A/N: And here it is, the epilogue.

I have ideas kicking around in my brain for continuing this series, likely jumping ahead to Seth in college, but not sure if/when said ideas will come to fruition.

As always, thanks for reading.

oooooooooooooooooo

They're sitting on a bench behind a grouping of trees this time, away from the deafening burbling of the fountain and the amorphous Rorschach topiary animals that make Seth's brain itch.

And they're catching up about nothing much in particular, which feels okay.

The family session that morning had been painful, but the time had passed, Seth staring blankly out the window while Ryan brooded silently and his parents tried in vain to salvage some kind of therapeutic dialogue, each of them laying it on a little thick about how hard it was for Seth and Ryan to open up and how much they appreciated their willingness just to be in the room with them.

Seth isn't ready for it, the family stuff, and the thought of pouring his heart out around Jodi, who sailed right past Empathetic Facial Expressions 101 and went straight to How to Ooze a Kind of Pity that Will Make a Person Feel Unclean for a Week made him immediately check out upon entry.

Somewhere in middle school, Seth had become so terrified that his dad would attempt to have the sex talk with him that he essentially avoided the man for roughly two years. He lived constantly on edge, poised with a subject change or a means of fleeing the scene or begging off conversation. He inwardly cringed imagining how the content would be adapted for him, how his dad would take great care to be sensitive to The Trauma, how he'd assure him it would be normal if it was different for him than it was for the other boys.

He'd lived so much of his life in the shadow of the other boys, an existence he could only imagine from the outside. The assurance was supposed to be thoughtful, supposed to show that the nuances were understood, but really it was like twisting a knife into a wound that was already bleeding out.

It had taken so much energy and forethought and end-arounding to avoid the conversation that, by the time his dad managed to successfully corner him for it, it had been like he'd already had the mortifyingly awkward sex talk every day for the previous two years. And it wasn't any less mortifying when his dad hit each expected note with painful sincerity and painful sensitivity, searching Seth's face as he spoke, trying to gauge his reactions, refusing to grant Seth the mercy of pretending-at least for one conversation-that he was at all like any of the other boys.

So Seth gets that avoidance is bad, that there's something to ripping off the band-aid in one go, and that the thing about someone twisting a knife when you're already bleeding out is that you're dying either way, but also, he was allowed to take his time with some things, and he couldn't do the family therapy thing all at once.

"Maybe a little bit at a time," Dr. Max had suggested, when they'd sat down to strategize for the next rehab visit, and then he'd launched into some convoluted metaphor about pumping air into a basketball that Seth didn't find entirely necessary, but the point remained, as did the continued permission to go as slowly as he needed to.

There's a lull in conversation and just a slight shift in the air and in his mom's facial expression, but he can tell that she's about to go somewhere a little deeper than analyzing Suriak's rotating menu of lunchtime specials.

Seth bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, his heart hammering in his chest. His first and strongest impulse is to bolt, to make a break for the car and sprawl out across the backseat.

"Your dad told me you told Summer," his mom says, before he has the chance to decide if he wants to run or if he wants to stay. "I hope it's okay that he told me that." She looks at him, her eyes wide and anxious, continuing to look nothing like the mother he'd known before they shipped her off to rehab.

"Uh, yeah." Seth clears his throat. "He, uh, asked me if he could."

"I think it's a really good thing." His mom's smile is soft and a little wobbly at the corners of her mouth. "You are so strong, Seth." She looks off into the distance and shakes her head a little. "Much stronger than I've ever been."

Seth bites down harder on the inside of his cheek, imagining his mouth slowly filling up with little tidal waves of blood, and he digs his fingernails into his palms, imagining the pale white half-moon indentations he'll leave behind, imagining himself later, tracing his fingers into each tiny groove.

He tries to imagine what Dr. Max would say to him right now.

Probably that Seth didn't have to talk, that he wasn't obligated to respond to the minefield that was that statement, but that he could try to stay and sit and listen.

And if that didn't work, if he really had to go, that was okay too and he could try again the next time.

