A Truth Too Bitter To Bear Alone

📅 October 2018

〚ᴛᴡ ғᴏʀ ᴀʟᴄᴏʜᴏʟɪsᴍ, sᴇʟғ ʜᴀʀᴍ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴛᴀʟᴋ ᴏғ ᴄʜɪʟᴅʜᴏᴏᴅ sᴇxᴜᴀʟ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ + sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ〛

It was a couple hours past midnight when Aetos awoke to his phone’s ringing and blinding brightness. With a sinking heart, Aetos noted Kato’s caller ID and picked up, already guessing as to why he was calling at this time of night.
“Hey, Kato. Seth?”
“Yeah. He's smashing up his fucking apartment again. 'Thena's out clubbing or some shit again, not picking up her cell. Can you go calm him down or whatever the fuck it is you do? It's two in the goddamn morning.” Kato’s voice crackled through Aetos’s speaker, his tired frustration coming through despite the static.
“Sure thing. Sorry you guys got woken up. Again. Thanks for calling me.”
As Aetos made to put down the phone, he could just barely hear Anarchy's sleepy groan of “We good with the kid or should we break out the fire axe?” and Chey’s “Listen, I can go up. I’ll be a fire axe in the meantime.” Kato mumbled back some contravention that Aetos couldn’t discern, said a terse “Come over, ‘Tae,” into the receiver, and the line went dead. Aetos sighed. 

Even if rare, the phone calls and fallout had become far too routine in his tired eyes—however infrequent the episodes were, the fact that they reoccurred felt devastating. It ached somewhere deeper than Aetos’s bones that this would be another night he spent trying desperately to help a man who refused to speak, who drowned his truth in liquor and left his friends to try and pick up the pieces. Aetos wasn’t angry, wasn’t bitter—just exhausted, just worried, just wishing to God in a hopeless sort of way that tonight would be the night Sethfire would finally accept help; open up and offer the rest of them the same trust they placed in him. 
As he pulled on his jacket and tied his shoes with fingers fumbled by sleeplessness and concern, Aetos felt weighed down by the regretful sense that perhaps he should never have moved out. It was bitter cold outside; the first frost was threatening already, even though it was just mid-October, and even the short walk from his apartment to the lobby of Sethfire's building was enough to make his teeth attempt to chatter. He warmed his hands and steeled himself in the elevator, though, and braced for whatever the night brought: It was with a sense of resignation that he made his way to Seth’s door. Scuffing his shoes on the welcome mat, Aetos sighed, then knocked.

The door opened before Aetos could put his copy of the key into the lock, and he felt his heart drop to the floor more than sink—if that’s what a sinking heart felt like, his had to be made of lead.
“Hey, ‘Tae,” Sethfire mumbled. His eyes were red-rimmed and tired, and Aetos couldn’t suppress the soft gasp that left his mouth upon seeing Seth's arms. Aetos had only been there the night of a relapse once before, and the blood smearing his friend’s skin was just as devastating a visual as the morning gauze he knew from nights which had gone by silent but serious. The destruction of the apartment was more familiar but no less depressing: The thrice-replaced foyer mirror lay shattered across the floor behind Seth, having again fallen victim to his self-loathing. The television quietly hummed and played static for an audience of broken glass and fractured reflections.

Biting back his dismay, Aetos tried to summon up a soothing tone—though he felt it came out just this side of tired. 
“Hey, Seth. Let's get you cleaned up, okay? How much did you drink?” 
Sethfire stepped back to let Aetos into the trashed apartment, and though he pursed his lips like he might have taken offense at being talked “down” to, he paused as though in thought.
“...Not enough. A bottle, maybe.” 
Aetos raised a tired eyebrow at that. 
“A bottle of...?” he inquired, making his way toward the hall bathroom to get peroxide and bandages; sighing heavily at the sight of the medicine cabinet mirror in fragments, filling the sink with shards of his own defeated facial expression.
Sethfire followed him and furrowed his brow as though the question was difficult. Maybe he was drunk or distracted enough that it was. 
“Vodka? Maybe whiskey. I don’t know. It’s a rough autumn that I’m doing this without drinking more.” 
Aetos cringed at his answer and quietly ran warm water over a sponge. 
“Go sit on your bed, please, Seth.”
“Alright,” Sethfire sighed, passing the bathroom door on his way towards the bedroom. As was so often the case, he sounded more tired than drunk; a despairing indication of how accustomed to liquor his body had become.

Aetos pushed aside the long-expired antidepressants from the cabinet shelf, tiredly moved an army’s worth of ibuprofen and topical painkillers to the side to reach the gauze and neosporin, then followed his friend—armed with most of a first aid kit—and got to work gently cleaning the cuts on Sethfire's arms. They were thankfully as superficial as Seth got; down to the dermis and still harrowing to look at, but not the deep cuts into adipose that Aetos had only ever seen the aftermath of, stitched up by hospital staff. He worked quietly for a few moments before finally breaking the silence.
“...When are you going to tell us what makes you do this to yourself, Sethfire?” he asked. “When will you let us in? You know that we’re scared—”

“You love me.” Sethfire cut him off with a non-sequitur, sounding exhausted. “You're in love with me.” There was no question mark, no trace of doubt in Seth’s tired voice.
Aetos felt his cheeks flush and he looked down to start wrapping Sethfire’s arms with gauze, but he saw no reason for denial.
“That’s true,” he replied evenly. 
“...You shouldn’t be,” Seth said quietly. There was an edge to his tone, something a cousin to both grief and self-loathing, and it tore at Aetos’s heart.

