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inthewildwoodTitle: strolled all alone through a fallout zone
Fandom: The Black Phone (Movies - Derrickson)
Summary: Finn was ten years old the last time he saw his mother. He's not sure he wants to see her again.
Fandom: The Black Phone (Movies - Derrickson)
Summary: Finn was ten years old the last time he saw his mother. He's not sure he wants to see her again.
Additional Tags: Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Homophobia
Rating: T
Finn had a little game he used to play with himself. He called it, "if Mom was here," and it lasted from when he was ten - right after Mom died - to when he was thirteen. It went like: if Mom was here, she'd be proud of me for winning that ribbon at the science fair. If Mom was here, she'd sit up with me when I got stomach flu and give me ginger ale and wash my face for me after I threw up. If Mom was here, she wouldn't let Dad hit us. If Mom was here, she and Dad would get a divorce and then she'd take us to live in a different house, in a different town, where she'd put all her porcelain figurines up on the mantel and there wouldn't be any beer in the house, ever, and our art would be on the fridge like it was when we were kids. If Mom was here, the first time I came home from school with a bloody nose, she would go over and yell at the other kids' parents, and then it wouldn't happen again. Over time, the Mom in his head had grown to almost mythical proportions: she could do things that his real mom couldn't have - or, more likely, wouldn't have. Mom-as-he-imagined-her could do anything to protect him, and she would.
He stopped playing that game after the basement. It was one thing when Mom was just dead, but knowing that Mom was dead and that the dead could talk to him, if they wanted - and she hadn't - meant that the Mom in his head couldn't possibly be real. He couldn't even pretend she was real. When she'd died, he'd wondered - guiltily, quietly, so as not to upset Dad or Gwen - if she'd left the way she did because she didn't want to be around him anymore. Now he has his answer.
His brain is too fogged in the years after the basement to think much about Mom, barring the times he's tempted to follow her lead and just end everything. He doesn't, just because it would be too unfair to Gwen. But the game comes rushing back to him after Camp Alpine, when Gwen tells him that Mom called, and what she said. It was one thing when he'd just assumed Mom wasn't calling because she didn't want to talk to him, but now he knows. And he can't say as much to his sister, because she deserved to have that, she deserved to get that last message, but - what does it say about him, about the kind of fucked up he is, that his own mother will cross over from the dead just to not speak to him? The message couldn't be any clearer. And he doesn't know entirely why she feels that way, but he can guess, and it makes him hate himself even more than he already did. Which is a feat in itself.
He puts it out of his mind again for years after that. He goes to college, meets Jay, relocates out to the West coast, and generally moves on with his life. He thinks of Mom from time to time - mostly when Olivia’s born, wondering what she'd make of her grandkid, if Olivia would love her as much as she loves her other grandmother - but it's usually in passing. Until the visit where Gwen sits him down and announces that actually, Mom's been watching them this whole time, oh and by the way, Olivia can see her. And, Gwen adds, she showed up today, which probably means something. Probably means she’s here specifically because they’re all together, and she wanted to see them like this. Like she cares.
Gwen announces all of this looking at Finn like she’s expecting him to - cry, or to be overjoyed, or just generally to show some kind of emotion about the fact that their mother is here with them, somehow. Under the circumstances, it’s a reasonable expectation. But Finn just sits on the couch and stares at his sister and feels - nothing. Nothing except a cold, creeping kind of anger.
“That’s great,” he says flatly, and goes to stand up. Gwen grabs his sleeve. He tries to shake her off, but it doesn’t get him far: she’s strong, when she wants to be.
“Aren’t you - ?” she starts, then falters at the blank look he assumes is on his face. “Finn, it’s Mom. She came back for us.”
“No, she didn’t,” he says. He tries to pull himself free again, and this time it works: Gwen looks too startled to hang on. “She came back for you and maybe Olivia. I don’t have anything to do with it.”
The more he thinks of it, the more the anger roils in his guts. What would Mom even want with him, at this point? She didn’t come back for him when he was scared and trapped and about to die. She didn’t come back for him when he was lost and hurting and desperate for some kind of guidance. So what could possibly bring her back now? Seeing him happy? He doubts it: he’s pretty sure the things making him happy are the same things that made her abandon him when he needed her. Gwen doesn’t get it. There's nothing about Gwen that would make Mom choose to leave her behind. This is the thing she can’t get, even if she does love him: just because she cares doesn’t mean anyone else does. It doesn’t mean other people - maybe even the same people she loves - don’t hate him.
“Finn,” she says. She looks like she’s been slapped. “It’s - why would she be here when you are, if she wasn’t here for all of us?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe she’s here all the time, and this is just the first time Olivia noticed her. Or the first time she said anything.” The bitch of it is, he thinks, he wants to be happy about it. He wants to care that his sister and his niece still have Mom in some capacity. They deserve that. They didn’t do anything to lose her. But he did, and he can’t sift that out from the knowledge that they get to have this, and he doesn’t. And it’s his fault. Maybe not for any reason he can control, but it’s still his fault. “If she wanted to see me, it’s been fifteen years. She's had time. She just doesn’t want to.”
“But -” He hates himself for putting that look on Gwen’s face. But he can’t stop. “Maybe she can’t reach you, where you are now. I mean, this is the park we went to when we were kids, she’s been there. Maybe ghosts can’t move around once they’re dead.”
“What, so I left her?” he snaps. “It’s my fault?”
“I didn’t say -”
“I didn’t leave her, Gwen,” he says over her. “She left us. Remember?” It's something he hasn’t ever said out loud before, mostly because the only people he’d say it to are people he doesn’t want to burden. But it’s pouring out of him now, like pus out of a burst boil. “That’s what she wanted, so why would she come back now, huh? Why would she care all of a sudden?”
