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teenangstlife
By the time Jen emerged from the pocket dimension the arena was contained within, she was green.
She was green most of the time - she was a superhero and a lawyer for superheroes, and she was proud to be visible as such. But sometimes, particularly if she didn’t want to draw too much attention, she’d let the green cool off. She’d be a tiny five foot tall woman, instead of the seven foot tall Hulk. That had been how she’d arrived at the arena today. But with all of the winding passages and shifting corridors, she was a healthy, annoyed green by the time she got out of there.
“Remind me to sue if they ever host again in there, that place is a nightmare,” She-Hulk said, as she walked up to Leah. They hadn’t known each other very long - just a few weeks, really. And she knew that while she was her legal guardian, she wasn’t her mother. That wasn’t a role she could claim. It was one that only Leah could give to her. But it didn’t mean she couldn’t care fiercely for her, that she couldn’t do everything in her power - legal or otherwise - to help.
She sat down next to Leah on the bench. She resisted the urge to scream at the writer to just let her be a kid for fucking once. There were so many things she wanted to say to her, and she wanted to hug Leah so tightly it hurt.
Instead, she started with: “you know, bad people don’t worry about if they’re bad. Only good people do.”
”Yeah, that makes sense.” Leah had mostly spaced out, watching one of her runes float like a balloon. She grabbed it out of the air and tilted her head to look up at She Hulk.
”Is it just me, or do good people not wonder that often?” She asked. ”It’s been three years, almost four now, and I don’t ever doubt that I’m better than my dad or all those monsters he’s friends with. I feel really stupid for that, right now.”
She-Hulk tilted her head for a moment, considering. She’d had a lot of these same questions, back when she was fresh out of law school, working for the district attorney’s office. She’d thought she was doing good - that the system was doing good. It was only later, when it had all come crumbling down around her, when she had lost her job and her life changed thanks to an accidental blood transfusion that she had started to really question things. She still didn’t have all the answers.
“Hmm. That’s a good question. I imagine it’s different for everyone. But for me, these crises of faith happen when I leave stable ground - when I don’t know where the road leaves. When it’s just me and the mirror.” She paused for a moment. “You’re going through a lot - more than you should have to. I think this - your dad, Arcade, the Contest, your first break up… It’s all new. It’s a place you’ve never gone before. So you question yourself - beat yourself up about your choices, call yourself stupid or wicked - when you’re anything but.”
There were a lot of things new to Leah, lately. Being a kid like she had been yesterday was practically Alien to her.
”I guess. Yeah, you’d think things like a break up would be easier than fighting. I mean- It wasn’t a bad one, for me anyway. She was in CAGE and stressed and-“ She shook her head. ”Sorry… I’m really not good at talking about this kind of thing, I’m used to just putting up with it.”
Not that she was actually over April. When she tried to think about a time she didn’t feel absolutely, pathetically lovestruck about her, Leah couldn’t remember if it existed.
She-Hulk shook her head. “You don’t need to apologize for that - I wanna hear whatever you have to say. As for breakups being easier than fighting… I don’t know. When my ex, Peter, dumped me it hurt more than anything Titania’d managed to do to me. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Titania to you before. You’ll probably meet her. She’s fixated.”
Oh, good, Leah wasn’t getting out of this that easily. Her whole life, she’d been fighting one person or another. If it wasn’t her dad, it was the people around her. If it wasn’t them, it was herself. She just couldn’t turn her brain off.
”…I feel like there was something I could have noticed, or said to her. I had no idea she was going through that stuff. I- I get why she needed space. That’s not her fault.” She hadn’t even talked to Sabine about that. Not really, when Sabine had taken it much worse and didn’t need to hear her bitching about it too. ”And I still can’t do anything about it.”
Bolstered by a nat 20 insight - see, the dice couldn’t actually be cursed when Morose was rolling them, right? - Jen looked at her adopted child with a discerning eye. She had so much trauma. She had been brave for so long, surviving in a situation that had required her to stifle her emotions, to not feel. Sure, some of this seemed to be due to the fact that Leah was certainly on the spectrum, struggling to connect with others and understand them - but She-Hulk was more concerned about the fact that Leah didn’t allow herself to feel - that because her ex-girlfriend had been doing bad, it was wrong of her to be upset about the break-up. That wasn’t healthy. She hoped she could get Leah to agree to another session, Dr. Whitehall might have better insights than she did. But still, she had to try. It was what she had signed up for the moment she had made Leah a part of her family.
