Hey guys! I wanted to do an introduction post bc I’ve seen a couple peoples. I’m gonna keep most things about myself private but I’ll share some of my interests.
My main fandoms currently are Jurassic world chaos theory/camp Cretaceous, HTTYD, and Percy Jackson, but I’ve had (and probably will have) more
My top ten characters right now are
Yaz fadoula (CC/CT)
Snotlout Jorgensen (HTTYD)
Leo Valdez (PJO)
Kenji Kon (CC/CT)
Piper McLean (PJO)
Hiccup Haddock (HTTYD)
Ben Pincus (CC/CT)
Astrid Hofferson (HTTYD)
Heather (HTTYD)
Sammy Gutierrez (CC/CT)
I love reading and writing. I probably won’t talk about it on here but my favorite books are PJO, fourth wing, boys of Tommen, and Greek mythology retellings.
My favorite music artists are the lumineers, Gigi Perez, Chappell roan and Noah kahan
Incase anyone knows or was wondering, I’m cabin 7, my dragon is a death song and my favorite dinosaur is a parasaurolophus.
I kinda love that Yaz in season three is unconditionally motivated to help Brooklynn while everyone else hesitates because I think it's such a fun element to see her unconditionally love in a platonic way.
Because we always see people credit Darius for "going after Brooklynn" meanwhile one Yasmina Fadoula was completely unwavering in that aspect. And honestly would have made for a fun Aro!Darius scene for him question his romantic interest based on Yaz's platonic love for her friends being THAT strong. And it would have been fun to see him acknowledge his feelings were platonic not romantic.
you guys how do we feel about the concept of brooklynn sobbing into darius' shoulder after he proposes to her because for a long time she decided that there couldn't possibly be anyone who'd want to marry her?
Another Fic idea! The Camp Fam actually talks all together after everything happens, and everyone basically apologizing for things that they did, for example, Sammy and Yaz not listening to each other, Brooklynn running away, Kenji punching Darius, Darius ghosting everyone, and whatever else you can think of, perhaps. By the way, yes, I did in fact just copy and paste these from our convo because I was too lazy lmao
i still have faith in you
“I want us to be a normal family. As normal as we could be, after something like— like Nublar. A family that supports each other and argues sometimes but always loves each other at the end of the day... But we’re broken. We’re a broken family.”
“We’re— we’re not broken, Sammy.”
“Yeah, we are.”
“We’re just... hurting. We’re not broken.”
“We kind of are — but we can fix it though. Right?”
.o0o.
Alone and in jail for the Biosyn incident, the camp fam finally talk about everything and attempt to fix what’s badly broken between them all.
!!!! trigger warning for past suicidal ideation. this fic is very emotionally intense, please don’t read if it may upset you!
They hug like hurricanes, the camp fam. Wild and relentless, like they’re dangling in mid air off a cliff and trusting nothing but the others to catch them. Their hugs range from tender to desperate, the gentlest hold to cutting off circulation. A firestorm of love they throw themselves into, pure instinct melding with years of each other being the ones they run to.
Yet, they’ve never clung to each other, never with such a primal, frantic frenzy, as now. They’ve barely been dumped in the shared cell together for more than a second, before they pile on each other: Kenji tackles Darius, the two clutching each other tight, and Brooklynn, Yaz and Sammy all collapse into each other, heads lovingly tucked into shoulders, foreheads pressed together in something far more intimate than a kiss. The two little groups merge after a while, gasping for breath. They love with nails so frantic, they make tiny scratches on each other’s skin. They clutch each other until they press into the harsh jut of each other’s bones and joints, and they feel the exertion in their muscles. But they hold on tight.
Because nothing hurt more than being apart.
And when they finally break apart, Brooklynn grips Darius’s hand, her eyes wide and wild, and says, “Ben is alive! Ben is alive.”
Their reactions are mixed. Sammy gasps, and Yaz buries her face in her hands. Kenji nods ever so slightly, and Darius grips Brooklynn’s hand, his eyes locked on hers the entire time. “Are you... are you sure?” He gasps with someone who isn’t brave enough to believe her yet. “How— how do you know?”
“I—” but before Brooklynn can reply, Kenji says, his eyes welling up, “She’s right.” The cell falls silent, as everyone turns to him. “I... I was in the hospital long enough to— to know. He didn’t wake up, he was... I don’t know, but he’s... he’s okay. Made it out of surgery. Gia’s looking after him.”
They all breathe a shaky sigh of relief. Yaz’s face crumples into tears, and Sammy hugs her close. Kenji covers his face with both of his hands, and Brooklynn has the decency to look away.
It’s a minute before Kenji says, “Brooklynn... how did you know?”
Brooklynn drops her voice, whipping her head behind and checking for cameras, before whispering. “Ben’s girlfriend — Gia — posed as a reporter. She spoke to me, asked me questions. She’s gonna help us get out of here. I saw a camera around her neck in a pendant.”
“She... took a page out of your book, huh?” Yaz says with a watery grin. A twitch of her lips says what words can’t. Look at who you are. Look at where you’ve come from. I know you’ve messed up. But I love you. I don’t recognise you. I love you. What happened to you? I love you.
“Bad influences, the lot of us,” Kenji says, his tone suggesting an attempt at a joke, but it falls flat.
The conversation fizzles out, settling between them. It hits them one by one that they need to talk. And there are a million and one things they could talk about. An impossible web none of them would even begin to know where to start unpicking.
Darius makes the first move. It’s always him — the leader, the guidance, their rallying cry. There’s something always quietly, fantastically brave in him. Something that makes the camp fam believe things are going to be okay. He clears his throat. Adjusts his position so his spine is tugged a little straighter.
And announces, in a voice soft as a feather, “I’m scared.”
No one speaks; how could they? What do they even say, to their young, brave leader whose shoulders they let the world rest on?
Into the silence, Darius continues, “God, I’m so scared. We— we could’ve died. Really died this time. Ben... God, I—” A sob catches on a perilous nail in his throat “—I really thought...”
“He’s okay,” Kenji says, voice shaking like he can’t quite believe it himself. “He’s okay, Darius. We got him out.”
“We almost didn’t.”
The truth rings, hollow, around the room. No pillows, no carpets, no soft human comforts to cushion the blow of bitter truth. Ben could’ve died. Any of them could’ve died. If they were a little slower, a little more tired, a little more indecisive... they could be planning Ben’s funeral right now.
“Ohh my God,” Darius says, dragging his hand over his face. “This is a mess. This is such a mess. I— I— I mean, what are we even supposed to do? What do we tell mom, Kenji? That we— we just ran off, disappeared for the second time with no notice?”
Kenji, concealing a small smile at being officially included in the Bowman family, says, “Look, I think it would be easier if we just told her the truth.”
“We can’t tell her the truth, Kenj. What— that we broke into Biosyn? We destroyed international research? Bypassed security to, what, uncover some grand conspiracy?” Hurt flashes across Brooklynn’s face, and she buries it quick. “That our stupid decisions got Ben—”
The cell is shocked into silence. They all know what they did — the six of them, as a group. The trespassing. The stowing away. The property destruction. Running, lying, nearly dying... There’s far too much to deal with, possibly too much to even trace.
“We aren’t just kids anymore,” Brooklynn says, her voice low. “Everything has changed since Nublar. We weren’t just running for our lives anymore. We — me especially — we broke the law.”
Yaz frowns, her expression indecipherable. “What were we doing, if not running for our lives?”
“We—” Brooklynn splutters. “It wasn’t just running scared. I— I made a choice. I was sick to death of running from everything that scared me, so... I chose to get involved.”
“Is that why you did it?” Sammy asks, her voice pillow-soft. It’s the first time she’s spoken this whole time, and the hurt wounding her face like a bruise is undeniable. “I just... want to know why.”
“I’m not sure myself,” Brooklynn says, her face half-honest — but even that is starting to lose credibility. Sammy’s eyebrows twist into a frown.
When Kenji next speaks, his voice is heavy. “If we really are going to do this — we have to be honest with each other. So that means we tell each other the truth, and nothing but the truth.” The legal wording doesn’t slip past them. They know they won’t escape the court appearances, the legal trials, the endless stream of lawyers.
“That starts with you, Brooklynn,” he says, voice hard and cold. “Why did you do it?”
Brooklynn sighs, her shoulders riding up and down. “Will you believe me if I say I don’t exactly know?”
“Not exactly,” Sammy says bluntly.
Brooklynn nods. “That’s fair. So... if I can’t tell you that, is there anything I can tell you?”
“How about when you first got involved. What happened there?”
Brooklynn chews on her lip, lost in thought. “Since the Lockwood incident, I’d been investigating on Dark Jurassic. I knew bad things were happening to those dinosaurs — and I thought that, since I had all the skills to investigate and all, I needed to help. At first, I just wanted to help the dinosaurs. I swear.”
“But then...?” Sammy’s eyebrows raise.
“Then... I began learning things. Just who was involved in this dinosaur trafficking ring. It wasn’t just a few bad eggs. It was every other rich and powerful person who’d had dealings with dinosaur trafficking — either for their ownership, or to commercialise and sell. It was so much bigger than I could even understand. And I knew I needed a way in: someone rich who I could extract intel from.”
Kenji’s eyes are grim. “My father.”
Brooklynn shuffles to face him. “I shouldn’t have spoken to him behind your back, and I never should’ve let him get in the way of our relationship. I... wasn’t a good girlfriend to you. I used you because you were close to him, and I was scared that, if we broke up, I’d lose that access. And I know that hurts. I truly can’t imagine.”
“Yeah. It kind of does hurt.” Kenji’s voice is cutting, slicing her heart to ribbons.
“I’m so sorry, Kenji.” Brooklynn bows her head. “I really am. And it’s okay if you aren’t ready to forgive me.”
“The thing is,” Kenji says, air rushing out of him like a deflating balloon, “I understand why you did it. Sort of. I— I mean, didn’t you just want to be done with dinosaurs? Didn’t you want to put it all behind you, and just get to be normal?”
“Sort of. For me, I thought that... after everything I’d been through — being Brooklynn The Nublar Survivor, rather than Brooklynn The Person — how could I look away? Obviously there were times I wanted to stop, but mostly, I was in too deep.”
“Right— you wanted to stop. But you didn’t. And I kind of understand that. You wanted to do what you thought was right. But still... faking your death? I— we all grieved you. You know that? Losing you drove a rift between me and Darius — and I’m not blaming you, cos I was a shitty person to Darius and that’s my fault. But it still happened. We still fell apart. Cos we were grieving you.”
Brooklynn shakes her head, tears pricking her eyes as she covers her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry,” comes her muffled voice. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I was a shitty person to you too, Kenj,” Darius says.
