Little Mark & Cg Cecil Headcanons !!

little mark & cg cecil headcanons !!

— requested by anon —

— cw: ptsd symptoms, negative feelings towards regression, and references to canon trauma but no s3 spoilers !! —

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ ✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧

🕹️ - trauma regressor mark! he doesn’t actually start regressing until after his dad leaves. for a long time, he copes by simply ignoring everything that happened— but he can’t ignore it. it’s everywhere, on every news station, on every omni-man poster torn down in the city, on the way that the world never really recovers from the loss of the original guardians of the globe. mark doesn’t actually see himself as a victim and so he doesn’t give himself the space to grieve what happened, or even really process it. he simply goes through the motions of being a hero and trying to make up for something he didn’t do.

🤖 - cecil watches him closely during this time, constantly checking in with him and debbie without their knowledge. he monitors mark’s mental state from afar and he starts noticing things. little things. meaningless things. like the way mark breaks down after a nightmare, curling in on himself and crying while he rocks back and forth. or the way he huddles in the corner of his room, hyperventilating, while desperately clutching his childhood action figures so hard that cecil is surprised they don’t break. it’s donald who picks up on it first, with his expansive understanding on trauma and ptsd (not really; it’s expansive to cecil, though, who never did a lick of mental health research in his entire life if it wasn’t relevant to his work. donald just works closely with their psyche evaluators and he’s spiraled more than once on learning the effects of trauma on the brain and how it would have affected him with his many deaths). donald says it’s ptsd, possibly complex, and mark gets thrown into a room with a mandated psychologist who works with him for weeks before they get any new information.

all the while, mark’s little things become more present. he’s clingy to his mother, clingy to cecil, clingy to eve and amber. but he’s nervous around everyone else, especially men. especially the immortal. during the few missions cecil tentatively allows him on, he’s flighty and scared, and more than once he gets overwhelmed and starts crying, pleading for cecil to let him go home. the psychologist calls it age regression, a trauma response from having his perspective on a caregiver fractured and being unable to process taking the brunt of the trauma from that interaction. mark is temporarily grounded from the field, and cecil pays an even closer eye on him.

🕹️ - mark doesn’t handle being a regressor well. he didn’t actually realize he was doing it until it was pointed out to him and, ever since, it’s gotten so much worse. he has a nightmare, he regresses. he flunks a test, he regresses. he gets yelled at by a teacher, he regresses. he falls and scrapes his knee, he regresses— even though it heals immediately and he’s literally been thrown at a mountain before! no matter what it is or how stupid, he cant stop. it’s like his mind can’t handle anything bad happening ever without sending him flying back to a time that was safe. a time before his powers. a time before his father left.

his biggest support systems are who you would think. his mother, william, eve, and amber (even after they’ve broken up) are all very kind about it and help him in any way they can— speaking softly to him, letting him cling to them when he gets scared, and never once calling him out for how his eyes never stop leaking tears. it’s great and he appreciates them, but it’s horrifically embarrassing and he’s always missing his father in a way that sends him spiraling all over again. he hates that he can’t do anything without becoming a massive baby, even when his mom assures him that she wants nothing more than to have her little boy back.

🤖 - despite developing a rabid new fear of people when he’s small, he ends up projecting a lot of his feelings about his dad on cecil. it’s hard not to when he’s the only real male adult mark is around, and when his feelings towards cecil have already been complicated since the beginning. it leads to a hot and cold relationship— mark craves his presence, craves a father that can protect him, but he’s just scared, grieving, and cecil is the only one he feels safe enough to let that out on. cecil is always there— he’s there when mark’s dad leaves, he’s there when mark finds out he’s a regressor, he’s always there— so it’s easy to blame him for every bad thing mark feels when small. within the same day, mark can go from crying because cecil isn’t around (though, he’s always watching) to throwing a fit when he is because how else is mark supposed to process everything if not with cecil, the only one that understands just how bad it is? cecil, of course, always allows it. there isn’t ever a time he fights back against the distaste debbie and mark have for him. he knows he deserves it for some things, and doesn’t for others but that mark needs someone steady that doesn’t react to him in the same way his father might’ve. it always ends with mark crumping into a babble of tearful apologies anyways, so it’s hard to take the misguided ravings of a toddler personal.

🕹️ - mark’s regression is unpredictable at best, but the one thing that rarely changes is how young he gets. mark hovers firmly in toddlerspace with his absolute oldest age being somewhere around four. cecil isn’t great with kids on a regular basis but he is pretty good with mark. it’s not difficult to please him when he’s not throwing a grief-fueled tantrum. turn on a superhero cartoon, put him in front of a rare, exclusive comic book that only someone like cecil can get his hands on so early, or just sit with him and let him cling to you. cecil has spent many hours on the grayson couch doing whatever work he can on a laptop and phone while mark is latched on to him with an iron grip. he’s not great at controlling his powers when small, but he tries very hard to be gentle with something as fragile as cecil. sometimes, on good days, mark will take cecil to his room and meticulously explain every one of his comic books or show him his action figures and all the little things they can do— like shoot lasers or be reassembled from a person to a robot. those are good days and cecil nods along even after the third explanation of what seance dog is.

🤖 - cecil, as always, tries to bridge the gap between him and the graysons with money. they don’t need it, and debbie is still firm on not wanting to owe him anything, but she can’t really deny his gifts when they’re for little mark. instead of taking mark to the store and letting him pick out things, cecil brings the store to him and arrives with bags of things for mark to sort through and take whatever he wants. is it all paid for with government money? perhaps. is that the most legal? maybe not, but cecil would argue that keeping the most dangerous thing on the planet satiated and happy so he doesn’t actually crack the planet in half while regressed is at the top of their priority list. by the end of it, mark has a ton of regression gear. pacifiers and sippy cups themed after seance dog and spiderman, floppy weighted plushies that are as big as his pillows, and baby plates with cool boyish designs for him to eat off of (plates that his mother insists on using for him even when he isn’t regressed because she thinks they’re so cute).

🕹️ - when mark regresses, either at home or on the job, cecil is always there. he might not be there physically, but he’s always a phone call away— or usually a screen, listening device, or teleport away. his regression is strictly need to know, for rather obvious reasons both regarding safety and mark’s distaste for his headspace when he’s older, but the guardians of the globe know enough of the situation and protocol to alert cecil if something seems awry. they don’t always understand it and the team is split in half in regards to who actually cares and goes out of their way to reassure mark when he gets scared/hurt in the field and drops, but cecil doesn’t tolerate mistakes when it comes to this. he cares too much about mark and needs him coping and safe, both for his own sake and the sake of the world.