“Some people don’t like to let others in,” Jen offered. “It can be scary to tell people how we’re really feeling - even people that we love and care about. And it can be just as scary for us, when we get a glimpse at how someone really feels. I know you feel bad about not being able to save her - I’ve been there, running the scenarios through my head, second guessing every interaction, each chance I had to do something if I hadn’t been too thick to notice… I still struggle with that. And the only thing that helps me is to recognize that I can’t be there for someone if they won’t let me. It sucks. It really does. But you can’t save people who don’t want to be saved.”
Leah wasn’t sure she agreed with that. If someone were suicidal, like April was, did they actually want help? Nemo saved her, but he wasn’t around to ask for an opinion.
It made sense, though.
”You can still try, can’t you?” She asked, leaning forward. Her hand found the ends of her hair. ”I mean, heroes don’t wait until someone asks them for help, right? Still have to do something.”
Jen nodded. “That’s what heroes do - we try, even if we might fail,” she reassured her. “Leah - feel free to say no - you don’t need to worry about hurting me either, I’m pretty tough - but may I give you a hug? I think you could use one.”
Oh, how quickly she tensed up. Anyone else on the planet, barring Sabine or Vicky, would have missed that. Her whole body shifted fractions in one direction, and back the other.
”…You know what, I think I could.” Leah tilted her head away from She Hulk, and very awkwardly held an arm up in her direction. Hugging someone smaller was one thing. Being the smaller one hugged, though? Weird.
She-Hulk did her very best to not cry.
She moved slowly, as not to startle Leah, gently putting her arms around her at first - and then, if the contact seemed okay, tightening her grip until she was hugging her just the way Jen’s own mama would. “There is someone else you’ve managed to save,” she said softly. “Yourself. You’ve come so far, Leah. You did it all by yourself. But I’m so proud to see you - to see you realize that you don’t have to be alone. That you have friends who love you and care about you - friends who I know you’ll do anything you can for, and friends who have your back just the same. That’s incredible. Don’t let anyone ever take that from you.”
She leaned in, putting arms around Jen. This didn’t feel familiar, but it felt right.
Her eyes stung. She needed to hear this.
”I won’t. I- I won’t. I can remember being… I don’t know, maybe ten or eleven years old and having to tell my mom not to do this. In case my dad caught us. It wasn’t just me he was awful to and- He-“
Leah’s voice cracked. ”I really, really don’t want anything like what happened to her, happen to them. I know I don’t make it easy for them, but… Friends make you want to be better.”
Jen couldn’t resist the urge to cry any longer, as she held onto her kid as tightly as she could - any tighter and one of them would have been crushed and the other shredded. She wanted to go back in time and stop any of this from happening - to spare an innocent child from this. She fought monsters every day as a super hero, but people like Leah’s dad - those were the real monsters, the ones who all too often got away with it.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Jen whispered, automatically going into a gentle rocking motion, the two of them swaying on the bench. “I can’t promise nothing bad will ever happen again - but I can promise you’ll never be alone. Any time you need help, any time you’re scared, any time you need me - that your friends need me - just call. I’ll be there. And we’ll kick his ass. We’ll get him, Leah. I promise. I promise.”
It was hard to believe that. Many had tried. Hell, she wasn’t even sure he was actually alive anymore. Agatha never said as much when she said it was inevitable she’d confront her past. But things were different. She knew they’d try.
”Yeah- We’ll do that. We’ll- Fuck. God. I saw him yesterday- It- He wasn’t even real and I-“ She took in a deep breath.
”Someone had me fighting a damn ghost. I broke down. I don’t know how people do this. I don’t know how people understand feelings, the way they don’t want to tear the ground into a canyon every time someone’s mad at them. People fucking confuse me, you know?”
She-Hulk harbored her suspicions about Leah - she didn’t need to break the fourth wall to have an idea that she might be autistic. But right now, Leah didn’t need a diagnosis. She just needed understanding. She rubbed soothing patterns into her back, once again mirroring the motions her own mother would practice, as she nodded. “I don’t know either,” Jen admitted. “I’m mad all the time - and it never really seems to go away. But you keep on moving - you keep on putting one foot in front of the other. And fuck being like other people, pardon my language. I’d rather you be yourself. Confusion and kindness and strength and all.”