“That’s not how it happened!” Gwen pushes herself to her feet, wobbling a little before she finds her equilibrium. “You know that’s not how it happened.”
“I was there,” he says. “And I was older than you. I think I remember it better.” He remembers waking up to the sound of Dad’s screams, running down the hall to the open garage door and seeing Mom swinging there. Gwen hadn’t seen it. Dad had sent Finn back to their room, and he’d huddled in there with her for hours while people moved around the house, talking in low, urgent voices like they might actually be able to do something. He remembers waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to come get them while Gwen begged him to tell her what was happening, until Dad had come in sometime that afternoon to tell them both that Mom was gone. He remembers all of it. Gwen doesn’t. She doesn’t know.
“Fuck you,” she hisses. “She’s my mom too, and I -”
“She’s only your mom,” he shoots back. “She doesn’t want me, Gwen. She never has before, and she sure as fuck doesn’t now.” He takes a deep breath. “Just - just don’t pretend like she’s here for both of us, because she’s not. She’s here for you and Olivia, and good for both of you, but she doesn’t care about me. Don’t try to tell me she does, because I know.”
Gwen’s still staring at him; her eyes are welling up with tears. Finn feels guilty stab at him, but he pushes the feeling away. Gwen wouldn’t be crying about this, normally; it’s just hormones. Besides, she needs to know. He’s not going to lie to her. What would be the point?
“And,” he says, because apparently there’s some pus still to drain, “I could have done what she did. I wanted to, and I didn’t. So what’s her -”
“Are you guys okay?”
They both turn to see Ernie in the doorway, looking between the two of them. Gwen opens her mouth, then closes it, dragging in a shaky breath. Finn could say “fine,” but they’re very obviously not, so he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “I’m going to bed,” and leaves, brushing past Ernie as he goes. Gwen will tell him what he said, probably. That's her business. He’s too tired to be angry at the thought. Ernie might as well know; everyone might as well know. It’s not like it isn’t obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than a few seconds.
Jay’s already in the guest bedroom, sitting up in bed with a book when Finn comes in. He takes one look at him and sets the book down. “You -”
“Give me a minute,” Finn says, and goes into the bathroom to change into his pajamas. Gwen and Ernie’s house isn’t exactly like the one they grew up in, but it’s similar enough to give him a sense of deja vu whenever he visits. The bathroom’s the same: the yellow sink, the green tiles, the single window above the toilet. Finn bends over the sink, splashing cold water on his face. He can hear Gwen and Ernie talking through the wall, Gwen’s voice quick and cutting where Ernie’s is more measured. Maybe he’ll talk her down enough that she won’t spit in his face at the breakfast table tomorrow. Or maybe they’ll just pack up and leave in the morning. Whatever she wants. Finn feels, more acutely than he has in years, how much this city doesn’t want him, and how much he doesn’t want it in return.
He spent a decent chunk of his adolescence hiding in bathrooms, but he’s twenty-nine years old and that really isn't going to fly anymore. So he splashes his face again, then gets changed and emerges. Jay’s still sitting up in bed, his gaze sharp and worried. Finn doesn’t avoid his eyes, exactly, but he doesn’t go out of his way to meet them, either. He crawls into bed next to Jay and lets himself go limp against him.
“You wanna talk about it?” Jay says quietly. He doesn’t demand that Finn look at him or anything like that, and Finn loves him for it. He presses his face to Jay’s shoulder.
“Not now,” he mumbles, which isn’t not ever, even though it’s what he’s thinking. “You staying up?”
Jay shrugs. “I was gonna, but I don’t have to. You want the light off?”
“It’s fine,” Finn says, and slides down so he can turn his face to the pillow. It's just the bedside lamp; it’s not bright enough to keep him awake. The sensation of his brain whirring like a serrated knife churning around his insides might, but he’s managed to sleep through that before. He closes his eyes.
Finn does dream sometimes, is the thing. Not like Gwen does - his dreams aren’t logical, and they’re not useful. But they do happen. There'd been a period where he tried to make sense of them, but eventually he’d given it up for a lost cause. He dreams like a normal person, that’s all.
He dreams about Mom.
It never makes sense, in the way that most dreams don’t make sense. He dreams that he’s sitting at the breakfast table with Gwen, and Mom’s there telling them to hurry up and finish their cereal before the dinosaur comes to take them to school. He dreams that she’s giving him a piggyback ride through the Grand Canyon, except then they’re on Everest (Mom had been interested in mountaineering, he remembers that; this part of the dream at least makes some kind of sense) and his ninth grade teacher is also there for some reason, and then they both disappear in the snow. He dreams that he’s playing baseball and Mom’s in the dugout, except when he looks back, she’s turned into the tree outside his bedroom window that he used to be scared of when he was a kid - all that tapping on the glass. Just nonsense images that don’t mean anything.
He dreams about Mom again, the night he and Gwen argue. It makes sense: she's top of mind, of course that's what his brain will zero in on. They're at the bay this time - or on a bench overlooking the bay. He and Jay go there, sometimes. She's sitting next to him in jeans and a grey cardigan he vaguely remembers, and she looks wrong to him, somehow. It takes him a moment to realize: she only looks a couple years older than he is now, the age she was when she died. She should be closing in on her mid-sixties by now, with grey hair and wrinkles. But she's frozen at thirty-five forever. Finn swallows past a lump in his throat.
"Gwen said you can't come here," he says.
She'd been looking out at the bay, but now she turns her head to look at him. Her eyes are so familiar. Everyone always said that Finn got his mom's face, especially her chin, but Gwen got her eyes. He doesn't know anymore if he's remembering her or Gwen when he looks at her.
