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Tommy Watson visits his mother’s grave for the first time twenty years after she died.
Because he only learnt her name when he was eighteen, and the time went too quick while he was waiting to be ready. Except, he’s still not, won’t ever be, doesn’t really know how anyone could prepare themselves enough to be ready.
Beloved Mother, Daughter and Wife.
He doesn’t know if that's true.
Though he kneels, and places the bouquet of mixed matched flowers gently by her tombstone. He wants to make a joke, a soft ‘fancy seeing you here’, or a ‘long time no see’ that will have no one laughing but makes him feel significantly more shitty about this whole thing.
Ranboo and Tubbo are in the car a few hundred feet away, he can barely see them, he imagines they’re chatting. Can see the way Ranboo’s eyes squint when he smiles and Tubbo talks with his whole body, he knows they’re watching him, instead of talking like he imagines.
Concern evident in the small frowns that they wear together, eyes boring into the back of his head with love and tenderness and furious protectiveness. He had to do this, by himself, though he wishes he could feel their hands in his because he is scared.
Terrified of this whole situation, really, because how does one introduce themselves to their deceased mother? What does he say? What can he say?
She's missed so much, there's so much she doesn't know and she’s been alone for so long, what if his company is not what she's looking for and instead wants his brothers or Phil. How can he compete with them again, and again, and still be there after all this time?
So he does the only thing he can think of, something he’s been told to do instead of all the self-destructive tendencies his partners and therapist are forcing out of him through nothing more than caring about him.
He loves them, they love him so he might as well try.
“Dear lord,” He brings his hands together, clasps them tightly, trousers damp from the morning dew that covers the grass like tears as it mourns along with him. “Is she there with you?” They’ve had this conversation before, though this is the first time he does so without a doubt of if he believes or not.
A crow caws in the distance, that reply is not for him, he thinks but at least there's someone out here listening to him. He’s not sure how comforting the crow, an animal he’s not overly fond of, can really be.
“I’m sorry,” He starts, when the crow stops, when the wind calms it’s blowing, when the grass soaks his trousers and he can feel the dampness on his knees. “For not visiting more, well, at all.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I didn’t know her name, or how to find her, or who she is, and-”
Deep breath, he’s got this, he will be okay.
“Tell her I’m sorry too.” He doesn’t think the apology is his to make, he hasn’t done anything wrong but it feels like he should and so he does because he has had a lifetime of overdue apologies and had vowed to be better than those that came before him.
He is his fathers son.
He is his mother incarnated.
“I love you.” Straight at her, words whispered to photos lacking life and memories of love undone, for her once and always. She should know that she is loved even when she’s gone because she was love personified, if the way she is mourned says anything about the life she lived. “She knows I love her, right?”
She, Kristin, his mother, the pretty lady hung on the wall, has always been everything and now she is reduced to hollow words of affirmations chosen by people that were thrown into their grief on a day of new life.
Beloved Mother, Daughter and Wife.
Surely she is worth more than those words. She had to have been more than those words, love, she was said to be love and yet in her final resting place she was reduced to what others believed her to be.
“Tell me,” He starts to ask, he will never receive a reply, it will not ease his conscience, it will not help sleep come easier, and it will not bring her back. He asks despite it, it is all he has left. “Does she regret it?”
“Because it was me or her, right?” She loved him, she gave up everything for him and so she must. He is not the person you give it all for, his family have made that clear. He is glad the question goes unanswered, the truth is a burden he could not bear and he does not know how he would live with that fate bestowed upon him.
“They choose her,” He admits, to the quietness that pertains the grave and the woman inside it; to the God he’s never truly had a reply from but blessed him with his two favourite people and so he forgives everything else for he is privileged to have them. “Everytime.” Words muttered and whispered, kept to his chest to save himself from the harm they cause.
“But…” She was different, she always has been, she has always been the centre of their universe, the sun they revolved around, the very reason their hearts beat and- “She chose me.”
He is rarely chosen, when it all comes down to it. His family did not want him, and though they love him Ranboo and Tubbo pick each other, not always but enough for him to notice.
Or maybe he always notices because he’s fucked up and jealous and far too paranoid for his own good and they are watching him. They are sat in an empty grave yard at seven in the fucking morning on a Saturday for him. In Tubbos beat up car that barely runs and they can’t afford to fix, with no heating and no conversations just this pure unbridled love for him that he doesn’t know what to do with.
He opens his eyes, turns his head so he can see them, they’re still watching, they nod and he turns back.
“Tell her I say thank you.” He owes her everything, for she gave him them. “For being the first person to choose me, and not them, though I wish it wasn’t a choice between us.” He pauses, considering his words, not that they really matter. “They say…” Another pause, another breath, another moment. “That I’m just like her.”
He will never know. It is never going to be completely clear to him how like her he is because he has no memories of her, doesn’t know the sound of her voice, they way it wobbles when she laughs, if her eyes creases like Ranboos or if she talks with her whole body like Tubbo.
If she is where Wilbur gets his musical ability from or if that was a generous gift from the heavens, if Techno’s obnoxiously smart brain came from her or if their smiles are the same. If when he looks in the mirror it’s her face he’s seeing or his fathers, or his brothers.
He can not see the resemblance, but teachers and family friends always say how they look just so alike and still he does not see that when his own face is reflected back at him, he sees the shell of a man who could have done so much more if she did not have to choose him.
“I hope they lied.” He whispers, the words coming out before he can stop them, a hushed confession so raw that he cannot help but let the tears fall, he hopes they lied. “You-” He’s talking to her again, he needs this to be for her and her only. “You have to have been better.”
“They-” He wipes his face on his sleeve, hands still joined. “They made me like this, but they can’t have done this to you too.” They loved her, and if they did this to her then they are truly bad people, there is no redemption, no forgiveness left for them. “They did this to me because they love you so how are we anything alike?”
They… Ruined his life, through neglect and hatred and false love and- it’s abuse really, when he stops beating around the bush, and covering it with nicer words and love he still holds for those people, but that's what it was at the end of a really long day.
He was abused, because she was loved.
So no, they aren’t anything alike, or maybe they still are. He doesn’t know anything about her life. Maybe they are exactly alike and she is fundamentally a better person than him for she was still love and happiness and everything good in the world while he is hate and anger and everything bad.
“I’m sorry. I- I’m going to go.” Though she deserves more, so does he, and that means leaving at the moment because he needs to be somewhere, anywhere, else and being with the two best people in his life sounds good at the moment. “I love you.” He hates her too, wishes she was here in the same thought.
“Look after her please.” He asks gently, he hopes she's happy. “Amen.” His knees are still damp when he stands, green grass stains adorn his trousers and mud on his legs. He wipes as much as he can off and can already hear Ranboos complaints when the stains are still there after washing, he smiles involuntarily and makes his way back to the car.
He is twenty years old and just met his mother for the first time.
He was eighteen and arguing with his family.
He was sixteen and yelling for help.
He is learning to be okay.
He will be okay.