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Chapter Twenty Nine – Reflection


Frank’s POV





How is it even possible to ruin someone as much as I’ve ruined Mikey Way after knowing them for only a fistful of blurred, eye-opening days?

Friday night is a night that has, undeniably, changed my life. I would like to be able to say that it’s changed for the better, it has in some aspects, but really it’s gone downhill more tragically than a sinking ship without any lifeboats. Well, that’s not strictly true; I can’t define the period in which my life has change with just a one sentence summary, that’d be like trying to sum up everything that’s wrong with the world in one word. No, in order for me to be able to understand how everything came to be as it is now, me sat on the linoleum floor outside Mikey’s hospital room and praying for some sort of miracle to fix the gigantean wreck I’ve made of things, I have to go through it all in my head.

Go through it and figure just what I need to do mend the damage that I’ve done.

But what if I can’t mend it; what if I really have done that which I was crusading to prevent? No. It’s not a case of ‘what if’; it’s a case of ‘I have’. If I didn’t know that before, I certainly do now; the look in Mikey’s eyes told me that much. His whimpering and shaking only proved to reinforce what I am no longer able to deny; the fact that I’ve messed up.

Messed up way worse than Gerard ever has.

Gerard.

I think that he hates me for walking out of that room; I think that Mikey does too, if his loud cries of pained white-noise are anything to go by. Shit, he just won’t stop crying. The door to his room may be shut, but I can still hear him loud and agonizingly clear. It’s like nothing I’ve ever heard before; it’s like the screams of mothers watching their sons march into hellfire; it’s like nails on a chalkboard being played out through the world’s most powerful speakers; it’s like the sound of a heart breaking, of a soul fragmenting, of a kid dying inside. And I caused it, I pushed him away; pushed him away after I pulled him in. After I used him to find out the exact flavour of ‘cute’.

I don’t want his forgiveness. I want, no; I need for him to hate me for this because without his hate I’ll have to live with an overwhelming guilt and sense of injustice for the rest of my demonic existence. But he’s Mikey Way, a kid to kind and shy to live out such impure emotions as hate. Unless he’s hating himself, in which case he seems to have a painfully high level of expertise in using that kind of hate. I just don’t see how someone as perfect, someone as loving as Mikey could be viewed as bad enough to warrant his treatment, bad enough to warrant the kind of treatment that led him to trying to blot his inner-light out permanently from this undeserving world.

I don’t understand it, but at the same time it makes a disfigured and disgusting sort of sense; he’s different and therefore has something that other people envy. The ability to be naturally nice without having to be pretend to be someone that he’s not. And because of that, because he’s too meek and gentle to fight back, they weaken their jealousy with his tears and tell themselves that it’s working, that they can’t be jealous of him because of all of the shit that he gets.

I know that I sound like I’m just piling praise onto a kid that really does need it, that I’m just using the same lame excuse as a blinded-by-love parent would, but it’s true; when this sort of thing happens it’s because the bullies want what their victim has, but who could be jealous of a kid that gets the dimmed daylights beaten out of him on a daily basis? It’s just how the minds of teenagers work and, as much as it sickens me like an out-of-date shot of cyanide, how the minds of most adults work as well.

Maybe Mikes saw that, saw the years of relentless suffering that could quite possibly lay in front of him, and maybe that’s what truly made too much way too much?

No. That was me who managed to do that. I made too much hate too much for him to handle and not enough love not enough to be worth living for. But what about Gerard? The poor kid wakes up from trying to kill himself to see his big brother lecturing him, shouting at him almost. I’m no expert and nor do I claim to be, but surely that’s going to do the poor, tortured soul more harm than good; he needs Gee to just listen and be calm for once, not force words into his mouth.

Actually, that’s a point; I haven’t heard Mikey actually say anything yet. Just cry like a damned soul being held in purgatory and whimper like a lost little puppy. No actual words. Just distraught sounds of hopelessness that convey more than any words from the mouth of any human, even the most profound of philosophers, could ever even dream to display. But that doesn’t change the fact that he has yet to speak, the fact that his big brother and his best friend have both managed to scare him out of speech.

