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She doesn’t even notice how much she’s changed until it’s far too late to do anything about it, even if there was anything she could do about it because she’s far too tired and worn to feel like there’s something left to save or recover, no matter what Coulson tries to convince her. There wasn’t really anything self destructive about it, it was just the result of living life as a SHIELD agent-- too many late nights, too many missions causing massive stress, too many dead bodies piling up in the back of her mind-- leaving no room for the positive or even for any of the self care she knows, somewhere deep down, that she needs and deserves.
It’s not until she’s back in the field with a team she hand picked and actually, truly likes that she realizes the years of self imposed isolation in the records room didn’t do as much good as she’d hoped; but as she takes calm, even breaths and moves slowly through her Tai-Chi poses, ignoring the two girls watching her from the sidelines, she also realizes that somewhere along the way, the positive started to seep back into her life and maybe, just maybe, she hasn’t changed so much that everything she once was is totally irrecoverable.