobbi risked a glance at his face and was relieved to see that his brow was resting neutral over his eyes, his mouth soft and cheeks relaxed. An open face, genuine face. He wasn't upset with her or casting judgement over the fact that she hadn't been using the tricks she was supposed to be practicing, just curious why not.
"Just feels like I shouldn't have to. There's no reason why I feel nervous, so I guess it's like… I haven't earned twirling, maybe. I've been carrying them around everywhere, but even that feels like… It's like… what Skye and Jemma went through was so much worse than me, you know? And I just feel like I don't have any excuse for feeling so anxious all the time."
Dr. Garner leaned back in his chair slightly and studied Bobbi for a moment with a pensive gaze. "Do you feel like you need permission from somebody to twirl? Permission to make yourself feel comfortable? Permission to experience your own emotions?"
She hadn't thought it was possible, but her face grew even warmer, and Bobbi lowered her eyes back to her lap. "I don't know."
"It's okay if that's how you feel," Dr. Garner assuaged, "although I'll tell you right now, you don't ever need someone else's permission to take care of yourself. And you don't need someone else's permission to feel things. That can be a difficult thing to unlearn, of course, I won't pretend like it's not. But if you need to hear it said today, you are always allowed to have feelings and you're always allowed to take care of them. Obviously there are times and places where you might need to adjust what that looks like to fit a given situation, but the only person you ever need permission from for those things is yourself."
"Okay." Even she could tell that her flat tone wasn't very convincing.
"Let's try something," Dr. Garner said suddenly. He got to his feet and beckoned for Bobbi to do the same. "I remember you once said moving felt good. Running, that sort of thing. You said you liked to pace while you twirled sometimes, is that still true?"
Bobbi shrugged, but stood from her own chair. "Yeah, I think so."
"So let's try this: you start to twirl, whatever that looks like for you. You give yourself permission to self-soothe, to stim, whatever. If you feel like moving around, let's do that, too. You start doing things that feel good to you, and I'll ask you a few more questions as we go. How does that sound?"
"Okay," Bobbi agreed. Okay. Okay. Okay. She felt a little self-conscious about it, since she knew Dr. Garner was probably watching, but she began to spin her batons slowly, the wood sliding across her palms and dancing in between her fingers as she began to expertly navigate the batons around and around. The release was almost instantaneous, and she immediately chastised herself for denying herself the relief that twirling brought for so long. Each pump of the baton helped another one of her ribs unlatch, one by one, and she could almost feel herself standing up straighter as her twirls grew stronger, faster. Soon, before she realized what she was doing, she was pacing lightly across the office, a few steps one way, until she drew up to a wall, then a few steps the other way, until she returned to where her chair stood. It felt amazing.
"How are you feeling now?" Dr. Garner asked, a smile in his voice.
"Good," Bobbi said. "Good-calm. Better." Not perfect, of course. It wasn't a total fix. But so much better than before that she could easily ignore the last few dregs of stress that still stewed inside her.
"You said this has happened a couple of times this week, where you feel anxious without an obvious trigger. Tell me a little bit more about that."
"I don't know, it's like I said," Bobbi tried to explain. It was easier to talk when her hands and legs were moving, her energy focused on action. "I can't figure out what's causing it, I just feel weird some days. There's not a pattern to it, as far as I can tell, and nobody's done or said anything to scare me. Not really. I mean, I guess I'm worried about Jemma and Skye. I haven't really been able to turn that off at all, not since… But I know they're safe, even if they're having a hard time right now. I know we're all safe, so it just doesn't make sense…"
"You study biology, right?" The question caught Bobbi off-guard.
"Yeah. Or, I mean, I'm taking bio at school. Second period."
"Have you learned about the science of fear? Or adrenaline or anything like that? Brains and nervous systems?"
"We're still on invertebrates," Bobbi said wryly. "The last things we talked about – jellyfish – they don't even have brains, so I don't think the subject's come up. We're supposed to do move on to stuff with spines and brains and everything after winter break, maybe."
"Well, you probably know at least a little about it," Dr. Garner said. "You strike me as a smart person. When we're confronted with something dangerous, our brains release chemicals, pump our bodies full of adrenaline to signal to us that something is wrong."
"Like fight or flight," Bobbi suggested.
