So - there were two scenes I felt strongly about being missing from 1x21. One of them was the one I filled in in A little less alone and the other I bitched so much about to TheTBone about that she told me to pretty much to quit whining and write it. I agreed.
In BelovedMaeve's awesome new installment of The Winding Road she commented on some of the choices in the finale and I couldn't agree more. I love everything about this show and I love the writing, but there are some things I would have loved to have seen in a slightly less catastrophic light or at least seen before it got that bad. In my opinion specifically, I would really like for once to have Stef actually able to ground her kids before anyone gets shot or gets their arm broken. Anyhow, this is how I can work out my frustrations!
(For the record, I will still enjoy seeing whatever happens as those catastrophic climaxes play out, but it'll never stop me wanting more good old fashioned parenting before everyone starts crying.)
I know my regular readers aren't usually big Brandon fans but a warning to any who may be - this may get a little rough as he's done nothing but drive me crazy this half-season. Not enough for me to wish he had his hand mangled by a car door, but enough to really want Stef to verbally mangle all of him in one.
Anyhow, maybe some of you wanted this as much as me, so if that's the case I hope you enjoy it.
The car doors slammed and Brandon was left in stunned silence in the back of the police car.
He had faced part one. He had faced the full confession and part of him was amazed he was still in one piece. His heart thumped, hearing it all laid out. Seeing his Mom so scared; his Dad so shaken; them both so angry.
The decision to give Ana the money had been so easy at the time. The quick fix. It had made so much sense but somehow now it made so little.
Here he was. Arrested. Alone. In more trouble than he'd ever been in in his life and possibly the cause of irreversible damage to his family.
He wondered what they were talking about. His Mom said they needed to decide what to do. Were they deciding whether to pursue the charges to teach him a lesson or was there something that needed fixing?
Did they know more to this than he did?
He replayed everything in his mind, over and over, absorbed in the surrealness, until finally the doors reopened. He flinched as they clicked and once again as they each slammed.
He could barely look at either parent but felt Stef's stabbing glare. He flicked his eyes up from their fixed point on the floor to look at Mike. He looked broken and desperate. He wasn't sure which was worse to face and he looked back to his feet.
As soon as she sat down, Stef could feel her throat catching, staring at her son. A curtain of ignorance had been ripped open and now not even the fears in the deepest corners of her mind had anywhere to hide from the inevitable light of day. She looked at her son.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to protect him. She wanted to smack him so hard across the head he could go back in time and fix it.
After a few moments for her to collect herself, Stef's expelled breath finally broke the drumming silence.
"How could you do something so incredibly stupid?" She whispered, her husk catching on every syllable. She looked at his diverted face, her heart pulsing a million miles a second.
She was terrified. She was furious. She wanted this to go away and yet she wanted this to haunt him so that they would never be in this position again.
He opened his mouth but he could feel the prickling at the back of his eyeballs and before he could dither, Stef continued on, apparently the lost words she couldn't express she now found all at once now she had begun.
"After everything that happened, after everything that we went through as a family? What you went through as part of the family the last time that woman was involved in our life - how can you do something as reckless as give her the upper hand?" Her tone swapped from despair to confusion to disbelief, but the fear still shining through as much as the anger. She wasn't just relaying this to Brandon. She was relaying it to herself. Ana was back in their life now and the potential effects of that shook her to the core.
Mike was staying silent, still trying to process his talk with Stef outside. He bit down on his tongue and looked at his son from this new angle. This alien angle. The son he thought he had won back and now apparently lost in more ways than one. With a break in the bombardment Brandon dared to defend his corner.
"I didn't know anything bad would happen, I thought it would be the end of it." He stuttered out, small and weak, feeling as ashamed as he had when he had first got into trouble - but this was no matchbox car and this would be no time out.
Stef closed her eyes again. The eerie sense of deja vu crept in and she shook her head wondering when it was he had lost his entire sense of responsibility.
Had he ever had it? Was this her fault for not raising him right? How had he screwed this up so badly right under her nose?