“No— no, don’t do that.” Kenji shakes his head. “I was way worse. I— fuck, I cut off the only support system I had to, what, be closer to my— abusive father?” The word strangles out of him. “You’re my brother.” Kenji’s eyes pierce straight into Darius’s with a clash of deep, pained brown. “And I treated you like dirt. All because I blamed you for something that wasn’t your fault.”
“I should’ve been there,” Darius says. The words are old and creaking, an ancient truth built deep into the depths of his brain with every nightmare culminating in the horrible truth. They can tell, just from the certainty of each syllable, it’s a mistake he’ll spend the rest of his life regretting.
“It’s better you weren’t,” Brooklynn says. “You would’ve just got attacked yourself. Or worse...” She shudders, and the rest can’t help but feel the same. In spite of everything — every near death experience their fried nervous systems have endured over the years — the camp fam cannot fathom a world where any one of them is dead. Like— forever-dead-buried-in-the-ground dead. “I got lucky.”
“Brooklynn...” Darius’s voice comes, slow and heavy with a million words deciding what should be said. “This wasn’t another stunt for the cameras. You got seriously hurt.”
“I know that!” Brooklynn snaps, a flare of anger colouring her words bright red. Her fingers protectively circle her stump, and she says, voice clouding with sombre grey, “You don’t have to remind me. I knew the risks.”
“And you got involved anyway,” Sammy says.
Brooklynn looks at the four, all refusing to look at her. She searches in vain for a pair of understanding eyes — but everyone looks some variant of hurt. Hurt that she caused. Hurt she doesn’t know how to make right.
“I understand if you hate me,” Brooklynn says eventually. “If you need to be away from me, to be mad at me... I get it.”
“Don’t you see, Brooklynn?!” Sammy bursts, with such surprising volume it crashes across the stone cell right back in their ears with a flinch. “That’s just it! You— you shut yourself off from us, you think you know best, and you go off with these grand old dreams of saving everyone without thinking about what your actions might mean for us. And— and just assuming we’d still be there on the other side. Did you think about seeing us once, when you were pretending to be dead?”
“I thought about it every day, Sammy!” Brooklynn shouts. “It killed me to be apart from you guys — but I was being hunted. And I didn’t want you guys to be next.”
“Since when do we face anything alone?” Sammy cries. “We’re— we’re the camp fam, damn it!” But even her conviction wavers on the words. “We do everything together. I just... Why didn’t you ask for help, Brooklynn? Why did you go with Santos? Why did you choose her instead of us?”
Sammy is crying hard now, tears running down her cheeks in streams that pool on her jeans. She takes a big sniff, coughing on phlegm. Yaz rubs her back, but she half-heartedly flinches away, curling in on herself until her tangled black hair curtains her face away from everyone else.
They sit and listen to her, all four knowing they have to stomach those awful, awful sounds.
Eventually, she re-emerges, wiping her wet face with her sleeve. And it shatters Brooklynn’s soul to say, “I... I don’t have a reason. For why I went with Santos. I put my mission above you guys, and even though we stopped a dinosaur trafficking criminal, I still hurt you with that choice. A choice I never should’ve made in the first place.”
Sincerity hangs heavily in Brooklynn’s heart as she finally has the courage to look Sammy in the eye. “Sammy, I’m so sorry. I... am so sorry. You deserve a million times better than this. I— I was a shitty friend to you, and a shitty boyfriend to you, Kenji — and it’s the biggest regret of my life.”
“But would you change it?” Sammy asks suddenly.
Brooklynn blinks. “What— what do you mean?”
“Would you change the fact that you did it? If you could turn back time, and erase all of this — the investigation, the faking death, all of it — from existence, would you?”
“I— of course I would,” Brooklynn says, but she doesn’t sound sure.
“You’d really?”
“Yes! Yes, I would, okay! I— I don’t know if you’re asking me to regret putting Santos behind bars, or saving all those dinosaurs — but I can’t honestly say I wish I didn’t do that. If there was another way—”
“It isn’t about them,” Sammy explodes, a fresh wave of tears springing to her eyes. “It’s about us! The six of us, and the friendship you ruined!”
A gasp snatches from the air, and Yaz hisses, “That’s a little harsh, Sammy.”
Sammy’s eyes narrow. “You’re taking her side? Again?”
“I— I’m not taking sides,” Yaz splutters. “I’m just saying, it wasn’t just Brooklynn who made things bad between us. Her... not-death impacted us all. I let myself drift away from everyone, before and after that. That’s on me, okay?”
“I— I know that, Yaz,” Sammy says softly. “It’s just that— you all have your other things. Darius has his speeches, and the DPW—”
“Not anymore,” Darius interjects, “I quit.”
“Yeah— but you still had something. And Kenji has his rock climbing—”
“Which I honestly might quit after that tree nightmare.”
“Let me finish you guys!” Sammy exclaims. “And Ben has college, Yaz has her studies in Wyoming, Brooklynn had— has her journalism — and I get we might not have these things anymore, but you guys were all I had!”
“What about the farm?” Yaz asks, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, sure— but it wasn’t enough to make me forget my own family had abandoned me.”
“We never meant to...” Darius trails off — because they had meant to and they all knew it. They’d never intend to hurt Sammy, but they did want to get away from everything that was hurting them.
“I can’t hate you for it,” Sammy says. “God, sometimes I really wanted to — but I couldn’t. I just love you so much, and it hurts like fucking hell. I want us to be a normal family. As normal as we could be, after something like— like Nublar. A family that supports each other and argues sometimes but always loves each other at the end of the day.” Her eyes cloud over with sorrow; it’s like watching something die right before their eyes. “But we’re broken. We’re a broken family.”
“We’re— we’re not broken, Sammy,” Darius says, taken aback.
“Yeah, we are.”
“We’re just... hurting.” Darius chooses his words carefully. “We’re not broken.”
“We kind of are — but we can fix it though. Right?” Brooklynn says, eyebrows raised and hopeful, but something in her eyes doesn’t want the answer. “We can fix broken things.”
“Even... this?” Sammy’s voice echoes through the cell. “Us?”
“We’ve done harder things,” Brooklynn tries to smile.
Kenji looks at her darkly. “Have we? On Nublar it was us against the dinosaurs. And now...”
“It’s us against the problem,” Yaz finishes. “Not us against each other. Trick I learned in my psychology studies. It’s never gonna be us against each other. Yeah it’s difficult, but who says it’s above us?”
“Well— Brooklynn had her chance.” Sammy’s eyes are dark. “She chose Santos.”
“I was trying to keep you all safe!” Brooklynn cries. “The further Santos was from you guys, the better.”
“But we could’ve helped!” A sob snags on her throat.
“Sammy, I was in too deep, and there wasn’t much I could let on without endangering you guys too.”
“Just ask!” Sammy shrieks. “All you had to do was ask. Just— tell us something. Fucking communicate, Brooklynn! Don’t fuck off to Malta and make us wonder if you’re going to be alive the next time we try to call you.”
“Sammy, I—” couldn’t. She couldn’t. It’s a truth all of them know. Countless things held her back until she couldn’t do it alone anymore.
“Can one of you — any one of you — just communicate for once?!” Sammy is hysterical now, awful sounds of despair wrenching from her throat as she screams her throat hoarse. “I tried, okay? I tried! I tried to keep us together, and you all just... didn’t. None of you stayed, not one of you! All I wanted was for you to stay, Brooklynn—”
“I don’t know how to stay, okay?!”
The words crash around the cell like lightning. They echo all the way down the corridor and back, hitting them all a second later. The final piece of the puzzle slots into place.
“I— I don’t know how to stay,” she sobs. “Ever since I was a kid, I was going back and forth, for— for filming— an— and I didn’t make friends because they never stayed. I thought my— my fans were my friends, but— but they weren’t! They just came when I was useful and left when I wasn’t. A bunch of them were fucking creeps! My managers were fucking creeps! I was... I was thirteen!” A howl of pain erupts from her throat, making them all flinch. They share everything, the camp fam — almost everything. This was one of those things where none of them genuinely had any idea.
“An— and— then, we were on Nublar, and we got off, and I couldn’t hold still. Nowhere felt safe. Nothing felt steady. And with just me, and my dads pretending to suddenly have a relationship with me, I... I was lonely! And scared, and hurt, and... I thought that journalism would make me feel better — and it did, for a bit. But I got sucked in. I loved the adrenaline rush of it, the excitement, feeling like I was finally doing something — like I wasn’t just some pretty face, some brand name. Like I was helping someone. Like— if I couldn’t save myself, and I couldn’t save any of you, at least... I could save the dinosaurs. But everywhere I stayed, I got restless. And I ran, and ran until I tripped on my feet and had my arm ripped off.”
The cell is silent. Breathing in a synchronised song of horror, sorrow— but understanding. Like things finally begin to make sense.
“I was hooked on the adrenaline. That power— I mean, we were just kids, right? On Nublar. But now, I wasn’t just powerless. I could do something. I could make people afraid. I could protect you guys, instead of watching you run from dinosaurs, or— or almost get poisoned—” her eyes meet Sammy’s “—or wake up screaming—” she looks at Yaz “—I wanted to save you. I wanted to save everyone. I became someone with a mission. I forgot how to—” Shame sinks onto her face, covering it with a heavy blanket of regret. “I forgot— how to be a person. How to be real.”
“Do you want to be?” Darius asks, his voice stone cold.
“Be what?”
“Real. A real person. Who knows how to stay.”
“Of course I do!” Brooklynn’s voice loses all substance. Her voice is gasps, breaths, consonants punctuating a sad rush of air. “I tried— I did try. Back in Biosyn. But I thought none of you would accept me anymore. Cos I was different. I wasn’t the Brooklynn you wanted. You looked at me like a package you ordered that had come back wrong. I got all up in my head about how you deserved better, how you shouldn’t be stuck with someone like me ruining your life. If I couldn’t be with you, then I could at least finally save you.”
Brooklynn says six words that change everything.
“Then, there was the dinosaur stampede.”
Realisation sinks onto Yaz’s face, painting it with horror. “You... you weren’t going to—”
Her lips jam together, crumple into a grimace, and Brooklynn lets out a sob.
And shakes her head.
“Oh, Brooklynn,” Sammy gasps.
“I’m sorry. I swear— I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” She lets out a strangled sound midway between a hiccup and a sob, and buries her head in her knees. Her apologies fall into her jeans, muffled, but equally as heart-wrenching. Darius rubs her shoulder, letting her cry until she’s drained dry and mumbles something about “needing to conserve what little hydration we have.” The reminder of their current circumstances is bitter, grating on them like a thorn ripping their skin apart.
“We would’ve stopped you, if we were fast enough,” Kenji says remorsefully. “By the time I realised, Ben already had you.”
“Brooklynn, I swear, if we knew you were... if that’s what you were about to... I— we would’ve pushed you out of the way. All of us,” Darius says eventually.
