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The water is cold, gushing forth like scarlet from a head wound, frothing and lapping and beating at the cliffs. Hero doesn't come here often. The air smells of salt. It stings, slightly, at his nose.
It's dark out. Stars speckle the sky, he doesn't try to find the constellations. A couple clouds, more wisps than anything, drift and puff along the endless expanse of ink above him. They're pale. Tinted purple, almost, tinted pink.
Hero swallows the sea air, it seeps into his skin. Distantly, somehow, he can taste watermelon. Ice cream. The muscles around his mouth twitch.
He avoided this place for years after Mari died. Shrank from it like a mouse from a serpent, snow from the Sun, a flame from the rain. The Sun shined brighter when she was here.
It's nighttime.
The Sun feels watery these days. Trickling down his spine, sinking into his face, summoning a gloss over his eyes. He spent a year away from it. Curtains drawn, blanket over head, nose nestled into his pillows.
He'd thought it was his fault.
Four years he spent believing it was his fault.
Some sick, strange part of him wants to laugh. He thinks he'll choke if he does.
Mari committed suicide. Everyone knew the facts. Mari took a rope to the tree in the back of her garden. Mari's deft, slender fingers knotted it into a noose. Mari was found swinging from it hours later.
Mari committed suicide. And then she hadn't.
Four years.
He should've noticed, he told himself. Should've done more. Should've listened better, or comforted better, or been present more than he had. He should've been a better friend, better confidant, better buoy. He should've been better.
Mari never told him she was suicidal. Mari was never suicidal in the first place.
He can't quite reconcile those two ideas yet. Mari is dead. Everyone knew the facts. Mari committed suicide, and her blood red eye would follow him until he chose to follow her.
They did everything together. Mari was dead. Four years had passed.
Hero is convinced, even here, even now, that when Mari died, Hero died with her. There is no Hero in a friend who failed to save her.
Mari committed suicide. Mari broke her back. Four years he spent believing it was his fault.
He didn't kill her. He didn't tell her to kill herself.
He was passive. He stood by and ignored her while she planned to do it.
He knew she was stressed. He knew she was hurting.
He gave her space before the recital. She'd been snappy, stressed, he was selfish.
Mari committed suicide. But no, not now, she hadn't.
He thinks he's supposed to be relieved. She wasn't hurting so badly she surrendered. She hadn't decided not to tell him. He hadn't failed to notice. He hadn't done anything wrong, had he?
He feels like he has. Guilt has become a second skin, sloughing over organs and threading between his ribs. His heart beats sluggishly against its bone white cage, and he thinks of how pale she looked, how crimson her eye had appeared, bursting, staring, ceaseless.
Mari never committed suicide. Now he knows the facts. Sunny took a rope to the tree in the back of her garden. Basil’s deft, slender fingers knotted it into a noose. Mari was found swinging from it hours later.
Sunny, Basil, Mari, Hero. Blinded, scarred, dead, alive. Hero never killed her. Mari never killed herself.
Accident feels like such a poor word for it. An accident was when Kel spilt Orange Joe on the fabric floor. An accident was when Aubrey busted her elbow during a baseball game. An accident was when Basil dropped his camera by the lake. Accidents were trivial, tiny, preventable things.
Mari's death was an accident. Not a suicide, or a murder. An accident.
And Sunny and Basil had strung her corpse from the branches like a ruffled cardboard piñata, staged and swinging for everyone to see, and lied to him for the last four years.
They'd stood by and watched as he broke into pieces, and he doesn't care that they were already fragmented, they stood there and they watched as he lost everything he was and then some. They went to her funeral. They let him think he’d failed her, she'd chosen to leave, let him hate her late at night for ruining it all, for ruining his life.
But Sunny pushed her and Basil tied the rope. And all the vitriol he's been harbouring for Mari– intelligent, beautiful, passionate, loving Mari– was never earned in the first place.
Hero is angry. He’s so angry that it threatens to spill from his skin, writhing for an exit, bubbling like scalding water against his tongue, and he feels like he hates them.
They were little brothers to him. Mari was everything. Mari is dead. They lied to him. The miserable, jagged, furious hurt that's sunk into his bones and Mari's memory is out a target, and he can't point it at them, his brothers, his friends.
Hero lost a year to his bedroom and his name to her corpse, and he died when she did but it was inevitable from the start. Hero despised himself, irrevocably, with a sort of unparalleled intensity he could not even begin to articulate. He failed her. She was dead. Is dead. And it's not his fault.
