Gahh it's been so so long! College has been very busy, as expected, but I am so glad for everyone still sticking with this story! I still have a lot planned! Arastoo will *finally* appear in the next chapter and it will make me cry.
Cam had found exactly what she planned to find at the lab: nothing.
"You can try." Hodgins had said to Cam, mournfully. She could understand that it was coming from a place of comfort, but in a way it was just setting up another point of expectation; yet another way in which she could ultimately fall short.
Things just could not be that simple, that orderly.
It also didn't alleviate the sting of Angela's words and how much they confirmed Cam's own doubts. They were all just feeling emotional, yes, but couldn't Angela and Brennan understand her hurt? The constant draining feeling wasn't something she could just get over like it was nothing, but she also wasn't sure what could actually make her feel more at ease. Every attempt just felt cruelly fruitless.
Her more innate, raw instincts made her simply want to hide away so as not to be forced into this emotional, vulnerable wedge with her friends, though her rigid side knew that simply wasn't possible.
As Cam got back into her car, bassinet in tow, her emotions felt like they were teetering and fevered again. What on earth was work going to be like? While she knew she had to try and adjust to normalcy, but her stamina felt so unimaginably low.
She loved her work, but clearly loving something and knowing its importance no longer carried the significance that it used to. It didn't matter how much she had spent on trying to look more presentable-more like her usual self-because it truly couldn't mask the inadequacies that her soul was bearing.
But she couldn't just stay at home, either. That would be difficult and draining in it's own way as she'd be completely unable to hide from the shortcomings of motherhood.
She took a deep breath. She couldn't consider that right now; she had to get through the day before letting herself panic even more about the future. For a second, though, she did ponder what Vincent would've wanted her to do, what he believed would make her feel most at peace. He had been involved with the impending idea of parenthood at one point; he had even been excited about it. But like everything else, she could never fully know.
Cam's fog of thought was again dispersed by a shrill cry from Aida. Yes, parenthood, that was it. Plenty of people found some kind of solace and purpose by embodying that. But, no matter how much conscious thought she put into it, the muscles in her brain rejected this. It rejected everything.
With a tense sigh of defeat, she made her way back to the apartment. Aida in one hand and the broken stroller dragging behind her, Cam opened the door to her apartment. She used to appreciate its qualities much more before this flattening of her energy. Before Aida, she had rarely been home due to how much she worked and she had been able to appreciate its comforts a lot more.
The white walls and contrasting warm, wood floors that used to feel eclectic now felt confining; the modern, grey kitchen felt almost nauseating since she couldn't really eat without getting sick ; the once prized, large windows let in so much light it nearly gave her a permanent migraine.
And, of course, the gray couch from Vincent's apartment had lost every ounce of its nostalgia and charm. Even though it had been only seven months since it had belonged to him, Cam could still smell his comforting smell seeped deep into the fabric. Though the scent brought a complicated wave of emotions, she could remember how she had curled up on it for almost a whole entire day after she brought Aida home from the hospital. That day, every part of her postpartum body was aching in pain, but his scent and the image it brought of the simper times they had shared put her more at ease than any medication could.
She had truly taken those days for granted. The intimate, sweet times where she and Vincent had been together on this very couch were blissful; the only worries plaguing her mind had been about how irritating it would be if anyone ever caught wind of their relationship. And, of course, she had taken his love for granted too.
Cam hesitantly opened the door, as if delaying the action would somehow magically remove the possibility of Michelle being home and the impending line of excitable questioning that she would bring.
"How did breakfast go?" Michelle asked hopefully, poised at the kitchen island as if she hadn't even moved from when Cam had left.
"It was…" Cam took stock of the broken stroller and heavy bassinet, trying to weigh what emotional catastrophe she was suppose to unravel first. She looked around despondently as if searching for some kind of distraction from the conversation. She hated to disappoint Michelle—yet again—but the emotional strain she felt in her limbs was clearly expressing itself on her face.
Noticing Cam's avoidance, Michelle could sense the hesitation. Her expression dropped and she swallowed hard as if bracing herself for another roll of dishevelment and grief.
Breakfast clearly hasn't fixed anything, no matter how much Michelle had hoped. Cam's friends could relate to her grief more than Michelle could since they had all known Vincent, but like every else, it failed to break Cam's fog. And what else could? How many times were they going to get lost in this cycle of drudgery?
"Breakfast went…" Cam tried keep her eyes turned away, but instead she let the broken stroller slip from her hand and she put the freed hand to her forehead in frustration."We got into a fight; Angela and Brennan said that I,"She carefully set Aida down and put her hands on her hips to try and collect herself further; she wanted to consciously stay strong for Michelle, but the biting truth was slipping out of her mouth.
"That I-I couldn't love Vincent, a-nd I couldn't love Aida either." She continued with a struggled breath, eyes feeling the trickle of tears.
