We All Fall Down

Who: Ashbelle and Thom
Where: The Harkin residence
When: Before School

Ashbelle had spent a lot of time smoothing things over. Quite a lot, actually. Particularly with the press, who wanted to report on what the hell had happened, and they had to give an unsatisfying 'details are being witheld by the authorities at this time' statement. She had parents to deal with. Not the least of which were the St. James'. With as tense as the entire town had been since the murders(Ashbelle had it on good authority that that's exactly what they were) there was a lot to be explained, and she'd had much of it to do. So when she'd finally arrived home the night before, she'd let Thom sleep, since that's what he seemed to need most at the moment anyhow. But it was the next day, and they were going to be having a Talk.

She was nearly beside herself with horror when he'd gone missing. It was her worst nightmare. That something would simply happen to him one day, and she would never know what. Or why. Thom had always been such a good, level headed boy. He didn't do this kind of thing. He was raised to know better, to do better. But quite suddenly she understood all too well the looks her own father used to give her when she came in after having been out for a little too long. Which, in her day...had been often. She hadn't been nearly as well behaved as her own son was.

But this...she felt in some way could have been avoided. Even if it was just the unyeilding heart attack that she seemed to be having since he'd not arrived home, and there hadn't been any word from him in explanation. She'd made breakfast. It was a very late breakfast, and she wasn't going into work today. It was partly because of the extra hours she'd put in the night before, dealing with everyone and their journalist or cop brother, but in reality, Ashbelle wasn't so frail that she couldn't go in to work after a long, stressful night.

The truth was her son had been missing for three days, and she wanted to be nowhere that wasn't the same building as him. Even if he didn't want to speak to her after their talk--which she was anticipating--she wanted to be there. Home. Nearby. She sat in the breakfast nook off the kitchen, mug of coffee sitting forgotten in her hand curled around it. Her gaze was out into the back yard, the trees giving way to patches of blue water far below, the harbor. Her mind was distant, and while Ashbelle was rarely truly distracted, she was now. She was letting herself feel it all. She hadn't had time until now, and Thom would likely be up soon, and she'd have to push it back again. But for those quiet moments where she was alone, the only sounds around her the ticking of the grandfather clock in the next room, she allowed herself a few moments to feel near tears, because her boy was almost lost.

Thom had been quiet the day before, answering questions only if they were directly address to him, avoiding people where he could. He'd been grateful that his mom had let him go to his room and he'd stayed there, but he hadn't slept much. He'd feigned it when she checked on him, not wanting to talk to her, to anyone. He'd spent most of the night staring at the ceiling. He'd spent one long period with his face buried in his pillow, just crying - something he wasn't proud of, something he'd never imagined he'd do. He'd always been stronger than that. But this - he'd never expected anything like what they'd just been through. Nothing where he was so helpless. He'd just lived through his worst nightmare and the fact that they'd gotten out of it alive had nothing to do with what he had or hadn't been able to do. If Chance hadn't found them, they'd still be there.

He hadn't set his alarm the night before, but he was up early anyway - habit got him up and dressed in the knowledge it was a school day. Not that he really much felt like going to school. He felt like a wreck and he spent longer than normal just standing in the shower, letting the water pummel him. That was, though, after he'd stared into the mirror for long minutes, as though he'd be able to see the other side - and then hung a towel over the damn thing before undressing. Even then, he could still feel it watching him, those things that had been in the shadows. It was like something crawling over his back, as if they'd be there if he turned around quickly enough.

Finally, though, he got out of the shower and dressed, pulling on clothes without thought, dragging a comb through his hair before he headed downstairs, trudging into the kitchen, not expecting anyone else to be there as he headed over to the fridge to pour himself a glass of juice.
se7enw0lfe: She heard him, and immediately looked over, still feeling restless about reassurances that he was there. In the night, she'd even stopped and listened outside his door to hear him breathing, like she had so often when he was a baby and toddler. But there he was. In one piece, looking exhausted, but whole. "There's a plate warm for you in the oven." she said, not overly loudly as she didn't think he'd seen her. And really, on a normal day she wouldn't have been there at all, so it wasn't surprising.

Thom jumped and dropped the carton he'd been holding, the thing exploding and sending orange juice splattering over the floor as he turned, realising after the fact that it was only his mom. he immediately looked away again, heading for a cloth to wipe up the mess. He was so jumpy today, it was ridiculous. And it made no sense to him - here, now, when he was safe again, he was jumpy as shit. There, where there really were things lurking - or so everyone believed - he'd held it together, not lost it for a moment. Since they'd got back, he'd just fallen apart.

