strong enough [crossover]

congratulations! it only gets worse from here

-- December 2006 --

MJ is crying again.

She's been crying a lot recently. In her defense, she has some very valid reasons for crying. Number one, of course, is that she's in her first year of college. It sucks how much she hates college. She's spent most of her life dreaming about a higher education and the doors it would open for her. She worked so, so hard to get where she is now, and yet she's never been more miserable in her life. Not even when she was homeless.

This most recent crying session takes place on a bench outside a closed Chinese food place. Despite being closed, their bowl of noodles neon sign is on, so MJ's latest breakdown is backlit in red. The bench is still drenched from the rain two hours earlier, but she can't bring herself to care that the metal is cold or that her clothes are slowly but surely getting wetter the longer she sits there. She has her elbows propped up on her knees, her face buried in her hands, tears streaming down her face, and no fucks to give about wet clothes or weird looks from strangers.

She'd known that college wasn't going to be easy - school has never been easy for her, thanks to her dyslexia. Still, she hadn't known it'd be this awful. She really shouldn't be doing so poorly. MJ remembers everything she hears and college is super lecture-based, so she should at least be doing okay. But despite remembering everything her professors say, she can't seem to understand half of it, and all of the quizzes and essays are kicking her ass.

It doesn't help that things back home aren't so good either. Even if she didn't have college to worry about, she'd still be stressed all the time. Unfortunately, she does have college to worry about, so between that and family matters, MJ is probably as stressed as humanly possible. Hence all the crying. And the sleeping poorly. And the lack of appetite.

Gods, she's falling apart.

She knows she's losing her grip when it takes her an entire minute to realize someone has joined her on the bench. She lifts her head from her hands to assess the situation. White man, 6'1", 176 lbs, late forties-early fifties, gangly, reddish-brown hair that goes in every direction, dark blue suit paired with Converse (bold choice), and sad brown eyes that seem too ancient for the body they belong to. MJ knows what eyes like that mean, and it only makes her want to cry more.

"Whatever it is," she says, voice cracking, "I'm really not in the mood."

He looks at her like he knows her. "I know. I'm sorry."

Wait. An apology? If he is what she thinks he is, apologies should be foreign territory to him. And yet he's apologizing to her, and he actually seems to mean it. Her entire body tenses. Who is this guy? And why is he British?

"Please just leave me alone," MJ pleads.

The man reaches out to touch her arm, then thinks better of it and pulls away so quickly that he bangs his elbow into the arm of the bench. He grimaces. "I'll walk away. I promise you, I will. But there are some things you need to know first."

MJ sniffles and wipes at her face. "Fine. But please make it quick. It's late and I really should be getting back to my dorm."

"Yes," the man agrees, looking around at the empty street and the stars twinkling above. He has one leg draped over the other, his banged elbow resting on his knee. His other arm lays on the back of the bench. "Yes, you should." He looks back at her with a frown. "What are you doing out so late, anyway? And so far from campus?"

"I decided I'd walk until I stopped feeling like I was going to explode," she says. "And then I only stopped because I prefer to sit down when I sob dramatically."