Adelaide Russel was one of the many psychiatrists that worked in Limbo under the new-ish guidance of Dr Isabella Romero. The woman was passionate about the wellbeing of the Supers that were in the facility, and had been passing patients down through whatever triage method it was that she used. It meant that Adelaide had a relatively full patient rosta. It meant that the days went by quickly but it also meant that when she went home to her husband, she curled up in the bed physically and emotionally wrung out. She had no social life because she was just too exhausted at the end of the day.
But she wouldnât change her job for the world.
She had only seen Indigo - Finesse - a couple of times since she had volunteered herself for therapy, but she had seen the womanâs file. She knew that there had recently been an anniversary that would have made being here a little more difficult to cope with than normal.
Her way of approaching therapy was to let the patient guide it. To let the patient tell her what they wanted her to know and they could work step by step until the patient felt better.
Being in a place like this was hardly good for anyoneâs mental health, but Adelaide did everything that she could even if she felt that her hands were tied.
Tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear, she closed the book she had been reading when she heard the faint knock at the door and got to her feet, moving away from behind her desk.
âIndigo,â she greeted, pulling the door open and indicating for the woman to walk in. Her office wasnât as large as Isiâs, and she didnât have a couch that someone could lie down on because it encouraged people to sleep - if they were defiant - and also made her think of Sigmund Freud and the backwards, disproved theories of psychology. So she had comfortable arm chairs, facing each other with a small wooden coffee table between them. She always had soft, ambient music playing just at audible volume, the sound of waves or a forest, mixed with gentle pipe music. âCome in, sit down. Do you want something to drink?â
Therapy wasnât something Indigo had initially sought out herself. Following the mission that left her and only four other agents on her team alive, the death of her partner and the torture sheâd lived through, it had been a mandatory thing. The first few sessions had been a waste, in her mind, since she felt no better for having talked about the incident, reliving the moments, explaining her feelings -which to her, seemed like perfectly normal feelings. But as time progressed and Indigo opened more to the process, she found that maybe her coping methods were just that, coping.
She couldnât be a field agent if she froze up with triggers sheâd yet to find, she couldnât be assignment missions if she wasnât mentally fit to withstand them. So she tried to embrace the program, open to the therapy a little more, and even when she was written off as fit for duty, she found the routine of it helped her.
Moving to Limbo was part of her healing structure -a new surrounding, new people, new handlers, save for Michael, who understood what happened and how Indigo may or may not react in certain situations. Sheâd yet to give consent for a telepathic communication to be used during a mission, purely because she wasnât sure she could deal with hearing a voice that wasnât Nathanâs in her mind. Setting up a program with Dr Russel helped to bring back a sense of calm that Indigo felt was getting away from her. Even just hour sessions with the woman without hitting the hard parts of her life were helping.
âDr Russel.â The office was soothing, the ambient noise kept it from feeling too stuffy and regimented, while the chairs offered a degree of professionalism without feeling like a shrink meeting. âA water would be nice.â She knew she used it sometimes, as a distraction or pause, long enough for her to feel like she could gather her thoughts on a specific topic. But she hadnât been called out on it, so she didnât feel like it was a habit she needed to break. Her current state of mind, so soon after the three year anniversary, it had her a little frazzled still.
Adelaide went to the small cooler in the corner, collecting a glass as she went and getting two glasses of cold water. As Indigo went and resumed her seat - they had only been talking a little while but they had an easy rhythm already - Adelaide joined her a moment later and placed the two glasses down on the table.
On the small shelving unit to the left there were numerous books, but there were also boxes with board games, chess, draughts, backgammon and snakes and ladders. She used those with some of the more reticent patients, got their minds working on other things, using it as a tool to relax them. She had colouring books too, mandalas and pencils. She had one patient who currently did nothing but came in here to colour for an hour. But it was what she needed, and it was a start.
Indigo, however, was receptive and honestly in a place like this that made all the difference. Adelaide had all the patience in the world, but it was trying.
âHowâve you been since I saw you last week?â she asked, settling in her chair and crossing one leg over the other at the knee. She had her notepad resting on the arm of the chair, pen on top of it but she didnât want to make notes if she didnât have to. She had promised Indigo that she had an open-book policy: if she wanted to see what had been written at any point she was welcome to, she just had to ask. It was her file, after all. âI noticed youâve been logging a lot of time in the hologym recently.â
âIâve been,â she knew that she needed to develop her answers, she couldnât just say she was fine, even if she was, there needed to be a further response to it. âBetter, I think, in the past weeks. This week was somewhat trying.â Talking about herself was something that Indigo had to learn how to do, not just talking about how she felt, but the things she did. Indigo tended to just get on with things, and people usually just allowed that to happen.