She gulped down and tried to quell the shaking throughout her body.
"You thought this would be the end of it." She scowled a his naivety, trying not to fall apart. She wanted him to say something that contradicted her anguish. Something to explain some level of understanding. She flicked her head to him again as he began to respond, her patience wearing thinner.
"I just didn't think - "
"No." Stef cut him off. "Apparently you never do!" She rubbed her fingers down her forehead in frustration at how familiar this was becoming. "You didn't do with this just like you didn't do with Callie." The name immediately stirred at Brandon's weak point, grabbing his attention.
"This has got nothing to do with Callie..." he cried back, unable to hide the desperation. The challenge stirred Stef even more.
"No it doesn't have anything to do with Callie..." she hissed. "It has everything to do with you!" The older issues, much further removed from Stef's involvement gave her more confidence in the fight. "Everything to do with you and your completely childish lack of self-control!"
"Stef - " Mike attempted to intervene seeing Brandon wince his head towards the window.
"No, Mike." She fired back, now fully on her tirade, snapping Mike back to his resigned silence. "Brandon, love!" She exclaimed even though the affectionate term was more accusing than endearing. "How can I get you to understand that you need to think further ahead than doing whatever you want to get whatever you feel like at that moment! Actions have consequences!" She rounded off, her voice still breaking through the anger, showing her own exposed position.
She was hoping once more for some level of acknowledgement. Something which would give her hope - even though she didn't know what it was she was looking for. The silence once again didn't bring it and she surrendered to the realisation that whatever it was it would probably not come today. Her eyes flickered over his low-hung face, her shoulders deflating more with every breath he took.
"Well you're coming home." She growled, the one decision she was determined to get through.
Brandon looked up, his regret quickly being dwarfed by his weaknesses. Home? She was dragging him home? He looked at the anger in her eyes and he looked at Mike, suddenly his quietness making sense.
"No...I..." he couldn't find the words to articulate it but he saw his Dad's head dip further. He looked back at Stef and thought of Callie. After everything that had happened tonight, after everything the last few weeks. How could he go home? He needed that space. He needed that time, now more than ever. He couldn't face home.
"Mom, I'm not ready! Please, not yet." He whimpered back, unconcerned for any lost dignity in pleading.
"No, Brandon. You are coming home and when you do you're grounded." Stef croaked. She was trying to sound firm, hoping a standard punishment may delude her that she could deal with this like any teenage error, regardless of how much her voice betrayed her confidence. Brandon shook his head, now his own anger creeping in at the apparent finality.
"For how long?" the further resilience lit Stef's ever shortening fuse once again.
"For as long as I say." She bit back defiantly.
"But -"
"No! This is not up for discussion. You have been out of my sight for too long - no more."
"Your sight? You mean your control..." He spat bitterly, even though it sounded more trembling than aggressive. The stress now was spilling over in Stef and drowning out any attempt of composure.
"You are going to argue about being under my control when you're completely out of your own? You do something as stupid as this and you expect I'm just going to let you go back to your bachelor pad?"
Mike exhaled furiously, offended by the attack but knowing full well he didn't have a play to argue that would get through to a stubborn Stef.
"This had nothing to do with me being at Dad's! It was to do with me trying to protect him! Trying to...I don't know, trying to feel I could do something that wasn't screwing up!" Brandon's volume and pitch ramped up again but it was laced with insecurity. Everything he thought he was doing for the best seemed to be misfiring.
"Well how is that working for you now?" Stef silenced his protest. Right now she didn't want to care about consoling his ego - he had wasted too many chances.
"If you thought this was what was best for your Dad then why would you lie? Why not share your triumph with us?" Her eyes darted right through him even thought he had once again returned to staring at the floor.
"Brandon you are sixteen years old! You know the difference between right and wrong. Stealing is wrong. Compromising your Mom's job is wrong. Selling fake IDs - wrong! Paying off a witness? That's wrong and insane!"
