Word Count: 1646 (One day I'll actually have a short solo. That day is not today. OTL)

Despite the killer headache, the bump on his head was a bit easier to ignore than the pain in his left wrist. After waking up from his disaster of an experience in Elysion, Paris had been unable to return to sleep due to the discomfort caused by his injuries -- which, truthfully, weren’t as bad as he supposed they could have been. For the most part, he suffered a few dings and nicks, plus a rather large lump on the head from the kick he’d suffered from at the hands … feet… of that gaudily clothed pink jackass from the Negaverse.

Worst of all was his wrist, which, after a three hour wait in the hospital waiting room, was now encased in a hard white brace that covered much of his forearm but, thankfully, left his fingers free to move, the apparatus itself cinched in place with bright pink bands of Velcro. Damn that Nega-b***h and her murderous curling iron! Did she not realize how positively unsexy it was to have to wear one of these?!

“Six weeks and you can take it off. That’s not so bad.”

Paris frowned at the voice and felt his head throb. “Right. Okay. You can go home now,” he said as he and the blonde woman walking closely beside him made their way out of the hospital. He attempted to turn in a completely different direction to leave her there, but she caught his upper arm and stopped him.

“Baby, don’t be like that. Let me drive you back to the house.”

He glared at her, tempted to argue against her offer, but he didn’t exactly relish the idea of walking all the way home, or cramming himself onto a bus with half the city. “Fine,” he grumbled as he pulled his arm out of her grasp and glanced off to the side with a moody ‘hmph.’

His mother smiled a tiny, victorious smile and then began to lead him toward the hospital parking deck, where a shiny, dark blue rental car was waiting for them. No doubt she’d acquired it -- as well as her plane ticket -- by the graces of her wealthy employer. It must be nice for her, having so much money at her disposal and so many opportunities waiting for her back in New York. The selfish b***h. He imagined it must have been difficult to drop everything in her glamorous, socialite life just to come see him.

“Why are you even here?” he asked, hand on the passenger side door, preparing to open it.

“Don’t be silly. Your father called me and told me you’d hurt yourself,” she said. Paris hadn’t told either of his parents what had really happened. How was he supposed to? He doubted they would even believe him, considering he could hardly believe it himself. The fact that he had another identity -- that he was supposed to be one of these people going around the city fighting against one another -- hadn’t managed to sink in yet, even after the previous night’s battle.

Instead, he’d told his father, and then his mother, a half-truth -- that he’d woken up from a nightmare and fallen out of bed, at which point he’d landed on his wrist wrong and bumped his head against a leg of his bedside table.

“I had to make sure you were okay, especially if it was bad enough for you to need to see a doctor,” his mother continued, pulling out a small, black car control in order to press one of its buttons and unlock the vehicle.

“In other words, Dad didn’t want to deal with it himself,” Paris replied, jerking the door open and plopping inside.

He didn’t look at her when she slid behind the wheel, nor did he say anything as she pulled out of the parking deck to begin to make her way carefully through the city streets. It was an odd experience, being in a car with his mother driving. He couldn’t remember her ever doing so when he’d been younger, but now she drove through the endless traffic as if it were second nature to her. It was strange how things had changed for her since he’d been small. Once upon a time she’d been helping Dad with his store and working weekends at a diner for a little extra cash. Now she wore fancy suits and designer heels, and showered him with a healthy allowance to try and make up for the fact that she’d left him in this horrid place and only came to visit when something went wrong.

“How are you doing in school?” she asked him when they stopped at a red light.

“Peachy,” he lied.

She wasn’t fooled. “Your father says you’re at Hillworth now, that you’ve been getting into trouble.”

“If you already knew that, then why did you bother asking?”

“Baby…”

“Stop calling me that!” he snapped at her, tearing his eyes away from the passenger side window long enough to glare at her. “I’m not a baby anymore!”

She frowned at him, either upset by his outburst or displeased by his attitude. He couldn’t tell which. She started driving again moments later, and didn’t attempt to say another word for a few minutes, allowing him to wallow in silence. When she did speak, she sounded hesitant, wary of upsetting him further. “Maybe I should have taken you to New York with me,” she said.

‘You think?’ Paris thought, though he didn’t say it. Instead, he said, “I wouldn’t have gotten into any less trouble there.”

“Your father’s obviously not looking out for you,” she argued.

“You’re the one who left, Mom. How’s that for looking out for me?” he countered, glaring out the window at the pedestrians on the sidewalk. Years ago, he wouldn’t have questioned going with her, but it was too late for that now. She’d made her choice, and now he was making his -- he’d rather stay with his father.

If his comment hurt her at all, he didn’t notice. “You don’t want to, then?” she asked.

“Of course I don’t want to.”

“You could still dance there.”

“Me not wanting to go has nothing to do with dancing. I’d rather stay with Dad, and I have friends here.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah, is that so hard to believe?”

He heard her let out a sigh. Even still, if she was growing frustrated with his attitude, he didn’t hear it in her voice. He couldn’t tell if she was simply pretending or if she was just that patient. “Who are they? Your friends…” she wondered.

“Why should I tell you?”

“Baby…” she tried again.

“Ladon, okay? I have a friend named Ladon.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“What? No!” he nearly shouted, returning a glare to her. “You think I can’t hang out with boys without them being my boyfriend? Way to assume things, Mom.”

“I was just asking.”

“Well stop asking. I don’t want to talk anymore.”

She left him to silence again, focusing on her driving while Paris focused on glaring random pedestrians into nonexistence. This is what he hated most about seeing her -- not the memories of her retreating back, but her failed attempts to act like a mother to him, her questions and her oppressive concern and her comments of “I should take you to New York” which he knew she didn’t mean, but instead merely uttered as a means of making it seem as if she thought about him during her fancy parties and her long hours in the office of her handsome, lucrative lawyer boss.

He didn’t want her concern, he didn’t want to go to New York with her, and he definitely didn’t want to talk to her about the things going on in his life -- friend drama and school woes and relationship troubles and his damned magical powers and crazy costume and all the crap that came with it. What he wanted was to go home, collapse onto his bed, and sleep for a few days, then maybe get up and find something to do to distract him from the fact that he was now, for all intents and purposes, a terrorist -- unwilling as he may be to go along with the whole thing.

When she pulled up to the curb in front of the house some ten minutes later, Paris wasted no time detaching his seatbelt and opening the door to climb out, about to slam the door and head up to the porch without a backward glance. His mother didn’t seem inclined to let him, and reached over to grab his arm again, careful as she was with his injury.

“I’ll be back in town on the eighteenth,” she gently informed him.

“Why?” he asked.

“For your birthday. I’ll take you out to dinner.”

He rolled his eyes and let out a huff, successfully pulling his arm away. “Great. I’ll look forward to it,” he said, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm in his voice.

“Baby!” she tried a third time, calling after him, and he didn’t bother to correct her. He was already stomping through the gate and up the short walkway to the porch.

She wouldn’t follow him, at least not as long as Dad was in the house, and Paris was grateful for the strain between his parents when it actually worked in his favor. He slammed the front door before she could so much as shout another word, leaving her to her fancy car and her flight up north as he stalked passed his father on the couch, ready to close himself off in the solitude of his bedroom. He didn’t bother to turn any of the lights on, and merely kicked off his shoes and yanked off his jeans before sliding beneath the covers, burying his head under the pillow and hoping against hope that he would soon fall into a blissful, dreamless sleep.