”I dunno. I’d love to be less confused about things.” Leah raised her head and gave Jen a sidelong look. ”Maybe then, I wouldn’t make other people wonder if I actually care- When we went to see April at CAGE, Sabine handled it worse than me and she really didn’t like that I seemed okay about it.” And she wasn't, she just didn’t show it. The whole thing was new to her.
”I need help. It feels wrong to say that. But I do.”
“There’s nothing wrong with needing help. I’ll remind you of that until you believe me,” She-Hulk reassured, her eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Your friends need help sometimes and that’s okay. So why can’t the same be true for you? Part of being a hero - part of being strong is knowing when you’re weak - knowing when to ask for help.” She then paused for a moment, considering. “This might be something that would be good to talk to Dr. Whitehall about. There are other people in the world just like you, who find other people hard to understand and need a little help. She might have some ideas, some strategies - but… I think what I would do, if I were you, is just be direct. It might be scary, but sometimes it’s best to just tell people that you care - you can even say that you have trouble showing it or you’re worried they don’t know. But being honest about how you feel, even if you feel differently than other people, that’s always a good call.”
”I can try. That’s just hard, sometimes. I don’t always know what I’m feeling… I told Whitehall I wasn’t going back, I guess she gets to say I told you so.”
“I mean, if you want, you can also try a new therapist - it doesn’t have to be Whitehall. But I’m proud of you already for wanting to try - it took me years to work up the courage to get a therapist. And years after that to find one I liked,” She-Hulk reassured. “But we don’t have to do that today. For the rest of today, I want you to focus on having fun. Be a kid. Party with your friends. Everything else can wait.”
”Party? You’re not asking me to get drunk or something, are you? Because I’ve got superpowers, so… No. But- I- Okay. If nothing bad happens between now and tomorrow, maybe I will.”
She-Hulk chuckled. “Pfft. If you want to drink, just watch your cup and make sure no one drugs you. Don’t go crazy hard the first time. Keep an eye on yourself and your friends. And if you’re uncomfortable or just want to leave and need someone, call me, okay? I’d rather you be safe.”
”Yeah. Yeah, I will. I should- Uh, maybe apologize to America and her friends anyway,” Leah admitted. ”I was kind of a bitch in that fight. The Hex Girls suck, though. They cheated.”
Then Leah remembered. ”Oh, right, I think they hacked my phone or something too. Got a weird text last night after I saw a fake of my dad.”
Jen frowned. Not at Leah’s recognition that maybe she was a little mean to the Young Avengers - she didn’t hold it against her, sometimes people were competitive and talking shit was part of that environment - but it was still good for Leah to be able to reflect on that. No, she was instead concerned about the revelation that the Hex Girls had cheated and hacked Leah’s phone. “Want me to beat them up?” she offered. “I can send them some scary documents, tell them to cease and desist immediately, yadda yadda yadda. We should probably change your phone number, too - or get you a new phone if you’d like.”
”All of the above, maybe? Sabine and I got teleported by Stephen Strange, he gave me a thing to find which of them cast that thing on me. So I’m maybe gonna kick someone for a field goal and-”
Leah’s head whipped around. The street became a lot louder suddenly as the sounds of the arena could be heard. The crowd was so noisy that it carried all the way out here, and she heard the announcer’s voice over them all.
They won.
”...Holy damn.” She looked back at Jen. ”They did it.”
She-Hulk blinked. She did a double take. She made a mental note to ask Strange why the hell he was being cryptic and weird and not just helping - wizards were the absolute worst. And then she screamed, her eyes lighting up and she grinned so wide. “You did it. You won! Leah, you won!! Gosh, I’m going to have to get some papers started to draw up a trust fund for you - I don’t want you blowing through your winnings, not yet - and please let me handle any sleazy people who come out to get you to be the new face of their energy drink, the vultures. But you won!! That’s incredible!! You should go see your friends - go celebrate! You took down the Young Avengers!”
”We- They really did. I knew they would… They-“ She felt floaty. A fucking smile cracked over her face. A big, unburdened smile.