Ashbelle jumped as well, not having expected that. She stood up, and headed over, pausing to grab another dish towel to bend and get it. "Get your plate, Thomas. I'll get it." she told him. It gave her something to do, at the very least. She realized in a distant, belated fashion that it was another manifestation of the deep still bleeding wound in her psyche that informed her that she'd failed to protect him from...whatever had happened to him. That all of her preparing him, and trying to make sure he was capable of handling anything hadn't stopped the events of the past few days. She pushed the thoughts away, however, knowing they weren't helpful right now.

He wasn't hungry, he'd only been getting a glass of juice in the first place because his sense had informed him that he should drink something. He looked at her, then away again, mopping up some more, before he stood, throwing the sodden cloth into the sink. He took the plate out of the oven and grabbed a fork, carrying them over to the table where he sat, toying with the food, but not eating it.

Cleaning up the spill, she stood at the counter for a moment, getting stray droplets that had splashed, and half leaning on it for support. "You don't have to go to school today." she told him. She also, in rare fashion, didn't know what else to say. She knew she had a lot to talk about with him, but right now it wasn't coming to her. Noticing he wasn't eating, she wasn't surprised, but was worried. She knew how it could be, after a traumatic event. Ashbelle knew it well. And she really really hated seeing it in her son.

"'Sokay, I'll go," Thom mumbled, his voice coming out quiet. It sounded strange to him, distant. he knew he'd been having trouble speaking lately, the last couple of days he'd been taking refuge in silence and now he was finding that hard to break, only speaking when he really had to. He pushed some of the eggs to the other side of his plate, stringing them out alongside the bacon to form neat little parallel rows.

"I don't think you should." Ashbelle said. It wasn't a command, though truthfully she would have liked it to be. She didn't want him going anywhere. She wanted him home. Running water over her hands, she dried them, then headed back over to sit at the table with him. "You should try to eat." she added. Nevermind she didn't think she'd actually even sipped her coffee.

He should try and eat, he knew that, but he couldn't - just the smell of the food was turning his stomach and he let the fork drop to the plate before pushing it away from him. "I'm not hungry," he said, making an effort to add that, trying to make his voice sound normal. God, he hated himself at the moment, for being like this.

Ashbelle let out a tight sigh, and looked levelly at Thom. "You're grounded." she stated. If he wasn't going to take care of himself, and he wasn't going to be speaking to her either, then she was going to start in with things he would very much need to know. Which was right now, he was officially grounded. For the first time in his life. She didn't think she'd ever have to say those words, not that she hadn't been prepared to, but even still. No, not her son. But right now, the boy sitting across from her didn't much resemble him. Maybe being home and away from everything for a while would help. She didn't know.

That had his attention and he blinked, his mouth falling open a little. He'd never been grounded, not once in his entire life. And he'd just been through hell and she was adding that? His first thought was to Leija, a welling of panic bubbling up. He wouldn't get to see her - and that wasn't acceptable. Not now, he - school wasn't enough, though he knew that he was definitely going in today now.

She looked back at him, the shock there, as she figured it would be. She frowned at him, and the stress of the entire situation started catching up with her again. "Thomas, you don't get to sit there and stare at me like that, when you haven't said one word to me about what happened to you. Do you have any idea what it's been like for me? I had no idea where you went! I had no idea what you were doing! At least if you had had the forethought and decency to leave me the slightest bit of a note, so I could know something, that would have helped, but no! You leave one day, and I don't see you again for three! Then you come home, and--" she broke off there, standing back up. "You're grounded."

"I had to go," he told her. He knew that at the time he'd thought that if he'd told her, she would have tried to stop him, and that wasn't acceptable. But now - well, now he still thought that, but, considering that she would be right, he wasn't sure he had the energy for a fight. Right now it felt like it would be easier just to sit here and let her shout at him, and then leave. Which wasn't like Thom at all, not in the least like the generally assertive person he was. Sure, he was withdrawn around his peers half the time, but only because he didn't connect very well with the school scene. It had never been like that with his mom, that wasn't how she'd raised him.

