A/N: Here's the epilogue. I do anticipate some follow-up stories, but it may take some time to actually write/publish them. The first part of the epilogue takes place when Seth is 10 years old, shortly after The Trauma came to light.

Additional trigger warning for some intense stuff in this chapter. Yes, there's intensity in the epilogue. Also, the epilogue might be the longest chapter of the entire story. I'm not sure I know how to epilogue right, but I hope you enjoy it regardless.

Thanks as always for reading and reviewing. This whole thing started with a story idea that I thought I would write but never publish to a now 3-story series that I intend to continue with, and I'm so grateful for all the great feedback I've received.

Also, I'm not sure characters' actual birthdays/birth years were mentioned on the show, so I gave it my best guess.

Deconstructing The Egg

Epilogue

oooooooooooo

Newport Beach, CA

1997

The ticking of the wall clock and the scratching of Kirsten's pen against paper feel deafening in Sandy's ears.

He gazes tiredly at a watercolor of a lighthouse on the opposite wall. He wonders if it's supposed to be soothing, the imagery of finding a safe harbor, but his focus keeps being drawn to the choppy waves crashing against the rocks.

He presses a hand to his chest, feeling like he can't draw a full breath. He can't remember the last time he was able to.

"I don't know what to put for some of these," Kirsten murmurs beside him.

Sandy glances over at the clipboard in her hand.

Kirsten likes having something to do, some direction to point herself in, so she'd commandeered the clipboard. Sandy hadn't minded at the time, but now that he's been sitting with nothing to focus on but a mediocre watercolor and the perpetual tightness in his chest, he has to admit he's been feeling a little clipboard envy.

Kirsten has already filled out the top half of the intake form, written down their address and contact phone numbers, Seth's allergies, his primary care doctor, his birthday. Underneath, there's a long list of items with checkboxes next to them.

Symptoms.

Kirsten has already checked off some of them; nightmares/sleep disturbances, withdraws from others and stomach complaints jump out at Sandy right away.

He scans the list. He doesn't know how to answer some of them either.

Trouble having good feelings or trouble having any feelings at all.

He glances over at Seth on his other side, curled up as small as he can make himself in the waiting room chair, his eyes dull and distant.

Sandy looks away, back down at the seemingly endless list of symptoms.

Seth seemed excited sometimes, about new comic books or tv shows or Thanksgiving dinner or summer vacation. He joked with Sandy and Kirsten, told them funny stories and made sarcastic or silly comments and seemed amused by little things that other people might not notice.

Did that mean that Seth felt happy? Did that mean that Seth was able to feel happy?

Sandy taps lightly on the paper next to Acts younger than age.

"You think?" Kirsten asks.

"Sometimes," Sandy says. He leans towards Kirsten, pitching his voice lower. "The horse thing?"

Kirsten nods and dutifully checks off the box.

Sometimes Seth seemed stoic and distant and wryly indifferent to everything, and sometimes he seemed small and lost and terrified. A few days ago, Sandy had come home from work to find Seth curled up under the desk in his office, sobbing and clutching his old toy horse to his chest.

Seth must've dug Captain Oats out of some remote corner of his closet. Sandy was sure he hadn't seen the toy horse in years, but now he seemed to go everywhere with Seth.

Or almost everywhere. Seth hadn't lost all of the self-consciousness of a 10-year-old who knows he's too old for comfort animals, and so the Captain stayed home when Seth went to school, and the Captain was currently in the backseat of their car. Sandy and Kirsten had pretended not to notice when Seth whispered something to the plastic horse and rolled his car window down a crack before following them into the office building.

And it wasn't just the horse thing. There were also the nights that Seth had woken up from nightmares vomiting and shaking and disoriented, seeming confused about where he was and when it was and what was happening. He'd clung to Sandy like when he was little, calling him "Daddy" between big shuddering sobs. Sandy couldn't remember the last time he'd been anything but "Dad" to Seth.

It made Sandy think about when they'd first moved into their Newport house, when Seth had refused to sleep in his new bedroom alone. He'd cry at bedtime and insist on sleeping in Sandy and Kirsten's bed, insist that their bedrooms were too far from each other, that they wouldn't be able to hear it if someone came into his room to kidnap him, that he'd be lost to them forever.

