A/N: A follow-up to Deconstructing the Egg set the summer after Season 2. Kirsten is in rehab, Trey is in a coma, Ryan is nursing untold injuries in the pool house and Seth is trying to make sense of the mess inside his mind.
Title from the excellent Arcade Fire song, played basically on repeat while I wrote this. Will likely be 2-3 chapters, and some characters tagged are only mentioned, rather than having any kind of speaking role.
TW: For implied/referenced child sexual abuse (and some pretty dark and blunt humor related to it), self-harm, brief reference of suicidality, and mentions of alcoholism and alcohol use.
My Body is a Cage
By: Flannel_Mafioso
oooooooooooooooooooooooo
Seth slows to a stop at a red light.
He can feel his eye start to twitch, feel his hands start to drum erratically on the steering wheel.
He doesn't like to stop.
If he can keep moving, then he can pretend like he's not going to where he's going to and he can push down everything that needs to be pushed down.
But now he has to stop.
The law kind of dictates that.
And now his brain starts going again.
His mom is in rehab and Trey is in a coma and Marissa shot someone and Ryan is nursing untold injuries in the pool house and his dad acts painfully cheerful all day and then stays up all night marathoning nature documentaries in his room.
"You've gone through a lot lately," Dr. Max has told him a few times, and Seth has wondered which specific things stand out the most to the doctor, what furrows his doctor brow the most as it gets unceremoniously heaped atop The Trauma.
Seth forgets sometimes that he almost sort of witnessed a shooting, stumbled into the doorway seconds later to see Trey facedown on the ground, got Ryan's or maybe Trey's blood all over his hands as he fumbled to follow the 911 operator's instructions—he's not even certain whose wounds it was that he clumsily tended to.
The blood on his hands and the blood on the floor and the sight of Ryan crawling on the floor and Trey's limp body as they carted him away all feel like nothing now, sort of distant and foggy, like he wasn't even there.
It's other things that have stuck with him. Like how the first dozen coherent thoughts he had about the whole thing were all about Ryan—is Ryan okay, would Ryan be okay, is Ryan alive, what exactly are internal injuries and does Ryan have them, but then, as he rode to the hospital, as he stood in the bustling emergency room, as the numbness continued to wash over him completely, as his dad's voice was suddenly behind him-Seth? What happened? Seth?-as his dad kept trying to get him to look him in the eye, as he couldn't meet his gaze because he was a million miles away, all he could think about was Marissa-
Did it feel good? Did it feel good to put a bullet into Trey's body, watch his knees buckle, watch the blood bubble up at the corners of his mouth, watch the way his eyes went wide and dark as he turned to see that it was her?
There's this razor thin word attempted that seeks to separate Trey from other people Seth has known, to neatly place them into different categories.
He wonders if that razor thin difference means anything to Marissa.
Seth doesn't want to think too much about Marissa.
He definitely doesn't want to talk to Dr. Max about her. He's not even sure how much Dr. Max already knows, how much his dad has relayed to Dr. Max behind his back.
Neither Dr. Max nor his dad have really broached the subject.
Seth keeps waiting for one of them to suggest that he and Marissa have some common bond now.
If this were a tv show, he supposes he would talk to Marissa, tell her about The Trauma and find some point of connection—I too have moments that I've lived through that apparently aren't exactly over—but he can't do it.
While there might be only a razor thin distinction between Trey and other people he has known, he's pretty sure the differences would feel vast to Marissa.
Involuntarily, he'd envisioned telling Marissa about The Trauma, and involuntarily he'd seen her wrinkled brow, one lanky arm rising up and across her chest to grasp other lanky arm.
"Oh, you mean he actually…?"
"You mean you didn't fight him off? You didn't valiantly club his head with a hefty chunk of driftwood, and then, in a related incident, shoot him in the chest?"
Fuck.
It made him think of all of those stupid pre-teen survivor meetings that his dad had dragged him to.
While there were always a handful of people whose stories were plainly much worse than Seth's, there were also those plucky kids whose attitudes or whose stories made Seth feel different, more diseased, more of a pariah in the land of survivors, where he'd been told he'd find camaraderie and comfort and kindred spirits.
"You mean it happened more than once?"
"You mean you didn't tell your mom and dad right away?"
Of course he knows that it was all horrible, what they all went through, and maybe there were degrees of badness or maybe there weren't, and maybe Marissa would edge away from him and maybe she wouldn't, and Dr. Max would probably say that he and Marissa and all those kids at group, be they plucky or be they bitter and depressed, had all had to face a reality that most people couldn't accept as real, let alone imagine for themselves.
But still.
And he does get that living out revenge fantasies probably isn't all it's cracked up to be, that it probably didn't actually feel good to shoot Trey.