"And you could have told me where you'd gone. Or what you were doing there. A mine. On caving grounds--Thomas, I have no idea what you could possibly have been thinking. How could you not tell me something like that? I checked around, I heard the rumors, about...dreams, and calls there, and you didn't even give me the slightest indication that anything was going on! You could have been killed! All of you could have been! If you had to go, I trust you in that. But the very least you could have done was let me know what was happening. I might have been able to help. I might have been able to find you sooner. I have no idea, because I exhausted every resource I had trying to follow your trail with nothing to go on." Her tone had changed, it was still angry, but it was less shouting. And a large part of her was not liking how her son was behaving at all.

He hung his head, not looking at her. It all sounded so very reasonable when she put it like that - of course that was how it would have gone, of course he should have gone to her. What had he been thinking? But it hadn't felt like that at the time. "I didn't thin you'd let me go - I thought you'd try and stop me," he muttered. "And it was just moving rocks - I didn't really think we'd actually find anything."

"Don't you hang your head." Ashbelle said to him, eyes heavy on him. "And...I've told you about this. I've told you about all of this. We've talked about it. You understand. You never take chances with things, Thomas. You never take chances. Moving rocks? A whole bunch of you out there just to randomly dig up an abandoned mine site?" It was ridiculous, to think that it was only going to be something like moving aside debris. Not when there were Other things going on. She shook her head, and sat back down, hand to her temple. A blinding headache was forming right behind her eyes.

He looked up, tears behind his eyes, the movement over his face clearly stating that he was fighting to get himself under control and it wasn't clear whether he was winning, or losing. "I'm sorry, okay. You're right - I shouldn't have done it. And I paid for it, didn't I? Because they could have all died. And can I go now?" he asked, pushing himself up from the table. He needed to get out of here.

"No, you can't." Ashbelle said immediately. "You could have died. You could have." She stood up as well, looking at him. "Thom, you're about all I have left. You're...you're my son. I love you. I don't even know what I would have done if..." And now he wasn't the only one who was struggling to keep emotion in check. Reaching out for him, she pulled him into a hug, though it was less a true hug and more her holding onto her son. "Please never do that again. I don't care what you're doing, or what you have to do, just...please don't leave me here in the dark again."

Thom clung to her as she pulled him into a hug, burying his face in her shoulder and her last words were all it took to push him over the edge and suddenly he was crying again. They were, in fact, possibly the worst thing she could have said and he couldn't speak, just dragging in noisy, uneven gulps of breath between loud sobs as he clung to her.

Ashbelle held onto him tightly, and she shed tears as well. It hit her hard, and while she managed to keep herself in slightly better control than her son, that didn't mean she wasn't actively crying. "I'm sorry I wasn't here, or you felt like you couldn't talk to me. I'm sorry I didn't find you." she said. She cut herself off before she could say more than that, and she kissed the top of his head and continued to hold onto him, like she was afraid if she let go he'd disappear from her again.

"It was so dark," he managed, between sobs as he continued to cling to her. "It was so dark and there was no way out and I thought I was going to have to watch them all die. And there was nothing I could do about it. And there was a guy who had a gun and I had your knife and I thought..." he couldn't end that sentence, he just couldn't - he'd not let himself fully think it at the time and he couldn't voice it now they were back. He just couldn't, but it had been there, lurking in the back of his mind.

Ashbelle rocked him back and forth, just a tiny bit, a totally unconscious gesture. "I'm so sorry you ever had to go through that." she said quietly, and at that moment, she would have given anything to take it back for him. Trade, anything. "You're home now, sweetheart. You're home and you can stay here and it'll be better. I don't know how you got where you did, but...no one'll get stuck there again. You have my word." And with that she was dead serious. Even if she had to dig up some of her rather long dormant contacts to do it.

He clung to her a moment longer as his sobs subsided, then he raised his head, stepping back and reaching up to wipe his eyes, looking away a little. He didn't cry - he'd never been someone who cried and he was faintly embarrassed, even if it was only in front of his mother. He swallowed past the lump in his throat and tried to get a hold of himself. "There was a cave in - from the looks of it our end, there's no way back through to the cave we were in. But in there there was a door carved into the wall. Natalya, this woman who was with it, touched it and it opened - it was the only way out of the cave, so we walked through. And that's how we ended up where we did. Apparently it was the in-between, if that means anything to you," he told her, his voice sounding like he was giving a formal report, which he realised he was. It was comforting in a way, giving things structure, allowing him to distance himself from the reality. "In there, it was dark, these endless corridors. And there were windows set into the walls that were actually the other sides of mirrors - you could look out onto rooms all over the world. Geography didn't seem to come into it. But there was no way out. But we didn't get hungry, or thirsty, or anything like that. I hardly even slept there. And then Chance found us - somehow he could do what we couldn't - he could get through the mirrors." The frown on his face made it clear that Thom had no idea how Chance had done what he'd done.

