Flock Together

 📅 May, 2018

[ᴄᴡ ғᴏʀ ɢᴀsʟɪɢʜᴛɪɴɢ, ᴍᴀɴɪᴘᴜʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ᴀɴᴅ ᴇᴍᴏᴛɪᴏɴᴀʟ ᴀʙᴜsᴇ, ᴀs ᴡᴇʟʟ ᴀs ʀᴇғᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ ᴛᴏ sᴜɪᴄɪᴅᴇ ᴀɴᴅ sᴇʟғ-ɪɴᴊᴜʀʏ]

Audrianna cupped her hands over her nose and mouth and took a couple deep breaths; eyes closed, hands to her face. Seven months had passed, almost. Seven months that she could only barely explain and that none of them could expect easy forgiveness for. She sat down and stared unseeing at her phone. Where could she even start with it? How on earth did you word an apology for being brainwashed? How were you meant to explain it without excusing it? Mentally, she tried to trace things back to the beginning of her awareness that something was “up.”
October was, maybe, the start of it. Ian had had that relapse, and that had been alarming, of course; none of them had understood for months— but that had gotten sidelined by Kato and Fawkes’s spectacular break-up...

Audrianna pressed her palms to her eyes until colors swirled behind her eyelids. Kato had been gone for four days; had disappeared into the city with a gun and an implied goodbye. Gabe had been losing his mind, there, almost in tears by that afternoon. There had been a lump in his throat, audible in every word he’d spoken for the past day, and his eyes shone; shone like they did when he talked about his mother. He and Ian had been there, at Audrianna’s apartment, and Gabe had been in the middle of a desperate gesture towards the door: He didn’t care about the dying daylight, he’d said, let the sun go down, he’d search Central Park inch by inch in the dark with a flashlight if he had to.
And then...Colin had showed up. Said that Bryluen had told him to meet her there.

Audrianna could almost feel the chilly heft of the air from then all over again; where the four of them had exchanged glances and all felt their hearts sink in unison. Bryluen had been going over to EoI’s complex with Astra that afternoon, and Audrianna couldn’t help but conclude that she must know something the rest of them didn’t; why else would she send Colin over with no heads-up? The bleak days had sapped Audrianna of hope; of course they were being gathered together to be told their friend was dead. In person, because that was nothing to be done over the phone.

𝒪𝒸𝓉𝑜𝒷𝑒𝓇 29𝓉𝒽, 2017…

Audrianna had been expecting a hesitant knock and footsteps that dragged, so Bryluen’s sharp rap on the door and brisk stride upon its opening came as a surprise.
“You won’t BELIEVE this,” she said to the room at large before anyone had managed a greeting, “Like, honestly, I know he’s TROUBLED, but sometimes there’s no excuse for how he acts and this is a new low!” She tossed her long, dark hair over her shoulder. “Kato’s alive, which of course we’re all glad for regardless—but they found him just sitting in a park; he’d been dragging this all on for the attention!”
“What?” Gabe croaked. His voice was stuck between grief and confusion, but there was something incredulous beneath the surface. His brow furrowed.
“I know, right?!” Bryluen said, her eyes wide, apparently appalled. “It all went to hell, honestly. Fawkes was so incensed she broke his nose—it made this horrible sound and bled a lot—but listen to this: I was hurt too, clearly, because we’ve all been so worried—so I voiced how I was disappointed in him—and I guess he didn’t like me calling him out, so he feigned like I’d wounded him so horribly he was going to shoot himself right there in front of all of us...and ANARCHY tried to attack me for it! Astra, you saw, he was coming right at me! Bayer, you had to stop him that first time, but how he shoved you away…! It was frightening; they intimidated us out of the apartment!”

The room was pin-drop silent for a few moments, everyone’s expressions varying degrees of shock, while Bryluen pursed her lips and blinked, apparently hurt and shaken. Bayer stood behind her, his thin-lipped expression unreadable and his silence seeming to indicate that a bomb of some nature truly had gone off.

“...I dunno, Bry…” Astra said, so quiet that she was at risk of being drowned out by the muffled sound of city traffic beyond the windows; “Like, it was every flavor of fucked up in there, yeah...but what you said was a little harsh...” 
Bryluen turned towards Astra and gaped, hurt still shimmering in her wide blue eyes.
“What? I wasn’t harsh,” she exclaimed; “You must have misunderstood me—it happens to people when they’re stressed, though, so don’t worry, I’m not angry! It makes sense, the situation was awful.” Bryluen rubbed Astra’s shoulder comfortingly and turned back to the rest of the room. Audrianna opened and closed her mouth, but couldn’t figure out what to ask. She felt slightly dizzy. It was too much.

