Don't You Worry Child

Heal

Chapter Summary: Samantha's first therapy session brings about change and change is good, supposedly.

Soundtrack: Heal by Tom Odell

Samantha looked around the therapist's office, biting her lip. The walls were beige, the couch was beige, the canvas prints on the wall were beige even the therapist's outfit was beige. The whole setup seemed a tribute to the life of the bored middle class housewife – tedious and annoying. She didn't want to be here, being in a place like this made her feel awkward and strange, like she was being watched. Well, she was being watched, of course, that was the whole point of therapy – for someone to observe you – it didn't mean she had to like it. "Samantha, why are you here?" The therapist asked after five minutes of mere silence in a tone that seemed far too condescending for the teenage patient's liking. The therapist had rectangular glasses framed by a black, glossy plastic and brown hair scraped back into a bun both of which, particularly combined with the woman's beige suit, created something akin to the sexy librarian before she became sexy seen all too often in music videos and films the world over. If her hair was a little glossier and her skirt shorter than its knee-length ending.

Samantha could have used some of her biting wit on the woman sat opposite her. She could have answered with the expected teenage angst. She didn't, however. Instead, she decided that blunt and to the point was the way to go forth "My boss wants me to see you to make sure I'm not completely crazy before he lets me come back,"

"And why is that?"

"Because some personal things went down and they were mixed into work. He thinks they may have an effect on the way I work,"

"And how do you feel about that?"

"Are you actually interested or is this like when you pretend to be interested in sports for the sake of your boyfriend,"

"I'm as interested as you want me to be,"

"Don't try and placate me," Samantha hissed. She hated being placated almost as much as being lied to.

"Okay, what would you prefer me to do then?"

"Not this! Right now I would very much prefer it if you weren't being so condescending. I would prefer it even more if I could just leave. But even more than that I would prefer it if all of this crap hadn't happened to me,"

"So why don't you leave then?"

"Because I love my job and my dad is concerned as is my boss because my mom died having lied to me my whole life. Not to mention that she seems to have done whatever she possibly could to have me killed or improved. I was raped by my ex-boyfriend repeatedly until he dumped me a week before my mother died. Then my last boyfriend essentially dumped me because of my mother's lies. Happy now? I've had my crazy outburst!" she yelled at the woman angrily, standing up just to prove her point.

"Sounds like you have a lot of problems then," the therapist in as soothing a tone as possible.

"And I bet you don't have any. You probably have one of those amazingly hot, rich husbands who's great in bed and I'd presume that you have sex every night because he's just. That. Good. And that's probably why you have two amazingly good looking, well-behaved, charming children. So you do this job to know that any of your problems, whether it's which PTA meeting you go to or which dessert to bake for the school's bake sale, it's all insignificant in comparison to those of your patients,"

"You sound angry,"

"WHAT AN EXCELLENT DEDUCTION SHERLOCK! Of course I'm angry. I'm a teenager that's what we're supposed to be," she answered, sarcasm dripping from her words. That is what she was supposed to be right? She was supposed to be hostile and difficult, right? Right?

"While that is true, I think the fact that most of your anger stems from your mother is troubling to say the least. So why don't you start with that?" the therapist asked, her eyebrows raised.

"How much do you actually know about S.H.I.E.L.D.? Because a lot of the stuff I say makes me sound incredibly crazy if you don't know enough,"

"I know everything I need to know for the purposes of your case,"

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In the space of the 45 minutes that had remained of her session, she had divulged a lot in the therapist – who's name she now knew to be Tracy – more than was probably necessary. Worst thing was she'd come out of the room with homework: Find a theme song. How on earth was she going to do that?

On leaving the office, she decided to make a trip to the hairdressers. She needed to change a lot and her hair was the first thing. Upon being seated in a big, black, leather spinning chair in front of a mirror she spotted – on the front cover of a magazine on the corner of the mirrored table – the perfect style and colour. She pointed out to the stylist appointed to her and tasked him with the job of making the change saying "I want exactly that style,"

"Including the colour?" The stylist asked incredulously "Your hair is such a beautiful colour, it would look wonderful without the change,"

"I want the colour too," she announced with a definitive nod.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It had taken two hours but as Samantha looked in the mirror she was greatly impressed and pleased by her new look. Her chocolate brown breast-length locks were now an ash blonde bob with a blunt fringe that covered the entirety of her forehead. Standing up from the chair, she tipped the stylist and paid for the job done before exiting out to her Audi S5. Her father had bought the car for her on the principle that she needed something to drive round in and he wasn't about to let his daughter drive round in a death trap second hand Cadillac or Chevy like she had suggested, namely because she could afford it on the salary S.H.I.E.L.D. paid her.

Turning the key in the engine, she reversed out of her parking spot and made her way down the highway. The top down as she drove with the sound of Lucy Hale's Goodbye Gone playing through the stereo as she sang along to it 'You let me go and I'm losing sleep. Counting your lies like I'm counting sheep. Now it's time to right this wrong. Boy I'm gonna get your goodbye gone' She loved the song, had ever since she'd first heard it months earlier and only now did it really have any significance. She wished, she really wished that she had exacted some kind of revenge on Steve. The kind of revenge that would make him truly regret ever having hurt her. But she'd never been the type to exact revenge, she believed in the theory of karma and it's coming back to bite you twice as hard even if you were the one who had been wronged first.

Her new hair flew about in the wind as the track changed to another song off the CD she seemed to keep in the stereo at the moment. Gloria Gaynor's voice rang through her ears as the song of strength known as I Will Survive echoed through the car and down the road as it played at top volume.