Re: Diner: Seven & Marta
Sitting there with him was cracking her open in a way that years apart and time in rehab and beyond hadn't. And wasn't that exactly one of the reasons that she'd made herself so hard to find? She'd known, even then, that seeing him, hearing his voice, being able to smell just a little of that old scent of him, even under the overwhelming grease and food of the diner... it would have pulled her back in a second. And that going back was what she'd been trying so hard to stay away from. For his own sake. Him and Sawyer. She'd known she was wrong, in more ways than one, wrong and broken. But in trying to be "strong" and keep herself from throwing everyone's lives into an equally fractured chaos, she'd turned them all around in a way that didn't have to be.
And even after all of that, Seven was sitting across the table from her and holding her hand as the panic clogged her throat and made her heart beat hard enough that she was starting to worry it would actually give out. She hadn't been hit so hard since her weeks in rehab, and the suddenness of its reappearance made it all the more difficult.
Even if Seven had tried to pull his hand back, in the moment Marta's grip was true enough to cling. The presence of it was a blessing that also brought pain - because she knew that if she'd been adrift without it, she could slip away in her mind (like she'd done so many times before, even after she was clean of the drugs). But Seven wasn't like the other men she'd wanted to slip away from, and the situation was so unlike those that her mind shied away from comparing in any way.
With the way the sounds of the diner seemed like a tidal wave in her mind, it felt like she shouldn't have been able to hear his voice. But it was there. Warm like it used to be when he'd wrap his arms around her, when they'd shared a bed, when he'd tease her about the Mommy Yoga classes. It was there, giving her permission to not be the sort of strong that had so thoroughly backfired on her, and promising that he'd still be there when she could open her eyes to the real world again.
So she let herself. She allowed everything to hit her, even though they were in public and it was likely embarrassing for both of them. She reached her free hand across the table too, groping for his, and then laid her forehead down on the sticky chill of the Formica. It smelled like syrup and bleach, and her whole body shook even as she folded over out across the expanse of it. She trembled and clung and tried to breathe. And while she knew in the back of her mind that she'd see the end of her panic, for the moment it was overwhelming.