But he’s guilty. And it sticks. And they're kids, sixteen, twelve back then. They didn't mean it. Sunny was mad, Basil was scared. They didn't mean to.
But they did. And they lied to him. And when being a murderer through inaction is so deeply interwoven with his being, Hero can't imagine an iteration of himself where it was never his fault.
He's tried reframing it. He could've stayed with them beforehand. He should've known Sunny was upset, resentful, pressured. He should've helped. He should've known something would go wrong.
(How could he? And why should he? He was fifteen. Nineteen now, he thinks about her body and the tree from which she'd hung and he can scarcely manage a breath.)
The water is cold, the water is moving. Hero remembers the lake. Mari dove in to save Sunny. Hero dove in to save Sunny. Hero dove in to save Basil. Hero was the saviour. Hero was the failure. They almost died.
It looks cold down there. The wind is ice. It's July, late July, he should be warm. It should be humid, sticking to his clothes, blanketing and suffocating, hot. He's cold. He's numb.
It's a long way down.
The waves are merciless, but he knows that they're honest. They would take a man and toss him like a ragdoll, stuff his lungs with saltwater and fling him at the cliffs. And he'd be dead. Fallen in. An accident.
Hero looks down at the water. Cold. Hero doesn't come here often. He drove down on a whim, he's been at home, his parents were worried. Sunny and Basil in the hospital, Kel would barely leave, Aubrey stuck beside him. And Hero– nineteen, responsible, absolved Hero– ran away again.
He hadn't told them. His mom and dad. He hasn't said anything since he found out the truth. He stared at them, both of them, coal black, teary pinprick blue. His eyes settled on Basil.
He’d asked if it was true. Stoic as a mountain, a hurricane in his ears. Hero hadn't gasped, or cried, or shouted. Levelly, calmly, he looked Basil in the eyes, and he asked if Sunny was telling the truth.
They cried. Both of them. All of them. Hero did not.
He didn't stay for the breakdowns. He didn't listen when his little brother called after him, voice cracking through the middle, to stay. He didn't acknowledge the apologies.
Hero went back home, back to his bedroom, back to the prison he'd forged for himself. He'd gotten into bed, familiar weight atop him, stared at the ceiling without touching the curtains. He did not cry. He tried to breathe.
He'd been carrying himself rather well, all things considered. Hero has been managing for years. Burying the remains of the person he was and pretending to still be a human. There are trophies by the wall, the floor is immaculately clear. He doesn't keep any photos.
He cried by the piano, the one in Sunny's house. It burst out of him through a dam, a river, gushing forth like scarlet from a head wound. It had been raw, and painful, and entirely out of his control. His face had been blotchy. Speckled the colour of her eye.
Hero does not cry often. He did not cry when he found out the truth. He isn't crying now.
He can taste watermelon. Ice cream. Salt. It's faint. Numb. He wants to throw up.
It would be so easy. Hero is so tired.
He never killed her. Mari's still gone.
Shouldn't he be better now?
Slowly, slowly, he takes a step forward.
His legs don't quite cooperate. They lock underneath him. Hero swallows. His eyes flick out to the cliffs.
And slowly, slowly– his hand reaches into his pocket.
Fumbling, numb, his fingers find the contacts. He hesitates. The picture smiles at him, sunset eyes shut, teeth all showing in a dimpled, lopsided grin. His little brother.
Hero feels something shift in his chest and tighten his throat, and the next thing he knows, his eyes have welled up and the picture's blurring to a blob of vibrant orange and brown. His thumb is trembling when he moves it.
It hovers over the button. The pad skims his screen, and the phone vibrates in his hand, one, two, three, four, piercing into the night. Two short sharp bursts, again, again, again. It restores sensation to his fingers, and they shake with a renewed vigor. He's shaking.
“Hey, bro,” Kel's voice is hoarse. It's there. He's trying to force some faint levity, it isn't working well. He sounds exhausted. Hero feels guilty. This was a bad idea. He should apologise. “You okay?”
He looks down at the cliffs. God, he has so much to apologise for.
He's shaking, still. Isn't that funny? Now, of all times, all places, his body chooses to betray him. The paper lighthouse crumples inelegantly in on itself, dissolving into pieces like it's been splashed by the sea spray.
“Hero?” Kel says again, uncertain now, worried. Hero's worrying him. He feels faintly sick. “You there?”