"I can't," she says. That tiny bit of chirp that her voice always had - it's still there. "Not in the real world, anyway."
Finn looks out over the bay. "So this isn't the real world?" He's not even really sure if this is a dream or not, if his brain's just misfiring or if this is actually Mom. He guesses if she turns into a tree in a few minutes, he'll find out.
She smiles. "What do you think?" And that - he remembers that, too. That was Mom's go-to answer whenever they asked questions she couldn't or didn't want to answer. Where do babies come from? Why did the neighbour's cat die? Why did Dad have to work all the time? What do you think? It had driven them crazy, Gwen especially. Then again, Olivia had asked him the other day why he didn't have a wife, so he finds himself more in sympathy with Mom's approach than he used to be.
"I don't know," he says. "Dreams are Gwen's thing, not mine."
She hums, slouching down a little in her seat. "Does it feel real?"
"I don't know," he says again, suddenly exasperated. Real mom or dream mom or whatever - did she really show up just to talk in riddles? "Does it matter?"
"Hm," she says. "I don't think it does." She looks back at the water. "I'm glad we're here, though. I wanted to see where you live." She laughs a little. "Did you paint your house blue?"
His and Mom's favourite colour had always been blue, when he was little. Dad had teased them about it. He'd sworn up and down that when he grew up, he was going to buy a house and paint the whole thing blue, inside and out. It had been such a throwaway conversation, he hasn't thought about it in ages. He's surprised she remembers. But then again, she has fewer years to remember than he does.
"Actually, yeah," he says. "But it was like that when we bought it." Blue with white trim. It hadn't been the reason they bought the place, but it had helped. "Not the inside, though. That's all yellow and white." He'd given Jay free rein over that part, since blue inside and out seemed a little excessive.
"Good," she says. "I'm glad you got that." She puts a hand to his hair, stroking it. "I've missed you. You don't know how much."
She sounds so gentle. It shouldn't spark that same cold anger that he felt when Gwen had talked to him earlier, but it does. "If you missed me, then why'd you leave?" He sounds like a petulant child, and he knows it. Well, he was a child the last time Mom saw him; this should be familiar for her.
She's quiet for a long minute. "I thought it was the right thing to do," she says finally. "At the time. For you and your sister."
He clenches his fists, then releases them. The movement keeps him grounded. "Well, it wasn't."
"I know." She strokes his hair again. "I'm sorry."
He can't deal with that. So he pivots. "Is that why you never came back before, when I was in the basement? Because you can't go different places?"
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her nod. "There's rules."
That makes a certain kind of sense, at least. And it soothes at least some of the scar tissue left behind. Not all of it, though. If you hadn't left, he thinks, you could have come and got me. Or he wouldn't have been there at all, because he wouldn't have been walking down that street, on that day. He would've been getting picked up from school. Or he would've been going to a different school entirely. Or he would've been at Science Club, because Mom would've signed the permission slip that Dad got drunk and forgot about. Or, or, or.
A horrible thought occurs to him, then. "You're not still at the old house, are you?"
"Oh, no," she says, and he feels his shoulders relax. "I'm not always - when I come back, it's to specific places. There's only a few of them, but I get to pick. I can't go places I haven't been before. That's why I can't come see you."
So he'd been right, then; he had left her. His eyes burn. That seems like something that shouldn't happen in a dream. "I'm sorry."
"Oh, Finney." Her voice is so tender, Finn has to look down at his hands to keep his expression under control. "Don't be sorry. All kids have to move out sometime."
He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Not just for that," he says. "For -" For being what he is, he guesses. He's past that, mostly - his list of people who he was scared would stop loving him had been short to begin with, and he didn't lose any of them - but Mom's a special case.
"You wanted me to be different," he says, raspy. "I know you did, and I tried, but I - I just couldn't." He thinks, not for the first time, of coming home and asking: Mom, what's a faggot? He hadn't even gotten a "what do you think" over that one, she'd just told him not to ever use that word again, and that had been that. It had impressed on him that faggot was one of the worst things in the world you could be, if not the worst. And he hadn't wanted to be one. But he couldn't help it.
"Finney," she says. "Finney, look at me."
He blinks, hard, and looks. She cups a hand under his chin. "I didn't want you to be different," she says, still in that horribly gentle voice that feels like sandpaper being dragged over his skin. "I just want you to be safe." He wants to look away, but she's holding him too tight. "I want you safe, and I want you loved. You understand?"
If she wasn't holding his chin, he thinks, it would be wobbling. His voice is a lost cause, so he just gives he a tiny nod. It's the best he can manage.
"That's my good boy," Mom says, and then the tears come for real, waterfalling down his face without his permission. Mom says something else, but he doesn't catch it: there's a sound nearby, and then he's turning his head, and he can see Jay sleeping next to him, peaceful in the predawn light. The pillow under his cheek is wet.
Gwen does not, after all, spit in his face over the breakfast table. She doesn't say much to him, either, but it's easy for both of them to ignore that while Olivia's there and pinwheeling wildly between asking Finn questions about why he and Jay have to go back to California tomorrow, interrogating her mom about why she can't take her tricycle out to the skate park, and "helping" her dad and Jay put creamer in their coffee. That keeps all of them occupied for a solid half-hour, before Jay catches Finn's eye and leans forward. "Hey, Olivia - bet you can't beat me at Guess Who again."
"Yes I can!" This gambit for her attention is an immediate and predictable success; she's already sliding off of Ernie's lap and halfway to the door. "I'll show you."
"I dunno," Jay says, winking at Gwen as he gets up from his chair. "We'd better have your dad referee to make sure nobody cheats." Ernie's already up and following Olivia. The last thing Finn hears her say is, "I don't cheat -" before Jay closes the door behind them, and he and Gwen are alone in the kitchen.