I have to do something. I have to help him, now more than ever because it really is my fault that he needs help.

But that means I have to tell Gerard everything. Absolutely everything; about Mikey running home from school, about Mikey informing me of Gerard’s cruel treatment of the poor kid, about the kiss that I stupidly initiated.

He’ll hate me like I hate me, like Mikey would hate me if he was less than the angel that he is, and he’ll probably never speak to me again. I’ll definitely never get to feel the petals of his serene lips command the attention of my own in a fiery tangle of tongues; never get to hear him tell me that he loves me with the conviction of a saint proclaiming their love of all things holy; never get to feel his hands against my hips with the passionate forcefulness of a lusty teenage boy.

I’ll never get to be his.

No.

I’ll always be his; he’ll never be mine.

And that’ll destroy me, destroy me like Mikes wanted that bus to destroy him.

But this isn’t about what I want; I’ve been selfish enough already and it’s time for me to face the out-of-tune music that Fate has composed for me. This is about doing the right thing for Mikey. This is about helping the two Way brothers to actually be the two Way brothers. This is about me admitting to my failures, just as I’ve been encouraging Gerard to do.

I hear a squeak on the eerily clean floor. I snap my head up, forcing more tears that I hadn’t even noticed amidst my regret and remorse to fall like rain drops from the gloomy clouds of my dull eyes, to see a very angry, very scary looking Gerard towering over me. His hands are on his hips in an almost teacher-like manner; his mouth is set in a hard line that reflects the no-nonsense message of his stance; his eyes are alit with savage fury that my selfish, careless, thoughtless actions set ablaze with my stormy absence from his little brother’s bedside.

“Frank? What the fuck are you playing at? He needs you just as badly as he needs me; you’re his friend.” His voice comes out as an animalistic snarl of warning, it’s message clear; hurt my baby brother and I hurt you twice as bad. But then he shakes his head as though trying dislodge his heated reaction to my behaviour and reaches out a hand down to me.

A hand that stings because it’s a hand that I’ve betrayed. And I despise traitors more than anything else; they’re the worst kind of sinner. The kind that can use people, the kind that hurts the people he’s supposed to love and protect.

But that hand is also a traitor; it’s slammed down on Mikey more times than the boy can cope with by the looks of things.

So I take it. I take the hand and let him pull me into a tight hug. I take in his smell; cigarettes dotted with a bizarre mixture of coffee and hospital disinfectants. It’s a bittersweet smell because he smells of everything I love and adore, but it’s getting kicked down with a constant reminder of the sorrowfully excruciating situation.

It’s also probably the last time that I’ll have his loving, gentle embrace; I still have to tell him. Tell him everything.

It’s only fair.

“C’mon, Mikey’s gone back to sleep. We should both be there when he wakes up.” He whispers, breaking my heart with each hot hush of breath, and laces his fingers with mine like it’s the only logical thing to do. “Together. As a team.”

I have to tell him. I can’t carry my betrayal further by letting him live on under the impression that I’m some sort of saint that can do no wrong. I have to tell him the truth so that we can mend Mikey’s broken spirit whilst medicine and bandages mend his broken body.

I can’t tell him. This is too perfect, just being needed by the one that I love.

I must tell him; I owe the both of them that much.

I mustn’t tell him; it should be up to Mikes.

“Ready to go back in, Frankie?”

Gee kisses the tip of my nose with the impish delicacy of a dancing fairy and I can’t help but give him a blush-reddened smile in response.

This isn’t right. He needs to know. I need to tell him. Mikey’s deepest memories and problems need to be made known to his big brother.

“Yeah, Honey. I’m ready.”

But maybe not just yet.




A/N: Thank you very much for reading; I hope that this was alright. Please review! :)