2019-09-27 - A Mother and Son Heart to Heart

Was there something he missed? An old photo that she hid from him? He wouldn't be in it. He's sure of it. Something that belonged to the family? He was desperate and if he didn't want to give up two of his own bones or his memories or... He made her get rid of everything she or the family had ever owned. Now he might be paying the price for it.

He was swallowing his pride here and could just imagine what she would say to him-- hearing that mocking tone in her voice. Seeing those cold eyes. Feeling-

His phone rings just steps away from her door. Fishing into his pocket to pull it out, he sees Isabella's name on full display along with that smiling photograph of her that he uses for her avatar. Why was she calling him now? Now of all times??

Retreating a few steps from Apartment 603, his back pressed to the hallway wall, phone to his ear, he murmurs in response to something said, "Could be better. Yourself? Look, I called you earlier because I'd heard word about Captain de la Vega." He sounded like death with just how heavy with phlegm his words come out, all spoken through a clenched jaw as he keeps his tone steady, controlled after having been interrupted from his task.

Reede had a lot to say. She always does. And Byron didn't have the time to listen. He'll relay what he knows, if just to share information. Did she say that she felt like drowning children once? Haven't they all felt that way before? He wanted to drown her now!

At some point, his tone rings clear, "I don't have many other options here." Marshall said that he at one point, he was thinking of giving up his relationship to Bennie. He tells her that. "Would /that/ have worked?" It probably wouldn't have. Not in a way that would be helpful. Eventually, he tries to get her to hang up, his words holding a weight of truth to them, "Bella, I have to go. There's things that I need to do before we get that casket and before we perform that funeral."

By then, he's already pushing off from against the wall he was leaning on, the phone lowering when he says, tone distracted, "Sure. Talk to you later."

Talk to you later. He replays his own words within his mind as he continues forward, slipping that phone back into his pocket. He knew that she was home, he could sense her. After taking in a labored breath, his head spinning, he raps his knuckles firmly against the door.

When he's let in, the apartment looks the way it always does. Minimalistic, as he'd preferred. Nothing personal displayed in any way, aside from a photograph that he'd given her of his time in L.A. He looked so proud in that suit, grinning widely at the camera. He had made her decorate the room with that photo, one of the few 'personal touches' he'd allowed. Would that be enough? A photograph from early on in his career. He could've used a haircut back then and he didn't look any older than what seventeen? Though he was twenty-one at the time. The Byron Thorne in that look picture looked happy. He was far away from here, but was he really happy?

He was probably happier than how Byron felt right at this moment.

Rarely visiting his mother without his suit and tie, feeling that this was a way to rub it into her face that /he/ made it, despite his flushed face, that fevered look within his glassy eyes, he's wearing just that-- a gray ensemble with a striped navy and dark green tie. He looked put together, his hair slicked back at the top and Byron would have been able to pull it off too if he didn't look like death warmed over.

Mary Thorne doesn't comment on her son's appearance for now. There are times when she doesn't even look on him, simply wandering around in her prison with an outstretched hand to trace an idle line to follow her path. Though she can't really help herself but to steal a few glances his way. He was clearly ill and in a way, this pleased her. When their eyes do meet, he's confronted with her familiar uncaring, or was it hateful, gaze? "It's not Sunday today." She'll finally say. "And we both know that you're usually far too busy to come and visit your mother." These words are more mocking than anything, but she smiles a touch, perhaps playing it off as some little tease in the way that other child-parent relationships tend to go over the years.

Byron knows it for what it is. She was being a bitch.

It doesn't help that his head was pounding and that he was swaying unsteadily on his feet where he stood, he just couldn't focus in on her. He couldn't pry into her mind to sense her laughing at him, being smug to see him in this condition.

On approaching the photograph, he swipes it from the end table that it was situated on, tearing it out from within the frame to tuck away into his suit's breast pocket. He'll leave the now empty frame laying on its side just where he had found it to further wander with scrutiny around the apartment. Picking up a random decorative box that he finds on a cabinet shelf in the livingroom, he asks, as he rummages through the contents, "Did you keep anything from the old house? Family photographs? Part of dad's baseball card collection?" There were jewelry in the box, some most likely given to her by his father. "Anything that I've ever given to you?"

