Stay Silent

When Hiro awoke, he was lying on a bed he didn’t remember ever making it to. The sky was just beginning to darken. The window he was facing was wide open. The undrawn curtains wafted gently with a cool breeze that was rapidly becoming cold, despite the blankets over him. He heaved them off, getting to his feet, still feeling the painful effects of puking and crying his heart out a few hours earlier. God, did he have to… keep doing that? It wasn’t fun.

His head ached. A lot. He woozily got to his feet and stared at the bedside table. How like his brother to leave him tissues, a clean bucket, more blankets, and some reading material. But it was the water he wanted, and he downed what was left for him so quickly – the cool relief it offered his sore, hot throat only fleeting. He needed more. He needed a lot more.

He wandered out, following the lights, heading downstairs. He could smell some fish cooking that he really wasn’t in the mood for, and he rounded through to the kitchen, jumping as he came face to face with the two of them, standing there, staring…

Only Tadashi smiled, but even then it was tentative. “Hey, how’re you feeling?” he asked.

“...Fine,” Hiro muttered, nervously turning his gaze onto Takahiro. There was something there on that boy’s face he could only class as unreadable. He felt compelled to apologise. “Um, sorry for… I don’t even know what happened,” he admitted in an ashamed voice, running a hand through his hair. He felt so embarrassed. Doing that kind of thing in front of his brother was OK, but in front of Takahiro was just too much to process. He’d already put the kid through enough.

Takahiro was stiff. “It was… scary,” he said, turning his head to the side. “I really wanted to talk to you straight after too…”

Then why didn’t you fucking talk to me when you had the chance?

Hiro pinched himself so sharply on the arm that he winced, because he needed that. “Sorry,” he said again, more apologetic. “I-I’m fine now. I can talk… You don’t, have to go easy on me or anything,” he tried to smile, “I can take anything you have to say to me.”

“Good,” Takahiro said, and it was just so dismissive and brusque that it made Hiro feel like he really shouldn’t have been smiling. At all. If it were even possible, he’d should’ve gone back in time and taken it back.

“Hiro?”

Tadashi questioningly held up a pan of fried fish, and he only needed Hiro’s answering grimace to know that his brother wouldn’t have any. He divvied and dished them up into two plates and then they were all heading back into the living room, where some old television show Hiro didn’t recognise was playing quietly. He sat on the couch, sucking on a bottle of cold water, feeling tense, having absolutely no idea what had gone on while he was still recovering from his panic attack or whatever that had been, and it freaked him out. He didn’t know whether he was supposed to be staring at the TV or not; his eyes flicked over to his brother and Takahiro, but they were both busy eating.

No one was talking, but no one was exactly watching the show either. Hiro decided that he was going to have to be the first to speak.

“Did you guys… talk?” he asked in a small voice.

“We didn’t want to talk without you,” Tadashi answered, smiling in a way that made Hiro think it was a lie; they must’ve talked at least a little without him there. Surely.

Hiro followed Tadashi’s sidelong glance at Takahiro. So it was up to the boy to initiate the conversation now, huh. Well, of course it was. He was just going to have to wait, and he didn’t know how long for.

But Takahiro didn’t end up making him wait for too long.

“Why did you lie to me.”

Hiro looked at him. “You mean…? Uh–“

“Why did you tell me that nothing happened to me.” Takahiro’s voice was cold. He wasn’t looking anywhere near Hiro, his eyes always on the screen or his plate. “Why did you lie.”

Hiro shuddered. It was a fair enough question. It deserved an answer. He turned halfway between Takahiro and the screen, not sure which he should be looking at, because Takahiro still hadn’t faced him yet. No matter how many times he cleared his throat, no matter how much water he had, he still couldn’t get the croak out of his voice.

He just stopped trying after a while. “Taka-kun, I… I was scared… I was stupid and selfish.” No more excuses. “I thought that I had to be perfect, you know? For the seminars and campaigning and all that… People just kept telling me how much good I was doing, and how I was doing so much for all of these male victims, giving them voices, but… It… I couldn’t risk… Some horrible part of me thought that it was necessary to silence you in order to do that. And I’m sorry, Taka-kun,” his voice broke a little. “I’m so sorry…”

Takahiro had stopped eating. He’d barely made it through one fish before he ended up staring at it, his fork prodding at it, softly at first, then more and more vicious until he was practically stabbing it, prongs grating harsh against the plate. The sounds made everyone wince.

