what doesn't kill you makes you focus on 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 thing you can taste..
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Summary: After months in therapy, Ryland's wife finally admits to her therapist that she’s married to Ryland Grace, a man on spaces death row.
Warnings: swearing, mentions of vomiting, angst/sadness, therapy session
WC: 1.78k
A/N: I was walking this evening and this conversation (or at least bits of it) really just came to my brain and I needed to get it out. I haven't written in years so be gentle lol
The routine was simple
Tuesdays.
4:15pm.
Every week is the same.
I clock out. I get in the car. I drive to her office. Like clockwork.
Luckily it’s only 10 minutes away. I usually drive in silence. My mind is loud enough going over everything I’m trying to avoid at these appointments. It’s been 9 months since the launch. 9 months since I heard his laugh over the static filled signal of his phone while on the ocean. 9 months since my world was here. In my world. On my world. Physically a part of my world.
I started attending these appointments 7 months ago. I would normally sit politely and make small talk, talk about some previous childhood emotions, explain my relationship with my parents. I never spoke of him. I couldn’t.
I walked in the office and flicked the light switch, signaling to Dr. Melanie Walsh that I was here. She was supposed to be one of the best therapists in town. It didn't matter. She couldn’t help with what I didn’t tell her. The first 20 minutes of the appointment go by like normal. She asks how my day was. I tell her some bullshit about my coworkers and how my boss is grinding my gears as always. She gives me some advice, a few coping skills, everything feels surface level. I notice a small object on her desk behind her while she speaks on the benefits of CBT. It sucks the air out of my lungs.
Sitting on her desk is a small hacky sack, designed to look exactly like earth. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to throw up. Please don’t fucking throw up in this office. I have no idea what she is saying anymore. My mind has fully drifted away from this office. Away from this day, this planet, fuck, this entire solar system. I’ve drifted so far out, but my body remains frozen in the same spot. I don’t know how long I was somewhere else, but I realized that she stopped talking. Judging by the stillness surrounding me, I’m assuming she’s been done speaking for a decent bit. I don’t know what she said to me, what I was supposed to say back. I feel small. I feel cold and clammy. I feel so suffocated in this small room. I’m looking down. I’m picking at my fingernails. I don’t know what compels me to say the next part. Maybe it’s the claustrophobia, maybe it’s the expectant look crossing Melanie’s face, but it rises out of my throat faster than my brain can comprehend.
“I’m married.” I say. It burns like bile. I’m staring off into the space slightly to her left. The sunlight is shining on the dust particles around us. It looks like stars. I wonder if he still sees me in them. I see her eyes instinctively flick down to my left hand. I haven’t worn my ring since the week he left. I took it off in anger. I was so angry with him for leaving. I haven’t been able to bring myself to put it back on.
“Oh. Wow. That’s interesting.” It’s painfully awkward how long the silence drags on. It’s clear she doesn’t know what to say. “How come you’ve never brought that up before?” Because, I’m scared that if I talk about it, I’ll break down into the most horrific collection of sobs and tears one could witness. There’s no judgment in her tone, but I can feel the heavy curiosity.
My throat clenches. My stomach clenches. I wince like she just slapped me across the face. I take a deep breath, and look her dead in the eye for the first time today. “Because I’ll never see him again.” I see it. The flash of sympathy. Her eyes are filled with a warmth I haven’t allowed myself to accept since he left. I see her contemplate what to say next.
“I’m sorry to hear that. How did he die?” Anyone would make that assumption. It’s the only logical one. I break eye contact. I feel naked and raw. I take another deep breath.
“He’s still alive. At least, I believe so. There’s no way of knowing for sure.” It burns again. I feel the bile actually rising this time. The last thing I need is to be sick in my fucking therapists office. I dig my nails into my palm to ground me back from the nausea. It works for now. “My husband…” I pause. I haven’t said those words since the day of the launch. I don’t even remember the last time I said his name out loud. “...is Dr. Ryland Grace.” She cocks her head ever so slightly. If it weren’t a habit I was so acutely attuned to from my many conversations with Ryland, I might not have even noticed. It takes her 13 seconds. 13 very quiet, very uncomfortable seconds where I see her wrack her brain for why that name sounded familiar. It hits her hard. Her eyes widen, the warmth leaving them, replaced by dread at her realization.
“Oh my god…” I don’t blame her. I’ve had months to wrap my head around it and I still don’t have more words to say about it than that. “Oh my fucking god. Shit! Sorry. I–” I look back to her eyes. She’s avoiding mine now. It’s a nice change of pace for a moment. “I’m sorry, that was wildly unprofessional. I don’t mean to be crass.”
“It’s okay, Melanie.” It really is. “I don’t even know why I’m talking about it. Or how. I suppose it’s the main reason I started coming to you, but every time I considered bringing it up, I felt like I was going to throw up. I kind of feel like that now.” She reaches down to grab her trash can and slides it towards the couch.
“If you have to, please feel free. It won’t bother me.” Somehow, I fully believe her. Melanie has never given me reason to not trust her. She’s been incredibly patient and kind towards me. I knew she knew there was something I wasn't telling her. She’ll never understand how much I appreciate her never bringing it up. “How do you feel? Are you able to put any of it into words?”
