Estrangements (Phan AU)

Effect

noun

       • the result of a cause or action by some agent; the power to produce some result; the fundamental meaning; an impression on the senses; an operative condition; (plural) personal belongings; (theatre, cinema) sounds, lighting, etc to accompany a production.

transitive verb

       • to bring about, to accomplish.

His mother doesn't get better, spiraling down a staircase of insanity with no way to find her footing or grasp at the iron railings. She has days where she cries, curled under covers as she refuses to get out of bed or eat the food he waves worriedly before her. She has days where she screams, twisting and writhing and breaking more than just corporeal objects as she fends off enemies Dan tries desperately to convince her aren't there. She has days where she sits in the chair by the window and stares unseeingly as the changing world so effortlessly throws her off its steady ground, unresponsive as he watches her watch things and pretends these days aren't worse than the ones she spends screaming.

She has days where she creeps into his room as he's lying in bed and tucks herself in beside him, wraps herself around him and holds him close like she did when he was younger. She rocks them back and forth, presses kisses into his hair and tears into his skin, all the while muttering that she's sorry, she's so sorry, and she loves him so so much. The doctor he sees on his eighteenth birthday calls these her good days. Dan secretly wishes she didn't have good days, hating how much worse they make the bad seem.

So he's eighteen and the doctor asks him if he's sure and he says yes, despite the awful feeling curling his gut, because this is the right thing to do. He signs their papers and he kisses his mother goodnight as he tucks her into bed, knowing full well this is the last night he'll spend with her in this house. It's why he ends up curling in next to her, though he knows she's going to scream and thrash and claw trenches into his arms as he wraps them around her and pulls her as close as he can. He doesn't cry, but his breaths are unsteady and he has to squeeze his eyes shut as hard as he can.

They come in the morning, like they'd said they would, and it's a sobbing under covers day as they gently coax her out of bed. It turns into a screaming day when they lead her outside to their van, into a silent day when they sit her in the back seats and strap her in tight.

It's a 'good' day when she looks at him, tears dripping from her eyes and snot from her nose as her fingers dig into her knees, and tells him it's okay because she loves him, she loves him so much. He's her baby boy and he's beautiful and she loves him.

Dan doesn't cry then, either. He squeezes his eyes shut even harder, sinks down to the curb and presses his hands hard against his face, but he doesn't cry. The awful feeling is still there in the pit of his stomach and he wants it to go away, he wants all of this to go away, but he knows it probably never will.

It's a beginning, of sorts, as the van is gone and his ill mother with it. It's the moment he goes from a loving son devoted wholly to caring for a woman too far gone to be cared for to a young man with holes in his sweaters and a permanent place outside the park eight hours from the life he grew up with. It's the moment he goes from the sweet boy who watched his mother take his baby brother out like he was trash and whispered wishes into the air for him to grow up safe and loved to the people-watcher with a blunt in his hand and an indifferent expression on his face as the only sort of friend he has tells him he'll go psycho at thirty if he keeps this up.

At eighteen, Dan's new life begins. No one ever said fresh starts had to be good.