#flashback sof tragedy

[itmighthavebeenintentional]

Shadow And Pills - Part 1 Preview

Summary: Some people come away from the Battle of New York with scars and broken bones. Some come away with nightmares and years of therapy ahead of them. Some don’t come away at all. Alexa comes away with a shadow.

18+ ONLY, MINORS DO NOT PROCEED

Warnings: RAPE, Torture, Abuse, Self Harm, Negative Images of Psychological Services/Mental Health Professionals, Hallucinations, Stalking, Supernatural Horror, Prescription Drug Use and Eventual Abuse, Mental Illness, PTSD, Flashbacks of Violence, Flashbacks of Tragedy, Starving Oneself, Isolation, Physical and Mental Exhaustion, Denial, Self Neglect, Gaslighting, Mental Spiraling, Mental and Emotional Abuse

18+ ONLY, MINORS DO NOT PROCEED

Author’s Note: This is not a happy story in any sense, at any point. I could only write this at my lowest places, emotionally and mentally speaking, and I had a hard time coming back from it. This is dark, and it does not at any point get lighter. I relied heavily on my own experiences with mental struggles and took a few pieces here and there from my own experiences with mental health professionals. MY EXPERIENCES ARE MY OWN AND ARE NOT TYPICAL, NOT EVEN FOR ME.

Extra thanks to @glassjacket and @thoughtslikeaminefield for not only helping me through this story but also through those dark moments. I wouldn’t be here without both of you. Period. And thank you, @glassjacket for your guidance and textwork on the image. 💙

If you need mental help of any kind, please DO NOT HESITATE TO REACH OUT TO GET IT. This story was an exercise in mental exorcism, in a sense.

For all the Loki lovers out there, I do not shine him anything like a good or redeeming light here. He is evil incarnate, more or less. I love Loki, I love good Loki and redeemed Loki and misunderstood Loki and just about every incarnation thereof. I needed a villain, and he fit the story.

Above all, please be kind. This was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever written, and it took me years to work up the courage to post it.

18+ ONLY, MINORS DO NOT PROCEED

Word Count: 1 - 3785; 2 - 3513; 3 - 1068

In Case You Missed It: ItMightHaveBeenIntentional’s Masterlist

Shadows and Pills: Part 1 Preview

Some people come away from the Battle of New York with scars and broken bones. Some come away with nightmares and years of therapy ahead of them. Some don’t come away at all.

Alexa comes away with a shadow.

In the weeks following the disaster, the public equally lauds and decries the Avengers, but while their opinions are divided over the heroes, the villain is universally denounced as nothing short of Satan himself, and the city throws an actual celebration the day Thor takes Loki back to Asgard to face the justice of their people.

Alexa, having not turned on her television since the day she got home from the hospital, ignores the boisterous celebrants and goes about her shopping, earbuds firmly in place, frown lines now permanently etched between her eyes and around her pinched lips.

“Routine will help you through some of the worst days,” her therapist tells her during one session. “Something familiar and safe to retreat to when the flashbacks are the worst. Just give it a try,” he adds at her disbelieving grimace.

And so she sets a routine.

Morning Routine: wake up. Ignore alarm, lie in bed an extra thirty minutes or so. Shower. Pretend to eat breakfast. Take meds (this one she never skips or shirks). Find something to wear. Stare at it for another ten minutes. Eventually get dressed. Contemplate keys for another fifteen minutes. Leave the goddamned apartment already.

Her routine has varying results, although she does admit to her therapist that life is marginally more bearable with the routine than without.

“It’s nice to have something to look forward to for the next day.”

Her therapist can’t quite hide his grimace at her flat, deadened tone, but she’s not being sarcastic or rude. She finds that going to bed at night is a trifle easier when she knows what’s going to happen the next day.

“So, who are we up to today?” the doctor asks, switching the subject with awkward abruptness. It’s been six weeks since Hell came to New York, and during their twice-weekly meetings, her therapist suggests going through each of the people she saw die in front of her that day, to get closure...or say goodbye...or something.

Sometimes Alexa wonders whether he just wants to hear the details for his own perverse pleasure.

“Brenda.”

