Returned to Sender - Scarlett Johansson

Part 28

Scarlett's POV

One step forward, five hundred back.

I don't even know what happened. But I hate myself yet again for pushing Sawyer past her limits. By this point, I should know Sawyer well enough to intervene before she gets to the point of being uncomfortable. I should be able to protect her. But I am starting to think she needs protection from me.

Sure, we were having a rough morning, and then there was the incident with everyone looking at her back. But when she went and threw water balloons with Lizzie at everyone, she looked like she was having the time of her life. The whole cast just stopped to stare at her at the end when she started to laugh after throwing that balloon at my face. She seemed to be so happy up there with Lizzie, so when India came waddling over and asked me to play in the pool with her, I knew Sawyer was in safe hands.

The water felt nice, and playing with the kids was always fun, but I still kept an eye out for Sawyer and Lizzie. After about ten minutes, I noticed they were sitting on the lounger from earlier talking.

I could see Sawyer sitting on Lizzie's lap as they spoke and wondered if she was tired after not sleeping last night because she had never been this cuddly with anyone but me. I was going to go over to check on her and to get her to drink some water because it was so hot when I was suddenly submerged under water. When I popped back up, I noticed Evans laughing with Keen as the two high-five, making me roll my eyes.

I was just planning my revenge when I heard Lizzie call for me. "SCAR!" She sounded urgent, so I whipped my head around to find her immediately, noticing Sawyer wasn't cuddling with her anymore. "She's banging her head again," she continued to yell, making me hop out of the pool and run over to them as quickly as I could. It had been a while since she had an incident where she was banging her head. I was starting to think we had moved past that, but I was clearly overly optimistic.

I was expecting a memory-induced panic when I saw Sawyer, but I was shocked as I heard her mumble a cranky. "No, I'm not," responding to her surroundings, that is definitely different. I went to scoop her up, wanting to calm her down before asking Lizzie what happened, when Sawyer ripped herself out of my hold, moving to be further away from me, puzzling me more. I watched as she swayed, cuddling her blanket and Nat before something in her snapped, and she threw them both away, shocking me.

I had never seen her like this; she always treated everything as if they were made of glass, and those two objects were arguably her most prized possession, so to see her throw them with such disregard made me wonder what the heck had happened.

I grabbed them both, sitting them beside me before shuffling closer to her in the hopes of talking her down when I heard her mumble, coming from Sawyer, the words seemingly falling out of her mouth in a loop. "I was fine on my own, and I'll be fine when Scarlett leaves me again," over and over, she repeated them. Each time she said it, another part of my heart cracked.

What the hell happened? She was fine thirty minutes ago, smiling and laughing with Lizzie, and now she is worse than I have ever seen her back to calling me Scarlett and breaking my heart.

"What is going on?" I ask, looking up at Lizzie, who's looking apologetically at me as Sawyer continues to mumble about me leaving her on a loop. "She thought you were mad at first because she got you in the face, so I said it would be fine. Then um, when Sawyer saw you playing with the other kids, she looked so sad. I said we could join you, but she had none because of the water. Then SJ started working on her equations, but she seemed so sad. She was holding back tears, so I might have tried to push her to talk to me." She paused, her gaze flickering between Sawyer and me in despair.

"Then she yelled and scared herself, and she started hyperventilating, and I could tell she saw memories. I think she was half in memory, half aware or something. Still, instead of her normal muttering, she was worried about you. She said something about how you didn't want her when she was little, but you were playing with India. She wanted to know why you liked that little girl but not her when she was little," she paused, taking a deep breath as if to fight off tears as she glanced at Sawyer for a moment before going back to looking at me.