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She needed him to be steady. If he shook, she would have started screaming again. She needed something holding her down, pinning her until she felt helpless again, and he gave her what she needed. His words sounded better than the shaky voice she'd heard coming from the medic, but that meant nothing. Dawson could have been lying to save her from the pain. She shook in his arms, and turned to bury her face in his chest.

"Dawson, I can't see. I can't see anything. I can't see." She couldn't stop saying it. She couldn't stop opening her eyes and attempting to force them to work, only to feel them fill with tears that she couldn't see, either.

"I can't see. I can't see." She was a broken record, sobbing into his chest. "I CAN'T SEE!"

She began the inevitable hiccups, but his hand brushed down her back in soothing motions, and it worked to bring her down from the ledge she'd immediately teetered herself on. She stopped chanting the obvious, and turned her head up, as if hoping that looking at him would make her sight magically return to her. It did not, but she finally managed to hear what she'd been ignoring the entire time.

Was Thaw..

Her lower lip began to quiver. "Thaw's crying, Dawson." She whispered, furrowing her brow in worry. "I've never heard him do this." She paused, and listened to it in wonder, and equal parts horror. "Dawson, what if. What if he can't - "

"Please turn around, Ms. Bertrand." The cold voice of the doctor on duty snapped her out of the moment, and she was stunned into complying, turning to give him a chance to examine her eyes. He used the light in the same manner as the medic, who was suspiciously absent - but his hands were pulling up and down on her eyelids, taking a closer, more in-depth view.

When he shut off the light, he looked no more or less concerned. "You're suffering from an unknown form of what's called cortical blindness. This means your eyes have not been damaged, it is the connections between your eyes and your brain that are no longer working properly. We don't know the cause yet, which means we don't know if it's temporary or permanent. We'll need an MRI to know for sure. I'll schedule you in today."

She felt his hand on her shoulder, but she felt no warmth from his touch. "I sincerely recommend that you not jump to conclusions. This is fairly common, and you have just as much of a chance of recovering on your own as you do of any sustaining injury. Wait until we know for sure."

She did not look like she would be waiting for anything, but she said nothing contrary in response. He took the silence to mean she understood, and gave Dawson a sharp nod, before turning to walk away.

The doctor paused in his step, and turned around. An actual question? Who would have thought? "She's free to leave the infirmary, if she wants, but she'll just have to come back when the MRI is set up." There was judgement in his voice, but he did not verbalize his opinion. "She'll get a text when the appointment is set. Please make sure someone is with her at all times in order to read it."

And that was the final straw. Maebe let out one, two, three groans of pure agony, before she turned back around and buried herself into Dawson's chest again.

She couldn't even read her own texts. She needed a god damned handler. She was useless.

"NO." She'd been quiet until he offered to text someone, listing names of people that horrified her with each added name. "I don't want them to see me like this. I don't want them to know. Not until I know for sure. Dawson, please, I don't want anyone to know." She wanted to hide away, maybe under the gurney itself, and shut down until she could find out whether she was now permanently blind. Blind. Her.

What was the last thing she'd seen, before it all went away? She fought to remember, and then struggled to forget. Her last sight was Otto's vicious hate, and the fists hitting her, over and over and over -

"I need you to stay." She felt only the slightest stirrings of guilt for forcing this upon him, but he had the bad luck of being the one who was there when it all went down, and now she had to rely on him more than she ever had before. "Please?"

"I can't see the sun." She reminded him, her tone souring. "Why would that do me any good? How would I get around? Are you just going to carry me everywhere?" Her expression was darkening by the minute, far too familiarly eager to dip into the depression that she'd already been struggling with. She slumped down against him, no longer clinging to him so much as using him for support to keep herself sitting.

"I know what's going to happen, Dawson." She grumbled. "I already know. I always know. I don't need an MRI to tell me what's up."

Maebe did not fight his arms wrapping around her, carting her up into them like a tiny ball of sadness and pouting. She did not fight him taking her out of the infirmary, and walking with her into the sunlight. She did not fight him when they stopped, and she knew she could have gotten away.

She had no fight left in her anymore.

When the buzzing happened, it was two hours later - her phone had a curt message, instructing them back to the infirmary and informing her that she needed to remove anything metal from her body before she entered the MRI room. She felt the buzz and did not move to get her phone out from her pocket.

"They're calling." She informed Dawson, murmuring tonelessly into the shoulder she'd slumped against for the entirety of their excursion.

She reached up to check her ears for earrings, but someone must have removed them long ago. She checked her neck for a necklace, and her wrists for any bangles, but the same was true for all of her jewelry. Finally, she slid her hands under her shirt, checked for a moment, and nodded.

"Just the wire in my bra."