”We won!”
She was green most of the time - she was a superhero and a lawyer for superheroes, and she was proud to be visible as such. But sometimes, particularly if she didn’t want to draw too much attention, she’d let the green cool off. She’d be a tiny five foot tall woman, instead of the seven foot tall Hulk. That had been how she’d arrived at the arena today. But with all of the winding passages and shifting corridors, she was a healthy, annoyed green by the time she got out of there.
“Remind me to sue if they ever host again in there, that place is a nightmare,” She-Hulk said, as she walked up to Leah. They hadn’t known each other very long - just a few weeks, really. And she knew that while she was her legal guardian, she wasn’t her mother. That wasn’t a role she could claim. It was one that only Leah could give to her. But it didn’t mean she couldn’t care fiercely for her, that she couldn’t do everything in her power - legal or otherwise - to help.
She sat down next to Leah on the bench. She resisted the urge to scream at the writer to just let her be a kid for fucking once. There were so many things she wanted to say to her, and she wanted to hug Leah so tightly it hurt.
Instead, she started with: “you know, bad people don’t worry about if they’re bad. Only good people do.”
”Yeah, that makes sense.” Leah had mostly spaced out, watching one of her runes float like a balloon. She grabbed it out of the air and tilted her head to look up at She Hulk.
”Is it just me, or do good people not wonder that often?” She asked. ”It’s been three years, almost four now, and I don’t ever doubt that I’m better than my dad or all those monsters he’s friends with. I feel really stupid for that, right now.”
She-Hulk tilted her head for a moment, considering. She’d had a lot of these same questions, back when she was fresh out of law school, working for the district attorney’s office. She’d thought she was doing good - that the system was doing good. It was only later, when it had all come crumbling down around her, when she had lost her job and her life changed thanks to an accidental blood transfusion that she had started to really question things. She still didn’t have all the answers.
“Hmm. That’s a good question. I imagine it’s different for everyone. But for me, these crises of faith happen when I leave stable ground - when I don’t know where the road leaves. When it’s just me and the mirror.” She paused for a moment. “You’re going through a lot - more than you should have to. I think this - your dad, Arcade, the Contest, your first break up… It’s all new. It’s a place you’ve never gone before. So you question yourself - beat yourself up about your choices, call yourself stupid or wicked - when you’re anything but.”
There were a lot of things new to Leah, lately. Being a kid like she had been yesterday was practically Alien to her.
”I guess. Yeah, you’d think things like a break up would be easier than fighting. I mean- It wasn’t a bad one, for me anyway. She was in CAGE and stressed and-“ She shook her head. ”Sorry… I’m really not good at talking about this kind of thing, I’m used to just putting up with it.”
Not that she was actually over April. When she tried to think about a time she didn’t feel absolutely, pathetically lovestruck about her, Leah couldn’t remember if it existed.
She-Hulk shook her head. “You don’t need to apologize for that - I wanna hear whatever you have to say. As for breakups being easier than fighting… I don’t know. When my ex, Peter, dumped me it hurt more than anything Titania’d managed to do to me. I don’t think I’ve mentioned Titania to you before. You’ll probably meet her. She’s fixated.”
Oh, good, Leah wasn’t getting out of this that easily. Her whole life, she’d been fighting one person or another. If it wasn’t her dad, it was the people around her. If it wasn’t them, it was herself. She just couldn’t turn her brain off.
”…I feel like there was something I could have noticed, or said to her. I had no idea she was going through that stuff. I- I get why she needed space. That’s not her fault.” She hadn’t even talked to Sabine about that. Not really, when Sabine had taken it much worse and didn’t need to hear her bitching about it too. ”And I still can’t do anything about it.”
Bolstered by a nat 20 insight - see, the dice couldn’t actually be cursed when Morose was rolling them, right? - Jen looked at her adopted child with a discerning eye. She had so much trauma. She had been brave for so long, surviving in a situation that had required her to stifle her emotions, to not feel. Sure, some of this seemed to be due to the fact that Leah was certainly on the spectrum, struggling to connect with others and understand them - but She-Hulk was more concerned about the fact that Leah didn’t allow herself to feel - that because her ex-girlfriend had been doing bad, it was wrong of her to be upset about the break-up. That wasn’t healthy. She hoped she could get Leah to agree to another session, Dr. Whitehall might have better insights than she did. But still, she had to try. It was what she had signed up for the moment she had made Leah a part of her family.
