#I couldn't help added Madney to this

[sweettsubaki]

How the Buckley Parents and Doug's abuse impacted Maddie and her relationship with Buck

So about a year ago I wrote this post and 515 having Buck acknowledge out loud Maddie's the one who raised him made me think I might actually write the thing. It's a bit messy and honestly there are some things I'd have loved to get deeper into but it was already a bit long.

Anyway, Enjoy:

The impact of Daniel's illness and their parent's reaction to it on Maddie's life was mostly three folds.

Being put on the backburner. That's kind of understandable considering Daniel had Leukemia but they went too far and it impacted her greatly.

Lack of support through grief (Lack of support through Child Bereavement is a specific topic that doesn't have that many studies sadly enough) along with some sweet sweet guilt tripping

Parentification

Aka we got ourselves some pretty nice Emotional Neglect and severe Emotional Manipulation to look through.

So the first one is sorta normal but the parents went too far. When a child is ill it's incredibly important to try and establish a routine while sticking to as many old routines as possible in order to give all the children (sick or not) some stability and quality times. Here, while we don't know the details, we know that they were focused on Daniel's health and Margaret's pregnancy was probably closely monitored to make sure she could give birth to the savior baby. We don't know how far they went in pushing Maddie to the background but it's not a big stretch to think they were at least fairly callous with her. Cases like this force the kid to start being more independent before being ready. Maddy was around 9 or 10 when Daniel died and while kids become more and more independent every week, at that age it still mostly concerns doing a task rather than making the decision off which task needs to be done (like, they can buy bread and count the money, but if left to their own devices, they're more likely to just impulse-buy something they want like cake or toys).

While we know the Buckley parents still did the day to day chores after Daniel died, it's not hard to imagine that some of it fell behind and Maddie helped for the small stuff. Stuff which, considering her age, she should have been close enough to start doing on her own sure but it was still too early for her to develop the decision making and understanding of consequences that go with knowing why a task has to be done. It also clearly impacted her life by creating a need to help others and be useful.

Note that when I talk about Maddie becoming more independent I am talking about really small tasks, most of which are more linked to emotional needs than physical ones like homework, bed time, ect...

Edit: @insert-reference-here reminded me of a part I totally forgot to mention. It's how in Buck Begins, Teen Maddie explained to Buck that their parents yelling was just how they showed affection. Which would make sense for Maddie as they spent more than a year with an ill child. A situation that can easily fray your nerves from worrying too much and the way they cared for both Maddie and Daniel probably shifted during that time. So Maddie believing this was the new normal is extremely probable.

When it comes to the second point, I'd like to remind you all as a comparison that Maddie was Denny's and Christopher's age in s5 when that happened. She was right at the age where she would understands the permanence of death but did not yet know how to deal with it and especially not with words. At this age, kids generally still express themselves through physical behaviors and/or start to imitate the adults around them. If she had to start being a bit more independen, chances are she started imitating her parents automatically since she had already started doing that in order to help their family. And then...

As we know the Buckley parents disappeared in their grief and made Maddie promise to never talk about Daniel again. Which means that she didn't just imitate her parents but was told specifically to not deal with her grief because it was difficult for them, she was told her feelings did not matter and did not get the physical reassurance children at this age often need. As I said above, children don't often express grief verbally so much as they do physically. Because of that cuddles, touch and quality time are often the best way to reassure and help them before helping them verbalize how they feel.

In terms of development the result of this behavior is pretty straightforward (and we can even add that in our long list of parallel between Maddie and Eddie if we want to): Maddie prioritized other's well being over hers and her sense of self became linked to how useful she could be.

Which brings us to the third point. This point is obviously linked to Buck who did not even have a baby box. Aka since he was born his parents never even tried to care for him aside from basic physical needs. It could have gone a different way: them caring but it stopping after Daniel's death, in which case they might have blamed him, they might not have but there would have been a change in how they treated him. That's not the case here because there was not even a baby box. They had no emotional attachment to Buck. Daniel died when Buck was around 1 yo and usually it's considered that babies start to really get a sense of permanence and understanding of an environment around 6-8 months old. I'm not gonna go in detail over Buck's own grief but I'll say two things.

