#ptsd flashbacks

John turned then, frown cutting across his face. “You’re falling apart.”

“No shit,” she laughed bitterly. The red light from the bulb caught the sheen of sweat across her temple. She tried to phase steady, tried to breathe through it, but then the floor dropped out from under her.

Not literally—but in her head.

The sound came first. The piercing, high, endless blaring of sirens inside her skull. Add in the clipped orders in Russian, clinical English murmurs about energy output, words like specimen and containment breach.

Her body jerked and fractured, half in the room, half somewhere else. The safehouse warped into a sterile chamber: white walls, restraints, bright lights burning into her eyes until she couldn’t see. The smell of ozone and scorched skin flooded her senses, thick and choking. Her throat convulsed around air that wasn’t there.

She clawed at her chest, desperate to hold herself together as her atoms threatened to scatter. Not again, not again, don’t let them take me apart.

Her voice cracked raw. “Don’t let them…don’t…”

John swore and dropped to his knees. “Hey, hey, stay with me.” He grabbed her wrists, and the static burned up his arms as she thrashed, her body passing through his grip before snapping back solid again. Her scream split the air. John’s gut twisted. She wasn’t here, wasn’t seeing him at all. She was drowning in a place he couldn’t reach, and she was tearing herself apart on the way down.

So he slammed his forehead against hers, hard enough to jolt them both.

Her eyes widened for a second, pupils blown, and in that flicker of stillness he saw her—saw Ava, not the Ghost or the experiment.

“There you go,” he muttered, voice low, steady. “With me. Not them. Not a lab. Me.”

The sirens in her skull still wailed, but through them, she could hear his breath, slow and deliberate, dragging her back. He didn’t let her slip away, his grip was unyielding, his voice cutting through the static.

“Breathe. Copy me. In. Out. Again.”

She sobbed but followed his instruction. Each inhale tore at her lungs, each exhale shuddered like glass cracking, but she matched him. Her body steadied, the shimmer easing until she was solid again. She collapsed against him, forehead pressed to his shoulder, fingers knotted tight in his shirt.

“I hate this,” she whispered, every word soaked in exhaustion and shame.

“Yeah,” John rasped, his jaw tight. He didn’t loosen his grip, didn’t let her drift. “Me too.”

For a moment, there was only the buzz of the bulb, the hammering of rain above.

“They… pulled me apart. Piece by piece. Until I didn’t know if I’d ever come back together.” Her breath caught, chest shaking. “Sometimes I think I’m still on that table.”

John closed his eyes briefly, jaw working. He didn’t tell her she was wrong. Didn’t offer empty assurances. He just tightened his hold, anchoring her weight against him. “You’re here now. And as long as I’m breathing, you’re not going back there.”

Her grip on his shirt tightened, as if testing the promise. She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. But she stayed, pressed against him, letting his steadiness be the thing that kept her from unraveling again.