It hadn't seemed strange at the time. In Berkeley, their bedrooms shared a wall, and now they were a staircase and several yards away. The new house felt too big and too remote to Sandy, and he hadn't liked it either, not being able to hear it if Seth stirred in the middle of the night or needed his mom and dad.

It's only been a few weeks since Seth had told him what had happened to him, and in that time Sandy has found himself mentally rewriting their history as a family, rewriting Seth's history, making connections he'd never wanted to make, starting to understand what Seth had really been afraid of.

With the connections came questions though, and gaps that Sandy can't seem to wrap his mind around. He remembered Seth not wanting to sleep alone, but he doesn't remember how the problem resolved itself.

And it had resolved. Seth had seemed to adjust to the new house and he'd started to sleep in his own room, alone and without complaint. Now Sandy wonders how Seth had done it, how he'd lived with the weight of this by himself for five years of his life, how he'd been able to seem excited by comic books and amused by funny little things during his day and how he'd slept alone in his room and went to school each morning and did his homework each evening and begged his parents for a skateboard for Chrismukkah and a model lightsaber for his birthday.

The psychiatrist at the doctor's office had told Sandy that the act of telling was likely unraveling whatever defenses Seth had built up to cope with what had happened, to keep it all at a distance. Now it was overwhelming him, overwhelming his system and his body, and she'd said it was like he was experiencing everything all over again.

Sandy doesn't know what to do with that.

"I wanna go home," Seth mumbles, jarring Sandy from his thoughts.

Sandy turns towards Seth, abandoning Kirsten and the list of symptoms he can't really wrap his mind around. He reaches out and gives Seth's shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

"I know honey, but this is important, okay?" His voice is quiet, sympathetic.

Seth closes his eyes and doesn't respond. They've had this conversation many times leading up to today. It's been made clear that he doesn't have a choice in the matter, hasn't had a choice about any of this.

Sandy feels torn about it, seeing Seth exhausted and wrung out and made to answer painful and invasive questions that leave him shaky and embarrassed. But Sandy knows he needs to do the dad thing and to keep doing the dad thing, and while he's struggling more and more to know what that is, he does know that Seth needs someone who knows what they're doing here, and that isn't either of his parents.

He doesn't know how other parents do this. He doesn't know how he's been doing it, stumbling clumsily through each moment.

He doesn't know how he'd sat in the doctor's office, watching Seth shiver in a flimsy paper gown, his skinny legs dangling off the end of the exam table, and how he'd said the words "We need to make sure that what happened didn't make you sick," each word feeling simultaneously too harsh and too vague, too scary. And he doesn't know how he'd watched Seth take in those words, watched him blink a few times and look away, watched him bite down on his lip so hard that a drop of blood bubbled up on its surface.

And he doesn't know how he'd sat there while the doctors drew Seth's blood and examined his body and how he'd watched his son crumple and look so small and look like the hands that touched him to check on his health were inflicting as much damage as the hands that had touched him to hurt him.

Sandy had tried to keep his expression calm and loving and reassuring, tried to somehow convey that the things that were happening were okay, that they needed to happen, but all he'd wanted to do was grab Seth and run, or just apologize to him over and over again. He'd tried to be an anchor that Seth could hold onto, all while his brain kept repeating I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so sorry.

Seth sighs, bringing Sandy back into the present. His body droops slowly towards Sandy and he rests his forehead on his father's arm.

Sandy starts to card his fingers gently through Seth's curls.

"My stomach hurts," Seth whispers, his voice small.

"I'm sorry, Setheleh. I know this is hard." Sandy hesitates. "Do you feel like you might get sick?"

"No." Seth sniffs. "It just hurts."

"I'm sorry." Sandy leans down close to Seth's ear. "Our meeting won't take very long, and Mommy and I will be there with you the whole time if you want us to be, okay?" When Seth doesn't answer, he presses gently. "Okay?"

Seth gives a little nod into Sandy's arm, his forehead warm against Sandy's skin.

