Studio 22 | Mary-Kate Olsen

Chapter Seventy-Two

"Sorry." He mumbled crawling from under the desk. "Nothing to a-pol-ogise for, Atlas." I tell him honestly watching him stand tall and box out his shoulders as if trying to intimidate the flashbacks to stop them from coming back. "I didn't mean to worry you." He says looking at me, eyeing my hands up. "You didn't... Just tired." I say honestly knowing that's why they were shaking. I stayed sitting on the floor looking up at him as he centred himself, rubbing his hands over his face and taking a few deep breaths. "It's going to be okay." I tell him knowing the aftershocks can sometimes bring more flashbacks. "You should go back downstairs." He tells me, leaning down and picking me up, his hands under my shoulders holding me until my feet are planted firmly on the ground and he was confident my legs weren't going to buckle from under me. "I can sit with y-ou." "No. Go." "Sage sits with me w-hen I have them... It h-elps. Knowing he's there. I could j-j-ust sit." I tell him. "Blue." He warned.

"We could talk it through?" "It wouldn't help" He says, shaking his head and sitting on his bed. I wish Papi was here, he'd have spoken to Papi. Atlas still sees me as his babysitter who cried when her parents left and had nightmares and needed him to hold me all through the night. He hadn't been here to see me grow. He didn't know what I could and couldn't handle. He never even tried to see what my limits were either. I will always be that kid he left behind.

"Mine h-appened randomly... The smallest thing triggering them." I tell him, sitting beside him on the bed. "And they were exhausting... Having to pretend it didn't happen. And continue." I looked at him but his eyes were glued to a spot on the floor refusing to even glance in my direction. "They got worse... But w-hen I started to t-alk... Be honest with people they sl-owly eased up. The fear I felt th-en didn't seem as o-verwhelming anymore." "You have no idea what I went through. You'll never understand. You're just a kid." He wasn't trying to be mean when he said this. "I have to protect you Blue. I can't talk to you about this." He looked at me, fear laced its way through his brown orbs, he was shattering in front of me and I had been so blind to it until now.

"I don't need protection anymore, Atlas." I told him. "I grew up." He shakes his head. "When I got injured the first time. When K-acy died." He nodded. Mami and Papi had filled him in on everything, I have never spoken to him about it. "That's the p-oint where mine start. It's like I'm there again, the air is d-ry and I get so hot. Her voice is all I can hear most of the time. It gets real huh?" He fiddled with his fingers, cracking his knuckles. A habit I picked up from him as a kid. "Sage gets a fan... it cools me d-own and h-elps ground me h-ere." I explained to him. "And he t-t-takes me to bed if we're at home. He knows I g-et tired." I shared. "But it's always o-kay. After it's over. Despite feeling like you're back there you're not. And you have to remind yourself that you don't have to ever be back there." He nodded and chewed his lip. "My team got c-ap-tured once... Not the same degree as what you went through but it was sc-ary... We were only stuck for a week. But I do understand it, Atlas. Some of it. A-and what I don't you can ex-plain to me. I saw it. I saw where you were for 7 years. I'm not a kid anymore. I can piece t-to-gether the fact that you were living in hell. I don't need things sugar coating or stories turning into fairy tales. I know our parents aren't superheroes... To us maybe but not really. I g-grew up, Atlas and I had to hold a lot together which only s-strengthened me." I was telling him this so he'd see I had changed. "Your soul is resilient." He says softly a small proud smile creeping up on his face.

We sit in silence for a few moments, I was giving him time to calm down and gather his thoughts. "It was horrible, Blue." He whispered, his voice cracking. "I didn't think it was going to end. And I wake up and I'm there and... I don't think I'm ever going to escape it." I took his hand in mine and I didn't say anything for a few moments. We just sat, I didn't know how to help him because I thought the same. I thought I'd be stuck there forever in the memories that swarmed my reality. But now as horrible as those moments are I know they don't last and I know my life I had built away from that was here surrounding me. "You f-ind your team here... And things just get easier."