notes: so this began in a sociology class if you can't tell.
notes2: it also hasn't been edited - at all - which you probably can tell.
forewarning: It's all post-Failsafe (spoilers), I wrote this directly after the episode and then abandoned it. Therefore, it's not consistent with some of the discoveries in Black Canary's therapy sessions. Hopefully, there will be a chapter for each character, but I only finished M'gann, Connor, and Wally.
disclaimer: Young Justice is not mine. If it was episode 19 would have aired in December. And there would be no 3 month hiatuses. $%#^#$#.
The Grief-Work Theory
The basic goal is to accept the reality of death. thereby, liberating oneself from the strong attachment to the "lost object". In which M'gann wonders who's dead and who's lost and which hurts less so she can join them.
1. Grief is an adaptive response to loss
It wasn't her fault they said.
Her reaction was normal. Freaked out, panicked, terrorized, hysterical, crazy. The only thing different was her. And Megan has never felt more like a failure.
She couldn't handle it.
Megan thinks this is what is wrong with her. She's still getting used to loss, so naïve and new, and all the others are far past grief. Far ahead of her. And that is a distance that can only be covered with bricks of blood and sorrow, but she's not sure she can or even wants to build this road - let alone walk down it.
Their eyes meet across Megan's sobs and they all wonder if they haven't fallen off the edge. There is some precipice here and it does lead somewhere. Maybe they fell off.
And they saw the end.
2. The work of grief is difficult and time-consuming
Long ago, there was an alien girl. She saw her world split into colors green-white. Then she stowed away to blue-green Earth, and found the shades (rainbow) in it's people and fell in hot-pink love. Maybe, that's why it hurt when the world turned solid-red.
It's been two weeks since M'gann's seen the golden sun. The dark-black coldness of her room is far more fitting.
And oh god does she miss it.
M'gann will spend two more weeks alone before Superboy comes in one night and curls up next to her.
Her skin is green and cold. His arms are familiar and warm.
He whispers I'm Sorry. And it's all M'gann can do to let him bind her into this world.
3. Grief-work is carried out through a long series of confrontations with the reality of the loss
There is a sense of abandonment when they die. An unimaginable pain when she dies – when her Uncle kills her? Kills her dead...kills her alive?
Because she wakes up. Didn't she? Is she?
There is Sadness and Guilt. Then Pain and Panic. Artemis dies and she loses her mind. Connor dies and she feels like her heart has ripped into a thousand pieces.
"I like your shirt."
Everyone dies and then she dies: dead-alive.
4. The process is complicated by the survivor's resistance to letting go of the attachment
It's not real.
It's not real.
She remembers now. Telling herself over and over – the real truth.
They are fighting and people are dying – but not really.
This isn't reality.
She knows this, realizes this.
It's not real.
It's not real.
Her organs twist with each video clip of another city decimated, she looks at the team. They will win this exercise and it will all be okay. Real or not. It doesn't matter because they are The Good Guys, so, they always win. period?
It's not real.
It's not real.
If there's one thing she' s learned on Earth it is that you may lie to yourself because there's no one to stop you. On Mars, they are linked, always and forever, no secrets unless you crumble off the edges of society. M'gann's mind works differently and her skin is green and she's different and she still sees them, hallucinations of her team in the dark deep-blood-red dead.
Then she wakes up.
Then they are looking at her, always not blaming her. Dead-alive.
And she's quite sure she has no idea which is real.
5. Failure results in continued misery and dysfunction
She can feel their desire, far more potently now that they are dead-alive. There was a muted connection in the simulation – like they were there, but not really. Everyone is scared. Because she hasn't emerged from her room in weeks. Because they died. Because they lived. And, right now, everyone desperately needs to know that they are more than surviving, but continuing.
Their thoughts buzz around, white noise in the background of M'gann's horror, and her head can only fall back, hitting the soft mattress, and reintegrate her mind into the network of nightmares.
And M'gann thinks that maybe she's still alive (and not dead-alive), just lost – but it doesn't really matter because it all hurts.
She's lost her mind and torn her heart.
But she can't afford failure.
Not again.
(So maybe it's a good thing she's lost a little bit of herself and maybe it's a good thing parts of her died because her old self couldn't handle this. But she can.)
endnotes: next up - Wally or Superboy?