She wasnât a big talker, a few words could convey what she needed to express, and she never felt the need to add anymore on to that for no reason. Talking about Florida or even just her team, it was something she consciously avoided most of the time.
âI found myself with more time than usual, my routine wasnât taking up the hours like it should.â Indigo made attempts to keep herself busy, filling the hours of the days with things to do. There were usually a few hours she was free to fit in things that werenât scheduled; talk to people, socialise, attempt to get to know people on her team, those things. But this week, sheâd been trying to keep her mind going. âI needed distractions, training felt like the most productive, least destructive method.â
Crossing her hands in her lap, fingers twining together, her thumb running over the rough break of her ring and pinky fingers on her left hand, Indigo chewed the inside of her cheek while gathering her thoughts. âIt feels rawer, this year. Iâm not sure why.â
âWell,â Adelaide said, âbetter is good.â She was aware of the date, the anniversary that had just passed and waited for Indigo to tell her what was going on, she let the woman talk because even this was an improvement on their first few sessions, where the conversation had been guided quite heavily by Adelaide herself, prompting and requesting expansions to one word comments, simple and guarded answers. And Adelaide had laid it out bare at the beginning: these sessions were for Indigo. They were for whatever she needed and if some of that touched on therapy then it did. If it didnât, and they sat in silence or talked about the weather, then that was what they talked about. Therapy wasnât just about digging through peopleâs trauma.
She shifted a little to get comfortable and tilted her head, âWhatâs changed with your regular routine?â she asked, âNormally you donât have problems keeping busy, so is there anything thatâs changed? Or are you just feeling the passing of time a little more keenly now?â
The red-head wondered if it had something to do with the anniversary, and she would have asked, but Indigo brought it up herself and that was a surprise. Also a relief. Grief was such a difficult thing to handle and comprehend, there was no easy way of helping somebody get through the loss of a loved one, let alone what had happened to Indigo.
She paused, taking a breath herself before she spoke. âSome years will be harder than others,â she commented, âand thatâs okay.â She reached out and picked up her own glass of water, taking a sip and hold it in her hand, resting it on the other arm of the chair to her notepad. âWhat makes you say that, though? What about it feels different?â
Better was good, better was a lot different from just a few years ago, where she emotionally cut off and pretended it didnât matter. Where she was useless to a team because she couldnât function as a team. But, given the time sheâd had and the direction throughout that time, Indigo felt like better was a large leap away from where sheâd been. And Dr Russelâs continued patience and assistance was extremely helpful in continuing that process.
âIt feels easier. The more I complete the work outs, the quicker I go through them, the faster my ability makes me. I need challenges and new skills to put into things. I usually focus on swapping out martial arts with different acrobatics, but recently even that has been sped up.â There was also the matter of Adam, the little âbatteryâ that boosted her powers for fifteen minutes to allow her to master complex martial arts in the blink of an eye. And while that had been useful at the time, reliance on that was not something Indigo was intending to build on.
The first year had been so painful she hadnât been sure she would survive it, coming out the other side of that was like the realisation that while things were utterly different, they werenât over. Indigoâs emotional scars would likely be there forever, but it didnât mean she had to stop living herself. It took a long time for her to come to grips with that, dealing with survivors guilt on top of the grief. âI suppose, a different environment, different faces. In Florida everyone knew, it wasnât commonly discussed or mentioned, but it was a known occurrence that people just⊠never brought up.â In Limbo, she had a blank slate, a fresh start. Although the handlers could all read her file, see the details, and Mike knew about the whole event from start to end, her peers didnât. âItâs like Iâm the only one carrying that now, itâs only really relevant to me, and sometimes it feels like I donât remember it enough.â
She smiled more. She had more friends. She was making friends. And sometimes, Indigo felt like she was disrespecting the memories by doing that.
It was an interesting turn of events to hear that Indigo was finding even the new challenges she set herself easier. Adelaide didnât know if that was a development of Indigoâs abilities or if it was just because she was consistently pushing herself harder to make sure that her mind was kept busy. She had worked with enough people who had PTSD and who were recovering from trauma to know that keeping busy was one way of avoiding dealing with sensations, feelings or memories people didnât want to deal with. Survivorâs guilt was something entirely different and she understood that sometimes that was the hardest thing to get over. The knowledge that you were alive when someone else wasnât.
