Movement

Chapter Thirteen.

Brady didn't get a phone call until 3:57pm the next day, precisely. It wasn't from Harry.

Her day went a little like this, prior to the phone call: She woke up after sleeping for no more than 45 minutes, took her mom to breakfast after walking Apollo in the park (he wasn't happy about all of the exercise), and sat on the sofa beside her mom watching re-runs of Friends.

She sat quietly through two episodes, her eyes flickering to the clock on the wall every thirty seconds. Her foot began to tap consistently, and God, Jane loved her daughter to the ends of the universe, but she could only take so much of it before she let out a loud sigh.

"Brady, dear, did you want to talk about something?" She asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Brady stopped tapping and glanced at her mom, her eyebrows pulling together.

"What?" She started, sitting up straighter and clearing her throat, "what do you mean?"

Jane rolled her eyes. "If you keep tapping on the floor like that, your downstairs neighbor is going to file a complaint. Is there something on your mind, dear?"

Brady sighed, her eyes shutting and hands coming up to rub at her temples in order to subside the migraine forming. She obviously couldn't tell her mother that Harry was performing a raid for the FBI on one of the most wanted men in America, but improvising was becoming more and more natural to her.

"It's just... Harry is working a tough case right now, and he was supposed to call me around noon," she explained, her eyes opening to stare up at the ceiling. "It's not just a typical day for him, the case is dangerous," she sighed, shaking her head and swallowing. Jane frowned, sitting up and placing her hand on her daughter's shoulder.

"It's only four minutes after noon, darling," she soothed, her hand squeezing Brady's shoulder. Brady turned her head to look up at her mom and frowned.

"I just don't feel right, Ma," her voice shook a bit, and Jane frowned deeper. "I have that Impending Doom feeling," she explained further.

That Impending Doom feeling was a phrase Brady had used since she was about ten years old- when her core would twist and ache and her legs would shake and she wouldn't realize her jaw was clenched shut until someone had informed her. Jane could remember the first time Brady had picked up the little saying after her second or so meeting with a therapist she had hired to talk Brady out of the strange shell she seemed incapsulated in. The first time she used it, she used it three more times that week, and when Jane had returned to the therapist's office a week later, she pulled over Doctor Lasawiki and asked about it.

"It's anxiety," the Doctor had explained to a timid Jane, "I don't think she wants to realize that she has it just yet. Maybe just.. Let her use it for now until she's comfortable enough to admit that she has a disorder, yeah?"

Brady never dropped that saying, and she still never admitted to the anxiety that crippled her soul every day of her life. It was, well, just worse some days, and that was okay. Because Brady could handle it.

"Baby," Jane sighed, wrapping an arm around her daughter's shoulders to bring her closer, "I know this is a silly thing to say, but everything's going to be okay. The way you've talked about him before... He seems like a tough guy, yeah? Sounds like he can handle whatever comes his way today," she soothed, her hand rubbing Brady's arm. Brady's eyes shut and she rested her cheek against her mom's chest, the exhaustion of not even squeezing an hour into her sleep the past few days overcoming her. She trembled a bit and Jane frowned, shaking her head and pulling her daughter ever closer.

"You look exhausted, why don't you try and take a nap? Did you sleep at all?" She asked, and Brady shook her head. Jane released another sigh. "Get some sleep, baby girl, I'll watch that phone of yours and wake you up if you get a call."