“I really don’t want to die.” She sniffles, wiping her nose on the cuff of the drab, grey shirt the police gave her. “I just— hic!” she grabs Sammy’s hand “—I wanted to make things right. I really, really do — and I didn’t know what else I could do to prove how sorry I am, cos I am! I really am!”
“I know you wanted to make things right,” Sammy says, “But suicide isn’t the answer. Be honest, do you think we would’ve wanted to lose you — for real, this time — after thinking you were dead for months?”
Brooklynn shakes her head, tears and snot flying sideways across her face. “I— hic! wasn’t really thinking. I just... I wanted to save you.” Her face shifts, something awakening in her. “I think that’s why I did it. All of it. I just wanted to keep you guys safe.”
“Thank you,” Yaz says. “It means a lot that you tried to protect us.”
Brooklynn’s face falls. “Tried?”
“You did protect us,” Yaz corrects. “You kept Santos away in Malta, you saved our asses in Senegal with the crate and the Baryonyx — not to mention, that trick with the dino stampede did work, kinda.”
“It didn’t work!” Brooklynn howls. “It got Ben almost killed!”
“And if you hadn’t done that, one of us might’ve actually died. No point playing with what-if’s, B. We all saved each other in some way. Especially you.”
“And Ben,” Kenji adds, his face downcast.
“And you, Kenji.” Sammy earnestly squeezes his hand. “You got us out of that tree safe and sound.”
“And Darius saved us from the really big one.”
“Quetzalcoatlus,” Darius corrects Brooklynn, his dino-nerd reflexes showing more than ever. “But yeah... I guess so. And you and Sammy saved Bumpy, Yaz. You took him home.”
Yaz gives something of a smile that slides off her face in a second. “Now all that’s left is for us to get home.”
The gravity of that mission feels akin to climbing a mountain. They have to get out safe. And soon. Their crimes weren’t that bad— just... breaking and entering into Biosyn, destroying Wu’s research, espionage, Brooklynn’s eco terrorism she still hasn’t really told them about...
“Ohhhh, we’re so fucked,” Darius groans. “Guys— we’re going to prison.” None of them would make it out of prison unscathed. Not without their already slashed-up brains bearing even more psychological scars. They cannot go to prison.
“Not if we play our cards right,” says Brooklynn.
“And how do we do that?” Sammy demands, her tone edged with ice. “Another elaborate Brooklynn scheme?”
“I— I don’t know!” Brooklynn exclaims. Her face twists into one of concentration. “I’ll think of something, okay? We did stop an illegal dinosaur trafficking ring, and shut down the raptor murder weapons training thing... Maybe the courts will take it easy on us.”
“And Wu did tell us to destroy his research,” adds Yaz hopefully. “Maybe he’ll vouch for us in court.”
“Yeah, okay— say we get out of here, somehow legally unscathed,” Sammy says, her face still gloomy. “We still have to deal with the repercussions of... everything. Past and present.” No one misses how her eyes ghost over Yaz’s.
Yaz meets Sammy’s gaze with a soft look. “Sam... I was a bad girlfriend. My PTSD doesn’t excuse that. But— would you let me at least explain myself? Please?”
Sammy gives a tiny nod.
“I... When you’re an athlete,” Yaz begins, “There is so much God damn pressure not to struggle. You don’t— show you are having a hard time. You just knuckle down and get on with it. And I guess some of that bled into my PTSD. I didn’t want anyone to see me struggle, because I was the strong one. Not on Nublar. Not on Mantah Corp Island. Not when everyone was looking at me and seeing Yaz Fadoula, the girl who has nightmares. And when I got off, and I got diagnosed with PTSD... I got tired of that being everything people saw. Even...” Her ribs squeeze her lungs until they puff into her throat. “Even you, Sammy. I’m sorry to say. I just— I know you meant well, but as my PTSD got worse, I feel like that became all you saw of me. You wanted to take care of me instead of be a girlfriend. And taking care of each other is part of it, sure, but so is trusting each other. Trusting that I’m going to be okay. And I can look after myself.”
“But you— you didn’t ask!” Sammy exclaims. “You cut me off, you barely texted — of course I worried!”
“I stopped texting because you were overbearing!” Yaz cries. “I— I was exhausted by how much you were worrying and— and I couldn’t deal with it! I had to go somewhere where someone believed I was strong. And capable. And someone who’s healing, because that’s... what’s what I was. What I am.”
Sammy’s face is splintered, cracked at the seams by countless creases of sorrow. If she weren’t so exhausted, so dehydrated, everyone is certain she would be crying.
“Yaz, I—” Her voice flakes, peels, crumbles. “I was so worried. I watched you fall apart. I had to put you back together. I... I don’t know what to say except could you really blame me?”
“I know, Sammy,” Yaz says, tears sliding down her cheeks, dripping onto her trousers. What little patches of warmth they might’ve breathed into her skin shrivels up with the biting chill. “It was a bad situation, and we both went wrong. But I should never have called you a coward. And I should’ve been more understanding about your family.”
Sammy flinches at the mention of them — but shakes it off her face. “I forgive you.” She beams at Yaz. “None of us were our best at that point.”
“Or at any point in the last... God, month?” Kenji interjects.
Grinning softly, Sammy says, “And I think things were said that none of us meant — myself included. And I wanna be the first to say... I forgive y’all for that.”
“And I’d like to be the first to say sorry. For... a lot of things,” Darius says, grimacing at the ground.
“What for?” Kenji’s face twists into a genuine frown.
“I... Well— I disappeared. I vanished to my cabin and barely talked to anyone — heck, I don’t remember the last time I called my mom. I don’t—...” His voice catches, then trails off. A single tear slides quietly down his cheek. A few more chase after it, like kids reaching for a dove that soars hopelessly out of reach.
“I don’t know how to deal with grief,” and in the last sentence, he sounds ten years younger. “I don’t know how to deal with anything— I just shut myself off. I didn’t make it easy for any of us to stay together. I was hurting, but that doesn’t excuse it.”
“You deserve not to hurt, Darius,” Yaz says softly, looking at him like a sister would look at her younger brother, still seeing a scared, fascinated twelve year old stuck inside his own head.
“And while we’re talking about that,” Kenji says, face sombre, “Darius... I am so sorry for how I treated you. And your family.”
“Our family.”
“I don’t deserve that,” Kenji says — and the sheer resignation in his eyes makes them realise he believes it. “Mom— Simone treated me with nothing but kindness, and what did I do? I fucked off to live in fucking... Colorado— and I treated you terribly. I was grieving, but that isn’t an excuse. You were grieving too, and you deserved better from me, Darius.”
“Hey.” Darius scooches closer, bumping Kenji with his arm as he swipes his tears with his wrist. “We’re still brothers, ‘kay? I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago.”
Kenji swipes at his eyes, a wobbly grin stretching across his face. “Thanks, D. ‘Preciate it.” A beat of silence later, he says, “I love you.”
Darius brings his arms around Kenji, and he moves to cradle him in return. “Love you too.”
“And I’m really sorry I hit you at Brooklynn’s funeral,” Kenji adds.
“You did what?” Brooklynn exclaims.
“Oh! Uh...” Kenji fidgets, looking away, his face burning.
“At your funeral, we did have... a bit of an argument,” Darius says, heavily mincing his words.
“Completely my fault, by the way,” Kenji says graciously.
“I shoved you.”
“Well I shoved you first.”
“Who cares who did what; that’s all in the past now,” says Yaz. “You’re both sorry, so that’s the end of it.”
A tiny portion of the room unwinds. It’s not over-over — but it’s at the final few minutes of an episode, the last few pages of a book. They can feel the threads tying together — and with that, they’re able to breathe a little easier.
“Sammy, I am so sorry,” Yaz says, turning to her. “I wasn’t a good girlfriend to you, and you deserved worlds better. I understand if you— if you need some space, but... if you’re willing, I want to be with you. I love you. So much.”
The sorrow seems to melt off her face. Sammy’s lips break into a smile, she moves forward, and says, “I love you too, Yaz.”
Eyes only for each other, they move to kiss, but hesitate at the last second, slowly turning to the others. “Do you guys mind if...?”
“If we—”
“Nahh!” Kenji teases, playfully punching Sammy in the arm. “You two deserve it.”
“Go for it,” says Darius.
“Lay ‘em on each other,” Brooklynn says enthusiastically, her chin on her hand. “I might even watch you.”
“Ew, Brooklynn!” Sammy laughs.
Yaz gives Brookylnn a playful kick. “You freak.”
Yaz turns back to Sammy, and they kiss, long and deep, their hands encircling each other’s faces with a desperation only months of being apart could engrave into their muscles. It’s beautiful, and when they let go, Yaz lets out a gasp and says, “Shit, I’m not missing out on kissing you ever again.”
The cell laughs — the tension loosening — and they lapse into a somewhat-comfortable silence.
A while later, Brooklynn clears her throat, and says, “I still don’t feel like I’ve really said sorry.”
“Was, hm...” Kenji frowns, pretending to be lost in thought, before he says, “Five times not enough?”
Brooklynn chuckles softly, and she shakes her head. “Let’s make it six, then. One for each of us.” She clears her throat, before she says, seriously, “I am honestly, truly, incredibly sorry for what I put all of you through. None of you deserved a day of the hurt I put you through, and... I just don’t know how to make it right.”
She rolls her head against the wall of the cell, her chin craned to the ceiling. Her eyes slide shut, deep in thought. “I’m gonna be honest, I am so tired. There’s been a million things on my mind for, like, ten years, and it’s fucking exhausting.”
“Then tell us,” Yaz says, quiet, firm. Room for her to back out if she wants. “What’s been on your mind?”
“When I was in Malta,” Brooklynn begins, “I said to Santos that I didn’t need the prosthesis she gave me to make me whole — or her. I even said—” shame clouds her face “—I didn’t need you guys. But then, we were all in Biosyn. Saving each others’ lives. And then, Ben got... hurt, and he never would’ve made it out without us. And I realised... we do need each other. I... need you guys. I want to need you. I want to fall back into you whenever things get too hard, and I want to be someone you can fall back into when you need me. I want you to be the ones I run to... I just... I don’t know how.”
“You choose us,” Yaz says, making it sound so gloriously simple. “Over and over, you choose us. And we choose each other.”
“Then I choose you guys.” A smile slowly, surely, beams across Brooklynn’s face. “I choose you any day of the week. And I know it’s killing Darius not to make a Pokémon reference right now—”
“Hey!” Darius says, but he can’t hold back from laughing. None of them can — and suddenly the air around them feels a lot less heavy. They rock with laughter until it drains out of them (occuring, somewhere along the way, that none of them have laughed together — properly laughed — in years), and they settle along the wall in something of a line, shoulder-to-shoulder like kids in primary school lining up for assembly. Darius’s head nestles on Kenji’s shoulder, as Yaz’s does on Sammy’s. Brooklynn curls her legs into her chest, and shuffles closer to the rest of them. They’re all probably crying, and none of them find it in each other to care that much.