- First is that 1yrs old can feel if someone's missing and become more fussy than usual and in turn need even more cuddles than normal which means that it could have played in how the Buckley parents might have considered Buck to be more needy than most which might have also played in their hiding away from him.

- Second it's that, as said in 515, Buck kept feeling something was wrong and it's mostly because children notice when others aren't ok because they do have empathy, but it might also in part be because of the early trauma of the Buckley parents not being attentive to his emotional needs as a baby (btw who else had been waiting for the Buckley sibling to say out loud what we've been shown which is that Maddie raised Buck and did a terrific job considering the circumstances aka that she was between 10 and 13 when she started raising him because I turned to complete mush when it happened). It's something that was luckily foiled big time thanks to Maddie (there are studies showing that having a stable figure meeting your emotional needs can prevent some of the worse side effects of neglect).

Buck had a pretty furnished room in Buck Begins so I don't doubt that he got all the toys and food he needed but as far as love is concerned I don't doubt it wasn't all there. That's where Maddie comes in.

Maddie is full of love and took a few of the chores off her parents' back. When it comes to Buck it was probably mostly playing with him and cuddling which may not seem like much but for a baby is pretty essential. We know she didn't take an active role replacing her parents (at least not one she understood) until he was ~5 and she was 13-14. Which means suppressing her own emotional needs in order to support and cherish her baby brother when her parents refused to do it. In Buck Begins, she clocked in almost immediately why he got hurt often. That he did it on purpose. While she obviously worried about him she let him get away with it because he got some love out of it, love that he more than deserved. But it means that it was one more drop in the ocean of her trauma. And she did that for as long as she could (until Buck was a bit older than the age she was when she really started taking care of him).

However it did prevent her from developing a sense of self outside of carer (again, Eddie comparison) while burying everything for as long as possible in order to take care of others (let's face it, between that and Buck constantly hurting himself, we all know how she got into nursing). The only reason why she still had some sense of self not linked only to caring about others is that she was 9 when her parents changed so she had already started developing a personality and Buck gave her an incredible amount of love even if he could not exactly take care of her. This love means he was always there to support her when he could and they had a lot of quality time together where she most likely found things to love by herself (she was not that much older than Buck that she could be touched by some hobbies even if we don't really know about that part of their lives).

Margaret and Philip Buckley's abuse of Maddie forced her to become a parent at 10. It brought her closer to her brother whom she loved and took care of even if it stunted the development of her sense of self.

And this brings us to Doug.

Maddie hadn't been emotionally taken care of since she was ~9 when she met that man. Now one of the basic technique of abuse is to turn the victim dependent on the abuser. That was easy for Doug because simply being attentive to Maddie was something she was not used to. And she missed the red flags (which Buck, who had been emotionally taken care of and hadn't been abandoned by Maddie yet at that point could see through immediately).

Because "he cares about me". Maddie actually found someone she thought she could rely on for her own needs which is why she did not notice how he was isolating her in order to have power over her.

Ideally it should have meant that she could develop that sense of self outside of caring except Doug made it so it was simply displaced. He made her take care of him instead of Buck. Because he did not help her with Buck. He called her constantly so her attention would be divided between them instead of being focused on Buck, until it became natural for her to think he would call her, to think about him above anything else. And he banked on her needing to get away from her parents to move to Boston and get her away from the one person who would still be able to influence Maddie. Get her used to not being around her Evan so much.

To the point that when they came back from Boston, she barely even got in touch with Buck and he had to get into an accident in order to talk to her (which is probably what convinced her the most that he should get away from their parents and what convinced her at first to go with him because getting hurt for attention was something he did with their parents, not with her and ofc she missed him and loved him). We don't know if the jeep was the first time he beat her. I don't think it was though it might have been the first time it was that bad simply because if Buck wasn't there I doubt she was in the head space to not do everything to take care of Doug as she was raised to do.