"Mom and I got to meet him already and he's really nice." Sandy's hand drifts from Seth's hair and he rubs his back gently through his striped t-shirt. "Plus, he's got a lot of cool Legos in his office."

"Oh boy, Legos," Seth mumbles.

Sandy smiles a little. Seth may be suffering and emotionally exhausted and pushed past his limits, but some things are still the same. He can still hear the eye roll in his son's words.

He closes his eyes, trying to remind himself that his son didn't become a completely different kid overnight.

It just feels like it sometimes.

There's this flash of a memory that keeps flickering across his mind. Seth at maybe 6-years-old and lying on his side by the pool, head resting on his bent arm, watching a small toy sailboat bobbing along in the pool, every now and then reaching out to nudge the boat a little with his fingertips.

The image keeps popping into his head, but only the back of Seth's body, his curled up posture, his listless little pushes at the toy boat. Sandy doesn't know what his face looked like, if he'd looked sad or lonely or scared or hurt or just blank. Part of him wants to stay with the memory, to cross to the other side of the pool, to make himself look at his son's face, and another part of him is too scared to look, too scared to see what he couldn't see before, what he should've seen before.

Sandy glances over at Kirsten, looks at her brow furrowed in concentration as she continues to labor over the form.

He knows that Kirsten is putting things together too, making her own connections.

She'd come home the other day with a pack of cigarettes, their first since college.

She hadn't really said much to Sandy since he'd broken everything to her, but that day she'd offered him a cigarette.

He was taking a long drag and wondering if Kirsten would or could ever forgive him for being the one to tell her, when she'd said, her voice husky and hollow: "Remember swim lessons?" She'd frowned, staring blankly off into the distance. "He wouldn't let the instructor go near him."

Sandy didn't remember the swim lessons, but he remembered taking Seth to get measured for his first suit.

It had been for Kirsten's mother's funeral. Seth had flinched and run away and tried to hide behind the dressing room curtain when the tailor had approached him with the tape measure. He'd whispered to Sandy through the curtain that he didn't like the look on the tailor's face, that he wanted his mom.

Sandy had eventually coaxed Seth out of the dressing room and knelt on the ground in front of him, measuring Seth's waist and inseam himself, not even trying to conceal the frustration in his voice as he'd barked out Seth's measurements to the tailor.

He'd wanted Seth to know that he was frustrated. Seth was 6-years-old, but he'd wanted him to feel bad for making a difficult day even more difficult.

He tries to remember now, had Seth seemed scared? Had his body been trembling as Sandy had pressed the tape measure against his body? What were the signs that Sandy had missed that Seth wasn't just being a fussy tired 6-year-old who missed his mom?

The office door opens, and Sandy feels Seth's back tense under his hand. He runs his hand up Seth's back and gives his shoulder another reassuring squeeze. Sandy sees Kirsten stand up to greet Dr. Max with an outstretched hand.

"I wanna go home," Seth whispers again, voice barely audible. "I don't wanna be here."

"I know," Sandy says softly. "Soon kiddo, okay? It'll be over before you know it."

Seth snorts.

"You know, you've been saying that a lot lately," he informs his dad drily. He lifts his head just slightly, his eyes quickly darting over to give Dr. Max an appraising glance. He looks back up at Sandy, lips twisted into a glum frown.

"These better be like, the world's greatest Legos," Seth mutters, resignedly starting to get to his feet.

Sandy smiles faintly at the slightly reddish patch of skin on Seth's forehead from where it had been resting on his arm. He gives Seth's shoulder another squeeze, grateful that Kirsten has been chatting quietly with the doctor to one side, giving Seth the opportunity to slowly ease his way into the situation. He starts to guide Seth towards Dr. Max, but Seth hesitates, grabbing Sandy's arm tightly.

"You'll be there the whole time?" Seth asks, looking nervously up at Sandy, his wry façade slipping again to show the fear and vulnerability bubbling up underneath. "You won't leave?"

"I promise," Sandy assures him. He wonders—not for the first time—how much his promises of protection and safety and steadfastness can really mean to his son. "I'm not going anywhere, okay?"