"Yes," Dr. Garner nodded. "Those are some of the ways a body might react to fear. It's a long list, but those two are common ones. That response is supposed to protect us from threats, but it can be more complicated than that, especially when a person is exposed to a lot of frightening or dangerous situations over a long period of time, the way you have been. When a person has to constantly deal with danger, with being afraid of danger, it can make that little part of our brain that sends out the warning signal, the amygdala, hypersensitive. It starts sending you a lot of false alarms. Your body becomes so used to being on the alert from actual danger, that it begins to also react that way even when there isn't any real threat around."
"So you're saying I'm making it up?"
"No, not at all," Dr. Garner assured her. "On the contrary, it's very real. Your brain perceives danger, whether it's there or not, and causes your body to react in very real ways. What's different for you is that your brain is so used to things being dangerous that it can be hard to register when things are actually safe and secure. I'd imagine that the stress and fear of what you all went through these last few weeks has probably exacerbated that phenomenon. You've already been through a lot of frightening things in your life, and all the stress you've been under recently may have retrigged some of that old, learned anxiety, even though the danger has now passed."
"Which is why I keep freaking out for no reason," Bobbi said slowly, putting the pieces together.
"Not for no reason," Dr. Garner corrected her. "There's a very potent reason. You're processing things that have happened, processing the feelings. And your brain is doing its best to keep you safe. It's just a little extra sensitive to stressors right now."
"I told Skye something kind of like that yesterday," Bobbi realized. "She was sort of freaking out because May had to leave for a little while, and I told her it was okay to feel freaked out after all the horrible stuff that's happened to her."
"You were right," smiled Dr. Garner. "I wonder, why do you think you're able to give Skye that advice, but not yourself? It's okay for you to feel upset after all of the things you've been through, same as her, isn't it?"
"I guess so. I don't know. It feels different. She's been through worse."
"I wouldn't exactly consider it a competition, would you? That doesn't really seem fair."
Bobbi frowned, trying to find a flaw in his logic. Unsuccessful, she drifted back towards her chair and plunked down, still thinking hard. "I think maybe… it's sort of like, I'm older and I should be more used to it. I shouldn't be freaking out about stuff, getting anxious for no reason. It just gets in the way, makes people think they have to take care of me or something. I don't want that, not when other people need more help than I do. I'm supposed to be able to handle things on my own. It's like you said, I have to take care of myself."
"You can do things to take care of yourself and still accept the help of others," Dr. Garner pointed out. "Asking for help is one of the ways we do care for ourselves as a matter of fact. At least, in my opinion."
"Maybe," Bobbi shrugged. "I just… I don't want to make someone feel like I'm one more thing they have to worry about, just because I'm not good enough at handling my own stuff."
"Can I ask you," Dr. Garner started slowly, "have you ever taken care of someone else?"
"Sure."
"Do you remember why you took care of them? Or how you felt while you were doing it?"
Bobbi thought for a minute. She had been taking care of people since she was a kid, so it almost felt like second nature to her at this point. Taking care of her dad had been a task that was expected of her; if she didn't do it, then no one would. Her dad needed her to keep him fed and in clean clothes. And she needed to take care of him so that he wouldn't get angry or start to think that she wasn't worth the trouble anymore and just leave, like her mom had. When it came to her dad, care was an obligation, a contract that, if done right, meant everybody got what they needed and nobody got hurt.
There were other times though, like when Jemma was struggling to get through breakfast, when Skye couldn't calm down without hurting herself, when she held them in the night as they shook from unspoken nightmares, where caring didn't feel contractual. She did those things because it was her job as an older sister, yes, but also because she wanted to. It felt good to help, to know that Jemma and Skye were okay and that they were looked after, safe, happy. All the things that Bobbi didn't get to be when she was their age.
"Taking care of other people is one of the ways we show people that they're important to us, don't you think?" Dr. Garner asked, after Bobbi had let the silence linger too long. "It might be difficult to see it that way, especially if you've had to be self-sufficient for some time, but I think it's a good thing that there are people out there who want to take care of you, particularly when you're struggling."
"It's not fair to them, though," Bobbi pointed out. "To put all my stuff on them just because I can't keep it together."
"I've found that, when I have the right people in my life, they invite me to share my burdens, even if I don't want to, even if I feel like I'm ladening them unjustly. That way it's not about fairness or about keeping a tally of who's done what for whom. It's just about people making choices to help one another out of the goodness of their hearts and the depth of their connections with one another."