“We’re codependent,” Kenji eventually says, giggling. “We’re so fucking codependent.”
“I mean... you’re not wrong, but is there a reason you’re laughing your head off about it?” Sammy says lightly.
“Oh I’ve lost it,” Kenji says, the smile not leaving his face. “I’ve finally fucking lost it. Kudos to that tree,” Kenji raises an imaginary glass in a mock-salute, “You’re the bitch that broke me.”
“And me,” Brooklynn echoes. “That tree was my third-to-last straw.”
“What was the last?” Asks Darius.
Brooklynn gestures broadly around the room. “This, I guess. No— actually, it was the fire.”
Kenji nods thoughtfully. “It’s a fitting metaphor: you can’t throw us into the fire and expect us not to burn.”
“How profound of you, Kenji,” Sammy says.
“Hey, no need to sound so surprised about it!” Kenji laughs, before the mood settles, warms, and wraps its arms around the five of them. There’s a glaring gap where a sixth should be — but it’s not the kind of gap that rots cold and hollow. It’s the cool space in a bed someone used to lie in, still lingering with the brush of warmth that promises to be back soon.
Darius lets the thought linger in his mind, mulling it all over. The conversation feels like an enormous weight’s been lifted off their chests, and breathing comes so giddily light and easy, it’s almost funny. He can’t stop the smile from spreading across his face.
And he has nothing but faith, when he says, “We’ll be okay, right?”
“Course we will,” says Brooklynn. “We’re the camp fam... Right?”
Sammy, Yaz, and Kenji beam. “Right.”
.o0o.
They hug like they’re in a hurricane, the camp fam. Clinging on tight, spines hunched, heads buried in each others’ shoulders like graves. Collectively bracing themselves for the winds about to batter them to the core, and spike icicles through their bones until they’re soaking wet and shivering through the cold Nublar nights. Hugs — huddling, more like — became survival. A ritual that kept the cold out and their hope warm and their hearts beating slightly closer together, six thump-thumps communicating a rhythm of its own that said: calm down. You’re okay. I’m here. Over and over, until the storm cleared, and so began the arduous, skin-splitting process of letting go, waiting for the next storm, until they just held on, rain or shine.
It’s cold in their jail cell. But they hold on tight, praying they survive, and when morning comes, they find none of them are quite ready to let go.
Thirty weeks (and one Leap Day) after beginning a two-week promotional tour for an amusement park's expansion, the newly-christened "Nublar Six" finally set foot on the mainland as they reunite with their families at an undisclosed port in Central America. They're older, messier, scarred, changed...but alive.
Yasmina and Sammy come out to their parents, making their intentions clear and finding themselves welcomed...and Kenji finds himself welcomed, too, as Mrs. Bowman accepts him into the fold with her two kids. They even have time for an interview before they go, sharing one last laugh before facing whatever the world has in store for them...because for now, it's over.
I'd always imagined that a third (and final) N6 series will be in terms of pacing between the slower pace of CC and the faster pace CT. It would be set in more locations than CC (2) but less than CT (6 ircc).
Soo...very unpopular opinion I'm about to give, but...I finished watching season 3 of "Chaos Theory", and...I can't help but feel like I'm the only one who actually likes Brooklynn's redesign.
I feel like a lot...a lot...of people are either forgetting or not realizing that people - yes, even fictional characters - change their looks when they grow up.
We gotta remember, Brooklynn completely moved on from being the 13-year old vlogging influencer that she was in "Camp Cretacious", and that for all we know, pink could've been her favorite color. But, as one grows and gets older, tastes change. Style changes. Adult Brooklynn wanted an edgier look in "Chaos Theory". Big whoop. I think the edgier style and the different-colored short and dyed hair suits her, and her adult lifestyle. Trauma could've also played a part in these physical changes, but mostly, Brooklynn just...grew up.
I swear, these days, it's like some people have forgotten what it's like to be 13, and then grow up. Ya know, change. Characters in story-writing do it, too. Everyone does in some way, shape, or form.
The writer's didn't "do Brooklynn dirty", they had her grow up. Become an adult! All the Nublar Six kids did, while still keeping one or two things about themselves that kid-them had!
Somehow, in the two months since Roxie’s last appointment, the hospital room remains the same. The table with the bead toys for kids is unchanged, and the floor’s scuff marks only have a few more additions. Even the noticeboard with sadly peeling posters of events that happened months ago hasn’t been updated. It’s frozen in time, trapped in a place where nothing moves on.
“Let’s hope this one goes better than the last,” Dave says, a knowing, looming hint of dread in his tone. He was there, hurrying out of the consultation room when Roxie stormed out, swiping at her eyes. He was there, as she vented in increasingly tear-soaked sentences, “they all think it’s psychosomatic” and “I know my blood work is normal” and “if even one would listen to me, that would be lovely, thanks” and “if it’s a bloody psychiatric problem, why aren’t I getting referred to the bloody psych department?” the whole drive home.
Roxie nods, the day ringing fresh in her mind. “Yeah.”
She absently returns her eyes to the book in her lap, resting her head on Dave’s shoulder while he plays a game on his phone. She can’t see the screen, but the tinny speaker declares “Candy crush.” Roxie scoffs, but she can’t hold back a smile.
Twenty minutes later, a nurse calls her to take her height, weight, and blood pressure. Half an hour later, her name is called — good by NHS standards. A nurse leads her and Dave down a maze of corridors, before they’re escorted to a door that opens into a room more reminiscent of a therapist’s office than a medical treatment room. Roxie’s stomach twists. Already, this does not feel good.
“Hi, darling, my name’s Alice,” a woman says, too bright, too cheerful. “I’m a psychiatrist, and I’m here to talk to you about whatever’s going on, alright?” Smile lines are etched into her skin. She must smile an awful lot. It’s odd for someone who works among so much suffering. She tries to catch Dave’s gaze, but his eyes are preoccupied with scanning the room. His face twists into a frown (nice to know she’s not the only uneasy one). He reaches for her hand — and Roxie jerks it away before she even wonders why.
“Roxie. Nice to meet you,” she says, careful not to forget her manners. She accepts Alice’s outstretched hand: her ungloved hand is clammy, making Roxie’s skin crawl.
“And who’s this with you?” She says in the tone an adult would ask a child about their stuffed toy.
“Dave. He’s my— friend,” she says after a beat, regretting it the moment the words leave her mouth. Her heart jumps into her throat, and she looks at Dave, dreading to see the inevitable look of disappointment on his face.
Dave stands beside her with a taut nod, his eyes unreadable and the rest covered by his respirator: he’s playing along for now. His hand twitches towards Roxie, and she anticipates his touch about to make its home on her knee — but he keeps it in his lap. Even though she knows he’s just playing along, disappointment curls in Roxie’s stomach.
“Right, then. Let’s get started, shall we?”
.o0o.
It’s not the worst appointment they’ve ever had, although the bar’s on the floor for that one. But from the way Roxie storms out and slams the door, it might as well be.
Dave chases after her, no longer caring that they’ve lost another doctor and will have to start this whole nightmare process from scratch. The only thing that matters is the whirlwind of purple and grey thundering shakily down the corridor.
She stops suddenly, panting, swaying, staring at the fluorescent lighting.
“Roxie?” Dave approaches her slowly, cautiously, as if approaching a wild dinosaur. Arms outstretched in case she collapses. “What’s— are you okay—”
She whips round and punches the wall with so much force, little chunks of plaster crumble to the floor like snow. Dave startles, but composes himself, and says, “Roxie, please don’t do that...”
Then, she draws her fist away, where it hangs limply by her side like dead weight, and she turns to face him with desperately tired eyes.
“Oh, Rox.” Dave’s arms are wide open, in a non-verbal invitation for a hug. She gives a small, sad shake of her head, and Dave’s heart sinks.
Before he can ask the all-important do you want to talk about it? question, she says, “One doctor. That’s all I ask. One doctor who doesn’t assume it’s all psychiatric. One fucking doctor who takes my very real physical problems even remotely seriously. Who doesn’t just— just imply I’m ‘too fucking young’ to have problems, or— or just because I’m a woman with a history of mental illness, it’s all in my fucking head, right?” She kicks the wall, leaving a faint scuff mark. “Ugh! Fucking pisshead wankers!”
Usually, Dave would laugh at her use of British swear words, but the situation is too serious for that. Roxie is clearly upset, and there are a million better, more comforting, more helpful things Dave could say.
But instead, one childish thought pushes through the mess in his brain, and he blurts, feeling five years old, “Why did you tell her I was your friend?”
Roxie sighs, her head rolling back — not a tic, Dave remembers, just a super-annoyed habit — and pinches between her eyes. “Dave, I— it was just— can we not talk about this now?”
Usually, he’d say, “of course” and bring it up later (or never. That’s also a good choice). But something about the way she dropped it so casually, so tiredly, makes his stomach clench, his head lurch, and unsheaths defensive claws he didn’t know he had.
“No.” His voice echoes, hard and firm, down the corridor. “I want to talk about this now, because you owe me an explanation.”
Roxie scrunches her eyes shut, everything creasing and crumpling like withered paper — she’s too exhausted for a conversation like this — and guilt stabs through him. He’s the one putting her through this when he’s supposed to be supporting her.
But anger seizes him by the throat again, and he says, “Rohana. Please. Tell me.”
“Okay, David,” she says, clearly mocking the use of their full names. “It was a slip of the tongue. I swear. That’s all it was.”
“But it wasn’t,” Dave says, equal parts accusing and upset. “I heard you hesitate; you clearly thought about it.”
“David— Dave, can we please just talk about this when we get home?”
“But then we’ll have to make dinner, do the laundry, and then you’ll probably have a drop attack or something,” he adds — a low blow, and the anger flashing across Roxie’s face twists his stomach to shreds, “And then we’ll never talk about it.”
“You’re implying I have drop attacks so, what, I don’t have to have these conversations?” Roxie puts a hand on her hip. “Are you seriously saying that to me, David?”
“No, of course n—“
“Because I work so fucking hard to manage my symptoms, and I would kill not to have them, believe me.” Roxie’s head jerks painfully, suddenly up — that’s a tic — and Dave flinches, knowing her symptoms are aggravated by stress. Stress he’s causing. He should stop. He needs to stop. He has to stop.
But for some reason he can’t make himself stop the words: “Do you even want to be with me?” from flying out of his mouth.
Roxie gasps, and for a moment her face is the picture of shock. She carefully schools her face into a calmer expression, trying not to let it show, but it’s too late. He saw it.
“Of— of course I want to be with you,” Roxie says after a pause. “I— I— I just... I don’t want to talk about it, but it has nothing to do with you. I prom—” her hand flies to her chest, with a resounding smack of flesh hitting skin — another tic. Dave almost moves to cushion her, but touching her when she’s this stressed will only make things worse. She clears her throat. “I promise.”
