#ahh...wish i could go back and relive the experience of reading the last couple of haikyuu arcs for the first time all over again

[waveoftheocean]

been thinking about brazil hinata recently so here he iiissss

[sirro85-blog]

Humans are Weird: Mental Health

Trigger Warning, probably.

Kizidan watched as the humans danced, the music was like nothing she had heard before it was pleasant but she had not joined in, it appeared you needed to know the steps and most of the dances had names. She watched as Major Kovac spun Captain Becca in his arms, her feet lifting off the floor, the dance ended with the couple close to her, Kovac kissed Becca and held her face between his hands, "ahh lass, you're my joy" he said softly before leading her from the floor. Diminutive when compared to most human's Kizidan felt especially small around the Major and his Captain the Major stood close to 2m tall and while the Captain was a head shorter she was still taller than most of her gender and a sizeable number of the male soldiers.

Kovac stroked Becca's neck and bent to kiss her before walking away, Becca watched him for a few moments and then turned to Kizidan and smiled, "enjoying it?"

"Very much, I've never seen a celidh before...I've never seen Kovac smile so much either."

Becca grinned, a disturbing trait of humans, "Don't let Kovac hear you call it a ceilidh, he'll give you a lecture, " she put on an accent similar to Kovac' "it's no a ceilidh, naebdys singin' it's a dance." She turned to look at him as he collected drinks, then she drained her own, "whatever it is, he is happier, it's a hard time of year for him it's nice to see him smiling."

"Why is the time of year difficult? To my knowledge you do not hibernate, nor are you seasonal breeders." Kizidan extended her crest in confusion.

"No, not the season...it's an anniversary of sorts, I probably shouldn't say but as it's the worst kept secret on board: Kovac lost a wife and son when he was younger, it was a transport accident, he was deployed his first ever posting, she was at home with the 6 month old and...Very sad, now he's...well he's never been a cheerful person but now...well he's in a serious job so I can't tell if he's permanently low level depressed or if he's just a proper grim bastard."

"Depressed...he's In a lower position? He's the highest ranking officer amongst your human unit, I don't understand."

"Oh god, look it's a mental health condition, or a mental ill-health condition, I'm not sober enough to explain ask me tomorrow Kids," Becca looked over to see Kovac approaching, "I'll get him to dance with you, he'll teach you the steps."

The following morning Kizidan found Becca exiting the gym, she was with Frank one of the older medics who gave Kizidan a nod and left for the medical wing.

"Morning Kids, how are you doing?"

"I'm well Captain, thank you for asking, I was hoping you could explain more of what you said last night, I did some reading on the subject of 'mental ill-health in humans' it seems a chemical imbalance in the brain can cause a variety of problems in humans, all of which would be terminal in Forell such as myself."

"I'll be honest Kids you've already explained about as much as I know," Becca replied, "I'm not sure I can be much help."

"No, I've spoken with the SMO and I have an understanding of the medical issues, I wanted you to build on idea of Kovac's health being caused by a single event. In what i read it is often a longer term cause."

"Fuck Kids, you're asking big questions here, look Kovac was an orphan and grew up inn the kind of poverty someone like me can't imagine, maybe he was always unhappy and that event tipped him over the edge, I don't know, I met him at the military academy and he was a grim bastard there but he was fucking sunshine compared to now," she sighed, "I don't really get it, if you want to learn more go for it but, in my experience the books don't match up with my own experiences."

"You are familiar with mental-ill-health?" Kizidan asked.

Becca shifted her feet, "i need some protein, let's get to scoff."

10 minutes later Becca was chewing some dried meat and Kizidan started her questioning again, "you implied you had first hand knowledge of mental ill health."

"Well, yeah, I mean the reason I'm a rank below the Major is I spent a year in bed wishing I was dead but too numb to do anything," Becca covered her face with her hands, "I met a guy, my perfect hero, we got pregnant, I nearly carried to term and in the final few weeks I had a problem the baby died and I had a still birth, I nearly died and when I was better my perfect hero was gone, left me to it." Her voice took on a monotone, detached quality, "I took it hard, it brought up a lot of rejection shit from my parents, 'why don't people want me, why do all men hurt me?' you're vulnerable to this stuff when your father is abusive and your mother blames you for it...Well we're down the rabbit hole now, I'd survived the stuff my father did to me, I'd put myself back together and made a life and that life had tried to kill me and I broke, I mean if I could have got out of bed I'd have ended it but even that was too much effort and besides I couldn't imagine putting others to the trouble of cleaning me away, I didn't think people would care but they'd have to dispose of the corpse and I wasn't worth that, eventually I felt a bit better and as days went past I managed to move and then exercise...now, it's still hurts but I'm 5 years healthy and provided I can maintain a healthy diet and exercise I seem to manage good mental health." Becca peeled a banana and broke it into pieces, she carefully spread almond butter onto thin slices of apple and sandwiched the banana between two apple slices, she popped this into her mouth, then started again on another.

"One shrink I saw told me I had ptsd another severe fugue state...something, but the first one diagnoses everyone with ptsd and the other guy is convinced that Kovac has anxiety and I've never seen the Major so much as look concerned let alone get anxious, guy's chill is legendary, personally I think I had severe depression, but I guess I was catatonic so who knows"

"PTSD?"

"Post Stress disorder, no, traumatic stress post, bloody hell, Post traumatic stress disorder, basically an event happens and you have issues resolving how you feel about it and that means it's hard to recall it without reliving it."

"It's a memory issue?"

"No, not really it's like you don't just remember it, you relive it, with all the terror and fear and the horror of the experience. I know Pants suffered with it, she saw some of her old unit go down in an ambush, she woke up screaming a few times when she first got to us, I know Wolf helped her a lot, I'm not sure how."

"It sounds as though your mental stability is a fragile thing." Kizidan observed.

"Well people are different, some poor bastards are born with problems, some develop issues for one reason or the other, trauma physical or otherwise can cause problems, they don't always cause these problems...Kovac has taken 6 rifle rounds to the chest, his body armour caught most but some got through, he lost a rib as a result, he's died on the table after a haemothorax, that was when he was shot another time. Yet he's still a combat soldier, he's remarkably sanguine about his injuries, we can all break we don't all break the same way or for the same reasons and we don't all mend the same way."

Kizidan gave a trill of disbelief, "You humans have this reputation of invincibility and invulnerability in the galaxy, yet you make yourselves sound so fragile."

"We are fragile, that's the problem we can break, horribly so but we are also durable so we survive the breaking and then, well then we have to learn how to survive with all our damage. That's our real strength, our ability to endure, to just keep going."