Adelaide had never wanted to push Indigo to talk to her, what she knew was from Indigoâs file and from the snippets that she had gathered during their sessions. She took another sip of her water and indicated, in a manner that was both gentle and encouraging, that Indigo should at least pick hers up before it got warm.
âWhat would you rather?â she asked, âThat people know but donât bring it up, or that this is your own personal history that is only shared with the people that feel you can trust?â She drew in a slow breath. âAnd- you have to remember that time erodes memories.â Theyâd talked about this before, but she thought it was pertinent now. âYou never remember the actual event. You remember the last time you remembered the event. Your recollection of the event will have changed over the years, due to the unreliability of memory. But- but itâs never just relevant to you. You have people here that care about you, donât you? Friends, colleagues⊠your pain might not be shared with them but the aftermath and the effects do have an effect on them.â She wished she had known Indigo before the incident.
She paused, leaning forward a little and placing her glass back on the counter. âItâs okay to move on, you know.â
Indigoâs PTSD displayed sporadically, which was enough to sometimes make her pretend it wasnât an issue anymore. The panic attacks didnât happen anymore, because the yoga and meditation helped her to manage her anxiety far better, her insomnia only came on when memories were triggered, usually post mission and she could pass that off as the adrenaline rush wearing off. Her episodes were far less since sheâd really let herself use the therapy sessions properly.
âI donât know. I donât want them to be forgotten, but thereâs the chance that they will be, without reminders. I was the reminder. But I donât want to just be that, the ghost of a team thatâs no longer there.â She knew that in time, her memory would fade too. Sheâd forget the details, faces, the order of things, who died first, what the screams sounded like, how bad it hurt. The mental whiplash that tore through her when Nathan had been killed and their bond shattered with his death.
Her memories would lessen over time and sheâd just have what she thought happened, the memory of memories, like Adelaide said.
Picking up her glass, taking a sip and then another, Indigo tried to process what she was feeling into coherent thoughts. She knew that she had people who would care, that she was building some friendships; Theo, Jade, Penny. Even Alice, the young girl she watched movies with. Michael, although primarily her handler was also her friend.
âI understand that while my pain is not theirs, they⊠my friends feel for me, and any pain I feel would be unfortunate to them.â It probably wasnât the best way to put it, but still. âIâm still not sure if Iâm ready to or not. If moving on is letting go, and if letting go means forgetting what he meant.â Sheâd loved one man in her life. It wasnât the love sheâd felt for her family before Regiment, it wasnât the aching love she still had for the little sister she had out there, somewhere, with a sweet and kind and generous mother. It was the kind of love sheâd read about in books, seen on movie screens, felt like she would never properly understand until Nathan entered her life and then, in a heartbeat, he was ripped from it.
Adelaide felt her chest tighten in sympathy for Indigo. She wanted to reach out, but they werenât at that point in their working relationship yet. She drew in a deep breath and laced her hands together. For her sessions with Indigo, she took her wedding ring off. âYouâre not the ghost of a team thatâs no longer there,â she said first of all, choosing her words carefully. âYouâre a survivor, the memory of a camaraderie, a friendship, and a love that canât be replaced by anything else. Nor should it be. What happened does not define you, and it doesnât define that team. But itâs not a betrayal of a memory to try and lay the trauma of what happened to rest.â
She watched Indigo pausing, using the water to collect her thoughts. At least in these sessions sheâd made it clear that she would be watching Indigo and the reasons for it. Adelaide was assessing everything, continually, but was always open with the other super, as she was with any of them who came through her doors. She just wanted to help - not just because it was the right thing to do.
âNot knowing is part of the journey,â Adelaide told her, leaning back in the chair again. âGrief and consolation is about taking that step when you feel youâre ready. And if youâre not ready to move on, then youâre not ready.â She thought about how she would feel if her husband was ripped away from her, if he was taken and she was alone in the world. She didnât think she could ever be in a position to move on completely. âThereâs a difference between moving on, letting go and forgetting. No one would ever expect you to forget what happened, or him, but you-â
She paused, âPerhaps move on is the wrong terminology. What Iâm trying to say is that no oneâs ever going to replace him. And thatâs okay. But youâre not doing anyone a disservice by being happy now, by making friends.â She wasnât about to fall back on the cliche line of âwhat would he wantâ, because that was infuriating.
What Indigo appreciated, above all else, was how heard she felt with Adelaide. Yes, the woman was paid to listen, she was paid to sit there and let Indigo work her way through thoughts and feelings and find ways to express her concerns and habits. But it was more than just listening to her, and Indigo felt like, even if Dr Russel was getting paid, she was genuinely trying to do what was best for Indigo.