“Taka-kun.” Tadashi put aside his own meal and jumped up to pull Takahiro’s away. He kneeled beside him, hovering patiently, encouraging him to use his words. “Taka-kun, tell us what you’re thinking,” he asked gently. “Talk to us.”

“I… I trusted you,” Takahiro said, flashing Hiro a look so betrayed that it made Hiro feel like he’d never forgive himself. There were tears in Takahiro’s eyes and Hiro was never going to forgive himself for this – not now, not ever. “You were my only friend, too… I trusted you and told you that something was wrong with me and you just… ignored me.”

“I’m sorry,” Hiro uttered, and it sounded so pathetic, not even coming close to the ocean of remorse he felt. But he didn’t know what else he could say. “I know, there’s no excuse, I’m sorry.”

He watched Tadashi move a hand across Takahiro’s back, but it was of little comfort to him. Tears dripped down his face and he wiped his shirt sleeve across his nose, sniffing, but he still carried a lot of resentment in his eyes. “After what you said to me at the library, I… I got so messed up.”

“Sorry.” He just kept saying it. He couldn’t stop. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“You are such a hypocrite,” Takahiro suddenly shouted at him, and Hiro just sat there, taking it, because it was all true. “Y-You spend so much time helping other people but you wouldn’t even help me! You said in the seminar how important it was to come forward and not stay silent and I did, and you silenced me!”

Hiro put his head in his hands. There were no tears, no sobs, but he was crying just as hard on the inside. Every inch of him hurt. “Sorry.” His voice came out muffled.

“You promised me when I was a kid that I could tell you anything and you’d believe me!”

I know. “I’m sorry…”

A heavy silence settled over them. Like Takahiro couldn’t quite believe him. And then Hiro heard something that made his heart splinter.

“I hate you.”

I hate me too.

There was a scuffle, footfalls, rustling. Hiro peeked between his fingers to see Takahiro was already at the door, flinging his bag over his shoulder, stuffing his feet back into his shoes. Tadashi stood just behind him, begging Takahiro not to leave right now, that they could talk it out, with or without Hiro there, that they could go to a counsellor or a police officer or call his dad – whoever he needed to speak to – but Takahiro still ended up slamming the door on his way out.

Tadashi fretted. He looked between the closed front door and Hiro, shaking and breathing shallow, not even sure who to turn to, completely stuck, until Hiro found enough of his voice to say, “You should go after him.” Keep him safe. Help him.

Tadashi didn’t protest. He rushed over just to give his brother a quick embrace and a short kiss, panting, “I love you – I’ll come back as soon as I can,” and then Hiro was meekly pushing him away. Tadashi sprinted, pausing only to swipe his car keys, and then he was out the door with another loud bang. They were both gone now. Hiro was all alone.

He tried. He made an effort. His hands trembled as he fetched the barely touched plates of fish and put them in his brother’s fridge for later. He tried to clean the place up a little bit, just rinsing pans and chopping boards and knives and things, wiping down benches, trying not to think. Trying not to feel. He hoped, and yet he didn’t even know what he was hoping for.

He eventually went back upstairs to the spare bedroom he’d been sleeping in. He laid down and wallowed in the empty feeling nestled deep in his gut. There was nothing else he could do now but wait for Tadashi to come back to him.

-------

Hiro had no idea what time of day or night it was when he next awoke to a dip in the mattress beside his head and a nudge on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and shifted to see his brother sitting beside him, smiling weakly in the dim room. “Hey,” was all he said.

“Hey…” Hiro pulled himself up, gingerly rubbing the sleep out of his sore eyes. Everything was sore. He couldn’t quite tell if he’d gotten too little sleep or too much sleep today. Or perhaps it was yesterday. But he didn’t care about that. “Takahiro?”

Tadashi’s smile tightened. His tone was gentle. “He’s back home now.”

“How is he,” Hiro asked, his face probably the epitome of don’t answer that – I already know what you’re going to say.

Tadashi sighed. “He… doesn’t want to see you. Or hear from you. He said not to bother emailing him because he blocked you.”