Bobbi considered that, calling to mind the faces of all the people who had shown her care the last few months. People like Natasha, who had welcomed her into her home and kept her grounded through the worst moments; Hunter, who had dropped everything to help her look for Skye and Jemma; Mack and Clint and Elena, who had offered shoulders to lean on and words of comfort. She thought about Miss Hand, who had worked tirelessly to bring them back together; May and Phil, who were so good, so kind, so patient with all of them as they worked through all of the tumultuous feelings and fear that still churned around inside of them like an emotional washing machine. She thought of Jemma, who knew when Bobbi needed her batons, who tapped her love on Bobbi's shoulder and never hesitated to offer a kind word, and she thought of Skye, who always put on her bravest face anytime someone needed defending, who flung herself in harm's way to protect Bobbi from her gun-wielding father and tried to comfort Bobbi when they were being split up. She had never had people like them. People who showed their love and offered their kindness unasked. People who cared about her because they felt the same way about her as she did about them.
"They take care of me because they care about me," Bobbi said as the thought finally calcified, her voice thick with unexpected emotion. "It's been like that for a while, but I… I didn't really realize until now. I didn't know what I was looking at, but now… I see it. I get it. They're my right people. That's why I missed them so much, why want to stay with them. That's why we help each other."
"And what a beautiful thing to discover that is," Dr. Garner smiled. "Helping one another is one of life's most wonderful gifts. I know you already use that gift. Now you just need to practice receiving it, too."
Even though she didn't want it to be, today was turning into a bad day. Jemma liked Dr. Garner, had started to feel almost comfortable in his office. He was a good listener, and even though he asked her difficult questions sometimes, he never made her feel bad, bad, bad like her old therapists had. She had hoped that knowing the plan for the day – 1. Wake up. 2. Dress. 3. Brush teeth. 4. Go downstairs. 5. Eat breakfast. 6. Gather things to leave. 7. Get in the car. 8. Go to the office of Dr. Garner. 9. Go to lunch. 10. Go to post-op check-up – would help make today a manageable day, and she had hoped that seeing Dr. Garner, whom she liked and trusted, would help maybe even make it a good day, but her hopes had been derailed before she even got to step three.
The list had been full of addendums and substeps – 1. Wake up. 1.5 Worry about Skye. 2. Dress. 2.5 Try and check on Skye's stitches. She tried to do step three, but they had needed to open a new tube of toothpaste that morning, and the taste was just different enough that Jemma didn't want it anywhere near her mouth. Already a bad sign.
She had tried to counteract the bad toothpaste by reigning things in at breakfast. She counted out her cornflakes (144 of them, a good number. Square. The number of squares in one section of carpet in Dr. Garner's office, she remembered.) and tried to get the texture right, but the memory of the toothpaste and the worry about Skye's still-red stitches and defensive tone was making her mouth feel all crawly and uncooperative. So then she couldn't do step number five, either. Phil had offered her a banana instead, saying that she should try to eat something, but the banana had a bruise, which Jemma didn't like on her bananas anyway, but especially not when the bruise reminded her so much of how much she needed to be worrying about Skye. She knew it was rather foolish to get teary over a banana, but the morning was already off to such a bad start that Jemma couldn't help herself.
The car ride had been quiet, the only real noise coming from Jemma's knee as she tapped out the streets they crossed, trying to calm herself down before they got to Dr. Garner's office. She could tell she wasn't the only one who was feeling bad. Skye was doing that thing where she hunched her shoulders and avoided looking at people – a clear sign she was nervous about something – and Bobbi's knuckles were white as she clutched her batons in her lap. Jemma tried to help, tried to tap on both their knees to remind them that I-am-here, but Skye just kept her eyes glued out the window, and Bobbi had actually flinched at her touch.
Jemma pulled her hand back in quickly. "I'm sorry," she whispered. She retucked her tapping fingers on her own knee, trying not to spin out of orbit over the fact that she had just done something to upset Bobbi.
"No, I'm sorry," Bobbi said quickly. Her voice came out a little sharp, and Jemma tried hard not to wince. Bobbi seemed to realize what her voice sounded like, though, because she took a deep breath and softened it before she spoke again. "It's not you. It's okay. Okay. Okay."