He decides he can do that, can try sitting and listening, but his mom isn't talking anymore, is just continuing to stare off into the distance, but he can do that too, sit and not talk and not listen and let his eyes fall out of focus as he gazes at nothing and lets the world recede to nothing around him.

ooooooooooooooooooo

Summer had asked him once if it had been hard when Ryan came to live with him, hard to no longer be an only child, suddenly sharing custody of his parents, one in the bleachers at soccer playoffs and one at the county high school art show. He couldn't really explain it to her, how not-hard it was, how, in actuality, he hadn't been an only child in years, had been splitting parental attention with a malevolent and destructive sibling who was hellbent on sabotaging him at every turn.

It was Dr. Max who had first likened The Trauma to another member of the Cohen household, and that image had adhered to somewhere deep in Seth's brain. Sometimes he'd look down in class and realize he'd doodled a kind of crude family portrait in his notebook: Mom and Dad and Boy and Formless Dark Cloud with Bug Eyes and Dripping Fangs, Looming Over This Otherwise Quaint Domestic Scene.

There were times when he knew to brace himself for The Trauma's disruptions-when he asked to go to day camp again the summer he was twelve, when his PE teacher called home because he refused to use the locker room at school, when his class went on their first overnight field trip, that last one resulting in-to Seth's utter mortification and to Seth's secret gratitude-Sandy Cohen becoming de facto chaperone of every school outing that required a tent or a hotel room or the threat of sharing a bed or sleeping quarters with boys from his class, boys who already enjoyed finding new and creative ways to torture him.

And then there were the gut-punches out of nowhere-that stupid movie with The Sixth Sense kid or the time The Nana had insisted that he watch the home video of his bris-a real cinematic classic, that one-and a younger Steven had appeared on-screen, grinning as he shook Seth's dad's hand and proceeding to pat Seth's little newborn head, smoothing down his wispy dark hair that stuck up in every direction.

And then there was that fateful Thanksgiving after Steven had gone away, Seth sitting with a forkful of turkey poised in front of his mouth when his Aunt Hailey, with all of her late teenage insolence and perhaps emboldened by the white wine she'd been discreetly guzzling since about noon that day, had demanded at the dinner table "Why won't anyone tell me what Uncle Steven actually did? God, you people all act like he died or something," her shrill, slightly slurred words met with a veritable cacophony of silverware clattering onto fine China.

Dramatic holidays were kind of a thing in the Cohen-Nichol house.

But beyond that, beyond the conversations he knew to prepare and/or dissociate for and the ones that snuck up on him, there were the non-events, the day-to-day, his dad's strained trying-too-hard smiles and the way his mom's gaze would glance off him and come to rest somewhere a few feet to his left and the way she spoke in careful euphemisms, each giant false grin and each aversion of eyes and each delicate turn of phrase feeling like the time a neighbor's lawn mower had shot out a little pebble that had pummeled Seth straight in the gut-sharp and staggering and surprisingly painful for a thing so objectively tiny.

His mom couldn't even say the word therapy. She'd say Dr. Max or "your appointment", but never therapy.

He'd once stood in the doorway of the kitchen, backpack hiked up on his back, listening in as his mom explained to The Nana that Seth wouldn't be home right after school because he had "an appointment."

"What kind of appointment?"

"Just a doctor's appointment."

"That's the second doctor's appointment he's had this week. Is there something going on with Setheleh that you're not telling me about?"

"No, Sophie. We just—we like to schedule his yearly appointments in the same week just to get it all done at once for him."

"I see. And the very same week I come to visit; how interesting."

Seth had had no idea if The Nana even knew what had happened to him, because his mom's caginess around therapy could've been because no one had ever told her, or it could've been because of his mom's general weirdness about anything even tangentially related to The Trauma.

After all, Seth was painfully aware of The Trauma and his mom never said "therapy" around him.

But did his dad confide in The Nana? Did his dad even want to confide in The Nana? And did his mom even let him confide in The Nana, or did she say "Absolutely not, Sandy. I will not have that woman judging us..."

The Trauma seemed to linger in every room and it seemed to cling to him like a thin film coating his body and it was a question in Seth's mind when it came to every family member and every family friend, a question he could never really stomach asking.

He still didn't know if The Nana knew.

