"Hey, instead of whompin' that poor thing around again, why not come give your old man a hug?"

Isla smiled when she heard Larry's voice as he entered Wildecat after hours. She had been trying to get out some pent up aggression after her trip and mercilessly took it out on the heavy bag that now dragged on the floor behind her. She dropped it and ran over to him, giving him the biggest, and tightest hug she could muster up. She knew he'd sense something was wrong, and she'd gladly open to him, but right now she was just thankful for his presense.

He groaned when she latched onto him, but in return he wrapped his thick arms around her and kissed her on the top of her head. "Missed me that much, kid?"

She laughed and pulled back, nodding a little. "Yeah, I guess I did." She was able to muster up a small smile that she hoped didn't look more like a grimmace. She didn't want to talk about her trip or exchange pleasantries about the weather or spring training for the Red Sox. She just wanted to sit and enjoy the company of her mentor and uncle. He had been the most solid rock in her life and sometimes all it took was his presence to make her realize that everything would be okay.

With his arm wrapped around her shoulders, they walked to their shared office and sat at their deskes. Isla began unwrapping her sore knuckles and watched as he pulled out a bottle of scotch from his desk. "Nightcap?" he offered, and she shook her head with a look of disgust. "I'd rather drink Lysol," she replied, and they both laughed.

After he poured himself a small glass, he sat back and watched her as she finished unwrapping and pulled on a sweatshirt. "What's got you so tense?" he finally asked, giving her some time to calm down enough to talk to him. After the decade that they had known each other, the way she carried her emotions written on her sleeve was familiar to him. He knew when Isla was hiding her anger, her sadness, or her anxiety. The only thing she was ever honest about was her happiness, and right now it looked like there was none left in her.

"Everything," she admitted, huffing and sitting back in her chair. Isla slouched and folded her arms across her chest. Instead of making any amount of eye contact with her uncle, she stared at the ceiling in order to focus on something else. "I'm a good person, right? I run this place, and I look after everyone I know. I donate to charities and help the homeless out when I can. I believe I'm a good person. I believe there's good in everyone...so, why is it that I feel like I'm the only one who thinks that?" She paused, wanting to continue, but knowing her rambling would eventually become more and more irrelevant to the things bothering her.

Setting his glass on the table, Larry took a minute to think about her situation before he spoke up. "I think there's a lot more than that going on. You know you've always been a magnet for bad people. I think you're a great person, Iz. I think you're one of the best that I know. But I also think your taste in people is awful and you let them take advantage of you because you see so much good in them that you forget to see them for who they are. Does that sound right?"

Sighing, Isla nodded. "I've kind of distanced myself from most people, but I feel like the ones I thought were going to be there forever turned out to be the cut and run type. I know I can't fix that in them, but I don't know how to walk away. I don't know how to get closure for myself, so I sit around crying and waiting for explanations from them telling me in great detail what I did wrong to warrant that kind of treatment. So...yeah. I guess it does sound about right."

The realization that she let people walk all over her was there, she knew it all along in the back of her mind, but refused to come to terms with it. Isla was a strong person, she was the strongest person a lot of people said they knew. She had been dealt a couple bad cards in the past and in the end, she was the one who came out on top because she never went down with a fight. Except for when it came to matters of the heart. Whether it was someone she was in love with or someone she considered a pillar in her lift, she let them stomp on her like the welcome mat greeted a pair of muddy boots in the spring.

"Twice this year I've lost people I thought were my best friends. I would have done anything for them. They were my bridesmaids, my closest friends...my sisters. And suddenly, I was public enemy number one to them. One just acts like she's so far above me that she couldn't even be assed to thank me for a Christmas gift, or tell me what I did that was so offensive that she cut me out. And the other..." She laughed humorlessly, the look of disgust on her face clear as day. "I was closer to her than I was to anyone else. There were times when she was the center of my universe, and she made me feel like I was the center of hers. And then suddenly, I didn't even exist. Despite reaching out to her several times now, she just won't talk to me. Not a hello, not a 'fuck off', no acknowledgement whatsoever." Isla scoffed and ran her hands through her hair, her face was red with anger, and her eyes puffy with the oncoming threat of tears. "I'd be fine with it if they only told me why I was being punished. I'd feel better if I knew why I deserved to be this far below them." She sighed and shook her head, throwing her hands up as she shrugged. "I guess no matter how high that pedestal is, I'll never be good enough." Reaching forward, Isla grabbed a half empty bottle of water and took a sip.

"I'm just sick of being this person that people think they can emotionally abuse. Like I haven't had enough of that in my life." Grunting, she kicked the desk with her foot and took a few deep breaths as she fumed. Maybe this was what she needed more than anything, a therapy session with Larry in the office that saw more tears and heard more emotional conversations than most couches at a therapists office. "And Oliver....God. I love him so much that I want to punch him in the face." The more she vented, the more anger came out. "He's so good all the time. He's so perfect and happy and he makes me so happy that it's sickening. I can't stand how good he is. This whole week I've just wanted to pick fights with him and get him angry because I got so sick of being on Cloud Nine with him. I've never even had a minor argument with him, it's like our honeymoon stage never ended."

She groaned and buried her head in her hands. "I'm so mad all the time that I'm mad about the things I shouldn't be mad about," she admitted. "He is the absolute light of my life and I've never wanted anything more than to just be with him all the time. I would do absolutely anything for him. I'd give him the moon and all the stars, and maybe even a second moon for good measure." When Isla realized how annoyingly she was rambling about Ollie, she huffed and stopped. Turning around to face her desk, she dropped her head on it and banged it against the wood.