Gwen's sitting back in her chair, one hand resting on her stomach. There's dark circles under both her eyes, and she's paler than she should be. Finn eyes her. "You sleep okay?"
"As much as I can," she says, pulling a face. "Three more months, and then I can finally get a decent night's sleep."
Well, she's still willing to gripe to him, Finn thinks. That's something. "Yeah, I bet you'll be sleeping great once you've got a kid and a new baby."
"Fuck off," she says. It's so utterly familiar, it feels like the ice breaking. Finn leans an elbow on the table, props his chin on his hand. Waits to see if she wants to say anything else. There's stuff they both need to say, but he doesn't want to be the one who gets the ball rolling.
"Finn -" she says finally. Her voice isn't shaking, exactly, but it's something close to it. He watches her swallow hard. "When we were kids, were you - did you really want to kill yourself?"
Finn drops his gaze down to the tabletop. This, at least, isn't anything like the Formica table they had when they were growing up: Gwen and Ernie somehow managed to scrounge up an actual wooden table, the kind with extensions that flip up when you want to make it longer. The patterned swirls of the wood grain can be almost hypnotic, if he lets his eyes go unfocused. But that's not for right now. "I thought about it," he says. "Not like - I didn't want to be dead." Which isn't entirely true; he'd wanted, from time to time, to be with Mom and Robin and the rest of them. But there'd been a gulf between wanting that and wanting the reality of being cold in the ground. "I wanted everything to - stop. Just to stop." The noise, the anger, the sleepless nights, the endless churn of horrible memories. If anyone had asked him, then, he wouldn't have been able to explain what it was he wanted beyond just: stop. Please, let it stop.
"Why didn't you?" she asks. He lets his gaze flick up to meet hers' for a moment, then has to drop it again. There are tears in her eyes. He put them there.
"I was tired," he says to the tabletop. "Just really tired, all the time. Too tired to do anything." It's a funny thing to think about, that he's still alive just because he was too lazy to get out of bed and walk ten steps away to the medicine cabinet or his dad's razor or even just a window where he could climb out and jump. But it's true. It had been easier to just lay there and rot than to actually do anything about it.
For the first time, he wonders why the same hadn't held true for Mom. Had she not been tired at all? Or had she just experienced a final burst of energy, like an animal wrenching a broken limb out of the teeth of a trap? It would only have taken five minutes. If she'd just missed that window of initiative, she might still be here. It could have been that easy. But she hadn't, and he had, and now he's here while she's not. Maybe that's the only thing that saved him and not her: timing and pure, stupid luck. Not having a weapon within reach in the rare moments when he could've roused himself to make use of it. It doesn't seem fair.
"And," he says, still talking to the table, "I didn't want to leave you alone. I figured you needed me. And then Camp Alpine happened, and . . ." He's never told her about the conversation he'd had with Mando. Never figured it was really any of her business. Still doesn't. Some things, he needs to keep for himself. "I don't know. I just kept going until things got better."
When he finally does look back up at her, she's nodding. "I was worried about you. Back then."
He winces. He'd known, obviously, but he'd still tried to tell herself she didn't notice how bad things were. "I didn't want you to be."
"Well, I was," she says, with the air of someone stating the obvious. "And I thought - maybe after camp, after Mom called, maybe that would have helped. I wanted it to help."
"I know," he says. God, she'd tried so hard with him. Harder than she should've had to, at fifteen. "It wasn't your fault. I'm sorry."
She just shrugs. Leans forward, mirroring his posture. "She really is here for both of us, Finn. She loves us."
He rubs his eye with his knuckle. "I know."
"You might not believe me, but -" She cuts herself off midsentence: he watches his words sink in. "You do?"
"Yeah." He's rubbing his eye so hard, he can see stars. He forces himself to put his hand down. "I do." He could tell her what changed his mind, about what Mom said to him last night. But he doesn't want to. Selfish, maybe, but this is another one of those things that needs to be just his. "I shouldn't have snapped at you. I just - it's a lot, you know?"
"No kidding," she says flatly. He laughs a little at that. She's looking at him a little strangely, searchingly, but he doesn't offer anything else. After a few moments, she relaxes. "Do you want me to tell you if I see her again? Or if Olivia does?"
He hesitates. It means something that she's offering, but - "I think that should be for just you and her, maybe. Unless she's giving you a message for me. If she wants to come talk to me, she will." Gwen's face hardens, and he raises his hands, placating. "She came yesterday because she knew we were all here, right? That's what you said. So if she wants to see me, she knows where and how. It's okay, Gwen."
His sister studies him for a moment. It feels a bit like she's x-raying him with her eyes, like she knows - or at least suspects - what he's thinking. Then she nods, using her hand on the table to leverage herself out of her chair. "Okay. You wanna go watch Jay let my kid win at board games?"
"I don't know if he's actually letting her, is the thing," Finn says, getting to his feet. "He's pretty bad at it." He occasionally wins at Yahtzee or Snakes and Ladders, but those are both entirely dependent on rolls of the dice. Anything that involves strategy is a lost cause. Finn hadn't even realized anyone could lose at Scrabble 80-200 until he'd met Jay. "But yeah, let's go."
Gwen goes to the door and opens it, letting the sound of Jay, Olivia, and Ernie playing spill into the kitchen. Olivia's laughing at something, presumably a wrong guess; Jay's talking in that exaggerated, aggrieved tone that Finn only hears from him when he's trying to entertain Olivia. Ernie's laughing too, though it's quieter than the others. If Mom could see this, he thinks. If they could all be together for real, forever - he would give a lot to have that. But he can't, and he knows better than to wish for it. What they've got now isn't perfect, but it's also better than he could have imagined for himself by a long shot. He can be happy with that. He lingers for a moment longer on that mental picture of Mom sitting at the table with them, laughing and smiling; then he lets it go and follows his sister through the door.