If anything, just watching her son manhandle that box brought Mary Thorne distress. Yes, a few of those pieces were given to her by Stephen. She'd done well enough so far to keep them hidden away from Byron and now he'd found them. She could hardly breath as she watched near helplessly as her son pulls out each and every piece- the gold and diamond pendant that Stephen said belonged to his mother and a random silver ring with a tiny amethyst in it that he gifted her when they were still teenagers. Her wedding ring was long gone, Byron had gotten to it early on.

"No. You told me to get rid of them." Her voice is steady as she lies, "We were to have a new start together."

There's this moment of quiet now with Byron contemplating what to do. For whatever reason, he pours the shiny and glistening content within his hand back into the box and resets it onto the shelf. Perhaps he's not thinking clearly or maybe the significance of the jewelry means nothing to him at this moment, but he just simply ignores them and moves on, looking all the more feverish and desperate. "You said that the last time I'd asked."

"Byron, what do you want? What are you looking for?" Mary finally asks as she trails behind her son, her own frantic and angry eyes searching him for answers, "Come, you should sit. You don't look well at all. I'll put on a kettle for--"

He is quick to cut his mother off, swerving to face her, his tall form looming menacingly over hers, "Now you ask that!" His voice is harsh, as in hoarse, but also booming, "Only now do you care about how I'm feeling? Anything about my welfare at all!" The heat and discomfort of his illness helps to ramp up this anger mixed in with this long-standing issue that he's always had with his mother. One of his hands lashes out to grasp at her in a vise-like grip once he notices her try to back away. "Why now, mom?!" He asks loudly, giving her a slight form a violent shake. If there's fear in her eyes, it's mostly hidden behind her own look of contempt when her son stares down into them. "Are you afraid? Is that the reason why you act as if you care?"

With his mother held tightly within his grip, Byron drags her across the room. His body ached, he felt like he was going to throw up and yet his own murderous rage pushes him onward that he doesn't even register Mary's struggles to dig her heels into the wood floor. The French Doors are swung open and they were out on the balcony now, feeling the warm drizzle to match the dark gray skies that expand far into the horizon.

"Mother, LOOK AT EVERYTHING I'VE GIVEN TO YOU." He has to pull her up to standing, as somewhere along the way, she'd tripped and he was literally dragging her across the floor. His free hand gestures towards the bay, "All of this, mother. All of this is yours!" The view, the luxuries, Byron had always tried to rub this in her face any time she did something to annoy him-- which is almost always.

Mary Thorne knew that she had reason to worry. She could see that burning intensity within her son's eyes. She had always pushed his buttons in one way or another and while there were times where he'd react violently, there was something different. Maybe she'd pushed him too far this time.

When he holds his mother's body pressed up against the balcony rail so that she could get a good look at the bay, putting his full weight against her, all those years of her neglect, the hatred he could feel coming off from her start to seep into Byron's mind. He could do this. He could throw her off the balcony and be rid of her for good. God knows that he wanted to. That she deserved it.

Feeling the pressure pushing up behind her, Mary's eyes just stare down at the craggy rocks below. If he could get her far enough to fall into the bay, her body would break against those rocks and be washed away into the sea. If not, she would simply splatter on the guard rail below or the lush grass below which would mean her blood would need to be hosed off, her body carted off for all to see. Her son deserved that, to find the name of his Apartments and his own reputation tainted in such a way. For the briefest of seconds, she almost welcomed death if she could pay him back in such a fashion.

And yet the more force she feels him place upon her, the more she struggled against him-- wriggling out of his grasp while ensuring that she was not the one to go over the railing. He was sick. Unsteady. She could feel the fever on his skin and the glaze of his eyes. Twisting within his grasp, they both fight for dominance until she looses her footing and slips out of his grip, her back against the railing.

"How does it feel, mother, to be this afraid?" Byron taunts her as he closes the distance between them. He was exhausted, walking on unstable legs, he swayed and lurched with each and every step. Mary pressed her back further against the side glass rail.