Alexa robotically begins to list the personal details she knows...knew...about her floor manager. Unlike the mail room intern she discussed at their last meeting, the list for Brenda goes on for a while. She’s worked with Brenda since she started at the company, learning most of what she knows about her current job from the woman.

Brenda was kind, sharply intelligent, and mothering to everyone under her supervision, and yet she did it in a way that didn’t make anyone uncomfortable. She balanced work and a family long and well enough to both receive regular promotions within the company and also, very recently, become a new grandmother.

The backs of Alexa’s eyes sting as she remembers the photo Brenda showed her not twenty minutes before part of the building collapsed on top of half the department. Her jaw locks as the scene plays before her eyes again, the explosions and shrieks of metal drowning out the shrieks of the people only five feet away.

She closes her eyes, but there’s no pause button to freeze the scene, no power button to shut the images off as she turns in her memory and runs, making it to the stairwell and slamming the door open, turning back and screaming for Brenda, straining her eyes through the smoke and dust and mountains of falling debris. Brenda is running, reaching for Alexa even though she seems miles away, and then one of the file cabinets is thrown over, propelled faster and harder than should be possible, and...and…

And then Brenda isn’t running anymore. Her outstretched hand, the only part of her that wasn't crushed by office furniture, spasms against the ruined carpet, as if it thinks it’s reached its destination and is grasping at its savior.

Alexa’s hand tingles, and her fingers lock into her palm, nails fitting easily into the little grooves she dug there weeks ago. No blood, she only dug that deep once, but the furrows remain as permanently etched there as the frown lines on her face.

Alexa struggles to take in a labored breath as her therapist watches her with the appropriate amount of professional, clinical sympathy and detachment.

“Do your counting,” he reminds her.

How could she forget? She counts to three once, letting a breath out at the end. She repeats the process twice more, ignoring her therapist’s brief flash of annoyance at her departure from his “system.” But, for once, he doesn’t ask her why she has to deviate from the standard one-to-ten method and just lets her do the goddamned counting in peace.

Small blessings.

“Have you had any flashbacks since our last session?”

She stares at him, letting her gaze rest heavy and disbelieving as she turns his question over. She’s been averaging about five flashbacks a day, triggered by everything from accidentally brushing a stranger on the sidewalk (Jim knocking past her to get down the stairs just as the door on the stairwell behind her explodes inward; more shrieking, then falling, then dark) to lifting a carton of cold milk from the shelf at the grocery (that impossibly cold hand grasping hers, pulling her up from the rubble, bringing her face to face with...something...something in the...shadows, it was so dark there, and…).

“Yeah. I’ve had some flashbacks since our last session.”

“What sort of coping strategies did you use?”

He’s not even meeting her eyes now, just getting notes down on that damned pad. The scratching of his pen grates into her bones, and Alexa grits her teeth as she glares.

One, two, three.

Breathe.

One, two, three.

Breathe.

One, two, three.

Breathe.

She slowly recites the list of strategies he suggested during a previous session, none of which have proven particularly effective at lessening the frequency of the episodes, but most of which she grudgingly admits provide some slight relief afterwards and allow her to refocus her mind on the present rather than dwelling in the memory.

“And the shadows?”

How can he get this wrong every time when he’s taking all those fucking notes?

“Still just the one.”

“Has it manifested in any other way? Asked you to do anything? Do you feel different in any way when you notice it?”

There’s a distasteful eagerness to his words that always turns Alexa’s stomach, and she has to physically bite into her tongue to keep from asking what kind of bonus he gets for each symptom she shows of different mental illnesses.

“It’s just there sometimes. I..” She hesitates, feeling vaguely nauseated from his questions, but she has to be honest, right? Because, ultimately, it’s his job to help her, and she’s never going to get through this by hiding symptoms. He can’t help fix her if he doesn’t know what’s broken, and he did suggest the routine, so, okay, he gets a pass for this one.

“I still mostly only see it before I’m falling asleep. I’ve started seeing it in the late afternoon, as well, not often, but sometimes. Always in shadows that are already there. It doesn’t talk or anything, doesn’t really have any face or form except for vaguely person-shaped, but it...it watches me. And it’s...denser than it was last week. More...it’s thicker than it was, like when you see wispy clouds kind of...gather and turn into storm clouds?”