Seth nods, but he doesn't let go of Sandy as they approach Kirsten and Dr. Max.

"Hi Seth." Dr. Max smiles down at Seth. "I'm Dr. Max. It's nice to meet you."

Seth looks blankly up at Dr. Max, fear and vulnerability back under the mask, evident only in the firm grip he continues to maintain on Sandy's arm.

"Hi," Seth chokes out eventually. He lets go of Sandy and crosses his arms tightly across his chest, his eyes drifting back down to his shoes.

Sandy watches Seth's eyes dart up again, taking in Dr. Max once more. Sandy wonders what Seth is noticing about him, how any of it is registering to him, if his height or his beard or his flannel shirt or his glasses or his deep voice feel friendly or unfriendly, safe or unsafe to him.

It's hard to know. As Seth's defenses have started to splinter, Sandy and Kirsten have started to see a little more of what it is that he's feeling, but there's still so much that feels confusing and uncertain, still so much that Seth is guarding closely to himself, so much that he doesn't seem to want them to see.

"Have a seat anywhere you like," Dr. Max says, ushering the family into his office.

Head bent low, Seth trudges into the office, his parents following closely behind.

oooooooooooo

Seth adjusts his messenger bag on his shoulder and slowly walks down the stairs, squinting in annoyance as the sunlight hits his eyes.

Compounding that annoyance is his heart, which has been hammering in his chest for roughly the past twelve hours.

As much as he's dreading seeing Dr. Max again, another part of him just wants to fast-forward to a month from now, when this whole therapy thing can feel routine, when he won't be on the verge of a panic attack all day thinking about it, when the humiliation he's feeling—forced to crawl back to therapy, forced to admit that The Trauma still runs his life—can fade to a dull background throb.

Seth plops himself down on the low cement wall by the student drop-off/pick-up circle.

His dad isn't here yet. He doesn't know whether he's relieved to have a few more moments alone, or if it's all just making this whole thing feel more painfully drawn-out.

He scrolls through his ipod listlessly, no song feeling quite right at the moment.

He'd stupidly hoped that making up with Summer would make The Trauma slowly fade back into nothingness.

He'd actually slept okay the first night after Summer went home, bolstering his confidence a little, making him wonder if maybe he didn't even need therapy.

Then the second night—last night—he'd woken up yelling and confused and feeling hands crawling all over his body and feeling like he wasn't alone in his room, and he kept fading in and out, disappearing and then resurfacing, over and over.

He was on his bed and then it went dark and then he was on the floor and there was vomit all down his shirt and vomit on his hands, and then it went dark again.

And that's how his dad found him, cowering in the corner, shaking and sobbing and muttering and covered in vomit, and fading in and fading out.

He was here.

That thought stuck in his brain and played on a loop and wouldn't let him go.

The nightmares themselves could be bad, but it was afterwards that was really the worst, the way the air felt thick and heavy, the way he felt like he was slowly suffocating, the way it felt like he could come through the walls at any moment.

When he was a little kid, it felt like he could come from anywhere, and at any time. Sometimes he'd be watching cartoons or sitting by the pool playing with his toy sailboat and feeling like it was an okay day and then the doorbell would ring, and then he'd just be there.

Sometimes nothing would happen. Sometimes one or both of his parents would be there the whole time. You'd think that would've been better somehow, but it was its own kind of agony, feeling terrified and tense and out-of-control, never sure what kind of visit it was going to be, if he'd overhear his mom or dad saying Could you keep an eye on Seth for a minute while...

He was here.

His dad found him, and his dad's face was looming in front of his, and he was talking to him in a low soothing voice, and then his dad was carefully helping him out of his gross t-shirt and then it went dark.

And then he faded back in, and they were both standing in the bathroom somehow, and he didn't know how he'd gotten there, but there he was, and he was trying to explain to his dad that he was fine, really, he just really needed to take a shower.

He was here.

He was trying to reason with his dad, trying to point out that he was covered in sweat and puke, and that he had been here, and his hands had just been crawling all over his body and he just needed to stand under scalding hot water until he couldn't feel them anymore, until he'd scoured off every inch of his skin that no longer felt like his anymore.

