Gen's mouth dropped open. She had really been expecting Paris to come out with some sort of joking good news that was fabricated to just try to throw some light on this whole thing, but he was delivering actual bad news. She promptly burst into tears. She was running on empty, but to hear Paris was getting better and there was proof he was beating cancer was such a flood of relief for her. "Oh my god, are you serious?" she sobbed and then pulled him into a hug, fighting the urge to squeeze him too tight. "Shit, I've been terrified it was going to end up like Mom. As soon as I saw how sick you were when I got back, I've been worried sick about you. Not that I wasn't before, but it was worse then. A fucking reality check. But what do you want to do? Are you going to go in aggressively, or do you not want to risk that? It's a huge call to make, buddy. What does she mean by completely incapacitate you? Like, bedridden? Wheelchair? What does that mean?" She was fussing over him, trying to smooth down his shirt, checking him over for any signs all this was fake or something.

"Look at him, darling. Just look at him, he looks so young and weak." Effectively, he just looked asleep at the moment. But the entwined network of medical wires and tubes holding him together made him look so broken. She sat forward, stroking her son's hair. He was motionless, no hint of movement beyond the rising and falling of his chest with the ventilator. Every system in his body was being medically slowed and controlled so he could fight this. It was the only way. "And Sash looks so young and innocent too. It doesn't seem right for him to have that weighing him down. He's got a fractured skull. It's not like it's just a bump that can be fixed with a band-aid."