Orange streetlights fill a sterile room as an elderly woman rests on her bed, with faint chuckles coming out of her every once in a while. She isn't alone, as a young-looking man sits beside her, gently holding her leathery hand as they talk.

"Let's not forget when you brought that damn raccoon home, swearing up and down that it was a cat. Oh, your father had to spend the next three hours getting it out of the house." She chuckles, making the 'young' man do the same.

"To be fair, I just thought it was fat." He's heard this story a dozen or so times in the last two years alone, but he likes to hear what she remembers. "You certainly put up with a lot from us kids." He wryly sighs out.

"Oh yes. But, what else are parents for? Children...they'll always find ways to surprise you. Even now, Sarah can't bother to leave her cushy New York apartment for a weekend, and Roger only cares about the will. I don't know what he expects." Her tone becomes less cheerful.

"Well, can't say anything about Roger, he doesn't talk to me much, but cut lil Sarah some slack, she's gotta get every hour she can manage. It's tough living these days."

"Yes, yes. It'd be one thing if it was just aged loneliness, but the real pain," She gives a deep exhale, complete with a rattle from her lungs, "Is that they've left me with just you to rely on."

The son is shaken, but hopes he can avert the path. "I know I can be a bit busy myself, Ma, but I come down whenever I can."

"You do, like a stray I was foolish enough to feed." One of the streetlights flicker, and what once was a warm glow into the room creates stark shadows across the woman's face. "Oh, what a monstrous child you were. Always so desperate for attention, causing some fight or breaking some rule of common sense. You'd find the most aggravating excuses too."

It's nothing he hasn't heard before. "I know I was a pretty wild brat back then, but that was ages ago."

"Yes, ages I cannot get back. Ages of incessant whining and dramatics and stress, stress that aged me into this." She gestured to her fragile form, still not looking the man in the eyes.

The man bites his tongue for a moment, but...if these conversations are never remembered, what's the harm? "It didn't have to be that way. I was desperate for attention, but only because-"

"Because I liked your siblings better, yes that's no shocker to anybody." She wheezes out with a wave of her hand.

"You...I...what?"

"Please, Eddie. Do you think I never heard a joke about the middle child, or that I never had introspection? It's been almost 60 years now, let's be honest. Roger was a spiteful bore, but he was my lovely eldest son, top of his class and with an excellent career. Sarah was my only girl, and she had friends, grace, and beauty. You...well, you said it yourself, a Wild Brat. The writing was on the wall, but what would I get out of it? Nothing. Nothing that outweighed the benefits of your siblings, at least. More fool me." She recounted, with the mans jaw merely hanging open with each additional jab.

"So you knew? You saw me suffering, begging to be seen and recognized and just...didn't care enough!?" He struggles to restrain his voice, he doesn't want the dutiful nurses to come in right now. 

"I did care, in a way, everyone would treat me like the devil if I didn't. But you just weren't worth the extra effort. You're still here, aren't you? Caring to your ailing mother as she did you: from a distance with no love lost."

"I'm here because I love you, you're my mother for crying out loud, no ifs ands or buts!" This made the woman wheeze a wry laugh against her will.

"Well, clearly you could thrive just fine off of the minimum if that's how you really feel."

Silence filled the room, as the man who had seen so much behind the surface of the world in the last decade or so could still not fathom...this.

"What did I do to you?" He whispers.

The woman sits with it, and shrugs. "You didn't do anything, Edward. You just weren't good enough. But what does it matter, you seem just...fine..." For the first time since this moment of lucidity, she turns to face her son. "Yes...yes you look quite alright. Far too alright. Are you really Edward? Did he have a son without telling me? You look...far too young." The orange bloom did not light his eyes anymore, and the stark shadows showed the almost doll-like coldness to his skin, and the glassed over gleam to his eyes.

"I am Edward, Ma." Technically, a Masquerade breach. But, his Clan was known for its dramatics.

"You...how dare you!" Her eyes become small and hateful as she begins to claw towards him. "How dare you sit there and watch this poor woman die, while you...you look so young! So full of life! You took that from me, took more of my life away, and gave nothing back to me, you ungrateful little shit!" Finally, the conversation veered back to where it always seems to end, with mourning and begging for her lost youth.

He stands, considering it, while she continues to claw at his chest and hurl insults. Maybe this time, with her cruelty on full display in far too lucid of details, he really should do it. "Bless" her with the curse of stagnation in this frail, enfeebled moment. Maybe he should just kill her, or force one of the nurses to do it. It'd be all too easy.

Well, he "could" do those things, as in physically having the ability. But he can't, not really.

Instead, he looks her in those hateful eyes. "Best get some sleep, Ma. And forget these last few minutes."

With a wave of hypnotic suggestion, her rage is pacified, her grasping claws become the leathery hands of a gentle elder once more, and she begins to lull back into peaceful slumber. As she does, one of the nurses begins to enter, one that Edward is familiar with.

"Everything alright, Ned? Did she sundown again?" She asks.

"Unfortunately. Nothing too out of the ordinary though, just got her to sleep." He says with a false smile.

"Damn. Ever thought of becoming a nurse? Could use skills like that!" She half-jokes, making sure his mother was comfortable and safe in the medical bed. 

"Nah, I got no bedside manner aside from...dear old Grandma here."

"Fair enough, from what the other nurses told me your dad was the same. Visiting hours will be done soon, but I'll give you a bit more time while I make some rounds."

"No worries, I was just about to leave." Following routine, he leans over and gives his mother a kiss on the forehead. His body nearly recoils, but stays the course. The next words almost die in his throat, but he can't escape it as they whisper out.

"Love you, ma. See you soon."