There’s no better time than now for brutal honesty. “I feel like someone took the single greatest, most perfect pure parts of myself, and ripped them out of me. Everyday I wake up and have this hollow feeling that the most amazing, irreplaceable parts of me were stolen right out from under me.” I feel the sting of salt trailing down my cheek. I don’t wipe it away. The sting reminds me that he was real. “Ry was the single greatest person in the world. Knowing that he’s not on this world anymore…I feel like I want to tear my skin off.”
“That must be really challenging to navigate alone. Thank you for trusting me with this, I know it can’t be easy to talk about.” It’s not. “This might not be the most professional of things to say, but in getting to know you this last year, I don’t think you’ll mind.” I probably won't. “You hide this void of emotion very well.” I don’t know if I should take that as praise or scolding. “It’s more surprising than anything.” Shit. I must have said that last thought out loud.
“I don’t want to have to hide here anymore. I have to hide everywhere else, so much so I feel like I’m hiding from my own brain. I need to face this because I need to accept the facts. I’ll never see him again.”
There’s the bile once more. I’m unable to stop it this time. I grab the trash can and spill the contents of my stomach. I see Melanie move slightly, and she then reaches out to hand me a tissue. I take it, wordlessly thanking her. I wipe my mouth and throw it into the mess.
“I’m not super familiar with the details of the mission other than basic ‘what played on the news’, are you able to talk to him at all?” Look, I know I just threw up, but facing what she just asked me, I wouldn’t be surprised if I did again.
“No. There’s not a satellite signal strong enough to make interstellar phone calls, unfortunately.” I laugh quietly to myself. “Even if there were, he’ll be asleep the next twelvish years. It’ll only be four for him, but time dilation is a bitch. Who knows what will happen in that time.” I feel my heart break all over again as I prepare to say this next part. “When he wakes up, it will have been 13 years. I’m sure he’ll be working for about a year or two. His supplies will run out maybe two years after that…and NASA will officially pronounce him dead after 20.” I’ll be widowed. “We had this whole briefing when all this shit happened. NASA and I. It was so official and cold. They kept calling him a hero.” He is. “They kept saying his sacrifice will be regarded as one of the highest in history.” It will be. “I threw a stapler at the director of NASA’s head.” It felt good. She laughed unexpectedly. Inappropriately. It’s like music in this horrific moment. She slaps her hand over her mouth and attempts to cover her outburst with a cough.
“I’m so sorry, that must have been terrible.” I can feel the sincerity. It softens the blows of my memories. My eyes catch another dust particle in the sunlight. I think to myself that Ryland will never see or feel the sunlight ever again. There's that stinging down my cheek again. There’s a beat. She’s trying to find the words to say. She looks at me with the same look as earlier. Warm, comforting, full of sympathy. “I must say…you have such a positive and warm energy surrounding you. How have you kept that?” I ask myself this question almost every day. I know my answer to a T.
“Ryland gave up his life in order to give humanity a chance. He was the best of all of us. I’d be a fucking idiot if I gave up my humanity because of his sacrifice. I won’t let myself…I won’t let him down.” I take a shaky breath, slightly watery from the tears freely falling at this point.
“You may be the most extraordinary person I’ve met.” I believe her.
“That’s because you’ve not met Ryland.” My heart swells with pride. God, I miss him.
Steph wipes her sweaty palms on her jeans, watching the clock from the corner of her eye.
One minute, and she’d be going into the therapist’s room.
She can admit, she wasn’t exactly the most vulnerable during that group therapy session recently. Correction, she wasn’t vulnerable at all. The therapist would try and ask her something, and she’d start blabbing about unrelated stuff.
“Hm? Whats that? Trauma? Y’mean the movie genre? I never liked Shakespeare that much.”
The therapist thought she was just some dumb blonde, who couldn’t understand what was being asked of her. She remembered how Dick stared at her, whenever she’d pretend to be dumb. He looked… frustrated, that she had been acting like that.
It was fair, after all. He knew she wasn’t as dumb as she pretended most times. She was like him in that way, she supposed.
Needless to say, she had been Not Great about that. After that whole breakdown with her father, she decided to try a new therapist. By herself.
She already figured out what she’d share and what she wouldn’t ahead of time, so she wasn’t too nervous. Still… she sighs and waits for them to call her name.
Isaacs current patient leaves, and after a bit he calls out
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Okay but the fix it writers when it’s been three, no, nearly four year after Bilbo left the lonely mountain. He saw them die. Thorin and his nephews. He knew he couldn’t stay to watch them mourn. He felt to responsible for having been knocked out earlier and now being the sole reason the line of Durin has fallen. But then those four years later, Bilbo is doing his merry finest to act like nothing had happened to crush his soul. To act like a regular hobbit around the others. He gardens and bakes and hell, he’s has a little fauntling toddling about the hobbit hole. He had a family. A boy. And then that early morning knock at breakfast. A very much alive and desperate looking King Under the Moutian and his trusted company. All alive and accounted for at his round home door. There was a lot of misunderstanding later and explaining that was gonna need done from both sides, especially with a certain tiny dwobbit playing on the ground.
Therapyyyy🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 today might be a bit of a heavy one😅 cus I felt absolutely miserable these last few days (starting to feel better) preparing myself for my evaluation tmrw morning 😭 AHHHHH I'm happy that the ball is finally rollinggggg