"Of course I know all that but I was doing it to protect him and before that to protect Callie." He shook his head frustrated, more to not have to face what seemed like the endless list laid out to him. It wasn't enough to derail Stef's rant.
"So you steal from your father to try and protect Callie, you then bribe a witness to try and protect your Dad. So who were the IDs to protect, Brandon?"
"I don't know!" He whimpered back. "Me, maybe...to not get found out! I was desperate! But I was going to come clean and then Dani well - "
"She provided you with an out so you wouldn't have to face the consequences. That does not help to prove anything about your choices."
"I came clean tonight -"
"Yes, because you couldn't throw Callie under the bus! That doesn't make you a hero, Brandon - you were the reason she was targetted in the first place! If you play with criminals you put the people you love in danger."
Brandon dropped his head down, blinking a tear. He hadn't even thought about his guilt until that moment. It had been a crushing reminder of how far his actions had reverberated.
Stef realised her breathing had quickened and studied the anguish he was facing. She replayed her words in her head and quickly realised a small level of hypocrisy. She wondered how much of this was her yelling at Brandon and how much of it was her projecting in anger at the way she had tried and failed to protect Mike, knowing those demons would be coming back out to play now this wound had been re-opened. It may not have been as clear cut and as obvious as her son's culpability, but she couldn't avoid the parallels.
She shook her head trying back to focus. She was accountable for her own part, yes, but that didn't excuse Brandon's. But then was she accountable in that too? She hated that this had gone so far and that she now had the responsibility to throw this all at him at once. How had she not been able to tackle this at earlier stages? Here she was lecturing Brandon on responsibility when suddenly all of her own had been thrown into doubt. Had she been neglecting him? She must have been. All these years of being the golden boy and suddenly a crushing mix of distorted morality had slapped him in handcuffs leaving her, Mike and Lena's jobs all at stake, not to mention the welfare of her family. This had all gone so wrong so fast.
She closed her eyes and took another long draw of air to try and pull herself back to some level of composure. She hadn't even touched upon the school confession situation but she couldn't face any more of this tonight. There was too much. She would get through the logistics and then get home, trying to push aside the complications with Ana and focus on the more local error of his ways.
"It's been a long day." She whispered, the words barely finding their way out in the fog of her brain. She pulled a pen and paper from her pocket and thrust them roughly into Brandon's hand.
"List. Now. Every kid who bought an ID from you."
"But none of them will - "
"Does it look like this is up for discussion?" She stared him down, cutting him off as he tried to hold out with his own stare. Buckling under her unbending command, he huffed through his nose and wrote out the list of all the names he could remember.
"You can spend tonight at your Dad's but I want you home tomorrow and we'll talk about this further, understood?" She ripped the completed list from his hands and shoved it back in her pocket, folding her arms.
Brandon tried to find the words to argue but he knew they would be futile.
Stef scrutinised him for a reaction seeing only the tiniest glimpse of a nod.
"Brandon...!"
"Understood." He squeaked briskly as his defences shut down in defeat.
She closed her eyes one more time, trying to search for those easier days. She suddenly had an overwhelming urge to cradle him - or throttle him. Shake him until the boy she thought she knew came back. Squeeze out this stranger and hug what was left, never letting go again.
With one last exhale she shook her head and instinctively kissed his cheek. She had never not kissed him goodnight when he was there, a basic need she had missed ever since he had gone. The sensation buzzed through both of them provoking different but equally complex levels of regret and comfort.
She pulled off swiftly and sharply slapped his leg climbing out of the car as fast as she could. Had she stayed any longer she wasn't sure if she would cry or if she would scream.
Without retaining memory of the short walk there, she covered her mouth and returned to her car. She was suddenly sat in her front seat with her head against the headrest and her heart beating against her chest.
Closing her eyes she bit firmly on her top lip, sitting in deadly silence. She didn't know how to even begin to dismantle this tangle. Her eyes eventually opened at the sound of Mike's car pulling out in front and driving away.
The car may have been disappearing into the darkness but she knew the shadows it had illuminated weren't fading any time soon.