He'd really hoped he hadn't said all of that last part out loud, but everything kept getting jumbled in his head, and he wasn't sure what thoughts he was just thinking and which ones he was saying out loud.

But he must've said something wrong, because he saw the way his dad looked at him.

And so his dad knew now—if he hadn't already—that his son was actually still totally fucking crazy and still seeing ghosts and imprisoned violent uncles in his room at night.

He was here.

His dad had turned on the shower and waited a few seconds before reaching in and testing the water temperature with his hand. He'd turned away so that Seth could take off his also-gross pajama pants with a modicum of privacy, but he wouldn't leave the room entirely.

I'm sorry, Seth; I just don't feel comfortable leaving you alone right now.

Seth had heard that one before.

Part of him wanted to argue, but most of him was afraid of what he might say if he opened his mouth again, so he just stepped into the shower and pretended like his dad wasn't hovering right there waiting for him to collapse into hysterics, or whatever it was that he was so afraid of.

He was here.

Seth jabs his finger at some random song in his ipod's library, needing to drown out everything in his brain, needing to drown out images of last night.

But he gets the message of last night, he does. Whatever this is and had been, it's clearly not a thing that is over. He guesses he just has to accept that, along with all of its accompanying indignities.

He was here.

He guesses he also has to accept that Dr. Max was right when he used to tell him that pushing his problems down wasn't the same as fixing them.

He'd tried to follow Dr. Max's advice, he really had. He got it when Dr. Max would talk to him about ways to stay present and in the room, ways to reassure himself that he was safe. But feeling safe had never really felt safe, and there had been something that had felt so much worse about being lulled into thinking it'd be an okay day—just him and his cartoons and him and his toy sailboat and just him pretending that he wasn't real and he had never even been real—and then hearing the doorbell ring.

The best and easiest thing to do had always been to detach, to go elsewhere in his brain, to slowly sink to the bottom of the pool and just bob there indefinitely. And bad things could happen to him, but he'd be far far away by the time they ever reached him.

Seth closes his eyes.

Death Cab starts up just as Seth hears the Range Rover slowly pulling into the circle. He feels his heart start to pound even more intensely in his chest.

He stands up slowly as his dad pulls to a stop in front of him. He yanks out his earbuds. His parents have a strict no-headphones-in-the-car policy, hellbent as they are on still being able to Talk To Their Kids, even during the surly teen years.

Usually it's just annoying, but today it feels like torture.

The passenger side window rolls down, and his dad's face comes into view, with his big dorky sunglasses and his big toothy smile.

"Hey kid," he says brightly, as if they aren't both in this situation because Seth is still totally fucking crazy and a total fucking mess.

Seth opens the car door and slides into the passenger seat.

He buckles his seatbelt and presses his face against the warm glass of the passenger side window, closing his eyes and imagining a universe in which his dad will just let them make the drive there in silence.

ooooooooooooooooo

"So last night was no fun, huh?" His dad says lightly, looking both ways before pulling out of the parking lot.

Seth winces. "Can we not—"

"I'm sorry, I just meant…" His dad's voice softens a little, becomes a little more serious. "Were you okay today?"

"I was fine," Seth says stiffly, feeling his dad appraising him from the corner of his eye. "Not like it's my first rodeo or anything." He snorts. "Mild-mannered high school student by day, pathetic train wreck of a human being by night."

"You're not—" His dad's voice is doing that thing again.

"You know Dad, you could choose to let one self-deprecating comment pass by without a fight," Seth says, raising his eyebrows pointedly.

His dad looks over at him and Seth manages to shoot him something approaching a smile.

"You're right," his dad concedes, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel. "I could do that." He nods. "I can do that."

"I appreciate it."

His dad is quiet for a minute, the only sounds in the car being the rhythmic clicking of the Rover's turn signal and the low strains of show tunes coming out of the speakers.

"I'm just…" his dad starts off slowly before trailing off again. "I know this isn't easy, son. I'm really proud of you, of what you're doing for yourself."