Dave wants to believe her. He really does. But he just can’t make himself.
“Roxie... I need to be away from you.” He turns away, trying his best to ignore the flinch that wracks his whole body when he hears another faint thump of flesh. Another punching tic. But he’d just make it worse if he tried to help her now. “I’m sorry. I need space. I’m going on a walk — stay here — I won’t be long, just— sorry. I love you. I— sorry.”
.o0o.
Getting the bus. I just want to be home. I’ll meet you there. X
Dave stares at those words until he can almost see each individual pixel. The moment his phone buzzed in his pocket, he sprinted back to the hospital, up and down the corridors, and only stopped when it became evident Roxie had evaded him.
So, in a sour mood, he drove back to their flat, went inside, and waited.
He got back thirty minutes ago. The bus back from the hospital takes twenty at most. And there’s a million and one reasons Roxie could just be taking her time, or trying to avoid him for a bit longer, but Dave can’t shake the feeling something has gone wrong.
Then, an unknown number calls him. “Hello, is this David Fisher?”
His stomach does a sickening swoop. “Yeah— yeah, why?”
“I’m Jeff, I’m a paramedic. Your number is on someone’s medical alert bracelet.”
“Oh my God...” Dave’s heart feels crushed under the heel of an almighty boot, and the broken pieces are swimming around his body, thumping wildly across every inch of his skin. “What— what happened?”
“All we have is the information on the bracelet: her name is—” and Dave knows the name he’s about to say, but that doesn’t stop the sob wrenching from his throat when Jeff says “—Rohana Malhotra. There’s no medical condition labelled on the bracelet, but she’s been having unresponsive spells for about ten minutes.”
“Oh, God...” Dave shakes his head, as if trying to rub away the horrible visions of Roxie, lying there, alone and scared, scrabbling for strands of consciousness to cling to as her body betrays her, over and over. Thinking, with what little thought she has left, that Dave hates her. That he isn’t coming to help.
That is, by far, the worst part.
“Can you give us any information on her condition?”
“Yeah— yeah, I can,” Dave says, scrambling to gather his phone, his keys, his wallet, anything within reach. “She hasn’t been diagnosed with anything—” his heart stings as he thinks of today’s disaster of a medical appointment “—but we suspect functional neurological disorder. She has these... drop attacks, we think. She collapses but doesn’t lose consciousness.”
“Do these attacks sometimes happen in clusters? Where several happen one after the other.”
“Yeah, sometimes. Where is she?”
“We’re at the bus stop by the Tesco in town, can you get there?”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Dave says, shutting the door behind him, and barely remembering to lock it before he charges down flights of stairs, and gets into the car. His hyperventilating must’ve been heavy, because Jeff says, “Her vital signs are all normal, and she doesn’t appear to be seriously injured. Right now, we have no cause for concern.”
“Oh— thank you.” Dave chokes out, starting the car and clutching the wheel tight.
“I’ll stay on the line with you, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Hey.” Jeff’s voice softens. “Stay calm. She’s gonna be okay.”
“I know,” Dave says. It would sound so convincing if his voice didn’t splinter into a million pieces.
Blinking rapidly, he starts driving. The drum of his heart in his ears beats almost as loud as the crunch of gravel beneath the tyres.
Roxie... God, he knew he should’ve texted and told her not to take that damn bus. Or better, he never should’ve left her in the first place. His emotions grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him away from her — and worst of all, he let them. He should be feeling so much right now — concern for Roxie’s wellbeing, worry if she’s okay, relief there’s paramedics there, sorrow this is all happening in the first place — but all he can think is how much he hates himself.
A paramedic — Jeff — is waiting outside the bus, a phone pressed to his ear. His eyes meet Dave’s, and wordlessly beckons him onto the ambulance.
And, through a wall of paramedics, Dave catches a glimpse of her curled-up hand.
“Roxie!” He cries and it takes everything in him not to break down crying. “I’m here! I’m here. Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
Jeff commands, “Let him through, he’s her emergency contact.”
(Emergency contact. Dave’s never been anyone’s emergency contact. The thought fills him with a strange thrill totally inappropriate for the situation.)
The paramedics part way like the Red Sea in a flurry of fluorescent yellow — and then, he sees her.
Small. That’s the first word that springs to mind. She looks so, wretchedly, terrifyingly small. Crumpled in the footwell of two seats, her legs squashed against the wall like an aluminium can — why wasn’t she in the priority seat where there would be more room for something like this to happen? — her hair splayed pathetically around her head like a last-ditch attempt to cushion what was inevitably a painful crash landing.
And— ah. The second thing that springs to mind. She needs something to cushion her head. Literally anything will and has done — a cushion, a blanket, a rolled-up hoodie — but in all his panic, the only thing Dave can think to use is his hand. He carefully slips his fingers under her head— “Be careful not to move her neck” — “I know what I’m doing,” Dave says, a little snappishly —and wriggles his fingers through her hair, trying not to tug on knots, until his entire hand is cradling her head. He can tell, somehow, she’s immediately more comfortable.
“She has these often?” Another paramedic asks, one holding a notebook.
“Well— it’s complicated,” Dave explains. “She can go weeks without having one, and then have three in a day. It kinda bunches and spreads.”
He wordlessly notes it down, before asking, “How do you usually treat it when it does happen?”
“We just wait for it to pass, honestly. Not much I can do but make her comfortable and stay with her.” He looks down at her, reaches for her loosely curled fingers to squeeze them in a gesture he hopes conveys the love he can feel pulsing at his fingertips. A shiver runs through him as he says, “It must be scary, losing control of your body.”
Roxie’s breathing changes. Her face twitches. Dave and all the paramedics still, staring intently.
“Do you think she’s waking up?” One says.
“If she is, she’ll still be very out of it. It’s a while before she can walk or think clearly.”
They watch, anticipation fizzing in the air, as struggle plays across her face. There’s a weak butterfly flutter of her eyelashes. A sound between a breath and a groan escapes her lips. Her eyes scrunch — a clear evidence of trying — but her body gives up, and her face goes slack again.
Dave can’t stop his heart from sinking.
“Sometimes she just doesn’t wake up for a while.” That’s how Dave knows it’s a Bad One. “It would be best to wait it out at home.”
“If she doesn’t wake up soon, we’ll have to take her to the hospital.”
He feels her instinctual shiver deep inside himself. Hospitals. Cold white walls. Squeaky linoleum. The threat of being drugged hanging over her head like a noose. A book Dave pretends to read as she fidgets with the edge of the blue blanket that does nothing to dissuade the chill. Endless waiting filled with not enough doctors and nurses that can help. Roxie tossing and turning and gasping herself awake with a nightmare. An eventual discharge after an overnight stay they both know they’re better off without.
No hospitals. Absolutely not. He tells them as such, and they say, “Her health has to come first.”
“It’s best for her health if she goes home,” Dave says, uncomfortably aware of how much of a shitty possessive boyfriend he sounds like. “We’ve called ambulances before, gone to hospitals, all that shebang — and it didn’t help. If anything, it stressed her out more which triggered more symptoms.”
The paramedics seem to exchange a difficult glance, before one says, “We really have to monitor her.”
Dave can feel his eyes pleading silently. “Could you at least drive us to our flat?”
So they load her onto a stretcher and carry her out of the bus. Dave knew better than to offer to carry her himself, so he makes do with holding Roxie’s hand. Maybe, if nothing else, she’ll know he won’t abandon her. Not again.
The ambulance sways into life, and Dave doesn’t let go of her hand.
More paramedics. More questions. More of the same answers being given to different people under the same system — Roxie’s sick of this and Dave is too— and he finally blurts:
“Look— she’s had these before, she isn’t seizing— not, like, epilepsy — we’ve had the brain scan done — and she just needs to recover at home.” Our home. “With someone to look after her that she trusts.” Me. If Dave were to be so bold. Announce that he is Roxie’s and Roxie is his and they share themselves, tying little gold threads to each others’ ribs. Threads that, no matter what’s happened, won’t snap.
Won’t, maybe, until now. Until Dave let her have a medical episode in public — alone, scared, without someone to make it okay. Without anyone to catch her head as she collapsed to the ground.
The guilt— the blame— the resentment— it all crashes back on him, and his stomach clenches with an inescapable feeling of sickness.
He apologises, over and over, tells her how awful he feels for this, until a paramedic nudges him and says, “If you’re really sure she can hear you, it might be nice for her to hear more... positive things.”
So Dave does that. He tells her how lucky he is to be her boyfriend, how much he loves her and loves being with her. He tells her about all the soft things they can do once she feels better: eat dinner, watch that movie she’s always wanted to show him, maybe just cuddle until they fall asleep. After learning how touch-starved Roxie is, he never passes an opportunity to touch her, hold her, hug her, kiss her, let her know she’s loved. He vows to do all of that times a million once she feels better.
And he realises, slowly, like a sunset rising, how much he loves her. More than anything in the world.
.o0o.
Roxie doesn’t relax until the keys jingle in the lock, and Dave takes her through to the lounge sofa: her favourite spot to ride out a flare up. Their bedroom was an isolating, and frankly maddening, place to lie for hours, but in their tiny kitchen-diner-lounge, she feels less alone: less cut off by the walls of their bedroom, and more connected to everyone else she cares about. Like now, hearing their dog barking at her legs, feeling their cat nuzzle into her arm, and watching Dave start to cook dinner. They’ve left — resulting from a hundred more flare ups like these — enough blankets and pillows on the sofa for Roxie to make herself comfortable, and she arranges pillows around herself until she’s on the verge of a drowsy sleep.
Her left hand slowly goes dystonic, and she shoves it underneath the blanket. She doesn’t want Dave seeing, but deep down, she knows he won’t look. Mostly because he’s concentrating on cooking, but also, part of him hates to look at her — at anyone — when he’s mad. She knows she deserves it. As horrible as the dystonia pain is, at least it feels earned this time.
So she watches him, too tired to move, fading in and out of control for her own body, and waits for it to be over.
He asks if she’s hungry for dinner. She isn’t, but says so anyway, knowing how hard he worked to make it. How hard he always works, worrying about her when she doesn’t even ask him to. She’d go as far as to say she doesn’t want him to, but wanting is useless. She knows he will. Just as she worries about him when he shrinks away, falling into another spiral of maybe-psychosis (yet another thing doctors haven’t worked out). Worrying about each other is part of the deal. It’s the worst part of love. (Love...)
She manages to stay conscious all throughout their quiet dinner, and her lucky streak hasn’t broken since. There’s a long conversation that needs to be had, and they both know it. And Dave, for all his confidence and chattiness, really isn’t that confrontational. Best to bite the bullet herself, and— and...