“Some people don’t like to let others in,” Jen offered. “It can be scary to tell people how we’re really feeling - even people that we love and care about. And it can be just as scary for us, when we get a glimpse at how someone really feels. I know you feel bad about not being able to save her - I’ve been there, running the scenarios through my head, second guessing every interaction, each chance I had to do something if I hadn’t been too thick to notice… I still struggle with that. And the only thing that helps me is to recognize that I can’t be there for someone if they won’t let me. It sucks. It really does. But you can’t save people who don’t want to be saved.”
Leah wasn’t sure she agreed with that. If someone were suicidal, like April was, did they actually want help? Nemo saved her, but he wasn’t around to ask for an opinion.
It made sense, though.
”You can still try, can’t you?” She asked, leaning forward. Her hand found the ends of her hair. ”I mean, heroes don’t wait until someone asks them for help, right? Still have to do something.”
Jen nodded. “That’s what heroes do - we try, even if we might fail,” she reassured her. “Leah - feel free to say no - you don’t need to worry about hurting me either, I’m pretty tough - but may I give you a hug? I think you could use one.”
Oh, how quickly she tensed up. Anyone else on the planet, barring Sabine or Vicky, would have missed that. Her whole body shifted fractions in one direction, and back the other.
”…You know what, I think I could.” Leah tilted her head away from She Hulk, and very awkwardly held an arm up in her direction. Hugging someone smaller was one thing. Being the smaller one hugged, though? Weird.
She-Hulk did her very best to not cry.
She moved slowly, as not to startle Leah, gently putting her arms around her at first - and then, if the contact seemed okay, tightening her grip until she was hugging her just the way Jen’s own mama would. “There is someone else you’ve managed to save,” she said softly. “Yourself. You’ve come so far, Leah. You did it all by yourself. But I’m so proud to see you - to see you realize that you don’t have to be alone. That you have friends who love you and care about you - friends who I know you’ll do anything you can for, and friends who have your back just the same. That’s incredible. Don’t let anyone ever take that from you.”
She leaned in, putting arms around Jen. This didn’t feel familiar, but it felt right.
Her eyes stung. She needed to hear this.
”I won’t. I- I won’t. I can remember being… I don’t know, maybe ten or eleven years old and having to tell my mom not to do this. In case my dad caught us. It wasn’t just me he was awful to and- He-“
Leah’s voice cracked. ”I really, really don’t want anything like what happened to her, happen to them. I know I don’t make it easy for them, but… Friends make you want to be better.”
Jen couldn’t resist the urge to cry any longer, as she held onto her kid as tightly as she could - any tighter and one of them would have been crushed and the other shredded. She wanted to go back in time and stop any of this from happening - to spare an innocent child from this. She fought monsters every day as a super hero, but people like Leah’s dad - those were the real monsters, the ones who all too often got away with it.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Jen whispered, automatically going into a gentle rocking motion, the two of them swaying on the bench. “I can’t promise nothing bad will ever happen again - but I can promise you’ll never be alone. Any time you need help, any time you’re scared, any time you need me - that your friends need me - just call. I’ll be there. And we’ll kick his ass. We’ll get him, Leah. I promise. I promise.”
It was hard to believe that. Many had tried. Hell, she wasn’t even sure he was actually alive anymore. Agatha never said as much when she said it was inevitable she’d confront her past. But things were different. She knew they’d try.
”Yeah- We’ll do that. We’ll- Fuck. God. I saw him yesterday- It- He wasn’t even real and I-“ She took in a deep breath.
”Someone had me fighting a damn ghost. I broke down. I don’t know how people do this. I don’t know how people understand feelings, the way they don’t want to tear the ground into a canyon every time someone’s mad at them. People fucking confuse me, you know?”
She-Hulk harbored her suspicions about Leah - she didn’t need to break the fourth wall to have an idea that she might be autistic. But right now, Leah didn’t need a diagnosis. She just needed understanding. She rubbed soothing patterns into her back, once again mirroring the motions her own mother would practice, as she nodded. “I don’t know either,” Jen admitted. “I’m mad all the time - and it never really seems to go away. But you keep on moving - you keep on putting one foot in front of the other. And fuck being like other people, pardon my language. I’d rather you be yourself. Confusion and kindness and strength and all.”