She was a survivor, of something that left very deep scars that possibly wouldnât heal entirely, but it didnât mean she had to remain broken with those scars. Considering the people she lost, her partner, her friends, her teammates, she could remember them without sacrificing her own life with theirs.
Her lips quirked in a soft smile as Dr Russel altered her train of thought, chose different words, but with the same general meaning. When Indigo was ready, that was when it was the right time, there was no start line she had to be at by a certain time. âI am finding it easier, making friends. Itâs not⊠Iâm not stopping myself as much.â She was inviting people to spend time with her, even if the time was mostly spent in silence or with minimal words. âAlthough most of it is with my handler.â Michael was still a puzzle to her -they shouldnât be friends, but they were.
Adelaide smiled again, but this time it was wider, a little brighter, as if the news that Indigo was reaching out to people and making friends genuinely pleased her. She shifted in the chair and nodded her head, folding her hands in her lap, stopping herself from reaching for her ring finger to play with the ring that sat on her desk.
âWell, developing a working relationship with your handler is beneficial,â she said, âand thereâs nothing that says you canât be friends with your handlers. Personally, Iâd encourage it. Not just for a working relationship, but Mike is a good guy. And heâd be a good friend.â Adelaide was a little more distant from the other members of staff here, but she knew of Mike and he was a genuinely nice man.
She tilted her head, wondering what the cut off phrase would have been. âIâm glad. Can I ask who youâve been spending time with? If you donât mind?â
Michael was a rather good influence on Indigo, his nature meant that she didn't just lock herself away and keep to herself, his encouragement to do more and interact more helped her actually do it. And his constant engaging her in activities. She appreciated it for what it was, an honest friendship, regardless of his place as her handler.
"He is, both a good guy and good friend. Although I find his organisational habits to be terrifying." It was those things, little jokes she could have with Mike, both with him and at his expense, how he knew she was teasing, how he actually teased her back.
"I volunteered to assist people in learning yoga and pilates. A few took me up on the offer, we've been spending time together outside of class." It was mostly with Theo and Jade, although she was considering doing additional training with team mates, and she was working with Beau and his developing powers. "Beau and I have been conversing, his native tongue is also French. I believe he found it refreshing to speak to someone else without struggling." And Indie enjoyed being able to hold conversations in French too.
Adelaide laughed. âThere are a few people here who have an organisational system thatâd give anyone sane nightmares.â Though Adelaide herself was hardly much better; her patient files were immaculately ordered and her office looked like it was tidy enough (she cleaned it three times a day to try and stop the ever encroaching monster that was her paperwork from taking over her desk), but her personal life was a disorganised mess.
She smiled and nodded, âIâm glad,â she said after a moment. âThatâs really nice of you, offering to teach people new things. It must be a challenge for you, to be going back to the basics. Do you find that helps fill the time some?â
It wasnât like Indigo knew how sheâd be, outside of the regimented lifestyle that was part of the Regiment life, she had a specific set of boundaries to live within, so her development had naturally slid towards organised. Her mind helped to keep it like that. It was still something she could poke fun at though.
âNot so much, I thought it might. I keeps me thinking though, I can replay the lessons I had, but slow them down. At lot of them pick it up quite well.â She hadnât had difficulties yet, teaching Theo was a lot more like just doing a lead and follow, which she appreciated, but she enjoying talking through the process, imparting the skills on others too. âI find⊠spending time with other people seems to fill time more. I donât feel like it passes just as quickly.â Like somehow, it took longer for an hour to be over than if she were doing the exact same on her own.
Adelaide nodded again. âThatâs good,â she reassured, knowing that the socialising part, at least, was new to Indigo here, âand as long as the passing of time isnât dragging - which is a sign of boredom - then Iâd suggest that you keep doing that.â
She glanced at the time and then patiently folded her hands together in her lap. âIs there anything else youâd like to talk about for the last part of our session?â
Boredom was something Indigo did her best to avoid, purely because her mind would wander over her past and actions sheâd taken, alternatives she couldâve used, it wasnât mentally stabilising for her and it tended to be emotionally draining. So it was just better to not do.
âI donât believe so, no.â She hadnât had any huge traumas, sheâd made it through a mission fine, sheâd been training, theyâd touched on her current emotions around the passing of the anniversary, there wasnât much else Indigo thought to bring up really. She knew the good times were just as important to discuss as the bad times, when she was really struggling, but lately, sheâd just been doing okay, and she was understanding that it would happen, and that was okay too. It didnât always have to be peaks and valleys.