“K…K, he—” Gabe choked out, stuttering like his twin. He shook his head. “K was fine? What….Dragging, like...What do you mean, he was…?” 
“I’m so sorry, Gabe,” Bryluen said emphatically, clutching her hands up to her chest and biting her lip. “Honestly, half of why I was so disappointed in him was just for you, I know how close you’ve been to him, and in so much pain! And for him to have just been leading you and us along for...honestly, no reason at all…!” She let out a distressed huff and looked to Audrianna. 
“I don’t get it, Audri, I’m so upset. I can’t believe Anarchy tried to HIT ME...and no one said anything to him! Then Fawkes, she actually punched Kato but they were acting like I was the villain—!” Colin was suddenly at her elbow, as if she’d summoned him from the air beside her, and she leaned against him for comfort.
“Even Sethfire was cold, and didn’t do anything about us getting bouncered out of the room...he seemed to encourage it! It was downright scary, honestly, even with Bayer there; Kato’s SO unpredictable and they let him point guns wherever he likes, and then Anarchy and Fawkes balling fists wherever they get the chance? I’m so distraught; I just can’t stomach the idea of working with them again! Or the people affiliated with them, really, it was just terrifying!” 

∼∼∼∼∼

The scene dissolved. Bryluen had whisked out of the apartment after that, distraught; Colin on her arm, Astra in her wake. Audrianna wished she’d seen it, then, in how Bayer’s eyes had been fixed on Astra, not Bryluen; that his then-unreadable expression in retrospect was so clearly one of evaluation: The resignation in it had only sunk in after he witnessed Astra’s visible defeat. And God, Audrianna wished she’d, too, made note of how confused Astra had looked when corrected; wished she’d stopped to wonder when Astra had begun walking with hunched shoulders and trailing after Bryluen like a dog. But she hadn’t seen it, hadn’t wondered, had been too shell-shocked by all else. Bryluen had left uncertainty behind, instability; fissures spider-webbing outward from that moment across their lives. 

There had been an implicit direction in her words, in “can’t-stomach-working-with-anyone-affiliated-with-them-again,” but it had been uneasy. Another opportunity to notice that had gone untaken. At the time, Audrianna had attributed her discomfort to her own hurt; they really had all been worried sick, and she’d felt Kato certainly owed just about everyone an apology for pulling a stunt like that—and if one was forthcoming, then maybe it could all be patched up. Bryluen wasn’t unreasonable, and it wasn’t like she hadn’t had reason to be shaken: She was very slight and surrounded by much stronger people, acting volatile! They all just needed some time, most likely. Some time and an apology.

None had come, though, and Gabe had ended up wounded by a text exchange that should have been a phone conversation and therefore allowed for tone to carry...but it hadn’t been, and the situation across the board was feeling more and more fraught.
Audrianna had been let in on Gabe’s attempt at outreach by Gracian, but knew she probably shouldn’t mention it to anyone else, and the fact that even talking openly amongst one another seemed somewhat risky was something else Audrianna wished she’d noticed. It had been too insidious for that, though, too deep-set and had started too far in the past, when everything seemed so innocuous.

By 2017 Audrianna had all but forgotten that the reason she felt awkward when talking one-on-one to Bayer wasn’t her own doing, but that years ago Bryluen had been the one who’d insinuated that Bayer might feel uncomfortable with her because of her education level and socioeconomic status, that perhaps he felt judged by her or lorded over. So her practiced routine of trying not to crowd him was built in by that autumn, just like a thousand similar hairline fractures in all their bonds; from Ian’s belief that even those close to him found his stutter irksome to Bayer’s impression that Audrianna felt uncomfortable around him due to his history. Not that any of those engineered insecurities came to light then…

No, in October’s aftermath everyone was on edge but unaware, and miscommunication and deceit reigned supreme. Audrianna ended up having an ill-fated text conversation of her own; she wanted to let Sethfire know that Bryluen and Astra had felt they were intimidated out of the apartment, certain that he’d seek to straighten things out, never one to leave someone feeling outcast—other than, perhaps, himself. But he’d seemed patently closed off, and Audrianna had found herself frustrated and hurt. Two weeks into the uneasy widening of the newly-cleaved rift between their bands, things finally shattered. Bryluen—supposedly accidentally—texted the group chat when intending only to message Colin, meaning all of them got the rather alarming text; “ok something really scary just happened and i dont know what to do about it.. can u come over?” 

They, of course, all grew concerned and asked what had happened, which was how in a group call Bryluen ended up telling everyone, through distraught hiccups, how Kato had come over and cornered her in her own apartment—screaming, ranting, almost certainly high on something—and made the incredibly cruel assertion that he’d rather be dead than ever be friends with the likes of her or her company. Bryluen, more shaken than ever before, tearfully burst out before hanging up that at this point she felt just fine leaving him to that opinion, then, and if everyone was only going to scream and threaten each other to communicate then she was quite done with the lot of them.
It had been awful, an unbearable blow to Gabe especially; Audrianna later found out that he’d texted both Kato and Athena to ask if it was true Kato had gone over to scream at Bryluen, and upon getting two variations on “Yes, and it was fucking justified,” was entirely devastated.