But by this point she was already under his influence. She said that for a long time she refused to see the truth because she didn't want to think of herself as "some battered woman" but at the same time she was (almost) ready to leave with Buck at that point and the only reason she didn't was to protect her baby brother from Doug. Then with Buck being away she didn't really have anything else to break Doug's influence and it came back stronger than before because her fear and feelings of humiliation at the idea of being a victim and trying to appease him after what happened kept him in power.

Margaret and Philip Buckley's Neglect prevented Maddie from being able to protect against emotional abuse (which then turned also physical). It also threw her into the arms of said abuser because he filled in the emotional needs her parents left open and he used that opportunity to manipulate her into leaving her brother behind for what she thought was his own good (granted with what Doug did to Chim and Maddie in S2, I'd say she wasn't that far off)

Both the Buckley parents were neglectful and emotionalaly abusive and guilt-tripping toward her. The Buckley parents doing so resulted in Maddie forging an incredible bond with her brother which Doug then tried to destroy as a way to finish Maddie's transformation into his woman.

Luckily he underestimated the strength of their bond because Buck never truly gave up on Maddie. He sent her postcards every time he changed places and, seemingly, for big holidays (or at least ones she loved since he sent her one on Christmas and we know he remembered her as someone who loved Christmas). He clearly called her, or tried to (he says she stopped 3 years before 201) and knew not to send the postcards where Doug was. It's his postcard that convinced her to leave Doug because, just like with the jeep, and just as Doug most likely suspected, at that point Buck is the only person who could get Maddie to act on wanting to leave.

And going to him at a point when he was mature enough for her to depend on him allowed her to start developing her sense of self outside of being useful. Not a lot, but enough that she could start a friendship and later on a relationship with Chimney. Chimney who also had a huge impact because he didn't let their relationship become one sided and offered as much as she did without condition. Chimney is who she thought Doug was back when she barely remembered what being taken care of was like. Both Buck and Chimney's unconditional love helped her relearn what both her parents and Doug prevented.

It was still there of course. Mostly latent and her Post Partum depression made everything go up to the surface and allowed her to finally start dealing with it but the point is that thanks to Buck she found herself in a place where was allowed to explode in order to better herself.

It became a mess and I ended up bringing Madney into this despite the fact that it was supposed to be about how her relationship with Buck was impacted by the abuse she recieved from both her parents and Doug but I couldn't help it. I hope this makes sense :D

[mellaithwen]

Send me a postcard (when you get to where you're going) (based on this post by @maddieandchimney) Buck hasn’t heard from Maddie in weeks, and just when he’s about had enough of climbing the walls, and he's moments away from going searching for his sister himself; the postcards arrive, all at once. (ao3)

“These mailboxes are just too small on a normal day, and there’s no way these would have all fit,” the man explains simply, and it’s then that Buck spots the pile of mail in the man’s hand, all wrapped up and bunched together with four elastic bands, clearly intended for the one address.

His address, apparently.

The mailman hands them over to Buck, who only just catches them in time. He has no idea why there’d be so much all of a sudden—he always sets his correspondence to be electronic where possible. He supposes there could be an early Christmas card or two in there, but his parents sure as hell never bothered, and most of the people he actually kept in touch with would hand him one in person.

“Uh, thanks!” He says, shaking his head out of his reverie and giving the man a grateful nod as he goes. He’s still intending on heading over to see Athena, figuring he’ll dump the mail in the passenger footwell of his jeep and sort it out after he’s spoken to her for advice on finding someone who doesn’t want to be found—when he spots the familiar cursive on one of the postcards in the pile and stops in his tracks.

“Maddie?” He whispers, as though the mail might actually respond.

He quickly unwinds the elastic bands, and starts sifting through the post. There's at least one utility bill, two junk mail leaflets that he’ll recycle later, and a note from the sorting office apologising for the delay, but the rest are postcards. All with a variety of images on the front, landscapes and animals, some with place names, some not, some with great paragraphs of text on the back, while others barely have more than Buck’s address.

And all of them signed with his sister’s name.

Buck’s fingers ghost over the paper—drifting over the familiar handwriting, as if he were afraid that he might smudge the precious ink that sits there. He tries to swallow past the lump in his throat before turning on his heel and running back up to his apartment—his plans all but forgotten in his pursuit of reading them all as quickly as he can.

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