Hiro didn’t know what he expected. His heart sunk like a broken ship slowly consumed by water but he still gave a firm nod. “Fair enough,” he mumbled. “I wouldn’t want to see or hear from me either.”

Tadashi put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Maybe it’s temporary.”

“Or maybe it isn’t.” Hiro ran a hand down his tired face. “He said he hated me, Tadashi… I’m surprised even you don’t hate me.”

Tadashi laughed a little, just light and warming. “Hiro, I could never hate you. You’re my brother. You’re family. Even if you somehow ended up in prison, I’d still visit you every weekend.”

It wasn’t until Hiro had blanched and his eyes had gone huge that Tadashi realised what he’d just said.

“Prison?”

Tadashi hastily tried to take it back, “Hiro, no, no,” he smoothed a hand over his brother’s head, over and over, “I’m sorry – that was stupid – you’re not going to prison. It was just a stupid joke.”

Hiro hadn’t even thought about it – really thought about it until now, and he was lucky that his body was too shot to produce anymore tears. “I should go to prison,” he said, and Tadashi made a face like he couldn’t believe the words that had come from his younger brother’s mouth. He was devastated.

“Hiro, we don’t even know if you did anything,” he exclaimed quietly, and that gave Hiro some pause.

“…We don’t?”

“No. I talked to him, while you were sleeping. He says he doesn’t remember anything beyond what you told him. He was inclined to think you might’ve… tampered with his memories, but…” He shrugged. “Nothing.”

“So…” Hiro stared hard at his brother. Tadashi seemed to be treating this as good news, but Hiro just couldn’t see it that way anymore. “So after all that… we still don’t know if it was real or not.”

“No.”

Then what was even the point?

“I’ve asked him to speak to someone,” Tadashi assured as Hiro dropped back onto the pillow, burying his face in it. “To maybe consider seeing a psychotherapist who deals in the recovery of repressed traumatic memories, or maybe a school counsellor.”

“But then he’d end up talking about me,” Hiro mumbled into the pillow, and Tadashi had to turn him over to hear him. “What if… mandatory reporting and… what if he makes allegations about me and presses charges–“

“Hiro,” Tadashi shushed him quietly, “Hiro, look, you won’t go to prison. Not until people know about Aunt Cass first. OK? Not until they know about everything that happened to you. Takahiro knows what happened to you, he wouldn’t… At worst, you could be sentenced to attend some intimacy retraining therapy, or something like that. But I doubt,” he started firmly, cutting Hiro off before he could even get a single word out, “it would ever get even that far. What’s most likely to happen is that… Taka-kun just won’t ever see or hear from you ever again.”

Something sort of like relief but not quite relief ran through him. He laughed humourlessly. “So… the Hiro Hamada approach to childhood sexual trauma, then…”

The conversation dwindled, but Tadashi never left. He stayed right there with him, every now and again offering to bring him a drink or some food or more blankets, but Hiro declined, not really wanting to spend even a minute without his brother’s calming presence and his comforting hand on his head. Tadashi wasn’t doing anything; he just staring off into space, lost in thought, when Hiro next spoke.

“I saw my rapist the other week.”

Tadashi frowned, confused. “Cass…?”

“No, the… the other one.” The fact that he even had to say ‘the other one’ was just depressing. “Her name’s Amanda… I was just waiting for a coffee on the street when I walked into her, and I fell. She apologised, she offered to help me up, and… I recognised her immediately. And she looked right at me but… she didn’t recognise me. A-And it just really shook me because… she didn’t remember what she did. She must’ve been that drunk and it just made me worry that… maybe I was so drunk that I didn’t remember either…”

Tadashi said nothing.

Hiro had to know. “Do you think I did it?” he whispered.

His brother very slowly grimaced. “I don’t want to believe it, Hiro. You don’t seem like that kind of person. But then…”

He didn’t have to say it. Hiro already knew where Tadashi was going with that sentence. But then Cass didn’t seem like that kind of person either.

“I’m not like her anymore, right,” Hiro begged, and his brother smiled ruefully, nodding.

“That’s right. You’re not like her. Not anymore.”

“Tell me more about how I’m not like her anymore,” Hiro murmured. Make me believe it.