If she could regain her footing, she scramble back into the apartment and maybe even out the door and into the hall. Or she could muster up her courage and slam into him, hopefully pushing him over the rail into who knows where, the woman didn't care. She didn't want to plead with him, never wanting to see her beg. He didn't deserve that much. Not from her. So as she tends to do in almost any situation regarding her son, she remains silent and vigilant, this time, she's looking for her way out.

He was standing over where she sat recoiled on the floor, breathing heavily, before he buckles forward into a violent coughing fit. If she didn't know better, she'd assume that he'd hack out a lung. This was her chance. She wouldn't let him kill her. Not after what happened to Stephen. In her own desperation and possibly for other, much darker reasons, Mary launches herself towards her son, their bodies colliding, the force making him stumble back against the railing HARD. He reaches for her hair, tangling his hand within her long locks to give it a good yank as she tries as she might to push Byron over the edge as he'd tried to do with her just moments ago.

"Do it." He says with a wild look within his eyes, "Take us both down." Then maybe, just maybe it would all be over and he would finally be at peace and away from the darkness which had plagued his life for as far as he could remember. That sickness in his mind. Yet neither of them were willing to relent to the other. While the lure of blissful peace and finality beckoned him, Byron wasn't going to just give in. And Mary knew that if Byron went over, there was a good chance that she'd be pulled along with him. Was this a chance she was willing to take?

They were both at a standstill with neither of them budging, but they could feel the sheer force of the other pressing against them. Then, the ping of a text message can be heard from his phone, breaking part of the tension between mother and son. Neither dared to take their eyes off of the other, staring with this paranoid and rage fueled intensity-- neither trusting the other to back down first. Then she could feel it, that crackling sensation surrounding his hands and only then does she slowly relieve that pressure against him in an attempt to step away. Some of her hair was still wrapped up around several of his fingers and she could clearly see the effects of static making them frizz and rise.

Slowly, Byron allows one of his hands to drop and dig deep into his pocket to fetch his phone once the electrical transference builds up within his hand still entangled with his mother's hair, his fingers only clenching tightly onto her when he finally breaks his gaze to read the message on his phone. There was a special sound that played when Lilith sends a message. That's the sound that he just heard.

(TXT to Byron) Lilith: Bleh, if I die in my sleep, I love your infuriating guts. This is ridiculous. I've never been this sick.

Something about the message makes him take pause, it lightens his mood incredibly despite how awful he felt. Rather than responding to it right away, not while he was in such a precarious predicament, he returns to phone to his pocket. He had his mother to deal with. Rather than continue to hold her hostage, he's careful when releasing his grip, allowing those sparks of electricity to die down as he does so.

Now Mary is able to retreat in full and while her son may think little of this incident, it's not something that she ever would forget. In fact, it looks as if Byron had already forgotten about it, there being no concern about how they nearly killed one another. Instead, that phone is in his hand as he steps back into the living area, "I need to take this." It's not spoken in an entirely casual way, so there's hints that he knows that he lost his cool, but not enough for him to concern himself with any of it.

"If there's ever a chance of finding what you're looking for, you need to return home." Mary finally says, though there's no kindness in her voice. She'd stopped trying to get him to purchase the Thorne House after the last time he blew up at her about it. More than anything, she didn't care if he found what he was looking for in their old home. Mary knew that her son dreaded being anywhere near the place, so while it didn't bring her any gleeful delight, it would leave her satisfied that he would need to face his demons once again. That's the only reason why when would offer him any advice, especially after what he'd done here. But even she knows that when he recovers, IF he recovers from this, they would both be doing the same song and dance as they tend to on any Sunday that he comes to visit her.

Deep within his heart, Byron knew that he would have to return back home. Even as he taps away a response to Lilith's message, his mother's advice is heard clearly in his mind. Between responses with Winslow, there's another name that he pulls up on his phone.

Byron: Olivia, I have a favor to ask you.
Olivia: Hey, handsome. I was wondering when I'd hear from you again. What can I do for you today?
Byron: I need to check for something back home.
Olivia: By home, you mean my place?
Olivia: You know you're always welcome here.