It wasn't, of course. Nothing was okay. Even though they were all home again, things didn't feel like how they were supposed to. They weren't back to normal. The patterns of the day were all shuffled around, and everybody was acting like they were tilted on their axis, all their orbits just a little out of sync. It was dangerous to disrupt an orbit. If the moon changer her orbit, she could bring flooding tidal waves or block the sun from the sky. If the earth changed hers, they could stray too far from the sun and lose their source of life, or stray too close and be incinerated by the very thing that was meant to sustain them.
Some days everyone seemed too far, too distant and uncomfortable with each other, no one wanting to talk about what was different, what had frightened them, what they still worried about. Other days, they were too close, like Skye had gotten yesterday, her temper flaring up and burning them all, but none so badly as Skye herself. Jemma didn't know how to put their orbits right, but she knew that she desperately wanted to, for all their sakes. She wanted the chaos of the universe, of their lives, to bow to the rules of how things should be, its tangled web of unpredictability un-gnarling at the mercy of undeniable, always dependable laws of nature. Energy cannot be created or destroyed. Two and two will always make four. May and Phil's will feel like home, and home will always feel good. Or at least, it should.
She wasn't quite sure how to put all those thoughts into words, though, now that she was seated across from Dr. Garner, Phil by her side. Dr. Garner was a smart man, and she was certain that he would have no difficulty in discerning her meaning from the brambles of her rambles about stars and orbits and gravity, but something about being in the formal setting of the office made her sometimes feel like she should try and be a little more clear about what she was trying to say. The only problem was, she didn't quite know how.
"I know Phil mentioned to me that some days have been non-vocal days for you, Jemma," Dr. Garner said kindly, once greetings had been exchanged. "Is talking okay today, or would you rather do something else – writing, drawing, something like that?"
"Talking is okay," Jemma murmured. She was tapping steady on her knee, nice and calm. 1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4. Even if she didn't quite feel calm enough for a 1-2-3-4 tap (more like a 1-2-1-2 after the morning she'd already had), by forcing herself to keep the slower beat, she was having an easier time encouraging her insides to slow down as well. She could talk today, even if finding the right words was still tricky. Phil and Dr. Garner were good people to talk around.
"Okay, great," smiled Dr. Garner. "Well, if that changes, just give me or Phil a signal and we can switch things up if need be, all right?" Jemma nodded, drawing another smile from Dr. Garner. "Do you have something you'd like to start with, or would you like me to begin us with a question?"
"You can start," Jemma offered. She was usually better at answering questions than coming up with conversation topics on her own, and Dr. Garner was good at asking questions.
"How are you feeling today?"
Jemma's face puckered. That was one of the questions she least liked to answer, but she probably should have expected it. They often talked about her feelings in Dr. Garner's office. She picked up the tempo of her tap slightly as she thought hard.
"Like Pluto's moons," she decided after a while. Dr. Garner made a curious noise.
"Tell me more about that."
"Pluto's moons have a chaotic rotation. Well, not Charon, that moon is tidally locked with Pluto, almost like a double-dwarf, but the other four – Styx, Nix, Kerebos, and Hydra – they all have rotations that are chaotic. Unpredictable. I was reading the other day; some scientists think they almost tumble while they're in orbit. Nix can flip its entire pole. It's… random. It doesn't make sense."
"So you feel like you're tumbling a little bit? Like things are chaotic?"
"Yes," Jemma admitted quietly. She felt a little guilty for saying that in front of Phil, when she knew he was trying his hardest to make them all feel good and safe, but it was true. She cut her eyes over to him for a brief moment, and was relieved to see that he didn't look hurt by her words. He smiled at her when he caught her eye. "All our orbits have gotten… out of sorts. Things aren't settled or back to normal yet. I… I don't like it. It makes me worry."
"What sorts of things are you worried about?" Dr. Garner asked.
Jemma frowned. "Everything." Worrying was one of her talents, one of the things she was best at. Even when she had been small, her mother had teased her lovingly for her tendency to fret over things. Although now, of course, she had much bigger things to fret over than the dreary English weather or the possibility that the ducks in the pond down the road from their home weren't getting enough vitamin B3.
"Let me rephrase that," Dr. Garner said with a slight, good-natured, chuckle. "What are some things that you're worried about in particular? Maybe give me a list. Three things that you've worried about today specifically."
