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This feeling stabbed her often- just below the centre of her ribs. When she'd been with Cain, it hadn't stabbed her so often. Now it did. It was one of the few things that made Cassandra want to go back to her father- just to relieve that feeling that the others called anxiety. It made her feel stupid. It made her feel scared. It made her want to hit her head against the wall, just to get the feeling out. The pressure would build and build inside her otherwise, and that, that was a terrible feeling that sometimes made her lie on the floor and hit things in silence.
The others called it a meltdown when that happened- or sensory overload or emotional overload or other words she chose to ignore, simply because she wanted to.
Cass had buried herself in the corner of her room, just behind the door, and covered herself in a blanket to block out as much light as she could. She had her knees brought up to her chest and her hands locked behind her neck, pressing down as much as she could. She wasn't sure why, but deep pressure like this- especially on her neck or back- helped to relieve the internal pressure. It didn't hurt. It felt reassuring. Maybe it came from Cain's constant warnings to watch her back.
She heard the door opening, but from the doorway, it was impossible to see her unless you looked behind the door. Those were Jason's feet. They had something of a practiced lightness to them, though occasionally, he'd put his foot down heavier than normal. Not too heavy- not like a stomp. Just heavy enough that Cass would notice, and nobody else would.
"Cass?"
"Mm."
That was all she could manage for now. Jason moved- she heard- looking around behind the door. With a sigh, he walked over, sitting next to her and carefully lifting the blanket to take a peek at her. She didn't lift her head from her knees, but she felt the blanket fall back around her and heard Jason move away. He was rifling around now, looking for something, before he came and sat back next to her.
Another blanket covered the two of them, before Jason lifted the blanket covering only Cass and draped it over his head the best he could. He laid her PECS book between them, opening it to let her look for what she wanted to say. She gazed at it for a long minute, at each picture. Sometimes she could read the words. Sometimes she couldn't.
She pointed at each image.
Me. Anxious. Upset. Brother. Jason. Fix.
Jason seemed to pause as he processed each word, stringing together the sentence she wanted to make in his mind. He shifted over, wrapping an arm around Cass and bringing her in close, squeezing her just enough that it relieved some of the pressure. She could feel the warmth of his skin, the softness of his sweater, hear his deep and calm breaths and his heartbeat.
"Do you know why?" Jason asked.
Cass shook her head.
"That's okay," he replied. "This happens to me sometimes. It's part of Complex PTSD. It's like flashbacks, of a sort."
He reached for the PECS book, flipping through it and pointing at a picture of a doodle with a cloud around their head and little lightning bolts coming off them. The person was hugging themselves.
"Flashbacks," he told Cass. "That one says 'flashbacks' under it."
She nodded in understanding. This was flashbacks. Or- these were flashbacks. Sometimes the words were wrong, even in her head. She wasn't sure why it mattered if the words were wrong in her head- after all, she knew what she meant. It wasn't her fault if others didn't.
The pressure was slowly evaporating. Slowly, but surely. The longer Jason held her, the more it went away. And that knife in her stomach called anxiety was slowly retracting too. Not all the way- it still left that wound called panic in the centre of her body- but enough that she felt she could function.
"B sent me to get you for dinner. Are you ready for dinner?"
Cass nodded. The two removed the blankets and went down for dinner, Jason holding Cass right up until they got to the dining room. It was nice to know she hadn't completely lost her mind, that this was something Jason experienced as well. As she glanced at each person on the table, she wondered how many of them experienced this.
She wondered if any of them would ever talk about it.