“Why not?” Aetos asked, keeping his tone level and his eyes on his hands as he worked, not wanting Sethfire to feel he was being pressured into returning his feelings. “Aside from the fact that you won’t have me, why shouldn’t I love you? You’re kind, you’re smart, you’re gentle with everyone but yourself—”
“It’s not—God, ‘Tae, don’t—” The sharpness in Sethfire’s tone had intensified; he seemed dismayed and he clenched and unclenched his fists as an almost anxious tic. “‘Won’t have’ you? It’s not about who you are, alright? You’re young. I’m ten years older than you—”
“I’m not a child,” Aetos retorted. “‘You’re young’ is a weak argument and you know it.” He smoothed a final strip of tender tape onto Sethfire’s arm and sat back to look at him. 
“I’d say ‘just tell me you’re not interested’ but that’s clearly not it, Seth. You’d say it if it was. And you talk to me differently than to anyone else. I must mean something to you but you won’t—”
“Don’t,” Sethfire cut him off; “make me have this conversation.”
“Then don’t tell me not to love you.”

Seth didn’t respond to that, and Aetos just studied him for a quiet moment; searching his profile and posture for any indication of where openness could be found.
“Will you ever trust me, Seth?” he finally asked, softly; “I’m not asking you to love me back. But if you’re going to act like we’re just friends, then at least trust me as if we are.”
“I do trust you,” Sethfire said, refusing to make eye contact.
“No, you don’t. You trust me more than the others, maybe, but you don’t trust me. You don’t trust anyone. You’ve been distant recently, Seth, more than usual and we’ve all noticed. We’re scared. Athena kept breaking down crying for months after last November and now—”
“Don’t—”
“No! We’ve put all our trust in you. What does it take for us to earn yours?” Aetos lifted his chin slightly, counting on his worried eyes to keep his firm tone and refusal to accept the interruption from feeling aggressive, but Sethfire shook his head and didn’t respond; just crossed his arms defensively at his ribs.

“Sethfire, I am begging you,” Aetos said, allowing his voice to soften again and lilt towards a plea; “to tell me what’s wrong. You saved my life three years ago. I’m terrified I won’t be able to save yours.” His eyes were drawn to the scars across his friend’s neck and he felt a lump forming in his throat. 
“Are you just going to stay silent and kill the rest of us through yourself, Seth? You’re too intelligent to actually think we’ll all be okay if you died.”
Sethfire finally turned to look at Aetos, pain etched across his face. 
“Don’t say that. I’m not—and even if—you’d adapt, ‘Tae, you’re—”
“You know you don’t believe that,” Aetos interrupted, his voice cracking slightly. “What would I adapt to? Losing you? Or losing Kato when he can’t handle the loss and kills himself too?” Sethfire opened his mouth as if to speak but Aetos just shook his head and kept going: 
“You know him, Seth, you can’t tell me that’s not what would happen. And what am I supposed to do if Athena stops eating again? She’s strong, but you mean the world to her. Grief and loss can trigger relapse of all kinds, so what am I meant to do if she slips? If ‘Key starts shooting up again? You die and then what? Are Chey and I meant to try and pick up the pieces, or just divide up the labour of ordering headstones for our friends?”

Sethfire looked somewhere between defeated and broken-hearted and Aetos gently reached out to touch his hand.
“I don’t want to be guilting you into anything,” he sighed, “But I’m scared, Seth, I’m scared you don’t understand how much you mean to us all. There’s something eating you alive and I can tell, so please...Tell me what’s wrong. Keeping it inside is destroying you. And you don’t need to be holding it alone.”
There was silence for a moment, and then the dam finally broke. 

“It was twenty years ago this autumn,” Sethfire said, averting his gaze, his eyes tired and haunted. “I was nine, Athena was two, and we had a nanny. Our parents worked and had their social appearances to keep up; at dinners and such where children weren’t necessarily welcome. They’d occasionally bring me, but...Athena and I were in this nanny’s care a lot.” Sethfire’s voice was exhausted with a hounded quality to it; something low and hunted making itself heard from deep in his chest as he spoke. 
“I thought that he was just kind, at first, you know? I...He would let me sit on his lap and he'd buy me gifts and pay attention to me and offer to help with my homework. Not that I often needed it, but the offers meant more than the help..." Seth's voice got clearer but higher, and he stared unseeing at his bedroom wall, at nothing. Aetos didn’t know what else to do, and so gently leaned against his friend's shoulder, a hand on his back. Listening, close, comfort as Sethfire had offered him those years ago.
“I…I thought he cared about me. I thought I mattered,” Sethfire said, somewhat hoarsely. “He seemed to care about the things my parents did not, you know: The books I read that weren’t obnoxious theory, what games I liked to play. He acted like he really wanted to know who my favorite Harry Potter character was—and this was before it was famous, when only the first book was out; him caring was special. It was about me. He asked after what my personal, childlike interests were. He treated me like…Like a kid; like I was more than my intelligence and career potential. I trusted him, ‘Tae, I trusted…I didn't expect…He…” Sethfire seemed at a loss for words for a second, his voice cracking. 
“...He molested me.” A pained noise worked its way out of Seth's throat and he curled in on himself, his knees tucking up instinctively while he hid his face in his hands; a futile attempt to stifle dry, strangled sounds that failed to be sobs but could no longer be contained in his chest.

