“Are you sure you’re trying to help him? Or are you trying to make his situation easier for you guys to deal with?
Skye shot him an offended look.
“Not what I meant,” [Mac] said. “I only mean that what feels like helping to you might feel like babying to him. It’s like, my grandmother was one of the toughest people I ever knew. Woman marched on Washington. Got the hose and the dogs turned on her. Didn’t take shit from anyone, period. But she got too old to walk on her own, so it was the wheelchair for her. And you know what she hated most about that thing?”
Skye shook her head.
“She hated that it was the only thing people saw when they looked at her, and especially that they thought it made her weak. I swear,” he said with a chuckle, “if grandma was trying to get something off the shelf and you gave it to her without being asked, you got a whack from a wooden ruler. Right hand to god, she kept one with her all the damn time.”
“Even if you were just trying to help?”
“Especially if you were just trying to help. ‘If I needed you to get that for me,’ she’d say, ‘I’d have asked you for it.’ Things like that, or opening doors, or even just going down the sidewalk, they didn’t come as easy to her. That didn’t bother her nearly as much as people assuming she couldn’t still do them on her own.”
“So you’re comparing Fitz to Grandma Mackenzie?”
“I’m saying people don’t break. They change, but they don’t break. You’ve just gotta know how to tell when they’re asking you for help, and to not step all over them when they’re not.”
After quite some time, I’ve finally become invested in the goings-on of the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV show. It’s been rough going at times, but I think it’s finally hit its stride, and it’s doing some interesting things with the characters. Out of the whole cast, it’s Leo Fitz with whom I’m most fascinated. The oxygen deprivation he endured during last season’s finale has left him with brain damage, which manifests itself in shaky hands and a speech impediment, and he’s been hallucinating a Jemma that helps him cope. While he always knows what he means to say, he can’t express himself as clearly or work as quickly as he used to, and his original team members have, to varying extents, written him off. Continue reading
Lady Geek Girl and Friends 