The In-Between. She'd heard of it. She hadn't ever heard a description of it though. Mostly because most people figured it wasn't actually a space. Not an inhabitable one, by any means. That was clearly wrong. Though not by much by her son's description. She rubbed at her eyes, and nodded, taking it all in. Her mind did the same thing his was, clicking back into more structured thought patterns. Dealing With The Problem. It was what they did. "It's accessible through mirrors?" she asked. That was disconcerting. And made her want to get rid of all the ones in the house, in a fit of irrationality. Though...maybe it would help Thom. "Shall we do a little redecorating?" she asked mildly.

Thom shrugged a shoulder. "There's a towel over the one in my bathroom," he told her. And he'd moved the one hanging on his bedroom wall into his closet last night. He'd felt like he was being watched - though he wasn't sure he wanted to vocalise that. It would either sound insane, or - and possibly worse - he could get confirmation that him paranoia was warranted and Thom wasn't sure he could deal with that right now. He'd prefer to think himself quietly insane, the alternative wasn't acceptable.

Ashbelle eyed her son for a moment. "I think I'd feel better if we removed them for a while." she said. And by 'think' she meant 'definitely positively without a doubt'. She paused for a moment, then continued. "I'm not going in to work today." She still wanted him to stay home with her. Him leaving wasn't something she thought she was going to deal with particularly well today.

He nodded. "I - I have to see people," he told her, quietly. Three people, to be exact, but he doubted he needed to add that in. Or the fact that he was only intending to go to school because she'd grounded him and it was the only way he'd now get to see those people. Because for all he didn't like it, Thom would abide by her ruling. Even when she was at work and she couldn't really enforce it, wouldn't even know if he left the house, he'd abide by it.

She looked down at the floor, arms around herself and she nodded. She wasn't going to tell him he couldn't go to school. And her issues were exactly that. Her issues. She wasn't going to put that on him, refused to. Even if she knew she'd be wondering just how bloody long school was these days. "I'll see you after school then." she said.

"I'll come straight home," he promised her. He paused for a moment, shifting his weight to the other foot. "Since you're not going in to work - can I take the car?" he asked. Because, honestly, he wasn't sure if he could face the walk today and he knew it would only get worse as the day went on as his exhaustion really started to catch up with him.

Nodding, she looked back at him, and gave him a light smile. "Yes, you can take the car. Be careful." she said. And she didn't mean with his driving. He was an excellent, careful driver, and didn't have any accidents or violations on his record. Her internal twitches over him leaving were kicking up again, and she pushed them back down. She'd had a scare. The worst scare of her life, and it was going to take a bit to get over. He was younger, he could bounce back faster. And apparently, he had people to see. One of whom he might need to see. Therefore, she had to let him go. Even if she hated it. Again, she was reminded of her father, and wondered just how often he'd felt like this. Probably all the time.

"Thanks," he said, attempting a little smile. "I should go - I'll be late," he added in explanation. Did his mom know what time school started? He wasn't sure. "I have my cell on me - though they make you switch it off in class," he told her, a roundabout way of telling her that he understood that she wasn't keen on letting him out of her sight today.

She nodded. "I know." she said. And she did. She was a lot more aware of Thom's life than he probably realized. "I'll make dinner tonight. Whatever you'd like." she promised. After a glance at the clock, she sighed, then gave him another hug, and a kiss on the forehead. "Go on. I'll see you when you're home." For a parent who had just grounded her kid, she certainly didn't seem like she was angry with him anymore. She wasn't, it was less that and more a lot of other things that factored in. "I love you."

"Love you too mom - and I'll come straight home," he promised and had every intention of keeping that promise. Giving her another half smile that didn't quite reach his eyes, he turned and headed off for school.

Ashbelle watched him go, even going so far as to watch him drive off. Her eyes remained there for a long moment, even after the vehicle was gone, and then she went and sat down on the couch. She was exhausted, emotionally wrung out. Her eyes welled again, and she really let herself have time. He wouldn't be back for hours, he'd never know.