There's Ryan to consider, obviously
Seth knows what it feels like to pop someone's balloon when it comes to a person they love. He knows what it's like to wonder if the people you love are mad at you for taking away someone they loved.
People had liked him-Steven.
Steven.
Dr. Max has been making him practice calling him by his name, even if it's only in his head. Something about taking some of the power away from him, or helping to remind Seth that he's safe now, that both the person and the name can't hurt him anymore.
Whatever.
But people had liked Steven. He'd been fun; everyone had said so.
To Seth's mom, he'd been the uncle who was nice to her when she was mad at her own parents.
And he was the only in-law his dad had liked, except maybe Aunt Hailey, in that way that you say that you like your wife's bratty little sister because it seems rude to hate too hard on an actual teenager.
Seth knows that Ryan's feelings towards Trey had been pretty definitively mixed, but still, it was one thing to think your brother was a screw-up and a bad influence, and a whole other line in the sand to realize he was capable of-
Seth jumps, startled at a sharp twinge of pain in his thigh.
He'd be confused by the source of said pain, except his right hand is still clenched into a fist and is rearing back for another go at his chinos.
He lets it happen.
Best not to intervene in these things, he thinks, wincing only slightly as knuckles meet thigh again and again.
He looks up.
The light, Baruch Hashem, turns green.
Finally.
He gets to move again.
oooooooooooooooooo
Those pre-teen survivor groups had been an actual nightmare.
The first time his dad forced him to go, Seth had argued with him right up to the entrance of the church basement.
"Everyone's gonna know."
"I know honey, but they're all going to be there for the same reason."
His dad didn't realize that that barely made it any better.
Also, that Seth did, in fact, grasp the concept of a support group.
"Remember, we said we would give this a try."
Seth didn't remember ever saying that. As a point of fact, he remembered barricading himself in his bathroom before said meeting, and his dad encouraging and cajoling and then semi-begging him to come out. He would've held out longer, but his dad finally pulled out the nuclear option, threatening to take away his video games.
That just wasn't an option for Seth, not having like, the one thing that could reliably make his brain go quiet.
He wasn't sure his dad would actually go through with taking his video games away—both of his parents had a certain lack of follow-through when it came to disciplinary measures—but he didn't feel like he could risk it.
So he'd followed his dad into the church basement, determined not to look at anyone or anything.
And then came the talking and the stories and the sad kids and the plucky kids, who were somehow lightyears worse than the sad ones.
He'd wondered if some of those kids had been audience plants, sprinkled in to instill hope in the others. Every meeting they'd get a little misty-eyed as they'd wrap up their stories with something about how they'd come to realize their own strength now.
And people would clap politely and Seth would feel his dad eyeing him eagerly, clearly hoping that Seth was hearing the same things he was—See, everything will be okay. You'll come out of this just fine!
He didn't know how or if to tell his dad that he knew he was going to be one of the forever bitter ones, like the baby goth girl slouching in her folding chair who whispered to the boy next to Seth "Doesn't 'strength' feel like the shittiest fucking consolation prize?"
And it did feel like that, like the adults running the group were overly bright and optimistic as they tried to trick them all into thinking there was some good that could come out of The Trauma, some kind of meaning or deeper appreciation of all the parts of life that weren't The Trauma.
Seth knew better. And he knew he was disappointing everyone—his mom and dad, his grandpa, the group leaders—by knowing better, for refusing the solutions they kept trying to offer him.
So even though part of him wanted to sit with the baby goth, wanted to say things to her like "Yeah, getting raped by my uncle has really made me like, appreciate sunsets or whatever," he steered clear of her. He knew she would laugh, that she was maybe one of the few people he'd encountered who was allowed to laugh at that kind of thing. And she was one of the few people that he could say those words to, without all of the euphemisms, the what happened of it all:
"It's normal to have nightmares, with everything that happened."
"What happened to you wasn't your fault."
He'd wanted to befriend the baby goth, or maybe just say two words to her, but he couldn't. He wasn't sure if it was because his dad was right there-See, everything will be okay. You'll come out of this just fine!-or because he was just generally a coward who either froze in place or projectile vomited at any sign of danger or discord or risk, but all he could manage to do was keep his head down and refuse to align with either faction.
He didn't make any friends, but he also didn't give anyone the satisfaction of thinking he was stupid enough to believe he'd ever be fine again.
Dr. Max would probably argue that his stubborn insistence on neutrality was why he only went to a few meetings before refusing to attend one more. And then he'd probably further argue that Seth had like, delayed his healing by ditching the group, or some kind of other stupid therapist jargon.
Whatever.
He'd just been relieved to not have to go anymore.
He was pretty sure he'd have done cartwheels into traffic if his dad had made him go again.
oooooooooooooooo
Seth pulls into a parking space and kills the engine.
He's here.
He has to stop again.
Fuck.