The sound that escapes her is a sigh so heavy — so steeped in every dismissal, every doubt, every doctor that thought her problems could be exercised or imagined away — it caves her chest in until there’s nothing left.
There’s a million ways she could open this conversation, but all she can say is, in a whisper about as strong as a dead baby bird: “I’m tired. I’m so, so tired.”
Dave nods grimly. “I can’t imagine.”
“And it’s not even just one of them... It’s every. Fucking. Doctor. Every single one that thinks they know better than the life I have to live twenty-four-seven. That flexes their doctorate and says it’s just— just fucking anxiety for the millionth time. And that doesn’t even make sense!”
“No sense at all,” Dave agrees. “We’ll find a doctor though. A good one. They must exist.”
“But could we even afford to go private?” She says, her voice rising. “The NHS isn’t helping, but it cost us enough to even buy the crutches none of my doctors think I should use because they don’t have to deal with their legs slowly collapsing for no reason in the middle of the London Underground.”
“Fuck them,” says Dave. “Scientists should figure out a way to give ableist doctors their patients’ symptoms, see how they like it.”
Roxie gives a humourless chuckle. “If only.”
“If only.”
“It’s bloody ridiculous though,” Roxie says after a lull of quiet. “How science can bring back dinosaurs now — and maybe even engineer some new hybrid ones — but people’s health manages to come somewhere at the bottom of the pile.”
“It’s fucked up,” Dave says, “And you deserve so much better.”
“You know, you don’t have to agree with everything I say,” she says, a hint of a tease. An unspoken request: laugh with me. Relax into me. Do what we do best together.
The corner of Dave’s lip quirks. “Luckily for you, you have a tendency to be right all the time.”
“I do, do I?”
“You really do, babe.” The nickname falls off his lips, natural as anything. Roxie’s frantically trembling heart settles slightly, and she suddenly longs to have him closer, to beg him to crawl into her little pile of blankets and hold her close in their own private heaven.
His smile sobers, dries, and he says, rather seriously, “I don’t think either of us were at our best today. Me especially— I mean, I really fucked up leaving you—”
“No, no, it’s on me,” Roxie says truthfully. “I wandered off. I lashed out. And I slipped up in the first place.”
“I know.” Dave’s eyes already forgive her. But she needs his head to forgive her too. “But I wasn’t the best boyfriend to you either.”
Boyfriend... Ignoring how Roxie’s heart skips a beat, she says, tentative, “I think I owe you an explanation for why I did that.”
“If you’re up for that, I’d appreciate it.”
She takes a breath. “Do you remember the last appointment we had together? The one before today?”
Dave nods, his expression hesitant, but listening.
“The doctor talked to you. Like I wasn’t even there. Like I couldn’t possibly know myself because I’m the sick one. Once you become a patient, you become invisible.” Pain fractures, splintering, through her voice.
“And I... didn’t want you to come with me today.” She doesn’t miss the miniscule hurt flashing across Dave’s face. It rips through her heart like a bullet. “I just wanted them to see a person for once. You insisted on coming because my symptoms were high this morning — which was sensible, I’ll admit — but I thought, if I at least said you were my friend, they’d listen to me more.”
“You...” Dave sighs bitterly. “You were right. You said it wasn’t personal… and you were right.” It’s then Roxie catches the spark of regret in his eyes. “One hundred percent right. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t trust that it wasn’t personal and I should’ve.”
“It never would be.” Roxie’s eyes are genuine. “I’m proud to be with you. I really am. I wouldn’t lie unless I thought I had to. But it doesn’t matter.” Her shoulders slump. “It didn’t work, and I’m not seeing that bloody Alice lady ever again.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Dave says, an attempt at cracking the now suffocating tension between them. He sighs, drumming his fingers on his knee. “I’m not mad at you; I just wish you told me. I would’ve been okay with it if you warned me before.”
“I didn’t exactly plan on saying that,” Roxie says. “It just... slipped out. I panicked. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“No, I should be sorry. I love being your girlfriend, and I love that I get to say, ’this is my boyfriend’, or ’let me check with my boyfriend’ or... I can’t think clearly but you get the gist, right?”
She finally faces Dave, and he’s smiling giddily. “Yeah. I get it.”
“And I do want to be with you. A lot. I’m serious when I say you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Dave scrambles closer — fucking finally — and wastes no time on slipping his arms around Roxie. She can feel her body relax: the slacking of each muscle, the softening of her posture, the steadiness of his neck when her head finds its home on her shoulder.
He leans in close, his breath tickling her ear like it’s their secret they keep even from the horsefly in the corner of the ceiling, and says, “You’re the best thing to happen to me. By a hell of a long way.”
Her mind cycles through about ten vaguely flirty comebacks, but she buries her head in Dave’s T-shirt instead. She can almost hear his smile as he hugs her closer, arms moving like reassuring snakes around her shoulders.
“I’m really sorry. About today.”
Dave squeezes her closer. “You know I forgive you, right? I don’t think I was ever really mad at you. If anything, you should be mad at me for—”
“Shush.” Roxie puts her finger on Dave’s lips, rather clumsily. Her body is still half-recovering from today’s ordeal. “Seriously, shush. Today was on me.”
“It was on both of us. How about that?” Dave says. Roxie can tell he wants to put this to rest and honestly? So does she.
“Okay, fine.” She pretends to be annoyed, and Dave grins. “We both fucked up, we both forgive each other...”
“I wasn’t there when you needed me,” Dave says, guilt flashing across his face — a suitcase-sized guilt they’ll undoubtedly have to unpack tomorrow — and Roxie squeezes his hand.
Somehow, in the two months since Roxie’s last appointment, the hospital room remains the same. The table with the bead toys for kids is unchanged, and the floor’s scuff marks only have a few more additions. Even the noticeboard with sadly peeling posters of events that happened months ago hasn’t been updated. It’s frozen in time, trapped in a place where nothing moves on.
“Let’s hope this one goes better than the last,” Dave says, a knowing, looming hint of dread in his tone. He was there, hurrying out of the consultation room when Roxie stormed out, swiping at her eyes. He was there, as she vented in increasingly tear-soaked sentences, “they all think it’s psychosomatic” and “I know my blood work is normal” and “if even one would listen to me, that would be lovely, thanks” and “if it’s a bloody psychiatric problem, why aren’t I getting referred to the bloody psych department?” the whole drive home.
Roxie nods, the day ringing fresh in her mind. “Yeah.”
She absently returns her eyes to the book in her lap, resting her head on Dave’s shoulder while he plays a game on his phone. She can’t see the screen, but the tinny speaker declares “Candy crush.” Roxie scoffs, but she can’t hold back a smile.
Twenty minutes later, a nurse calls her to take her height, weight, and blood pressure. Half an hour later, her name is called — good by NHS standards. A nurse leads her and Dave down a maze of corridors, before they’re escorted to a door that opens into a room more reminiscent of a therapist’s office than a medical treatment room. Roxie’s stomach twists. Already, this does not feel good.
“Hi, darling, my name’s Alice,” a woman says, too bright, too cheerful. “I’m a psychiatrist, and I’m here to talk to you about whatever’s going on, alright?” Smile lines are etched into her skin. She must smile an awful lot. It’s odd for someone who works among so much suffering. She tries to catch Dave’s gaze, but his eyes are preoccupied with scanning the room. His face twists into a frown (nice to know she’s not the only uneasy one). He reaches for her hand — and Roxie jerks it away before she even wonders why.
“Roxie. Nice to meet you,” she says, careful not to forget her manners. She accepts Alice’s outstretched hand: her ungloved hand is clammy, making Roxie’s skin crawl.
“And who’s this with you?” She says in the tone an adult would ask a child about their stuffed toy.
“Dave. He’s my— friend,” she says after a beat, regretting it the moment the words leave her mouth. Her heart jumps into her throat, and she looks at Dave, dreading to see the inevitable look of disappointment on his face.
Dave stands beside her with a taut nod, his eyes unreadable and the rest covered by his respirator: he’s playing along for now. His hand twitches towards Roxie, and she anticipates his touch about to make its home on her knee — but he keeps it in his lap. Even though she knows he’s just playing along, disappointment curls in Roxie’s stomach.
“Right, then. Let’s get started, shall we?”
.o0o.
It’s not the worst appointment they’ve ever had, although the bar’s on the floor for that one. But from the way Roxie storms out and slams the door, it might as well be.
Dave chases after her, no longer caring that they’ve lost another doctor and will have to start this whole nightmare process from scratch. The only thing that matters is the whirlwind of purple and grey thundering shakily down the corridor.
She stops suddenly, panting, swaying, staring at the fluorescent lighting.
“Roxie?” Dave approaches her slowly, cautiously, as if approaching a wild dinosaur. Arms outstretched in case she collapses. “What’s— are you okay—”
She whips round and punches the wall with so much force, little chunks of plaster crumble to the floor like snow. Dave startles, but composes himself, and says, “Roxie, please don’t do that...”
Then, she draws her fist away, where it hangs limply by her side like dead weight, and she turns to face him with desperately tired eyes.
“Oh, Rox.” Dave’s arms are wide open, in a non-verbal invitation for a hug. She gives a small, sad shake of her head, and Dave’s heart sinks.
Before he can ask the all-important do you want to talk about it? question, she says, “One doctor. That’s all I ask. One doctor who doesn’t assume it’s all psychiatric. One fucking doctor who takes my very real physical problems even remotely seriously. Who doesn’t just— just imply I’m ‘too fucking young’ to have problems, or— or just because I’m a woman with a history of mental illness, it’s all in my fucking head, right?” She kicks the wall, leaving a faint scuff mark. “Ugh! Fucking pisshead wankers!”
Usually, Dave would laugh at her use of British swear words, but the situation is too serious for that. Roxie is clearly upset, and there are a million better, more comforting, more helpful things Dave could say.
But instead, one childish thought pushes through the mess in his brain, and he blurts, feeling five years old, “Why did you tell her I was your friend?”
Roxie sighs, her head rolling back — not a tic, Dave remembers, just a super-annoyed habit — and pinches between her eyes. “Dave, I— it was just— can we not talk about this now?”
Usually, he’d say, “of course” and bring it up later (or never. That’s also a good choice). But something about the way she dropped it so casually, so tiredly, makes his stomach clench, his head lurch, and unsheaths defensive claws he didn’t know he had.
“No.” His voice echoes, hard and firm, down the corridor. “I want to talk about this now, because you owe me an explanation.”
Roxie scrunches her eyes shut, everything creasing and crumpling like withered paper — she’s too exhausted for a conversation like this — and guilt stabs through him. He’s the one putting her through this when he’s supposed to be supporting her.
But anger seizes him by the throat again, and he says, “Rohana. Please. Tell me.”
“Okay, David,” she says, clearly mocking the use of their full names. “It was a slip of the tongue. I swear. That’s all it was.”
