watchful eyes (tronnor)

twenty six; the anger of the witch

(sorry if the formatting is weird I'm doing this from my phones & if i got connor's siblings' names wrong oops forgive me it's been awhile since I've watched a video with all of them)

it is funny, she thinks, how her son's friends like to refer to her only as "connor's mother". it is true, i am his mother. but it was still strange, to be reduced to something so small. she was a mother first, yes. but she was also a wife, she was also a christian, she was also a sister, she was so much more than just "connor's mother".

but it in the end, in a tapestry woven around connor franta, she knew she would always just be connor's mother. to his friends, who wove her into stories only because she was connor's mother, she would only ever be that.

she did not mind much. she was connor's mother first. (she was also nicola's mother and dustin's mother and brandon's mother, but to connor's friends, it only ever mattered that she was connor's mother.)

there were things that came along with being connor's mother, though, and those were the things that managed to bother her now.

connor was a puzzle, like the directions to an origami child. he was almost understandable, yet something completely otherworldly at the same time. he dated lana, he had brought her home, he had let her shake hands with his father and he had brought her to his room (door open, always open). he loved lana, he must have. you do not date someone if you do not love them.

yet she watched his eyes wander to troye mellet's hands and eyes and lips and broken and empty soul.

she watched him smile when troye entered the room, in a way that he did not smile when lana entered the room.

it burned her and crushed her and broke her and shattered her like she was a glass thing and she had no soul. she wondered what it made her, if she had given birth to someone who chose to act on a sin, on a thought that passed through a cage of starving animals.

he had chosen lana.

she knew that he had chosen lana.
that knowledge had always washed through her like a cleansing river, like a hand releasing her from fear and worry.

i only want what is best for him, she thought. i do what is best for our family.

connor had chosen lana.

yet connor's mother watches lana leave the house with a washcloth around her hands and a sudden fear in her eyes.

they were done, she knew. there was something in the shake of lana's hands, in the curl of her lip, in the faint nothingness in her eyes. connor, in the basement, did not make a sound. he was silent and she was terrified.

she wondered if god would still love her as he loves all his children, even if she had helped create a thing that was wrong; a child who could never understand. who, when given the freedom to chose, could not chose correctly. who had watched the cut of troye's body and the tan of his arms and the dip of his collarbone. who had been blinded by something that was not real or true or holy as love should be. something that was wrong and only hurt as hell hurt.

"connor," she says quietly, whispering (hissing) into the basement. "connor, did you break up with lana?"

his voice comes back very small; "yes."

the word curls around her neck and her thoughts are choked. "you should try and get her back. tell her you made the wrong choice." she prays he tries to understand. he needed to chose correctly because the world could not tolerate a wrong thing (and he was wrong). i only want what is best for him, she prays. please let him want what is best for him too.

"i think - i - " he does not continue and she does not want him to. something burns inside of her and she wonders if it is hate or fear that lit it.

"connor," she says. "do as i say."

he does not answer.

"connor," she says. her voice is hard, but so is the world. so is the truth. he did not understand, and she did. until connor understood too, she would have to direct him. "connor, do as i say."

fear dries her throat. (but it must have been her worry for her son that had lit the angry fire that tried to tell her that the thing that was wrong needed to be cut out of him immediately.) she can see him nod, somewhere in the darkness.