Rating: T
Finn had a little game he used to play with himself. He called it, "if Mom was here," and it lasted from when he was ten - right after Mom died - to when he was thirteen. It went like: if Mom was here, she'd be proud of me for winning that ribbon at the science fair. If Mom was here, she'd sit up with me when I got stomach flu and give me ginger ale and wash my face for me after I threw up. If Mom was here, she wouldn't let Dad hit us. If Mom was here, she and Dad would get a divorce and then she'd take us to live in a different house, in a different town, where she'd put all her porcelain figurines up on the mantel and there wouldn't be any beer in the house, ever, and our art would be on the fridge like it was when we were kids. If Mom was here, the first time I came home from school with a bloody nose, she would go over and yell at the other kids' parents, and then it wouldn't happen again. Over time, the Mom in his head had grown to almost mythical proportions: she could do things that his real mom couldn't have - or, more likely, wouldn't have. Mom-as-he-imagined-her could do anything to protect him, and she would.
He stopped playing that game after the basement. It was one thing when Mom was just dead, but knowing that Mom was dead and that the dead could talk to him, if they wanted - and she hadn't - meant that the Mom in his head couldn't possibly be real. He couldn't even pretend she was real. When she'd died, he'd wondered - guiltily, quietly, so as not to upset Dad or Gwen - if she'd left the way she did because she didn't want to be around him anymore. Now he has his answer.
His brain is too fogged in the years after the basement to think much about Mom, barring the times he's tempted to follow her lead and just end everything. He doesn't, just because it would be too unfair to Gwen. But the game comes rushing back to him after Camp Alpine, when Gwen tells him that Mom called, and what she said. It was one thing when he'd just assumed Mom wasn't calling because she didn't want to talk to him, but now he knows. And he can't say as much to his sister, because she deserved to have that, she deserved to get that last message, but - what does it say about him, about the kind of fucked up he is, that his own mother will cross over from the dead just to not speak to him? The message couldn't be any clearer. And he doesn't know entirely why she feels that way, but he can guess, and it makes him hate himself even more than he already did. Which is a feat in itself.
He puts it out of his mind again for years after that. He goes to college, meets Jay, relocates out to the West coast, and generally moves on with his life. He thinks of Mom from time to time - mostly when Olivia’s born, wondering what she'd make of her grandkid, if Olivia would love her as much as she loves her other grandmother - but it's usually in passing. Until the visit where Gwen sits him down and announces that actually, Mom's been watching them this whole time, oh and by the way, Olivia can see her. And, Gwen adds, she showed up today, which probably means something. Probably means she’s here specifically because they’re all together, and she wanted to see them like this. Like she cares.
Gwen announces all of this looking at Finn like she’s expecting him to - cry, or to be overjoyed, or just generally to show some kind of emotion about the fact that their mother is here with them, somehow. Under the circumstances, it’s a reasonable expectation. But Finn just sits on the couch and stares at his sister and feels - nothing. Nothing except a cold, creeping kind of anger.
“That’s great,” he says flatly, and goes to stand up. Gwen grabs his sleeve. He tries to shake her off, but it doesn’t get him far: she’s strong, when she wants to be.
“Aren’t you - ?” she starts, then falters at the blank look he assumes is on his face. “Finn, it’s Mom. She came back for us.”
“No, she didn’t,” he says. He tries to pull himself free again, and this time it works: Gwen looks too startled to hang on. “She came back for you and maybe Olivia. I don’t have anything to do with it.”
The more he thinks of it, the more the anger roils in his guts. What would Mom even want with him, at this point? She didn’t come back for him when he was scared and trapped and about to die. She didn’t come back for him when he was lost and hurting and desperate for some kind of guidance. So what could possibly bring her back now? Seeing him happy? He doubts it: he’s pretty sure the things making him happy are the same things that made her abandon him when he needed her. Gwen doesn’t get it. There's nothing about Gwen that would make Mom choose to leave her behind. This is the thing she can’t get, even if she does love him: just because she cares doesn’t mean anyone else does. It doesn’t mean other people - maybe even the same people she loves - don’t hate him.
“Finn,” she says. She looks like she’s been slapped. “It’s - why would she be here when you are, if she wasn’t here for all of us?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “Maybe she’s here all the time, and this is just the first time Olivia noticed her. Or the first time she said anything.” The bitch of it is, he thinks, he wants to be happy about it. He wants to care that his sister and his niece still have Mom in some capacity. They deserve that. They didn’t do anything to lose her. But he did, and he can’t sift that out from the knowledge that they get to have this, and he doesn’t. And it’s his fault. Maybe not for any reason he can control, but it’s still his fault. “If she wanted to see me, it’s been fifteen years. She's had time. She just doesn’t want to.”
“But -” He hates himself for putting that look on Gwen’s face. But he can’t stop. “Maybe she can’t reach you, where you are now. I mean, this is the park we went to when we were kids, she’s been there. Maybe ghosts can’t move around once they’re dead.”
“What, so I left her?” he snaps. “It’s my fault?”
“I didn’t say -”
“I didn’t leave her, Gwen,” he says over her. “She left us. Remember?” It's something he hasn’t ever said out loud before, mostly because the only people he’d say it to are people he doesn’t want to burden. But it’s pouring out of him now, like pus out of a burst boil. “That’s what she wanted, so why would she come back now, huh? Why would she care all of a sudden?”
“That’s not how it happened!” Gwen pushes herself to her feet, wobbling a little before she finds her equilibrium. “You know that’s not how it happened.”