“But it wasn’t,” Dave says, equal parts accusing and upset. “I heard you hesitate; you clearly thought about it.”
“David— Dave, can we please just talk about this when we get home?”
“But then we’ll have to make dinner, do the laundry, and then you’ll probably have a drop attack or something,” he adds — a low blow, and the anger flashing across Roxie’s face twists his stomach to shreds, “And then we’ll never talk about it.”
“You’re implying I have drop attacks so, what, I don’t have to have these conversations?” Roxie puts a hand on her hip. “Are you seriously saying that to me, David?”
“No, of course n—“
“Because I work so fucking hard to manage my symptoms, and I would kill not to have them, believe me.” Roxie’s head jerks painfully, suddenly up — that’s a tic — and Dave flinches, knowing her symptoms are aggravated by stress. Stress he’s causing. He should stop. He needs to stop. He has to stop.
But for some reason he can’t make himself stop the words: “Do you even want to be with me?” from flying out of his mouth.
Roxie gasps, and for a moment her face is the picture of shock. She carefully schools her face into a calmer expression, trying not to let it show, but it’s too late. He saw it.
“Of— of course I want to be with you,” Roxie says after a pause. “I— I— I just... I don’t want to talk about it, but it has nothing to do with you. I prom—” her hand flies to her chest, with a resounding smack of flesh hitting skin — another tic. Dave almost moves to cushion her, but touching her when she’s this stressed will only make things worse. She clears her throat. “I promise.”
Dave wants to believe her. He really does. But he just can’t make himself.
“Roxie... I need to be away from you.” He turns away, trying his best to ignore the flinch that wracks his whole body when he hears another faint thump of flesh. Another punching tic. But he’d just make it worse if he tried to help her now. “I’m sorry. I need space. I’m going on a walk — stay here — I won’t be long, just— sorry. I love you. I— sorry.”
.o0o.
Getting the bus. I just want to be home. I’ll meet you there. X
Dave stares at those words until he can almost see each individual pixel. The moment his phone buzzed in his pocket, he sprinted back to the hospital, up and down the corridors, and only stopped when it became evident Roxie had evaded him.
So, in a sour mood, he drove back to their flat, went inside, and waited.
He got back thirty minutes ago. The bus back from the hospital takes twenty at most. And there’s a million and one reasons Roxie could just be taking her time, or trying to avoid him for a bit longer, but Dave can’t shake the feeling something has gone wrong.
Then, an unknown number calls him. “Hello, is this David Fisher?”
His stomach does a sickening swoop. “Yeah— yeah, why?”
“I’m Jeff, I’m a paramedic. Your number is on someone’s medical alert bracelet.”
“Oh my God...” Dave’s heart feels crushed under the heel of an almighty boot, and the broken pieces are swimming around his body, thumping wildly across every inch of his skin. “What— what happened?”
“All we have is the information on the bracelet: her name is—” and Dave knows the name he’s about to say, but that doesn’t stop the sob wrenching from his throat when Jeff says “—Rohana Malhotra. There’s no medical condition labelled on the bracelet, but she’s been having unresponsive spells for about ten minutes.”
“Oh, God...” Dave shakes his head, as if trying to rub away the horrible visions of Roxie, lying there, alone and scared, scrabbling for strands of consciousness to cling to as her body betrays her, over and over. Thinking, with what little thought she has left, that Dave hates her. That he isn’t coming to help.
That is, by far, the worst part.
“Can you give us any information on her condition?”
“Yeah— yeah, I can,” Dave says, scrambling to gather his phone, his keys, his wallet, anything within reach. “She hasn’t been diagnosed with anything—” his heart stings as he thinks of today’s disaster of a medical appointment “—but we suspect functional neurological disorder. She has these... drop attacks, we think. She collapses but doesn’t lose consciousness.”
“Do these attacks sometimes happen in clusters? Where several happen one after the other.”
“Yeah, sometimes. Where is she?”
“We’re at the bus stop by the Tesco in town, can you get there?”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Dave says, shutting the door behind him, and barely remembering to lock it before he charges down flights of stairs, and gets into the car. His hyperventilating must’ve been heavy, because Jeff says, “Her vital signs are all normal, and she doesn’t appear to be seriously injured. Right now, we have no cause for concern.”
“Oh— thank you.” Dave chokes out, starting the car and clutching the wheel tight.
“I’ll stay on the line with you, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Hey.” Jeff’s voice softens. “Stay calm. She’s gonna be okay.”
“I know,” Dave says. It would sound so convincing if his voice didn’t splinter into a million pieces.
Blinking rapidly, he starts driving. The drum of his heart in his ears beats almost as loud as the crunch of gravel beneath the tyres.
Roxie... God, he knew he should’ve texted and told her not to take that damn bus. Or better, he never should’ve left her in the first place. His emotions grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him away from her — and worst of all, he let them. He should be feeling so much right now — concern for Roxie’s wellbeing, worry if she’s okay, relief there’s paramedics there, sorrow this is all happening in the first place — but all he can think is how much he hates himself.
A paramedic — Jeff — is waiting outside the bus, a phone pressed to his ear. His eyes meet Dave’s, and wordlessly beckons him onto the ambulance.
And, through a wall of paramedics, Dave catches a glimpse of her curled-up hand.
“Roxie!” He cries and it takes everything in him not to break down crying. “I’m here! I’m here. Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”
Jeff commands, “Let him through, he’s her emergency contact.”
(Emergency contact. Dave’s never been anyone’s emergency contact. The thought fills him with a strange thrill totally inappropriate for the situation.)
The paramedics part way like the Red Sea in a flurry of fluorescent yellow — and then, he sees her.
Small. That’s the first word that springs to mind. She looks so, wretchedly, terrifyingly small. Crumpled in the footwell of two seats, her legs squashed against the wall like an aluminium can — why wasn’t she in the priority seat where there would be more room for something like this to happen? — her hair splayed pathetically around her head like a last-ditch attempt to cushion what was inevitably a painful crash landing.
And— ah. The second thing that springs to mind. She needs something to cushion her head. Literally anything will and has done — a cushion, a blanket, a rolled-up hoodie — but in all his panic, the only thing Dave can think to use is his hand. He carefully slips his fingers under her head— “Be careful not to move her neck” — “I know what I’m doing,” Dave says, a little snappishly —and wriggles his fingers through her hair, trying not to tug on knots, until his entire hand is cradling her head. He can tell, somehow, she’s immediately more comfortable.
“She has these often?” Another paramedic asks, one holding a notebook.
“Well— it’s complicated,” Dave explains. “She can go weeks without having one, and then have three in a day. It kinda bunches and spreads.”
He wordlessly notes it down, before asking, “How do you usually treat it when it does happen?”
“We just wait for it to pass, honestly. Not much I can do but make her comfortable and stay with her.” He looks down at her, reaches for her loosely curled fingers to squeeze them in a gesture he hopes conveys the love he can feel pulsing at his fingertips. A shiver runs through him as he says, “It must be scary, losing control of your body.”
Roxie’s breathing changes. Her face twitches. Dave and all the paramedics still, staring intently.
“Do you think she’s waking up?” One says.
“If she is, she’ll still be very out of it. It’s a while before she can walk or think clearly.”
They watch, anticipation fizzing in the air, as struggle plays across her face. There’s a weak butterfly flutter of her eyelashes. A sound between a breath and a groan escapes her lips. Her eyes scrunch — a clear evidence of trying — but her body gives up, and her face goes slack again.
Dave can’t stop his heart from sinking.
“Sometimes she just doesn’t wake up for a while.” That’s how Dave knows it’s a Bad One. “It would be best to wait it out at home.”
“If she doesn’t wake up soon, we’ll have to take her to the hospital.”
He feels her instinctual shiver deep inside himself. Hospitals. Cold white walls. Squeaky linoleum. The threat of being drugged hanging over her head like a noose. A book Dave pretends to read as she fidgets with the edge of the blue blanket that does nothing to dissuade the chill. Endless waiting filled with not enough doctors and nurses that can help. Roxie tossing and turning and gasping herself awake with a nightmare. An eventual discharge after an overnight stay they both know they’re better off without.
No hospitals. Absolutely not. He tells them as such, and they say, “Her health has to come first.”
“It’s best for her health if she goes home,” Dave says, uncomfortably aware of how much of a shitty possessive boyfriend he sounds like. “We’ve called ambulances before, gone to hospitals, all that shebang — and it didn’t help. If anything, it stressed her out more which triggered more symptoms.”
The paramedics seem to exchange a difficult glance, before one says, “We really have to monitor her.”
Dave can feel his eyes pleading silently. “Could you at least drive us to our flat?”
So they load her onto a stretcher and carry her out of the bus. Dave knew better than to offer to carry her himself, so he makes do with holding Roxie’s hand. Maybe, if nothing else, she’ll know he won’t abandon her. Not again.
The ambulance sways into life, and Dave doesn’t let go of her hand.
More paramedics. More questions. More of the same answers being given to different people under the same system — Roxie’s sick of this and Dave is too— and he finally blurts:
“Look— she’s had these before, she isn’t seizing— not, like, epilepsy — we’ve had the brain scan done — and she just needs to recover at home.” Our home. “With someone to look after her that she trusts.” Me. If Dave were to be so bold. Announce that he is Roxie’s and Roxie is his and they share themselves, tying little gold threads to each others’ ribs. Threads that, no matter what’s happened, won’t snap.
Won’t, maybe, until now. Until Dave let her have a medical episode in public — alone, scared, without someone to make it okay. Without anyone to catch her head as she collapsed to the ground.
The guilt— the blame— the resentment— it all crashes back on him, and his stomach clenches with an inescapable feeling of sickness.
He apologises, over and over, tells her how awful he feels for this, until a paramedic nudges him and says, “If you’re really sure she can hear you, it might be nice for her to hear more... positive things.”
So Dave does that. He tells her how lucky he is to be her boyfriend, how much he loves her and loves being with her. He tells her about all the soft things they can do once she feels better: eat dinner, watch that movie she’s always wanted to show him, maybe just cuddle until they fall asleep. After learning how touch-starved Roxie is, he never passes an opportunity to touch her, hold her, hug her, kiss her, let her know she’s loved. He vows to do all of that times a million once she feels better.
And he realises, slowly, like a sunset rising, how much he loves her. More than anything in the world.
.o0o.
Roxie doesn’t relax until the keys jingle in the lock, and Dave takes her through to the lounge sofa: her favourite spot to ride out a flare up. Their bedroom was an isolating, and frankly maddening, place to lie for hours, but in their tiny kitchen-diner-lounge, she feels less alone: less cut off by the walls of their bedroom, and more connected to everyone else she cares about. Like now, hearing their dog barking at her legs, feeling their cat nuzzle into her arm, and watching Dave start to cook dinner. They’ve left — resulting from a hundred more flare ups like these — enough blankets and pillows on the sofa for Roxie to make herself comfortable, and she arranges pillows around herself until she’s on the verge of a drowsy sleep.