"Skye," Jemma said, almost automatically. Almost always at the top of her worry list, no matter what day it was. "I worry about her a lot of days. She's still having a hard time. And her stitches might be getting infected. We have to go see a doctor today to get our stitches looked at, both of us. I'm worried about that, I suppose. Lots of other things. Our family. What I'm missing at school. Fitz and Trip. Being safe. Knowing what's going to happen to us. Getting everyone back in the right orbit, so they feel good. But if I have to only pick three, then Skye, and Skye's stitches, and going to the doctor are my three things for this morning specifically."
"Those are certainly all things that I would be worried about too, if I was in your position," said Dr. Garner kindly. "It's hard not to worry about the people we care for, and I'm sure going back to see a doctor feels intimidating after what happened the last time you saw one."
"I'm not afraid of doctors." Jemma wasn't sure if she was supposed to correct Dr. Garner like that, but she didn't want him getting the wrong idea. "I've seen them my whole life. When I was born, I came out upside-down and with my umbilical cord wrapped around my head. The doctors had to work hard to save me. And when I was small, I had to have an operation for my scoliosis. The doctors fixed my spine and helped me walk properly again. Doctors fixed my arm after I broke it in the car crash. They sewed up the cut on my head that I got from the Walkers, and they made a report so I didn't have to stay there. And this time, they saved me from… they took the bullet out. And made sure I didn't die. I wish they hadn't made a report this time, but I know they have to do that sort of thing to keep people from getting hurt. Doctors aren't frightening. They fix people, save them. But sometimes it can be frightening if you know there's something about you that needs to be fixed. And I don't want them to send us away again."
"Jemma," Phil said gently. "Miss Hand and Melinda and I have already spoken with the doctor that we're meeting with today – a couple times, actually. She knows about our situation, and she knows that she doesn't have to make any reports. No one is going to try and take you away today, I promise."
Jemma turned her attention towards Phil and drank in the sight of his earnest eyes and warm face. She shifted slightly on the couch so that they were sitting closer together, their knees and arms touching, and she lighted a soft 1-2-3 (I-trust-you. I-love-you. How funny that love and trust fit so neatly together...) on his wrist. Phil smiled and rotated his hand slightly so that he could tap back on her own hand, mimicking her rhythm. It made Jemma's heart feel like all the stars in the galaxy had burst to life, radiating their sparkling joy through her veins and arteries, lighting up every cell of her body. She smiled back.
"The doctor will take good care of you," Phil assured her. "And Skye, too. Dr. Garner takes care of your minds and hearts, and Dr. Little will take care of your bodies. If there's something to fix, we'll fix it, and if there's not, we'll still make sure you both are getting what you need. But it helps us if you can tell us when you need something. If you're feeling worried about something, you can tell me, or Melinda. Sometimes the things we worry about are things that other people can help us with, so we don't have to worry any more. And even if it's not something we can fix, at least you won't have to be worried alone."
"Being worried alone is awful," Jemma murmured. "That was the worst part of being in the hospital, I think. I was alone a lot of the time and worried about a lot of things. It was hard to stop thinking about bad things, remembering them. Like being in the hospital after my parents died and being in the hospital after I got hurt at the Walkers. I remembered those things a lot, worried about Skye and Bobbi a lot."
"That sounds pretty hard, to remember those things, to hold all that worry and have no one to share it with." Dr. Garner spoke quietly, but his tone was more matter-of-fact than pitying, which Jemma appreciated. She much preferred facts to feelings. "You know, Jemma, this is a pretty good place to share things like that. Memories and worries. If you ever want to, of course. You might find it helps to ease some of the anxiety… help get your orbit back to what you're used to."
"Maybe," Jemma mused. She usually only talked to Skye about those sorts of things, but she felt like maybe Skye didn't need to be the only one Jemma poured her feelings into, especially when Skye had so many feelings of her own to filter through. And maybe it wouldn't be so bad to let a few more people into her head. She and Phil had talked a little about her parents before – she knew he understood a little about how she felt without them – and Dr. Garner was easy to talk to, easy to trust. She took a deep breath, gave herself a sharp tap in the midst of her steady beat, a heavy 1 in the 1-2-3 to give herself the jolt she needed to start.