”I dunno. I’d love to be less confused about things.” Leah raised her head and gave Jen a sidelong look. ”Maybe then, I wouldn’t make other people wonder if I actually care- When we went to see April at CAGE, Sabine handled it worse than me and she really didn’t like that I seemed okay about it.” And she wasn't, she just didn’t show it. The whole thing was new to her.
”I need help. It feels wrong to say that. But I do.”
“There’s nothing wrong with needing help. I’ll remind you of that until you believe me,” She-Hulk reassured, her eyebrows furrowed slightly. “Your friends need help sometimes and that’s okay. So why can’t the same be true for you? Part of being a hero - part of being strong is knowing when you’re weak - knowing when to ask for help.” She then paused for a moment, considering. “This might be something that would be good to talk to Dr. Whitehall about. There are other people in the world just like you, who find other people hard to understand and need a little help. She might have some ideas, some strategies - but… I think what I would do, if I were you, is just be direct. It might be scary, but sometimes it’s best to just tell people that you care - you can even say that you have trouble showing it or you’re worried they don’t know. But being honest about how you feel, even if you feel differently than other people, that’s always a good call.”
”I can try. That’s just hard, sometimes. I don’t always know what I’m feeling… I told Whitehall I wasn’t going back, I guess she gets to say I told you so.”
“I mean, if you want, you can also try a new therapist - it doesn’t have to be Whitehall. But I’m proud of you already for wanting to try - it took me years to work up the courage to get a therapist. And years after that to find one I liked,” She-Hulk reassured. “But we don’t have to do that today. For the rest of today, I want you to focus on having fun. Be a kid. Party with your friends. Everything else can wait.”
”Party? You’re not asking me to get drunk or something, are you? Because I’ve got superpowers, so… No. But- I- Okay. If nothing bad happens between now and tomorrow, maybe I will.”
She-Hulk chuckled. “Pfft. If you want to drink, just watch your cup and make sure no one drugs you. Don’t go crazy hard the first time. Keep an eye on yourself and your friends. And if you’re uncomfortable or just want to leave and need someone, call me, okay? I’d rather you be safe.”
”Yeah. Yeah, I will. I should- Uh, maybe apologize to America and her friends anyway,” Leah admitted. ”I was kind of a bitch in that fight. The Hex Girls suck, though. They cheated.”
Then Leah remembered. ”Oh, right, I think they hacked my phone or something too. Got a weird text last night after I saw a fake of my dad.”
Jen frowned. Not at Leah’s recognition that maybe she was a little mean to the Young Avengers - she didn’t hold it against her, sometimes people were competitive and talking shit was part of that environment - but it was still good for Leah to be able to reflect on that. No, she was instead concerned about the revelation that the Hex Girls had cheated and hacked Leah’s phone. “Want me to beat them up?” she offered. “I can send them some scary documents, tell them to cease and desist immediately, yadda yadda yadda. We should probably change your phone number, too - or get you a new phone if you’d like.”
”All of the above, maybe? Sabine and I got teleported by Stephen Strange, he gave me a thing to find which of them cast that thing on me. So I’m maybe gonna kick someone for a field goal and-”
Leah’s head whipped around. The street became a lot louder suddenly as the sounds of the arena could be heard. The crowd was so noisy that it carried all the way out here, and she heard the announcer’s voice over them all.
They won.
”...Holy damn.” She looked back at Jen. ”They did it.”
She-Hulk blinked. She did a double take. She made a mental note to ask Strange why the hell he was being cryptic and weird and not just helping - wizards were the absolute worst. And then she screamed, her eyes lighting up and she grinned so wide. “You did it. You won! Leah, you won!! Gosh, I’m going to have to get some papers started to draw up a trust fund for you - I don’t want you blowing through your winnings, not yet - and please let me handle any sleazy people who come out to get you to be the new face of their energy drink, the vultures. But you won!! That’s incredible!! You should go see your friends - go celebrate! You took down the Young Avengers!”
”We- They really did. I knew they would… They-“ She felt floaty. A fucking smile cracked over her face. A big, unburdened smile.
”We won!”