Her left hand slowly goes dystonic, and she shoves it underneath the blanket. She doesn’t want Dave seeing, but deep down, she knows he won’t look. Mostly because he’s concentrating on cooking, but also, part of him hates to look at her — at anyone — when he’s mad. She knows she deserves it. As horrible as the dystonia pain is, at least it feels earned this time.
So she watches him, too tired to move, fading in and out of control for her own body, and waits for it to be over.
He asks if she’s hungry for dinner. She isn’t, but says so anyway, knowing how hard he worked to make it. How hard he always works, worrying about her when she doesn’t even ask him to. She’d go as far as to say she doesn’t want him to, but wanting is useless. She knows he will. Just as she worries about him when he shrinks away, falling into another spiral of maybe-psychosis (yet another thing doctors haven’t worked out). Worrying about each other is part of the deal. It’s the worst part of love. (Love...)
She manages to stay conscious all throughout their quiet dinner, and her lucky streak hasn’t broken since. There’s a long conversation that needs to be had, and they both know it. And Dave, for all his confidence and chattiness, really isn’t that confrontational. Best to bite the bullet herself, and— and...
The sound that escapes her is a sigh so heavy — so steeped in every dismissal, every doubt, every doctor that thought her problems could be exercised or imagined away — it caves her chest in until there’s nothing left.
There’s a million ways she could open this conversation, but all she can say is, in a whisper about as strong as a dead baby bird: “I’m tired. I’m so, so tired.”
Dave nods grimly. “I can’t imagine.”
“And it’s not even just one of them... It’s every. Fucking. Doctor. Every single one that thinks they know better than the life I have to live twenty-four-seven. That flexes their doctorate and says it’s just— just fucking anxiety for the millionth time. And that doesn’t even make sense!”
“No sense at all,” Dave agrees. “We’ll find a doctor though. A good one. They must exist.”
“But could we even afford to go private?” She says, her voice rising. “The NHS isn’t helping, but it cost us enough to even buy the crutches none of my doctors think I should use because they don’t have to deal with their legs slowly collapsing for no reason in the middle of the London Underground.”
“Fuck them,” says Dave. “Scientists should figure out a way to give ableist doctors their patients’ symptoms, see how they like it.”
Roxie gives a humourless chuckle. “If only.”
“If only.”
“It’s bloody ridiculous though,” Roxie says after a lull of quiet. “How science can bring back dinosaurs now — and maybe even engineer some new hybrid ones — but people’s health manages to come somewhere at the bottom of the pile.”
“It’s fucked up,” Dave says, “And you deserve so much better.”
“You know, you don’t have to agree with everything I say,” she says, a hint of a tease. An unspoken request: laugh with me. Relax into me. Do what we do best together.
The corner of Dave’s lip quirks. “Luckily for you, you have a tendency to be right all the time.”
“I do, do I?”
“You really do, babe.” The nickname falls off his lips, natural as anything. Roxie’s frantically trembling heart settles slightly, and she suddenly longs to have him closer, to beg him to crawl into her little pile of blankets and hold her close in their own private heaven.
His smile sobers, dries, and he says, rather seriously, “I don’t think either of us were at our best today. Me especially— I mean, I really fucked up leaving you—”
“No, no, it’s on me,” Roxie says truthfully. “I wandered off. I lashed out. And I slipped up in the first place.”
“I know.” Dave’s eyes already forgive her. But she needs his head to forgive her too. “But I wasn’t the best boyfriend to you either.”
Boyfriend... Ignoring how Roxie’s heart skips a beat, she says, tentative, “I think I owe you an explanation for why I did that.”
“If you’re up for that, I’d appreciate it.”
She takes a breath. “Do you remember the last appointment we had together? The one before today?”
Dave nods, his expression hesitant, but listening.
“The doctor talked to you. Like I wasn’t even there. Like I couldn’t possibly know myself because I’m the sick one. Once you become a patient, you become invisible.” Pain fractures, splintering, through her voice.
“And I... didn’t want you to come with me today.” She doesn’t miss the miniscule hurt flashing across Dave’s face. It rips through her heart like a bullet. “I just wanted them to see a person for once. You insisted on coming because my symptoms were high this morning — which was sensible, I’ll admit — but I thought, if I at least said you were my friend, they’d listen to me more.”
“You...” Dave sighs bitterly. “You were right. You said it wasn’t personal… and you were right.” It’s then Roxie catches the spark of regret in his eyes. “One hundred percent right. And I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t trust that it wasn’t personal and I should’ve.”
“It never would be.” Roxie’s eyes are genuine. “I’m proud to be with you. I really am. I wouldn’t lie unless I thought I had to. But it doesn’t matter.” Her shoulders slump. “It didn’t work, and I’m not seeing that bloody Alice lady ever again.”
“Thank goodness for that,” Dave says, an attempt at cracking the now suffocating tension between them. He sighs, drumming his fingers on his knee. “I’m not mad at you; I just wish you told me. I would’ve been okay with it if you warned me before.”
“I didn’t exactly plan on saying that,” Roxie says. “It just... slipped out. I panicked. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
“No, I should be sorry. I love being your girlfriend, and I love that I get to say, ’this is my boyfriend’, or ’let me check with my boyfriend’ or... I can’t think clearly but you get the gist, right?”
She finally faces Dave, and he’s smiling giddily. “Yeah. I get it.”
“And I do want to be with you. A lot. I’m serious when I say you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Dave scrambles closer — fucking finally — and wastes no time on slipping his arms around Roxie. She can feel her body relax: the slacking of each muscle, the softening of her posture, the steadiness of his neck when her head finds its home on her shoulder.
He leans in close, his breath tickling her ear like it’s their secret they keep even from the horsefly in the corner of the ceiling, and says, “You’re the best thing to happen to me. By a hell of a long way.”
Her mind cycles through about ten vaguely flirty comebacks, but she buries her head in Dave’s T-shirt instead. She can almost hear his smile as he hugs her closer, arms moving like reassuring snakes around her shoulders.
“I’m really sorry. About today.”
Dave squeezes her closer. “You know I forgive you, right? I don’t think I was ever really mad at you. If anything, you should be mad at me for—”
“Shush.” Roxie puts her finger on Dave’s lips, rather clumsily. Her body is still half-recovering from today’s ordeal. “Seriously, shush. Today was on me.”
“It was on both of us. How about that?” Dave says. Roxie can tell he wants to put this to rest and honestly? So does she.
“Okay, fine.” She pretends to be annoyed, and Dave grins. “We both fucked up, we both forgive each other...”
“I wasn’t there when you needed me,” Dave says, guilt flashing across his face — a suitcase-sized guilt they’ll undoubtedly have to unpack tomorrow — and Roxie squeezes his hand.
• Had to be evaluated for gender dysphoria to get gender affirming care, also did grief counseling after his dad died
• His mom put him in therapy after Nublar but he didn't like the focus on healing from his trauma rather than living with it so he stopped going. Also didn't like how he was being rushed into talking about certain subjects (ex. Kash)
• Found a good therapist post-BioSyn who helped him understand his autism and everything that happened to him
• Stopped therapy about two years afterwards once he was in a better place mentally
• Encourages therapy
Yaz: [C-PTSD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder]
• Loves being in therapy, does art therapy for her anxiety
• I can't remember if the place she was at in CT was good for her but we're gonna say it was
• post-BioSyn does a mix of talk therapy and play therapy for her C-PTSD
• Knows therapy isn't for everyone but reccomends coping skills and things she's learned
Sammy [C-PTSD]:
• Was very hesitant to go to therapy post Nublar
• Reccomends it for other people but it's not for her
• Did family therapy once but it didn't go well (samesies)
• Went to a grief support group after Brooklyn's death
• Couldn't click with a therapist post-BioSyn and did not enjoy working through her trauma
• Accepts Yaz's coping skills
Kenji [C-PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder] tw self harm and physical abuse mentionq
• Never considered therapy as an option, his dad told him to never talk about his problems
• Was encouraged to go by Mrs Bowman and Darius and figured talking about Nublar couldn't hurt. Was not prepared to get into the trauma from his dad.
• It took a long time to build a good relationship with his therapist but they were the first person he opened up to about the abuse he faced from his dad and self harming. Instead of hospitalizing him they made a safety plan to reduce harm
• Post BioSyn was a lot more difficult, he was tackling anticipatory grief from Ben, coming to terms with what happened to Brooklyn, identity issues (also from Ben haha) and trauma in general. He stopped after a few months because as helpful as it was he was dreading his sessions.
• Encourages trauma informed care and harm reduction
This is heavy but I feel like it fits with his character
• Hates therapy, always has. His dad, in an attempt to fix his son's ocd did a form of wilderness therapy (this is an extremely inhumane practice used in the Troubled Teen Industry where children and teens are taken to the middle of nowhere and forced to survive without proper medical care, supplies or food. I highly suggest listening to the victims online for more information.)
• His mom finally put him in therapy for his "anxiety" post Nublar but once deeper issues began showing he was involuntarily hospitalized. He's blocked out this entire part of his life.
• His mom hid his diagnoseses from him and pulled him out of therapy after that. Post BioSyn he had to find a trauma and dissociative disorder specialist and does a mix of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy, most common type of therapy) EMDR (forgot the exact acronym but eye movement therapy used for extreme trauma) and IFS (Internal Family Systems, used for parts work)
• Stayed in therapy just long enough to get an understanding of his diagnosises then dipped. He's attended a few disability support groups but otherwise stays away from mental health spaces
• Encourages trauma informed, non pathological (not seeing everything clinically), mental health care that prioritizes harm reduction and keeping people out of institutions
Brooklyn [C-PTSD, Anorexia Nervosa] tw ed
• Never considered therapy until after Nublar
• Went to an eating disorder treatment program that was very helpful, but she understands as an adult not everyone has the same experience
• Has been to grief and disability support groups and enjoys them
• Post biosyn therapy was a lot of reflecting on how her actions affect other people
• Encourages therapy and voluntary hospitalization
After an entire day of calculating, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ve rewatched camp Cretaceous and chaos theory five times.
When I start my sixth rewatch tomorrow, I’m gonna make a journal of it in a way. I’m gonna have a page for every episode and each page will have:
The episode number
A brief summary
My ranking of which characters had the biggest role in the episode
If I cried or laughed a ton
Important quotes or anything cool about it
Possibly a couple more things but I don’t have my notes on me right now. Each season gets a different colored sticky note and best episodes (top five probably) will get a clear sticky note that I write the coordinates on (season,episode)
The cool thing about this is that if anyone who knows me wants to learn about “my show” (which is how I refer to it to everyone I know) they can look off of that. Just thought I’d share! Maybe I’ll post a page or two!