But then, in the intervening years, he'd finally been allowed to quit therapy and he'd outgrown camp, and nobody seemed to spontaneously bring up Steven anymore, least of all Aunt Hailey, who snuck equal parts pitying and curious looks at him when she thought he wasn't paying attention, leading him to assume that she knew or had figured out something. Regardless, things somehow settled down, grew quieter.

Still, it remained an awkward kind of equilibrium with his parents, The Trauma easier to ignore, but still a force they couldn't entirely shake, his mom still struggling to look at him without the hint of a pained expression twisting up the corners of her mouth.

And then Ryan moved in with them, and while Seth hadn't realized it at the time, he wasn't just gaining a brother and a live-in best friend, but also a buffer. Without even trying, Ryan diverted attention from The Trauma, defanged the dark cloud hovering over them.

He's not sure exactly how things started to shift. Maybe it helped that his mom was suddenly and perpetually in her We have a guest mode with Ryan around-maybe that was enough of a distraction-but he first noticed it one morning at breakfast.

Seth and Ryan were standing around the kitchen island, prepping their bagels and going back-and-forth about something-girls, water polo players, the Newpsie hierarchy, something-and his dad gamely chipped in a joke or two, always wanting to hold his own with the youth. And then, to Seth's surprise, his mom chimed in, smiling her tight-lipped waspish smile over the rim of her coffee mug, looking a little nervous to be throwing herself into the scrum of their banter.

And then, in the breakfasts that followed and the family dinners and the holiday dinners and the car rides to and from the Newpsie parties, it was like he finally got to be a different person around his parents and his parents finally got to see him as a different person.

There were conversations that he braced himself for, but they never came.

When they didn't say: "Are you sure you're okay if Dad doesn't come to Comic-Con this year? I don't think Ryan will think it's weird if Dad comes along with you guys."

When they didn't say: "Palm Springs with your girlfriend and without your de facto overnight chaperone? Aren't we biting off a little more than we can chew there, buddy boy?"

When his dad didn't say: "There is no way that you had actual sex with an actual girl and didn't have a subsequent and massive emotional breakdown about it. Let's process this in painstaking detail."

It was part of the devastation, the insult-on-top-of-injury, when Seth started having nightmares again, when the past started to bleed into the present again, when The Trauma crept back into his life and then slowly became a thing he couldn't fully ignore and couldn't fully hide from his dad-there had been those sweet perfect months when things were good and quiet and the vast gulf between him and the other boys had narrowed until it was just a sliver, barely noticeable unless you made an active effort to see it, months when he could breathe a little easier thinking that the whole Trauma thing was finally, at long last, over, done with, a thing of the past.

And then it wasn't.

oooooooooooooooooooo

"I'm really glad you have her to talk to."

"Hmm?" Seth blinks, his fuzzy brain slowly coming back to the present moment and his surroundings and trying to piece together his mom's words, whether he wants it to or not.

"Summer, I mean. I'm glad you can talk to Summer about things."

Seth is ambivalent at best about it, but it's nice that it's apparently been such an easy celebration for his dad and his mom and his therapist.

"And I'm glad you have Dr. Max too," his mom adds. "He's a good one."

"He's all right." Seth shrugs his shoulders. "A little full of himself at times, if I'm honest." He frowns. Since his parents had first forced him into therapy, he'd developed a strange but persistent instinct to at least lightly disparage Dr. Max when talking to his mom.

He wonders what Dr. Max would say about that one.

"They can be like that, therapist types." HIs mom gives him a knowing look. "I know Jodi can be kind of a lot..."

Seth snorts. "Understatement of the century."

"But I'm taking some good things from it, from therapy."

"And just ignoring the way she clutches her heart and gasps every time anyone says anything remotely sad?"

"It's not that bad."

"Mom, c'mon."

"Okay, it's pretty bad," his mom admits, nose wrinkling.

"I'm glad though, if it helps and all." Seth ducks his head shyly.

His mom smiles, sliding her hand into his and interlacing their fingers.

"Seth, I-I know I haven't always been there for you."

"What? Mom, no. I didn't—" Seth feels something hitch and then sink in his chest.

He doesn't want to do this, not now, but maybe ever.

