Chp.18: Secret emotions

When the sun had risen, Haku, Darbi and Kotaru were still lying together in the same spot as the previous night. And even for a long time afterwards they stood there, not moving. From time to time Darbi raised his head and sniffed the air to make sure there was no danger, then lowered it again and lay down again. None of the three had said a word after what had happened the night before.

Only when it was almost noon did Haku finally open his mouth. "Thanks, guys. I think you needed some company" he said.

"Well, that's what brothers and sisters are for, isn't it?" Kotaru answered, and then gave him a slight smile. "Have you calmed down now?"

"If you haven't, say so now, so I'll already know that I have to punch you on the head again in case you have another emotional crisis" Darbi grumbled in a tone that sounded offended, but was clearly teasing.

Haku let out an amused snort. "I'm fine… more or less" he said. "Can you tell me exactly what I did while I was... well... I don't know how to define it..."

"Out of mind? In a hallucination? Completely unable to understand what you were doing and what was going on around you?" Kotaru asked.

Haku felt a little ashamed for that description. "... yes, I'd like to know"

"If you're worried that you attacked us or something, you can rest easy. You didn't touch us even with a finger" Darbi said. "You just ran away without notifying us, you went here and you started hurting yourself in multiple ways. We found you and I jumped on you to prevent you from getting hurt, and Kotaru tried to wake you up... somehow"

"Uh... well, at least it doesn't seem like he did anything harmful" Haku said trying to play down, even though his pride screamed at the thought of showing himself like that in front of his two brothers.

"Nothing harmful for us, you mean? Because trust me, you were in very bad shape. Just look around, there are stains of your blood everywhere" Kotaru said in a reproachful tone, to then ask the fateful question: "When we arrived, you were clearly in a state of pure panic. What were you seeing to scare you to that extent?"

Haku's claws lightly scraped the surface of a stone, making a screeching sound. "It's not important"

"It seems important to me" Kotaru said looking at her paw and the lines she had drawn in the stone. "Stop acting like you're an unbreakable rock with no emotions and let us help you. Tell us what happened"

Haku looked at both his sister and Darbi. Both had a determined expression on their faces, and it was clear to Haku that they weren't going to leave him alone until they had his answer. He had no choice. He was tempted to make up an excuse, but he knew he wouldn't be able to sound convincing, not right now. So he answered sincerely: "I saw our parents"

Both Darbi and Kotaru looked confused. "You mean... our mother and father?" Darbi asked. "Do you remember that they are...?"

"I know they're dead! Don't get me wrong, I know very well it wasn't really them. But at that moment... it was as if they were" Haku said. "They were right here in front of me. They were eating you all and listing my mistakes one by one, and mocking me for my attempt to keep the family together. They called it a pathetic fantasy born out of a desire not to be alone". Haku shivered. "Maybe they weren't entirely wrong"

"Haku, no" Kotaru immediately stopped him. "We've talked about this before. You didn't use us. Don't believe anything your wounded mind told you at that moment"

Haku sighed. "I know you're right, Kotaru…but I really think it's partly true". He rested his head on the ground. "My actions haven't always had the reasons I've told you. I kept the family together because I loved you, but also because I was too afraid to be alone. When I started guiding you… when I convinced myself that my duty was to protect you... I did it again because I loved you, but also because having someone who listened to me, who I could handle, who I could control, made me forget how fragile I was in this cursed world. I guess that's why I started behaving that way… I felt threatened that you could make your own decisions… because if you could… then the only thing I had control over would fade away too... and I was too cowardly to let it go"

Haku looked at his claws, which continued to dig into the stone. They were sinking so deep into the rock that they were starting to ache. He wanted to stop them, but his fingers didn't respond. "I convinced myself that I was the only one who could get you to safety, and that therefore I must be fearless, and as such I always hid my uncertainties beneath my logic. I hid them so well that even I forgot to I had them. In my mind there were only calculations, questions, evaluations, plans. I was like this because that's how a leader should behave, and I was convinced that I was a leader... and if I stopped that belief, then I would be crushed from my fear of this world. So I kept convincing myself that I was your boss... your big brother. So... we can say that I used you a little bit, even if not totally"

Silence fell between them. Haku didn't know how his siblings would react to those words of his, but still he had the feeling of having lifted a weight from his heart. Then Kotaru said: "If that means to you that you used us, then we are no less guilty. We used you too."

Haku looked at her surprised. "Sorry?"

"Come on, do you think you're the only one with emotional problems? The only one who's scared? The only one who has more trauma than scales on his skin? We're all in the same boat, Haku" Kotaru told him. "All of us are terrified of this world. Practically everything here wants to kill us and even taking a step without having inspected the area can cause our death. Our mother first starved us and then drove us violently, and our father he tried to kill us. Many of us still have nightmares at night because of those events. I lost count of how many times Teramon and Keita woke up in the middle of the night crying their eyes out. And we, unlike you We didn't have an illusion to hold on to, we didn't have anything to have control over. Do you know what we clung to for courage?" Kotaru patted Haku's shoulder. "You, idiot! We clung to you. You were like a mountain to us, you always seemed to know what to do, you were confident. Thanks to you, we won. That's why we kept our heads up and faced all the challenges of this world without fear. We were your illusion of control, but you were ours. So, it can be said that we used each other"

Haku was surprised. "Teramon and Keita cried at night?"