“I was there,” he says. “And I was older than you. I think I remember it better.” He remembers waking up to the sound of Dad’s screams, running down the hall to the open garage door and seeing Mom swinging there. Gwen hadn’t seen it. Dad had sent Finn back to their room, and he’d huddled in there with her for hours while people moved around the house, talking in low, urgent voices like they might actually be able to do something. He remembers waiting and waiting and waiting for someone to come get them while Gwen begged him to tell her what was happening, until Dad had come in sometime that afternoon to tell them both that Mom was gone. He remembers all of it. Gwen doesn’t. She doesn’t know.
“Fuck you,” she hisses. “She’s my mom too, and I -”
“She’s only your mom,” he shoots back. “She doesn’t want me, Gwen. She never has before, and she sure as fuck doesn’t now.” He takes a deep breath. “Just - just don’t pretend like she’s here for both of us, because she’s not. She’s here for you and Olivia, and good for both of you, but she doesn’t care about me. Don’t try to tell me she does, because I know.”
Gwen’s still staring at him; her eyes are welling up with tears. Finn feels guilty stab at him, but he pushes the feeling away. Gwen wouldn’t be crying about this, normally; it’s just hormones. Besides, she needs to know. He’s not going to lie to her. What would be the point?
“And,” he says, because apparently there’s some pus still to drain, “I could have done what she did. I wanted to, and I didn’t. So what’s her -”
“Are you guys okay?”
They both turn to see Ernie in the doorway, looking between the two of them. Gwen opens her mouth, then closes it, dragging in a shaky breath. Finn could say “fine,” but they’re very obviously not, so he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “I’m going to bed,” and leaves, brushing past Ernie as he goes. Gwen will tell him what he said, probably. That's her business. He’s too tired to be angry at the thought. Ernie might as well know; everyone might as well know. It’s not like it isn’t obvious to anyone who thinks about it for more than a few seconds.
Jay’s already in the guest bedroom, sitting up in bed with a book when Finn comes in. He takes one look at him and sets the book down. “You -”
“Give me a minute,” Finn says, and goes into the bathroom to change into his pajamas. Gwen and Ernie’s house isn’t exactly like the one they grew up in, but it’s similar enough to give him a sense of deja vu whenever he visits. The bathroom’s the same: the yellow sink, the green tiles, the single window above the toilet. Finn bends over the sink, splashing cold water on his face. He can hear Gwen and Ernie talking through the wall, Gwen’s voice quick and cutting where Ernie’s is more measured. Maybe he’ll talk her down enough that she won’t spit in his face at the breakfast table tomorrow. Or maybe they’ll just pack up and leave in the morning. Whatever she wants. Finn feels, more acutely than he has in years, how much this city doesn’t want him, and how much he doesn’t want it in return.
He spent a decent chunk of his adolescence hiding in bathrooms, but he’s twenty-nine years old and that really isn't going to fly anymore. So he splashes his face again, then gets changed and emerges. Jay’s still sitting up in bed, his gaze sharp and worried. Finn doesn’t avoid his eyes, exactly, but he doesn’t go out of his way to meet them, either. He crawls into bed next to Jay and lets himself go limp against him.
“You wanna talk about it?” Jay says quietly. He doesn’t demand that Finn look at him or anything like that, and Finn loves him for it. He presses his face to Jay’s shoulder.
“Not now,” he mumbles, which isn’t not ever, even though it’s what he’s thinking. “You staying up?”
Jay shrugs. “I was gonna, but I don’t have to. You want the light off?”
“It’s fine,” Finn says, and slides down so he can turn his face to the pillow. It's just the bedside lamp; it’s not bright enough to keep him awake. The sensation of his brain whirring like a serrated knife churning around his insides might, but he’s managed to sleep through that before. He closes his eyes.
Finn does dream sometimes, is the thing. Not like Gwen does - his dreams aren’t logical, and they’re not useful. But they do happen. There'd been a period where he tried to make sense of them, but eventually he’d given it up for a lost cause. He dreams like a normal person, that’s all.
He dreams about Mom.
It never makes sense, in the way that most dreams don’t make sense. He dreams that he’s sitting at the breakfast table with Gwen, and Mom’s there telling them to hurry up and finish their cereal before the dinosaur comes to take them to school. He dreams that she’s giving him a piggyback ride through the Grand Canyon, except then they’re on Everest (Mom had been interested in mountaineering, he remembers that; this part of the dream at least makes some kind of sense) and his ninth grade teacher is also there for some reason, and then they both disappear in the snow. He dreams that he’s playing baseball and Mom’s in the dugout, except when he looks back, she’s turned into the tree outside his bedroom window that he used to be scared of when he was a kid - all that tapping on the glass. Just nonsense images that don’t mean anything.
He dreams about Mom again, the night he and Gwen argue. It makes sense: she's top of mind, of course that's what his brain will zero in on. They're at the bay this time - or on a bench overlooking the bay. He and Jay go there, sometimes. She's sitting next to him in jeans and a grey cardigan he vaguely remembers, and she looks wrong to him, somehow. It takes him a moment to realize: she only looks a couple years older than he is now, the age she was when she died. She should be closing in on her mid-sixties by now, with grey hair and wrinkles. But she's frozen at thirty-five forever. Finn swallows past a lump in his throat.
"Gwen said you can't come here," he says.
She'd been looking out at the bay, but now she turns her head to look at him. Her eyes are so familiar. Everyone always said that Finn got his mom's face, especially her chin, but Gwen got her eyes. He doesn't know anymore if he's remembering her or Gwen when he looks at her.
"I can't," she says. That tiny bit of chirp that her voice always had - it's still there. "Not in the real world, anyway."
Finn looks out over the bay. "So this isn't the real world?" He's not even really sure if this is a dream or not, if his brain's just misfiring or if this is actually Mom. He guesses if she turns into a tree in a few minutes, he'll find out.