Seth frowns, wishing they'd sprung for an ejection seat for the Rover. He stares out the window, thinking that now would be a nice time to totally blank out. He wonders why he never learned how to do that on command.

He'd spent all this time running from The Trauma when he could've been focused on getting The Trauma to work for him.

"I'm saying that too much aren't I?" His dad asks.

Seth gives his dad a look.

"Okay, I am saying that too much. Got it." His dad nods emphatically. "And see, you can convey everything with just a look," he adds cheerfully. "It's not just a Ryan thing."

Seth closes his eyes again and slouches low in his seat, wishing he'd requested a therapist that didn't require a twenty-minute headphones-free drive.

He kind of remembers this being a problem when he was younger, his parents using car rides to trap him into conversations he didn't want to have. They'd argued that it was kinder and less confrontational, what with the lack of forced eye contact or whatever, but Seth knew it was because he couldn't flee the way he tended to flee from most of the Big Talks they wanted to have with him.

We were just wondering if the kids at school are still giving you a hard time...

Your teacher called and said you'd been skipping Sex Ed this week. Has it been too much for you? I know we said it might be too much for you...

I saw your browsing history, Seth. It's normal to be curious about girls and sex at your age, but I just want you to know that you can come to me...

You google "big boobs" one time when you're bored and then you never hear the end of it in the Cohen household.

"So is Summer coming over tonight?" his dad asks, interrupting Seth's mortifying mental jaunt through Car Rides Past.

"I dunno," Seth says, fiddling with a loose thread on his t-shirt. "I wasn't sure I'd be up for company later," he admits.

"Of course, whatever you want," his dad says quickly. "It was just nice to see her the other day."

Things with Summer were feeling a little weird, but Seth doesn't want to tell his dad that.

He'd thought that the talk in his room had gone well, but after that first night, with all of Summer's apologizing and all of their pretty incredible make-up sex, things had lapsed into a kind of awkwardness between them. They were being more careful with each other.

Summer was being gentler, kinder, more transparently patient with him. And he was hesitating more before he spoke, afraid to annoy her or make her angry, or set off the things that used to result in a smack upside the head or a punch to the arm.

It had only been a few days, but it all made Seth a little nervous, wondering when the other shoe would drop. He figures Summer can't keep the rage blackouts at bay forever. He was going to make her mad at some point.

When the initial euphoria of making up with Summer had faded, he'd also realized that he wasn't quite sure he believed that Summer could just stop hitting him, totally cold-turkey. When he thinks about the time they've spent together, it's hard to remember a conversation that wasn't punctuated with some kind of smack or punch or whack.

And time will pass, and she'll undoubtedly get tired of how much energy it takes to be that patient with him, and he'll forget to keep hesitating before he speaks, and she'll let herself be annoyed and frustrated and angry with him again, and he doesn't know what happens then.

He's not sure he wants to know what happens then.

"Ready to go in?" his dad asks.

Seth blinks a few times, realizing that the car is stopped and has probably been stopped for some awkward length of time now. They're parked outside of Dr. Max's office, and he senses that this isn't the first thing his dad has said to him in hopes of eliciting some kind of response, and his dad is looking at him with that steady concerned gaze he gets.

"Yeah, I'm ready," he says, blinking a few more times. He sits up, unbuckling his seat belt and reaching for the door handle.

He is very much not ready, but he figures it's unspoken between them that he's going to lie about these kinds of things.

oooooooooooooooooo

The waiting room hasn't changed; same lighthouse watercolor, same hushed quiet, same ridiculous overstuffed chairs.

Seth slouches in one said ridiculous chair, pleased to note that his feet can touch the ground now. No awkwardly bobbing ugly sneakers crowding his vision this time.

Sandy holds a magazine in front of his face, pretending to read some article about interior design. He sneaks a discreet glance at Seth.

He can see the tension radiating off of Seth in the way that he's holding himself completely still, in the way that any outside observer would think that he was totally calm, almost bored. Sandy knows that when Seth is most anxious, he's either hyper talkative and moving all over the place, or eerily still and quiet, like he isn't really there at all.