Michelle watched as the emotion built in Cam's face, expressions of confusion and the knocking sense of depression. "Is that what you think?" She questioned, tentatively.
Cam wiped her watering eyes with the back of her hand, arms still firmly on her hips and eyes turned on Aida. "They might...have a point. I c-can't stay tethered to feeling that way anymore. I can't do it."
Michelle felt her own face tense with Cam's, the air around them going stiff. What else could she really say at this point that would matter? She could understand Cam's deep sadness since she had witnessed it nearly everyday since Aida's birth and even before that, but she could also perfectly relate to Angela and Dr. Brennan's points of frustration.
"Are you even trying?" Michelle asked, the question surprising both of them. She couldn't even look at Cam when she asked it; she just maintained her tense position at the kitchen island.
Cam felt a lump grow in her throat and her brain go fuzzy as she furrowed her brows at Michelle's question. "Trying? What are you talking about, Michelle?"
Unrest growing in her expression, Michelle took a shallow breath before facing Cam again. "Aida needs you so much right now," she began, her own eyes beginning to water. "And you can't even be strong enough for her."
"If I could, I-I would, Michelle." Cam replied with a sharp tone. "I take my responsibilities seriously but this-"
Michelle stood up, interrupting Cam's flimsy defense. "If you actually took your responsibilities seriously, you would do all you could to get better for Aida, for you, for all of us! You don't even remember what it was like when my dad died, do you? Or do you even think about when my mom died?" Michelle could feel the tightness in her throat, a precursor to the unrest growing in her emotions.
"Of course I remember that! But grief is...complicated, Michelle."
"I don't care! You have no idea how Aida is," Michelle has to stop to breathe in order to keep up with her quaking heart. "How Aida is going to feel, but I do."
Cam's frustrated face softened. She had tried her best to avoid drawing parallels between Aida and Michelle, but it was ultimately unavoidable. Michelle had lost her own mother relatively young and did not have too many solid memories of her. And of course, she definitively felt the loss of her own father.
"She's going to have so many questions, ones that you won't be able to answer! She-she's going to just wonder all of the time; why the universe wanted to take her dad from her o-or what he was even like, m-maybe all of the things they would've done together if he had been able to...stay." Her tone was still hot, but was paired with streaks of tears. Cam attempted to come close to Michelle, to offer some kind of comfort, but Michelle jerked away.
"This isn't just about you anymore. Clearly, something isn't right. Something that's not going to be changed just by your believing that you're this kind of perfect, impervious person that's immune to real hurt!" Michelle continued, but the volume of the fight had triggered a fit of whaling in Aida.
"That is not true!" Cam tried shouting over the screaming. "I am doing my best here, alright? Maybe the baby didn't fix everything, but this is something that happened to me, and I'm dealing with it at well as I can!"
"Why can't you see what's going on? Cam, he's gone! He died! You're allowed to feel that!" She was being pushed to the brink now, not even wanting to bother with slowing down. "Sometimes, I'm so worried to leave you alone with her in case you get so depressed that you forget to feed her or something! You're supposed to be her mother, and my mother too."
"H-How dare you say that?!." Cam crossed her arms, trying to take back the authority in this conversation against her own uneasy emotions.
"You know I'm not wrong, Cam. You're h-hurt, but you can't take everyone down with you. Everyone who loves you, even if you don't realize it o-or don't know what you're doing." Michelle said with one final cut as she turned away, heading for the door.
You know what, maybe your friends were onto something. If you really loved me, your friends, a-and even Vincent, you would be doing better than this!" She haphazardly threw things into her purse. "I'm going for a walk." She slammed the door behind her, leaving Cam in the lurch.
Deflated, Cam let her weak body become pulled to the couch with Aida continuing her cries. Hands wrapped around her stomach, eyes sore, and gaze vacant, she felt the punch and sting of Michelle's words. But, like everyone else, she was not wrong.
Considering Michelle's hurt was the last thing she wanted to do, not because she didn't care but because she knew how it would make her feel. She wasn't just failing as a mother to Aida, but to Michelle as well.
One thing she admittedly hasn't considered was how Aida would feel. Cam had briefly imagined how Aida would grow up around the lab, but she dismissed the larger issue. How could Cam provide insight and comfort through her daughter's loss when she couldn't scrounge up the comfort for herself?
She knew exactly how she had reckoned with this before; she had ignored the whole concept of a pregnancy ultimately creating a baby which would ultimately create an actual person. She had imagined that Aida would somehow exist in the middle as only an idea of a person who didn't have to deal with this momentous loss.
When Cam thought about it, she wasn't treating anyone like an actual person anymore. Every fixture in her life, from Michelle to Vincent's parents, couldn't reach her anymore. They just acted as stern advertisements of her failures.
Letting herself fall deeper into the worn couch, closing her eyes to block out the hysterical crying, she let her mind drift and the sobs flow without composure.
He was gone, wasn't he?