She smiles. "What do you think?" And that - he remembers that, too. That was Mom's go-to answer whenever they asked questions she couldn't or didn't want to answer. Where do babies come from? Why did the neighbour's cat die? Why did Dad have to work all the time? What do you think? It had driven them crazy, Gwen especially. Then again, Olivia had asked him the other day why he didn't have a wife, so he finds himself more in sympathy with Mom's approach than he used to be.
"I don't know," he says. "Dreams are Gwen's thing, not mine."
She hums, slouching down a little in her seat. "Does it feel real?"
"I don't know," he says again, suddenly exasperated. Real mom or dream mom or whatever - did she really show up just to talk in riddles? "Does it matter?"
"Hm," she says. "I don't think it does." She looks back at the water. "I'm glad we're here, though. I wanted to see where you live." She laughs a little. "Did you paint your house blue?"
His and Mom's favourite colour had always been blue, when he was little. Dad had teased them about it. He'd sworn up and down that when he grew up, he was going to buy a house and paint the whole thing blue, inside and out. It had been such a throwaway conversation, he hasn't thought about it in ages. He's surprised she remembers. But then again, she has fewer years to remember than he does.
"Actually, yeah," he says. "But it was like that when we bought it." Blue with white trim. It hadn't been the reason they bought the place, but it had helped. "Not the inside, though. That's all yellow and white." He'd given Jay free rein over that part, since blue inside and out seemed a little excessive.
"Good," she says. "I'm glad you got that." She puts a hand to his hair, stroking it. "I've missed you. You don't know how much."
She sounds so gentle. It shouldn't spark that same cold anger that he felt when Gwen had talked to him earlier, but it does. "If you missed me, then why'd you leave?" He sounds like a petulant child, and he knows it. Well, he was a child the last time Mom saw him; this should be familiar for her.
She's quiet for a long minute. "I thought it was the right thing to do," she says finally. "At the time. For you and your sister."
He clenches his fists, then releases them. The movement keeps him grounded. "Well, it wasn't."
"I know." She strokes his hair again. "I'm sorry."
He can't deal with that. So he pivots. "Is that why you never came back before, when I was in the basement? Because you can't go different places?"
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her nod. "There's rules."
That makes a certain kind of sense, at least. And it soothes at least some of the scar tissue left behind. Not all of it, though. If you hadn't left, he thinks, you could have come and got me. Or he wouldn't have been there at all, because he wouldn't have been walking down that street, on that day. He would've been getting picked up from school. Or he would've been going to a different school entirely. Or he would've been at Science Club, because Mom would've signed the permission slip that Dad got drunk and forgot about. Or, or, or.
A horrible thought occurs to him, then. "You're not still at the old house, are you?"
"Oh, no," she says, and he feels his shoulders relax. "I'm not always - when I come back, it's to specific places. There's only a few of them, but I get to pick. I can't go places I haven't been before. That's why I can't come see you."
So he'd been right, then; he had left her. His eyes burn. That seems like something that shouldn't happen in a dream. "I'm sorry."
"Oh, Finney." Her voice is so tender, Finn has to look down at his hands to keep his expression under control. "Don't be sorry. All kids have to move out sometime."
He scrubs at his eyes with the back of his hand. "Not just for that," he says. "For -" For being what he is, he guesses. He's past that, mostly - his list of people who he was scared would stop loving him had been short to begin with, and he didn't lose any of them - but Mom's a special case.
"You wanted me to be different," he says, raspy. "I know you did, and I tried, but I - I just couldn't." He thinks, not for the first time, of coming home and asking: Mom, what's a faggot? He hadn't even gotten a "what do you think" over that one, she'd just told him not to ever use that word again, and that had been that. It had impressed on him that faggot was one of the worst things in the world you could be, if not the worst. And he hadn't wanted to be one. But he couldn't help it.
"Finney," she says. "Finney, look at me."
He blinks, hard, and looks. She cups a hand under his chin. "I didn't want you to be different," she says, still in that horribly gentle voice that feels like sandpaper being dragged over his skin. "I just want you to be safe." He wants to look away, but she's holding him too tight. "I want you safe, and I want you loved. You understand?"
If she wasn't holding his chin, he thinks, it would be wobbling. His voice is a lost cause, so he just gives he a tiny nod. It's the best he can manage.
"That's my good boy," Mom says, and then the tears come for real, waterfalling down his face without his permission. Mom says something else, but he doesn't catch it: there's a sound nearby, and then he's turning his head, and he can see Jay sleeping next to him, peaceful in the predawn light. The pillow under his cheek is wet.
Gwen does not, after all, spit in his face over the breakfast table. She doesn't say much to him, either, but it's easy for both of them to ignore that while Olivia's there and pinwheeling wildly between asking Finn questions about why he and Jay have to go back to California tomorrow, interrogating her mom about why she can't take her tricycle out to the skate park, and "helping" her dad and Jay put creamer in their coffee. That keeps all of them occupied for a solid half-hour, before Jay catches Finn's eye and leans forward. "Hey, Olivia - bet you can't beat me at Guess Who again."
"Yes I can!" This gambit for her attention is an immediate and predictable success; she's already sliding off of Ernie's lap and halfway to the door. "I'll show you."
"I dunno," Jay says, winking at Gwen as he gets up from his chair. "We'd better have your dad referee to make sure nobody cheats." Ernie's already up and following Olivia. The last thing Finn hears her say is, "I don't cheat -" before Jay closes the door behind them, and he and Gwen are alone in the kitchen.
Gwen's sitting back in her chair, one hand resting on her stomach. There's dark circles under both her eyes, and she's paler than she should be. Finn eyes her. "You sleep okay?"