“I'm here,” he says quietly, a murmur, but that's not his name. He's a coward. He's left them all behind, gone to the cliffs instead of the hospital. He's shaking.
“...Do you want me to come home?”
Kel's not at home. The hospital has visiting hours, but they've been lenient with him some days. He doesn't come into their room until late. Hero wonders if his brother has told their parents the truth. Sometimes, Kel goes out to find Aubrey, visits her house, decrepit and disordered, brings her back with him. Aubrey. Hero feels his heart hurt.
“I'm not at home,” he says finally. His tongue is numb. Kel should be. It's late. “You should be.”
“Okay,” Kel says slowly, Hero barely hears him. The water's cold. Gushing forth like scarlet from a head wound, frothing and lapping and beating at the cliffs. It's right there. “Do you need Mom and Dad to come get you?”
Hero can drive. Kel knows he can drive. Hero drove here himself. He wonders if Kel thinks he's drunk, and he hates himself just a little bit more.
He pauses.
Huh. Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. He's nineteen, but he's pretty, and he's done it before. They let him in if he tries. Can he try tonight?
He doesn't know if he wants to.
At least that way he wouldn't be worrying Kel.
“I'm tired, Kel,” Hero says, softly, far away. From Kel, himself, from Faraway Town. Out of the bubble. He blinks, his eyelashes are cold on his skin. “...I'm sorry.”
“Hero?” Kel's voice is unsteady. Wavering. He sounds like a kid. He's sixteen. Hero can't do this to him. Hero doesn't want to do this to him. Hero doesn't feel like his body is his own. “Talk to me, bro. What's wrong?”
Kel knows what's wrong. Of course he knows what's wrong. Hero laughs a little, breathlessly. He's shaking.
“I think I want to kill myself.”
It takes him a second to realise those words came from him. He would be horrified. He would retract it, apologise, panic until he can't breathe, if he could feel anything at all.
Hero's tired of his life existing as a lie. He's functional and clever and charming, and so he is fine. Mari hung from the tree in her back yard, and so Mari chose to die. Hero is so, so tired.
Kel's saying something. Some sort of reassurance, sharp with panic, brittle, he doesn't deserve this. Hero is a horrible brother. Or maybe it's anger. Kel deserves to be angry. Hero doesn't think he is.
“I'm sorry,” he says again, and he's crying but he doesn't know why, he can't feel that ugly rawness in his chest. There's nothing. He's nothing. “I'm so, so sorry.”
“Can–” Kel's breath hitches, he sounds like he's crying too. This is the part where Hero comforts him. Hero says nothing. “Can you sit down for me, Hero? Is there– please.”
That's an instruction. Hero's good at helping people. Listening. He sits. “Okay.” Is that his voice?
“G– good, Hero, that's– that's good,” Kel's voice wobbles. “I'm– I'm gonna go get mom, okay? We'll come get you.”
“Okay,” Hero says again, and it's quieter now. It's so quiet here.
The phone is solid in his hand. The ground is solid beneath his legs. It feels like he's floating away.
Hero waits, then. Kel doesn't leave the phone, not all the time he's on the way home. He talks about everything and nothing, everything except the elephant crushing Hero to death under its sturdy, gargantuan foot.
When Hero hears his mom, he starts to cry again. He can hear the waves, gushing forth like scarlet from a head wound, frothing and lapping and beating at the cliffs.
He loves his mom. He loves his brother. He loves his friends, even here, even now.
Hero is so tired. He waits for them, unmoving, listening, phone in his hand. He speaks when they tell him to. The cliffs, he says, the beach. It all feels far away.
And then the voices are closer– so close, he can feel them, breath upon his face. And he's pulled in close, held tightly between warm, sturdy arms, and it's like he's a kid again, fifteen, fourteen, five, shrinking before his eyes.
And people are talking, his family is talking, and the waves seem so far away now. Hero leans into the hands that cup his face, and his eyes may be glossy but they're wide open now, he's tired but he's here, he's alive.
He wants to go home. The moon is in the sky, a delicate crescent, a smile. There's hair against his cheek and his shirt is damp with tears, and the Sun is rising, tentatively, over the water.
It's been four years since Hero let himself be held. He takes in a breath, he meets his family's eyes, drinks in the love like he's starving. They're not angry, or pitying, or horrified, or disappointed. They're not disgusted.
Hero looks at the sunrise, pale and shining threads of gold. It's beautiful. Something stirs in his chest.
And finally– finally– Hero lets the mountain crumble.