"I can't get him to have a serious conversation with me about having kids," she finally admitted, the distress in her voice completely muffled by the position her head was in. "Every time I try, we either get off topic, or I feel like he's completely uninterested. And if he is, then that's fine, but I want him to be honest about it." She stopped to wipe some tears away. "And then anytime we make even the tiniest ounce of headway, I get flustered for wanting it, and scared that he might not, and just walk away from the conversation. But...Connor and Cyn both want a sibling. I want them to have a sibling, one that's ours."

As tears fell from her eyes and landed on the desk, Larry sat there and tried to take it all in. He'd never experienced such emotional whiplash from her, but he knew she was entirely capable of it. A few times, he cleared his throat and tried to go over everything he heard just then, but wasn't sure where to begin.

"Honestly, babydoll, I think you are capable of figuring this out on your own. You know when to walk away from people, and if you get no closure from them, then you don't. You don't have to beat yourself up over it." He sighed and looked at his niece before rolling his chair over to her desk and putting his hand on her back. "One thing I learned when I was a cop was that victims of abuse, which you are, aren't fully capable of understanding that they think they deserve to be punished for minor things. You have always felt that way whether or not you agree with me. You don't need to put yourself through emotional turmoil because you think you deserve to atone for something. You can walk away, wash your hands clean of fairweather bullshit and still come out on top as the better person, it's just whether or not you want to." He sighed and watched as Isla picked her head up and wiped her tears. "Look, I get it. You think you deserve all of this, and you want to fight to get answers because it's who you are. But you don't have to, and that's something you're going to have to learn on your own. I can't fix you, that's your job."

Isla knew Larry was right. She knew he was right about her fixing herself, and that she truly did think she deserved shitty fairweather friends and that she craved a fight because that's what she was dealt in the past, but she also knew that it was okay to walk away from all of it wihout any of that, too.

Looking at her, Larry also knew the kid talk was going to eat away at her until she and Ollie had a real conversation. "One thing I regret about meeting Di when i did is that I hadn't meet her sooner in life. If we could have raised kids on our own, we would have, but we at least had you. And sure, you were old enough to take care of yourself, but you're as much ours as Cyn is Ollie's and Connor is yours. You two still have time to figure it out, and when the time is right, you will." Taking a tissue out of the box, he handed it to her and waited.

"I'm going to be 30 this year. He's going to be 40. I don't want to rush into having a huge family, and I know he doesn't either, but if not now, or soon, then when? It's not like we have an unlimited amount of time to figure these things out." Isla wiped her tears and her nose and threw the tissue in the trash. "I keep telling him we'll wait until Connor goes off to college, that maybe it's better to raise a baby with one less person in the house, but I don't want to wait that long. And we have to talk about it and explore our options ahead of time because it's not going to be as easy for us as it could be for anyone else. Craig and I couldn't have kids, so there's a good chance Ollie and I can't, either."

"I know, Iz. That's something you guys need to plan for, and maybe it'll take a couple of years, so opening up the line of communication now won't hurt. But maybe you're looking at this all wrong. Maybe it's not necessarily that you couldn't have a kid with Craig. You know, maybe you weren't ready for it, or maybe the timing wasn't right. You could have been trying to hard, or not hard enough. These things have a way of being tricky and it's never easy to deal with them. But what you need to understand is that you and Oliver are more in love than anyone else I've ever known and perhaps that will be what matters in the end. The universe has a funny way of playing tricks on people, so if you let it, maybe it'll provide for you when you're both ready."

Having this talk with Larry had put many of Isla's worries to rest. Although her festering aggression was something she would still have to deal with, she knew there was nothing better than a therapy session where she could put absolutely everything out on the table. She smiled at him and nodded. "Thanks, Lar," she said. She realized that he was right about the universe providing for her when the time was right, because had it not been for him showing up at the right time, there was no telling what sort of trouble she could have gotten herself into when her fuse finally burned to the end.

"You don't need to hold it all in. I taught you better than that, and I know you utilize what you have to get out your aggression, but sometimes physicality isn't all you need. Sometimes you need to lay it all out there, and it sounds like you were getting close to your wits end with the things that were weighing you down. You know where to find me, you know my number. And if it's not me you need to talk to, then talk to Dinah. You have plenty of people who care about you and who are rooting for you every day, so don't think you have to hide all of what's inside of you from us. We're family now, kid. There's nothing you can say to me that's going ot make me love you any less."

As they both stood up, Isla and Larry embraced in a long hug where she buried her head and took a deep breath. "I know," was all she had to say and the hold on her that tightened told her that everything was going to be okay. Pulling away, she wiped her burning eyes with her sleeve and smiled at him the best she could.

They both locked up and made sure Wildecat was buttoned up tight for the rest of the night. As he walked her to her car, one arm draped around her shoulder, he stopped them and took her face in his hands. "I'm proud of you, Little Bird. You had a really big year last year, and this year will be bigger. Things might seem tough right now, but they're not so bad in the grand scheme of things, okay? Look at what you've done in the last year as far as coming into yourself as a person. A year ago this would have been a lot harder for you to do, but you did it tonight and that's a really big step. Just give yourself a lot more credit and don't look to other people to do it for you. You are a good person. You're a good wife to Oliver, and a good mother, not only to your kid, but his too. You've made a lot of big life changes over the last year and it's done nothing but help you grow up. So try to remember that, okay?"

Isla nodded. "Okay," she said, her cheeks pink as she reluctantly accepted his praise.

They hugged again and said their goodbye's and good night's before going their separate ways.