"As much as I can," she says, pulling a face. "Three more months, and then I can finally get a decent night's sleep."
Well, she's still willing to gripe to him, Finn thinks. That's something. "Yeah, I bet you'll be sleeping great once you've got a kid and a new baby."
"Fuck off," she says. It's so utterly familiar, it feels like the ice breaking. Finn leans an elbow on the table, props his chin on his hand. Waits to see if she wants to say anything else. There's stuff they both need to say, but he doesn't want to be the one who gets the ball rolling.
"Finn -" she says finally. Her voice isn't shaking, exactly, but it's something close to it. He watches her swallow hard. "When we were kids, were you - did you really want to kill yourself?"
Finn drops his gaze down to the tabletop. This, at least, isn't anything like the Formica table they had when they were growing up: Gwen and Ernie somehow managed to scrounge up an actual wooden table, the kind with extensions that flip up when you want to make it longer. The patterned swirls of the wood grain can be almost hypnotic, if he lets his eyes go unfocused. But that's not for right now. "I thought about it," he says. "Not like - I didn't want to be dead." Which isn't entirely true; he'd wanted, from time to time, to be with Mom and Robin and the rest of them. But there'd been a gulf between wanting that and wanting the reality of being cold in the ground. "I wanted everything to - stop. Just to stop." The noise, the anger, the sleepless nights, the endless churn of horrible memories. If anyone had asked him, then, he wouldn't have been able to explain what it was he wanted beyond just: stop. Please, let it stop.
"Why didn't you?" she asks. He lets his gaze flick up to meet hers' for a moment, then has to drop it again. There are tears in her eyes. He put them there.
"I was tired," he says to the tabletop. "Just really tired, all the time. Too tired to do anything." It's a funny thing to think about, that he's still alive just because he was too lazy to get out of bed and walk ten steps away to the medicine cabinet or his dad's razor or even just a window where he could climb out and jump. But it's true. It had been easier to just lay there and rot than to actually do anything about it.
For the first time, he wonders why the same hadn't held true for Mom. Had she not been tired at all? Or had she just experienced a final burst of energy, like an animal wrenching a broken limb out of the teeth of a trap? It would only have taken five minutes. If she'd just missed that window of initiative, she might still be here. It could have been that easy. But she hadn't, and he had, and now he's here while she's not. Maybe that's the only thing that saved him and not her: timing and pure, stupid luck. Not having a weapon within reach in the rare moments when he could've roused himself to make use of it. It doesn't seem fair.
"And," he says, still talking to the table, "I didn't want to leave you alone. I figured you needed me. And then Camp Alpine happened, and . . ." He's never told her about the conversation he'd had with Mando. Never figured it was really any of her business. Still doesn't. Some things, he needs to keep for himself. "I don't know. I just kept going until things got better."
When he finally does look back up at her, she's nodding. "I was worried about you. Back then."
He winces. He'd known, obviously, but he'd still tried to tell herself she didn't notice how bad things were. "I didn't want you to be."
"Well, I was," she says, with the air of someone stating the obvious. "And I thought - maybe after camp, after Mom called, maybe that would have helped. I wanted it to help."
"I know," he says. God, she'd tried so hard with him. Harder than she should've had to, at fifteen. "It wasn't your fault. I'm sorry."
She just shrugs. Leans forward, mirroring his posture. "She really is here for both of us, Finn. She loves us."
He rubs his eye with his knuckle. "I know."
"You might not believe me, but -" She cuts herself off midsentence: he watches his words sink in. "You do?"
"Yeah." He's rubbing his eye so hard, he can see stars. He forces himself to put his hand down. "I do." He could tell her what changed his mind, about what Mom said to him last night. But he doesn't want to. Selfish, maybe, but this is another one of those things that needs to be just his. "I shouldn't have snapped at you. I just - it's a lot, you know?"
"No kidding," she says flatly. He laughs a little at that. She's looking at him a little strangely, searchingly, but he doesn't offer anything else. After a few moments, she relaxes. "Do you want me to tell you if I see her again? Or if Olivia does?"
He hesitates. It means something that she's offering, but - "I think that should be for just you and her, maybe. Unless she's giving you a message for me. If she wants to come talk to me, she will." Gwen's face hardens, and he raises his hands, placating. "She came yesterday because she knew we were all here, right? That's what you said. So if she wants to see me, she knows where and how. It's okay, Gwen."
His sister studies him for a moment. It feels a bit like she's x-raying him with her eyes, like she knows - or at least suspects - what he's thinking. Then she nods, using her hand on the table to leverage herself out of her chair. "Okay. You wanna go watch Jay let my kid win at board games?"
"I don't know if he's actually letting her, is the thing," Finn says, getting to his feet. "He's pretty bad at it." He occasionally wins at Yahtzee or Snakes and Ladders, but those are both entirely dependent on rolls of the dice. Anything that involves strategy is a lost cause. Finn hadn't even realized anyone could lose at Scrabble 80-200 until he'd met Jay. "But yeah, let's go."
Gwen goes to the door and opens it, letting the sound of Jay, Olivia, and Ernie playing spill into the kitchen. Olivia's laughing at something, presumably a wrong guess; Jay's talking in that exaggerated, aggrieved tone that Finn only hears from him when he's trying to entertain Olivia. Ernie's laughing too, though it's quieter than the others. If Mom could see this, he thinks. If they could all be together for real, forever - he would give a lot to have that. But he can't, and he knows better than to wish for it. What they've got now isn't perfect, but it's also better than he could have imagined for himself by a long shot. He can be happy with that. He lingers for a moment longer on that mental picture of Mom sitting at the table with them, laughing and smiling; then he lets it go and follows his sister through the door.