"It's okay, Seth." His mom squeezes his hand. "If there's one thing they keep hammering into us here, it's that it's good to deal with things the way they are."

Seth looks away, jaw tight. "I appreciate it though, you know. You give me space."

"Too much space."

"But sometimes it's what I want," Seth counters. "I mean, you know how dad can be, acting like it's a federal offense to be upset in his presence if he doesn't know why."

"I am familiar with that one," his mom admits. "Your father can be...persistent."

"Another massive understatement."

"But maybe we need to renegotiate things a little, find somewhere that feels okay. The way it's been going hasn't been working, for any of us." His mom gives him a steady look. "Has it?"

Seth bites his lip and looks away.

"No, I uh, I guess not," he concedes.

But it could be a relief to be with his mom sometimes. She didn't ask a lot of questions and she didn't expect him to have answers for everything. She could let things stand, let there be things she didn't know.

If he got sick, if he threw up, his dad would turn on the cross-examination. Is it a Trauma thing or a stomach bug thing? Did you eat anything weird? Did you have a nightmare last night? Was the cream cheese expired? Did your substitute teacher look like Steven again? Did you have the lunchroom tuna again, even though that didn't go so well for you last time, champ?

With his mom, he'd just find a ginger ale and a pack of Saltines waiting for him on his nightstand. No dramatics, no interrogation, no expectation that he plumb the depths of his psyche to pinpoint the precise cause or causes of his vomit.

You threw up; here's some ginger ale and some bland crackers.

Dr. Max would probably point out that he was putting a good spin on things, that he was yet again ignoring large chunks of the truth to focus on the upside of his mom's distance, of her avoidance and her stillness and her remove.

But Dr. Max didn't get everything. He wasn't wrong, but he wasn't fully right either. Things didn't always have to be so hard or so complicated, and Seth didn't always have to put words to every experience and every symptom and every bad stomach day and every bad brain day.

Sometimes you could just put on the fucking helmet and ride away and not have to scrutinize everything so much.

"And I know it'll take time to earn your trust."

"Mom, I trust—"

"Seth." His mom gives him a gentle look. "It's okay. I know it'll take time, but if you want to talk more, I'll be there, okay?"

"Okay."

"I don't want to be so disconnected from what's going on with you anymore." She pauses, eyes glistening. "And I don't want to make you feel like you have to hide from me."

"I don't," Seth insists.

"Seth…"

"Okay. I just…I know it really hurt you." Seth's voice breaks, eyes suddenly warm and itchy. "I-I didn't want to make it keep hurting all the time."

"You have never hurt me, Seth. Do you understand that?"

Seth has a brief flash of a memory, crossing the street with his mother, his pudgy little kid hand in her's.

"It doesn't always feel like that," he admits softly.

His mom gives him a pained smile, eyes crinkling. "Maybe that one'll take time too, huh?"

"Maybe."

"And I'd like to go see Dr. Max with you, if that would help." She smirks. "Or maybe just to convince him I'm still alive and well." She nudges his shoulder gently with her own.

"Mom, I'm sorry." Seth groans. "I didn't mean-"

"I know," his mom interrupts him, voice firm. "But I earned that one."

"This is kind of weird," Seth points out. "Usually you're the one detailing all of the things I've done wrong."

His mom laughs a little. "Feels a little unnatural?"

"Up is down, down is up, dogs laying with cats..." Seth trails off, biting his lip. "It's a new day in the Cohen family, huh?"

"Something like that." His mom exhales a long breath. "I hope, anyway. I think we're about due for it. And I would like to keep talking about it, me coming to therapy with you." She pauses, giving Seth a searching look. "If you want that, of course."

Seth lets the idea sit with him for a few moments before responding.

"Yeah, I, uh, I think it would be good," he says finally, slowly. "To talk."

His mom doesn't hammer out the details or ask a dozen questions to make sure he really means it or rehash any old ground or acknowledge that he's sniffling and wiping tears from his eyes, and she doesn't launch into an effusive speech about what a diligent little trauma victim he's been, to take so many steps towards his own recovery.

"I'd like that," she says simply, her thumb running in light circles across the back of his hand. "Thank you for being here."