“Well…” Tadashi heaved a sigh. He reclined back on one elbow, just thinking. “I think it’s the way you… just handled everything so much better than she did. You silenced and manipulated Takahiro, like she once did to you, but… you stopped. You changed your mind. You changed, Hiro, and that was something I realise now that she never did. You didn’t keep up this mess for years and years like she did. You took some responsibility for your actions – even though you don’t know for sure whether they were your actions, or…

“Look… No one would blame you nearly as much as they would her. What you did– maybe did was one-off, what she did was consistent. You had literally been sexually assaulted that day and– Hiro,” Tadashi moaned, moving to stare into his younger brother’s forlorn, glazed over eyes, “there are just so many things, Hiro – so many mitigating circumstances that you can’t even see. You can’t even see just how much this boy is affecting you. Aunt Cass never reacted like this. She never cried when she saw the consequences of what she’d done to you. The pain in your eyes…” Tadashi took a moment to brush some of Hiro’s hair out of them. “She just kept lying and denying all responsibility. That’s why she’s an awful person and you’re not, Hiro. I swear to you that you’re not.”

It was the nicest thing he could’ve heard from his brother right now. He wanted to believe it. He really did. “None of that really matters though,” he said, “if he never forgives me…” I never forgave her.

Tadashi sighed. “He just needs time,” he said, probably thinking he sounded more convincing than he really was. “Maybe things will be different soon.”

“Maybe not.”

“Mm…”

Another short silence. The fingers in Hiro’s hair felt nice. His eyelids began to feel heavy again, his blinks becoming a lot slower.

“You told him not to go to that party, right?” Hiro asked, earning a brief chuckle from Tadashi.

“Don’t worry. He won’t, not after the talk I gave him. I schooled him on staying safe at parties, and the importance of friends who knew where you were at all times, and at the very least counting and pouring your own drinks if you couldn’t stay sober… He tried to tell me that I was talking to him like he was a girl.”

Hiro scoffed. But there was nothing funny about that. “I guess I just sort of… freaked out,” Hiro admitted in a low voice. “I just didn’t want him to end up like me.”

Tadashi’s hand stilled for a second before moving again. “I know, Hiro. I know... But he won’t. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Hiro gave a long sigh, his eyes closing. “Above everything else… I just want this kid to be OK.”

The hand on his head fell away only to replaced seconds later by a short press of his brother’s lips. The mattress sprung up again as Tadashi got to his feet. Hiro opened one of his eyes to see that his brother was moving quietly towards the door; he must’ve thought Hiro was falling asleep. His replies had certainly been slowing down.

Tell him. Tell him now.

He sat up. “Tadashi?”

His brother turned at the doorway, smiling pained. “Hm?”

Hiro stared at him. “If… If I took Cass to court, would you help me?”

Tadashi didn’t respond. His eyes were squinted and searching, like he were trying to gauge at a distance whether Hiro was serious or not. Eventually he said, as if there were no other answer he could give, “Of course I’d help you.”

“I have friends – from the organisation, I mean, who’ve been through the criminal justice system before,” Hiro explained. “I feel like I know a lot about how it works. And, I’ve talked enough about my abuse now that it shouldn’t feel any different than doing another seminar…” He paused, awaiting some sort of affirmative, supportive response from his brother. But none was very forthcoming. Tadashi was like a statue. “It’s not too late… right?”

He swallowed. Tadashi wasn’t saying anything. The deadpan look on his face felt like he were saying, why bother, and Hiro found himself thinking that his once courageous idea was presenting it’s true face as a stupid idea in disguise, fooling him. He wished he’d never even thought it.

“Forget it,” he tried to say, turning over, and only then did his brother seem to remember himself.

He uttered into the quiet of the room, “Hiro, if you want to press charges against Aunt Cass, then I’ll stand by you. I’ll be there every step of the way. Whatever you need.” He waited until Hiro peeked over his shoulder at him to smile plaintively. “I mean it,” he insisted gently, and Hiro suddenly felt like an idiot for ever doubting that he didn’t. His brother wasn’t like that anymore.

Just realising that made his chest start to swell with warmth.

Hiro smiled back, fighting a quiver in his lip. “You’re the best–” he got out, swallowing down the big brother in the world part, fearing it would just be lost to sobs. He gave a nod as if to cement his point, and Tadashi racked in a couple of sobs, poorly passing them off as laughs.

“You’re OK,” he said, and the laughter became genuine.