“Oh, Seth…” Aetos breathed, his heart twisting painfully with how helpless he felt to comfort his friend.
“I knew it wasn’t right what he was doing, but he had been so kind,” Sethfire choked out against his palms. “He’d made me feel valuable as a person, I thought he saw something in me beyond what my parents and educators did, and I guess that was fucking true!” Sethfire’s voice had become almost unrecognizably raw and even within context Aetos found himself thrown off by the curse.
“I never spoke a word to anyone. He told me it was a secret and it was a secret that I kept. It lasted twice a week for a year, ‘Tae, and I told no one.” Seth’s voice shook along with his shoulders, but he dragged his hands down his face, forcibly straightened his back, and returned to staring sightlessly at the wall. 
“Eventually another victim of his, someone smarter than me, clearly—raised the alarm. In the aftermath my parents asked me if he’d done anything to me, but I could tell what they wanted to hear, Aetos. I could read my parents: The scandal it would have been...Their reputations. I was ten years old, I stood by them. Protected them. ‘No, he never laid a hand on me.’ ...Fortunately he was convicted even without additional testimony. Managed to get himself killed in prison a few years ago.” 

A few moments passed in silence as Aetos tried and failed to find words of comfort; everything seemed inadequate. He desperately wanted to know for certain how to heal the gaping wound that Sethfire was revealing to him; the secret, soul-deep injury that had been bound up and allowed to fester for twenty years. Alcohol was a disinfectant; no wonder Seth drank. Aetos cupped one of Seth’s hands in his and squeezed.
“I’m so sorry,” Aetos said, hardly more than a whisper. “I’m so sorry you went through that, Seth. I’m here. And I’m hearing you: I get why you’re in so much pain, now. Why you have been for so long.”
More silence. Seth looked hollowed out; vacant except for the dim anguish flickering in his distant eyes. 

“All of it is in everything, now, ‘Tae,” he said, almost inflectionlessly. “He is dead and I am not and I can’t escape it. Over and over he told me it was not wrong, and so I allowed it to continue. I put his word above my instincts; I put my parents’ values above my own. How do I trust myself to do what’s right when—”
“You were a child,” Aetos interrupted, sitting back but gripping Seth’s hand tighter. “You were ten, younger! How do you ‘trust yourself to do what’s right’? What have you been doing with us all, Seth? Me, ‘Key, Kato? Athena? If no one else, she’s proof that you don’t hold up your parents’ values. You’ve saved four lives—more than that; K-O…” Aetos shook his head after a lurched pause. “...If that’s not doing what’s right, then what is?”
Sethfire shook his head tiredly and shrugged.
“I let Athena down in more ways than she would allow me to take credit for,” he said softly. “But even barring that...I just feel sick. Constantly. I can save lives and do whatever good I’m able to do with my broken hands, but shame has no antidote. I can’t bleed out his touch, I can’t drink myself clean, but damn do I try.”
“...You aren’t dirty,” Aetos murmured. “And you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. An awful, awful man took advantage of you—and what you’ve done is become his opposite. Whenever you’ve met anyone vulnerable, you have never taken advantage of that. All you've ever done is help, and never once even asked for anything in return. What he did was evil. But I don’t think you’re capable of being anything other than good. If there’s space for shame in all of that, I can’t find it.”

Sethfire blinked slowly and rubbed his eyes with his free hand. He looked worn down and much older than he was.
“I don’t want to have told you about this,” he said softly, an audible ache in his voice. “I don’t…It’s too much, ‘Tae, I don’t want to have to talk about it. I don’t want you to know. Or anyone to know.”
“I understand. But I’m glad you told me,” Aetos murmured, running a gentle thumb across Seth’s mirror-cut knuckles. “You don’t have to talk about it unless you want to...but I think you know that you can’t keep pain buried inside. Not without it killing you. I can help you carry it, now.” 
Sethfire let out a shaky breath and Aetos tucked one of his long dreads back behind his ear.
“I still see you the same, you know, Seth. You’re still gentle. Still kind. Still brave, still selfless.”
Seth gave a hollow nod contradicted by some despairing, disbelieving noise he couldn’t suppress, and Aetos returned to leaning against his shoulder; to offer comfort in closeness.
“I wish I could take your pain away,” he said softly, “but I can’t. I can only tell you that I’m here. That you’re needed, and loved, and deserve to be. You have a heart that keeps others strong. Please keep it beating.”
Sethfire was silent for a moment, and didn’t look up when he finally responded, his voice pained and all but inaudible;
“...I’ll try.”