Why Not?

Chapter Fourteen: This Mad Night's Almost Peaceful Interlude

After Katie had calmed down, she spilled everything she knew.

Apparently, you'd missed a lot when you were gone.

Chloe had stopped eating for most of the duration of your mission, and she intentionally left her lunchbox at home on the counter so she couldn't eat it at school. When confronted about this, Chloe had told Scarllet that she was fine and that she just wasn't hungry. When asked more questions, she frankly told Scarllet to fuck off and tried to ignore her.

However, Scarllet gets very angry when people tell her that. So, this resulted in a fight, which was only heard by a couple of people. None of which happened to be any of their parental units, which was fun.

After that, Chloe wasn't as nice, and she was always cold-- like she was always tired. Then, her grades started dropping, and she got an F on a test that was really important to her. When Maverik tried talking to her, she flipped her shit and told him to get the fuck out of her room.

And honestly, the amount of swearing that Chloe was supposedly doing was almost concerning, but you decided that was the least of your worries.

When Katie was finished, and you were all caught up, both Steve and Bucky seemed completely horrified. You could tell that they also felt awful. Chloe was their daughter, after all, and they tried to show her as much love and care as they could without smothering her (which was a hard thing to accomplish. Chloe's very people sensitive.).

And now they were finding out something was very wrong?

Yeah, they probably felt horrible.

However, you stopped them when they went to go talk to Chloe.

"Trust me when I say she'll shut down as soon as you ask her about it," you told them. "You should probably have Clint, Nat, or T'challa talk to her. They're more likely to get through to her." You advised.

See, there's this thing that Chloe does. Because she's very anxious, shy, and people sensitive, she'll randomly stop all verbal communication. Instead, she'll use sign language and watch as everyone struggles around her. These episodes either last days or weeks, and she'll never tell you when it's coming.

The saddest part, though, was the fact that it wasn't even on purpose. It's like a fight or flight reflex.

Unfortunately, you didn't get too long to think about this too long before the rest of the team got home. And on night's like tonight, that meant dinner would be served in twenty minutes.

These twenty minutes passed by pretty quickly, as per usual. Everyone was busy doing something. Malissa was setting the table, Maverik was helping Wanda with the cheese garlic bread that always came with Monday night pizzas, Micheal was intently watching the microwave timer, and Scarllet was helping to pick out a movie. Chloe was nowhere to be seen, but that wasn't very surprising from what you'd just heard.

Instead if watching a movie, as the team usually did, you started a TV series called 'the magicians'. It was about a guy who ended up discovering the fact that magic was real, and it was his journey through his learning process.

Well, that's how Micheal had described it, anyway. You were too preoccupied with everyone's peculiar behavior.

Everyone seemed on edge. You didn't know what they were on the edge of-- you figured it was probably a mental breakdown of some sort-- but you knew the result wouldn't be good.

These feelings became apparent after dinner, after most of the adults wandered off. (Probably to sleep, you'd figured, seven kids ought to be stressful.)

Scarllet and Micheal talked in a hushed tone near the TV. She was trying to bite her thumb, but Micheal was holding her hands. You couldn't hear what they were saying, but from what you could see, they were talking casually about something that might've made Scarllet anxious. 

Well, she didn't look too anxious, actually. She looked more annoyed than anything.

Well, until Micheal abruptly stood.

 "What the fuck did you just say to me?!" he practically shouted. His hands clenched into fists at his sides as Scarllet went from annoyed to absolutely terrified. 

You sat up, now on guard. 

Whatever was about to go down was something you knew wouldn't be pretty.