He nods, his pen whizzing over the legal pad he records their session notes on. “So, you feel threatened by the shadow? Like it’s storm clouds gathering to...what? It feels menacing?”

But, like most of the questions Alexa fences in this office, this one isn’t easily answered.

“It feels like it’s watching me, waiting for something. I don’t know what. I don’t...I don’t know if it’s menacing, exactly. Like, it feels potentially dangerous, but I can’t tell if it’s for me. I don’t know. It’s just...darker and more there this week, but it doesn’t do anything, and I don’t feel different, and it doesn’t speak to me. I. Don’t. Hear. Voices.”

She clips off each word at the end of her rant separately and precisely, repeating her counting in her head, and she forces her breathing to even out. The doctor is just doing his job, he’s just trying to help, he’s supposed to ask these questions, it’s how he helps-

“Hmm. I’ll have to consider that between now and our next meeting. In the meantime, go ahead and move up to the next dosage step with your meds, keep it on the escalating schedule we set.”

You set, she thinks mutinously for a moment before internally shaking her head. She nods, biting her tongue once more. She’s going to have a permanent indentation there as well, at this rate.

“Any side effects? Itching, swelling, difficulty breathing? Any unreasonable lethargy or detachment?”

“I mean...I don’t really have anything to attach to at this point, so…”

He frowns at her again, and she wonders if he’s going to crank up her dosage two notches instead of one.

“Are you having what you feel are typical emotional responses to everyday stimuli? Have you laughed or smiled at anything yet? How long has it been since you emotionally felt anything besides the frustration and panic?”

And, somehow, this question is difficult, too. She struggles through, trying to find a balance between honesty and not making herself look like a complete failure who can't function in life. She doesn’t help her case when she admits she hasn’t followed many of his suggestions beyond establishing a routine.

“Not even exercising?” he asks, his disappointment palpable.

When she silently shakes her head, her lips pinched tight against his disapproval, he shakes his head with a sigh that sings of ultimate betrayal. Instead of berating her as usual, the doctor frowns and looks down at his notes, considering them silently. He clicks his tongue against his teeth for a moment before switching over to end-session mode, robotically delivering his closing remarks, his typical reminders to keep her meds on a strict schedule at the exact time every day, to avoid all alcohol and unprescribed drugs, to keep her diet as clean and unprocessed as possible, and to get plenty of exercise. Even this last bit is delivered with a sharply clinical detachment, as if she has driven him to the brink of her own psychoses by stubbornly refusing to accept his help.

There is a short, silent moment between them where they refuse to look at each other, the doctor perusing his notes once more while Alexa examines the wrinkles creased into her jeans from lack of folding. The doctor flips pages over in his legal pad and slaps the cover shut sharply, breaking the standoff with one last, dismissive comment.

“Routine, Alexa. Stick to the routine. If it’s what brings you comfort, if that's the one thing you’re taking away from these sessions that actually helps, then stick with it. I’ll see you Thursday afternoon.”

….

Her afternoons vary, according to her therapy schedule. Her sessions take roughly an hour and a half, so that’s one block of time she doesn’t have to try and fill. On the days she isn’t having her skull cracked open, she can sometimes force herself to work on the files her company sends her way. Grunt work, brainless stuff that any first-year intern could do, but it keeps her on the payroll and covered by health insurance until the doctor clears her to return to the office.

Not that there’s an office to return to yet.

Grocery shopping for food she’ll pretend to eat later, making excuses to stay out of the apartment a little longer each day, watching the shadows of the buildings grow darker and longer until the sunlight disappears from the streets.

And the other shadow, the darkest of all, thick and solid against the brick and stone, pacing her, keeping track as she wanders through the broken city blocks. Sometimes she walks a little faster, pretends to not notice the black spot. Sometimes she pretends it’s keeping her company. With the most conversation she’s had in weeks taking place in her therapy sessions, she occasionally finds the imaginary company of her shadow stalker to be more pleasant than menacing.

Occasionally.

Eventually, though, she and her chimerical companion head back to the silent, encroaching walls of her apartment to begin the night routine.

........

The rest of Part 1 coming soon.

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