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Syd's tears had her looking all too young, even as her insistence on smoking when she was very obviously not accustomed to cigarettes pointed at a symbolic determination to be viewed as grown up. Ironic, truly, considering how equally childish her avoidance of reading the partnership agreement could be perceived as. Then again, she and Carmy were twins in that respect. Only Sydney's reputation was someone who was left, and Carmen was the one who left, who disappeared and disappointed.
Carmy was so stuck in the role he had inhabited since childhood that he even tried dating the girl he had crushed on as a child, one who had - in theory, as Carmy had no memory of her presence - been there when his mom almost burned their house down. Claire, whom Mikey and Richie had insisted was the love of Carmy's life, as though Richie hadn't spent decades calling Carmen queer in various ways. As though Carmen's failure of masculinity wasn't almost as overt as Pete's, the difference being that as a Berzatto, Carmy inherently belonged in his family whereas Pete as an outsider could be dunked on without consequence. Stevie was assumed to be gay in spite of literally being married, so of course Carmy could be both belittled, emasculated, and also never once asked what he actually wanted.
"I visited Mom."
"Oh, shit." Carmen Berzatto returning to his childhood home was a sign of insanity. They say insanity is doing the same act over and over again expecting a different result, well...
"This is - this is what you do, you run away when things get hard," Richie wasn't wrong. Carmy was running, had been using The Bear to hide from what his Mom had done to him, her calling him handsome ran through his head making him want to burn himself worse than he had after Mikey died. Mikey died and Carmy wanted nothing more than to join him.
Mom had cried, had said the words Carmy had always hoped to hear someday but not for the right reasons, no. She wanted to be in his life again, as though she wasn't the reason he barely had anything that could be considered a life to begin with. As though she hadn't touched him in ways he could never explain, her outward expressions of insanity around his extended family were the only problems there.
"And I'd never tell you to go visit her, but -" Uncle Lee had no idea what asking that of Carmy would have meant. Uncle Lee had replaced Carmy in some sense when, well, when he had dated Donna, when Carmy was what, seven to ten, maybe, when Mikey was a teenager and Natalie was the closest Carm had to a mother at the time, which was in no way what a seven to ten year old boy needed as a parent.
Then again, Uncle Lee hadn't known what Donna had done to Carmy, what she did to Mikey first, when Dad left, what her baby bear boys were made to be in their drunken mother's presence. Sugar was the least loved in the household, but being loved was far from an inherent good, even in a family filled with love that was truly pure, good, just not from Double D.
"When I'm with you, I feel like I'm on fire!"
"Then you shouldn't be near me if I make you feel like shit all the time!"
Carmy had no way of explaining that wasn't what he meant but he tried, and ended up screaming at Claire on her front steps.
"Why're you nervous?"
"Because I think about you. You and Natalie. I know I -I did things and I made things bad and I was awful. I did drink. I did scream. I lied and I yelled. I'm sorry."
"My heart is broken." Carmen never had a heart capable of being broken to begin with. His heart was built from cells wrapped around his mom's dysfunction, and now she was trying to fix herself and it destabilized everything Carmen thought he knew about who he was. Who was he if Mom wasn't a monster? If she could change for the better, what did that say about all the pain she caused him?
"People tell me such wonderful things about you because I didn't do that. I hear about your life from other people. I am now, I'm trying to. I'm trying to make things better. And I'm- I'm here asking if I can be part of your life again." Carmy in essence agreed to that because what else could he do, honestly? Mom was trying, which was more than she had ever truly done before. And maybe it would never be enough, maybe Carmy's only real way of allowing her to be part of his life would be to forfeit life entirely, but maybe he could find a way to do that that would hurt everyone less. He could leave Chicago, leave The Bear as soon as they climbed out of the hole, slowly stop communicating again until everyone assumed it was safe to forget about him and then Carmen could follow Mikey into the abyss that was screaming for him to.
"Did Pete tell you what he did?"
"No, attorney-client privilege, why? What's going on?"
"He's quitting The Bear."
Natalie knew Carm was beginning to resent cooking. He had avoided her to the point she had to bring Sophie to the restaurant. That was shit Carm did when he felt unworthy. Carmy had never even considered the fact he was an uncle until it was staring him in the face, until he was holding his niece. "It's alright if you don't love it anymore." Natalie had told her baby brother, the baby bear, and he was deciding he didn't love it anymore, so all Nat could do was hug him and sob. She would be one-sixth owner of the restaurant her brothers had fantasized about starting together, a dream she had originally been excluded from due to being forgotten entirely yet again.
Carmy wouldn't actually do what he wanted to, Nat, Pete, Richie, and even the fact that Syd's abandonment issues worsened after her dad's heart attack ensured that Carmy stayed at The Bear long enough that when he did leave, he couldn't go through with his original plan. He had never actually really had much of a plan besides what he had said after Syd learned about the changed contract: find out who he was outside of a kitchen. That wasn't exactly a huge goal compared to his past goals, but what was was trying to do so while also coping with Mom wanting back into Carmy's life.
The hardest part of Mom trying was just that - that she was trying, that she was affectionate, that when she was affectionate she remembered Carmy was the one interacting with her. The other hard part of dealing with Mom was that Mom usually went through Nat first, who was a Mom herself now, so Carmen felt like he had no excuse to continue maintaining his distance. Comparatively, being loved in the wrong ways was better than being denied a mother's love most of one's life, Carmy told himself (trying to avoid thinking about how Natalie was actually the most normal of the three, that she had survived wanting to build genuine connections and Carmy had barely survived by escaping).
Claire wasn't the one - Carmy eventually realized Claire had been right on those steps, that she had made him feel like shit and he just couldn't differentiate good anxiety or noise in his head from bad. Richie, hell even Natalie would call Carmy insane when he broke up with her. Syd, Marcus, and Tina treated Carmy like always when he visited the restaurant, so Carmy found himself in the kitchen occasionally. Everything was so much less stressful when he wasn't in charge. When the setting varied instead of being the white inside of The Bear day in and day out.
Carmy couldn't tell anyone when the nightmares and sleepwalking began again, but he knew the cause was Mom. Carmy hated his subconscious for not recognizing she was sober now, or maybe just not comprehending that sober didn't equal safe, but Donna was safe now. Her affection was ordinary. Carmy was the abnormal one, dissociating half the time, cooking for her in part so he didn't have to look her in the eye. Mom was just an old lady now. Carmy felt crazy. He probably was.