"Not just them. They were just the ones who did it the most. But we all woke up in nightmares from time to time. I did it a couple of times too" Kotaru replied.

Haku's eyes were wide open like two cups. "I never noticed it..." he murmured with a certain sense of guilt in his voice.

"Haku, you spent your days running halfway through the forest, experimenting with runes, studying everything in your path, and even when you were still, your mind was constantly producing the most varied plans. At night you were so tired that it was impossible to wake you up unless we screamed or shook you extremely violently" Kotaru said. "You can't blame yourself if you didn't notice anything. We didn't tell you anything, after all"

Haku listened to her almost not believing his ears. He didn't know his siblings had such secrets. He'd always been convinced that they only followed him because he had the highest intelligence, not because they saw him as an anchor of safety. "I didn't expect you to feel this way..."

"Oh, come on, do you have eyes!?" Darbi snapped annoyed. "I can understand that you're bad at socializing, but now you're exaggerating! Didn't you see what I was like when our mother told us she didn't love us? I was devastated. I didn't even have the will to get up. I would have stayed there forever until some predator would come and get me, and I would let them. The only reason I chose to move forward is because you refused to leave me there! You went back, you forced me to stand up, and you told me you'd always protect me! Haku, all this time I've been clinging to you to go on! If it wasn't for you I would have given up a long time ago!"

Haku didn't expect such words to come out of his brother's mouth. He hadn't expected her to think that way. "And not just me" Darbi continued. "Rhaegal saw you as a hero after you saved him from our father. Our sisters saw you as a savior after you brought them food. We all watched how you handled our journey, and we all felt safe with you. That's why after you did... well, what you did, everything fucked up. You, the brother that we used to not be afraid, had started to scare us! It was obvious that our siblings would get confused and eventually they would gone... and then you messed it up even more by hitting Rhaegal"

Those last words brought back very painful memories. Haku shivered slightly as he thought about it. "I didn't want to hit him" he said. "I don't know why I did it. I..."

"You told us earlier why you did it: you were scared" Kotaru said. "If our siblings were gone, you would have lost that little control you had left, and your illusion would have faded. You were afraid of that, and so your body acted accordingly. A sort of defense mechanism, let's say. I'm not saying that you are without fault, but I can see that your act was not entirely voluntary". She let out a snort. "You built an armor based on your illusion, and in that moment the armor cracked and you got scared. That's why you hit Rhaegal. But doing it only made things worse. Not just for our family... but also for yourself, because you realized you weren't the absolute protector you thought you were. You weren't a complete hero. This broke your armor... and everything you buried came out all in once. That's what caused your crisis". She shrugged. "Or at least, that's how I see it. I wasn't in your head, I can't talk about certainties"

Haku opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, then he just said: "I assume that's an accurate consideration". He drummed his fingers on the rock. "So... what now?"

"I guess I'll have to learn to live without the illusion that my brother is invincible and infallible" Darbi responded. "It will be difficult to live with fear... but I'm optimistic. If there's one thing I've learned in the six months of our life... it's that I like living. So I don't want to give up, even now that the illusion broke"

"We'll all have to learn to do that," Kotaru said. "It won't be easy to get scared again... but you can't live in fantasy forever after all. Deep down in our hearts we knew you couldn't be as perfect as you wanted us to believe... we were just trying to ignore that feeling". Kotaru sighed; maybe that was also why no one had ever talked to Haku about how they disapproved of his way of bossing them around until things escalated... if they did, their illusion would be shattered, and no one wanted to.

Haku grunted. "I guess you're right" he said. "So, I too will have to live with the knowledge that I'm not as perfect as I thought... that I'm not the older brother"

"Oh, you finally admit it!" Darbi exclaimed triumphantly, and then gave him a friendly shoulder. "So? What do you want to do now, my dear not-big-brother?"

Haku laughed at that teasing, then looked up at the sky. "I don't want to go back with the family... not yet. I'll do one day, but right now I'm too scared of myself to try to get close. Besides, they don't want me, and I'll respect their wishes" he said, then his gaze became more determined. "But... I want to be sure they arrive to the desert. I want to be sure none of them die"

"This is the Haku we like" Kotaru said standing up. "Let's hurry up, then. They have a lot of advantage"

"If we can't keep up, just know it's your fault, because you didn't let me sleep all night!" Darbi grumbled stretching himself. "Come on, we have a long march ahead"

Haku couldn't help but smile to see them behaving like this. "I repeat what I said yesterday... you are two idiots"

"And I repeat what I said yesterday: this is family" Darbi replied. "Come on, get your ass up and let's go"

Haku felt his heart warm at those words. Albeit a little slowly since his body was a little numb, he stood up, and then he and his two siblings headed north again.