It's the latter that tends to get Sandy more nervous, flashes him back to Seth, 6-years old and lying curled up on his side by the pool, flicking absently at his toy boat. He could lie like that for hours, barely moving, just watching his boat bob along in the water.

Last night had been a lot for Sandy. He knew that Seth liked to move on quickly from the bad nights, put them behind him and pretend they'd never really happened, but Sandy was still feeling unsteady.

It was hard for Sandy to live with the knowledge of everything that Seth had to live with. It was harder still to know that Seth still went back there sometimes, that The Trauma wasn't a thing that had happened and was done, that it would maybe never be done.

When he found Seth on bad nights, it was often a Seth who was somewhere else, stuck in some other time, and Sandy knew it was his job to help guide him back to the present, back to safety and to himself.

And he would come back. There would be a moment where Sandy could see the shift in Seth's eyes and in his body, and Sandy would feel the tension ease in his own shoulders, and he would think Seth is back. He's here.

And Seth would be shaky and embarrassed and sometimes irritable and sometimes needy and sometimes quietly grateful, but he would be there, and Sandy would think again Seth is back. He's here.

Last night had been different. Sandy had watched helplessly as Seth shifted rapidly back and forth from the 6-year-old to the 16-year-old—sometimes mid-sentence—and it had never really felt like Seth had come back, and Sandy had never felt that moment of relief, that ease of tension in his shoulders.

Seth was calmly—almost patronizingly—promising that he was fine, that he just needed to shower and—in classic Seth fashion—get less gross, and then he was rambling about how his skin wasn't his anymore and how much it hurt and how loud the doorbell was, and his voice was cracking and Sandy looked into his eyes, pooling with tears, and knew he was looking at the 6-year-old again, and he felt powerless to guide him anywhere, let alone to safety or to himself.

And then Seth went quiet for a moment and rubbed at his brow and looked at Sandy quizzically as Sandy was fumbling for some kind of a response, but before he could say anything, Seth had said slowly, haltingly I, uh, I'm gonna shower now.

Sandy tried so hard to be there for his son, but in so many ways Seth was alone with all of this, had always been alone with it.

That was maybe the hardest thing of all to live with.

The office door opens.

Sandy sees the briefest flicker of dread and sadness and anxiety flash across Seth's face before it fades away, Seth's lips forming a sardonic smile, his usual mask of perpetual amusement, as he slowly stands up.

"Hi Seth." Dr. Max smiles at Seth and reaches out to shake Sandy's outstretched hand. "Sandy," Dr. Max says, smiling at the older man. "It's nice to see you both."

"Nice to see you too," Sandy says.

Seth's eyebrows raise a little at that sentiment, but he lets it pass by without comment.

"Hey Doc," Seth offers, hands buried in the pockets of his track jacket.

There's a beat of quiet and Sandy looks at Seth, seeing his uneasy posture, the way he can't yet meet Dr. Max's eye.

He remembers Seth at 10-years-old, curled up on Dr. Max's couch between Sandy and Kirsten, mute and frozen and barely responsive. He wouldn't look at-let alone play with-any of the Legos in the office, nor the Star Wars figurines, nor any of the usual stuff that would've captured his interest.

Sandy looks between Dr. Max and Seth, hesitating, struck by the certainty that Seth won't utter a word in his fifty-minute session, that he will become still and frozen and mute again.

"I can come in with you," Sandy offers, reaching out and resting a hand on Seth's shoulder. He tries to catch Seth's eye, tries to keep his expression calm and loving and reassuring, tries to somehow convey that the things that were happening were okay, that they needed to be happening. "I mean—if you want me to," he adds.

Seth doesn't lift his head, but his eyes dart up and meet Sandy's just briefly before he looks away again.

"I uh, I think we've got it from here," Seth says softly. "Thanks though." His eyes meet Sandy's once more, and he manages a small wry smile as he turns towards the open office door. He looks back over his shoulder and tips his head towards Sandy in a small nod. "See you on the other side, as they say."

Sandy gives his son a small smile, quietly returning Seth's nod with a slight inclination of his head.

Seth follows Dr. Max into his office and closes the door behind him.