"I think I remembered the times in the hospital after the car crash and after the Walkers the most because this time felt the most like those times," she began, her voice not quite as strong as she wished it could be, but not a tremulous mouse-voice, either. "I was alone all those times. Alone and frightened. After the car crash they put me in an ambulance before I understood what was going on. I… I didn't see my parents, not really. My arm hurt and my head hurt. They put me in a cast and then I had to stay the night all alone, I think so they could make sure I didn't have a concussion. Probably also because they didn't know where I could go. A doctor told me about my parents, that they died, and I met Mrs. Finney, my old social worker, later on. She didn't stay long."
"I wasn't sad at first," she continued, twisting up her face a little as she concentrated on dredging up the old memories, sorting through them to put them in order and make sense of them. "I understood what had happened, but I didn't really feel it for a while. Mostly I was scared. There were a lot of things that were upsetting me, I was trying not to get out of sorts. But I got sad later." She bit down on her lip, and her fingers curled inwards, tight muscles turning her hands into almost claws as she tried to stay steady against the choppy waters of memory.
"That's a very normal reaction to something like that," Dr. Garner nodded. "Grief is a tricky process to categorize."
"It was like I was a part of a binary star system, but one of the stars had vanished," she tried to explain. "The two stars are supposed to be in sync. Their orbits are tied to one another, they have a common center of mass, the same barycenter, you know. But then I was the only one, and everything was lopsided. I didn't want to move, or talk, or anything. I wanted to stay put until things were balanced out again. But I had to leave the hospital and go to St. Agnes."
"How did that make you feel?"
"Bad," Jemma said softly. "Like I was going to implode. Star-death collapse. I met Skye, though, and she helped. She was a new star for a new binary. It was a new barycenter, but we had it in common. I don't normally like new, but that was a good new. It just took me a while to get used to it."
"Of course. Adjusting to any kind of new takes time, and you had a lot of new, a lot of feelings to process."
She told them a little bit about the Walkers next. Phil's face got a tight look on it when she briefly mentioned what had happened to there, but it was the same kind of look she had seen before on Miss Hand and Skye's face at the same information, so she knew the grim expression was meant to be directed at the Walkers, not at her. He held her hand tightly while she spoke, squeezing like he might never let go of her. Mostly, though, she talked about how she had felt once she'd been brought to the hospital and separated from them for good, the overwhelming mix of fear and guilt and relief preoccupying most of her thoughts as she spent lonely nights trying to pull herself back together, holding onto the one glimmering hope of being able to see Skye again.
"I was still out of sorts when I got back to St. Agnes," she admitted, "but coming back to Skye was the best thing. It was like coming home. My orbit felt right again. I could breathe again, everything didn't feel so closed off and tight. Being with her puts my gravity right."
"It's clear that you two are very important to each other," Dr. Garner smiled. "I can see why you worry about her. You care about her very much."
Jemma nodded. "She helps me a lot. I want to be able to help her, too. I want to help her put her gravity right."
"To get the binary stars back in sync," Dr. Garner suggested, and Jemma nodded again.
"Do you want to know something?" she asked, after moment or two had passed in peaceful silence.
"Always."
"There are some star systems that are like binary stars, but they have more than two stellar bodies in them. Same principle, they all share a barycenter and orbit in sync, but there are several with three stars, and even some with more than that. There's one with five called Beta Capricorni. I think that might be my new system, my new barycenter."
"Is that so?"
"Yes," Jemma smiled. "I felt it when we all got to be together again last week. I felt the way I do with Skye, but it wasn't just her anymore. It was everyone. They all felt like home. When May and Phil came to the hospital to get me, I felt… I felt like I might never be worried about anything ever again. And then Bobbi came home, and then Skye, and we were all there, and the gravity was right. It was like everything clicked into how the universe was always supposed to be. We're a little out of order right now, but I know how it's supposed to be now, too. And I know we'll find it again, because nothing else feels as right. And the universe always finds its way to what's right."
Hello! I'm sorry it's been taking me so long in between updates - life just keeps getting in the way, I think! I appreciate you all so much for being here and sticking with me and this story, despite the extended gaps in update time :) These three chapters are a little bit of "breather chapters" I think... a lot has been happening and I thought everybody needed some time to process everything. I hope you still like them, though, in spite of them not being as action-packed :)