Separation from their friends shook things up, and it was that sickly, wounded winter that Audrianna started, accidentally, stumbling towards the truth. It seemed like their communication with one another had started to break down with the stress and trauma of it all, and so it really began with her feeling like she was almost trying to fix misunderstandings: Colin had begun confiding in her, intermittently, about his chronic feelings of heartbreak; how in love with Bryluen he was and had been for years, how she’d swing from closeness to coldness; love him one day but flirt openly with strangers the next or talk to him about propositions she’d gotten from accomplished, attractive men he felt he couldn’t measure up to. Audrianna had still been in the dark at the time, so she’d assumed Bryluen had some kind of commitment issues painfully at play; she told Colin as much and reassured him about his worth, and made a mental note to have a heart-to-heart with Bry about what might be causing her to be so emotionally flighty with such a good-hearted—and, yes, gorgeous—man.
But then Astra had come to her.

It was another scene that ended up branded into Audrianna’s memory, and it played in technicolor on the back of her eyelids as she pressed the heels of her palms harder against them.
Astra had asked to come over, to talk, one-on-one, and when she arrived her body language had been so atypical that Audrianna had been overcome with concern even then…

𝒟𝑒𝒸𝑒𝓂𝒷𝑒𝓇, 2017...

Audrianna frowned, sitting across the table from her friend, both of them cupping mugs of tea and seeming to hesitate. Astra avoided Audrianna’s eyes and kept looking at a patch of floor to the left of the table; her head held low, shoulders slumped. Even her hairstyle seemed to have fallen victim to whatever had beaten her down; she’d stopped wearing it up, loud and proud, like a cockatoo, and now it shrouded her face.
Audrianna pursed her lips and finally set her mug down, uncrossing her legs so she could lean forward.
“What did you want to talk to me about, Astra?” she asked. “You look so down. I’m here for you, whatever it is, you know.”
Astra drew a breath and nodded, apparently drawing on the support. She straightened up a bit, and managed to falter her way to eye contact.
“No, I know. Thank you. It’s just...it’s hard. It’s...kinda...it’s about October,” she said.
“Mm. That was rough.” Audrianna blinked her sympathy. “Still is, really.”
“Y...Yeah. But...Well, what’s sorta bugging me...the actual day? I was at the apartment with Bry, you know…” Astra pressed her lips thin; she turned her mug around and around in her hands. “Stuff...stuff just keeps messing with me. I don’t know if I'm remembering everything right, but I...I really think she said that KO deserved to be hit in the face? That it would ‘do him good’ to be…punished. Because he’d been an ‘inconvenience.’ And, like, everyone reacted worse than they should have, but I dunno, Audri...I get why it was mean. Like, it was, right? ...Please don't tell her I talked to you about this.”

∼∼∼∼∼

“Don't tell her I talked to you about this.”

It had been that line more than anything else that had set something off within Audrianna; slammed some internal panic switch that got her racking her brains and combing through her memories; suddenly wary, looking at everything through a new, analytical lens. Bryluen had made the mistake of making some small comment to Audrianna about her close relationship with her dad, then—and with the new, leery perspective she noticed how much it seemed like a pointed suggestion that she confided in him too much, or felt she needed to due to his money. It was untrue and offensive and the next day Audrianna had attempted to have words about it—but Bryluen had acted surprised; wide-eyed and confused, and had batted her eyelashes with a concerned pout as she innocently insisted she couldn’t remember implying anything like that, and asked if Audrianna was sure this was a conversation that the two of them had had? Maybe she was confused, Bryluen insisted, sculpting her expression into one of worry. Was Audrianna sure she was remembering correctly? Because Bryluen was certain she’d remember if she’d said something that could come across like that.

 Audrianna was sure she was remembering correctly, and armed with Astra’s conversation and all her apparent confusion, Audrianna found that the interaction had only fed the fire lit under her, and her determination to find clarity only grew.
 It had felt surreal even then and still seemed like a movie she’d seen rather than her own life when she thought back on it now—but she’d started journaling more intently, and once-cathartic diary entries morphed into something else: Data. Records. Enumerative lists of things said; notes taken of contradictions, exaggerations, outright lies. 

At that time, Audrianna noticed that Coahoma seemed like she, too, might be aware something was wrong: She’d gotten a little more distant from the rest of them; worked her shift job more, talked less, didn’t seem nearly as enthused with the music industry as she once had. Astra and the twins were clearly feeling it, and Audrianna finally went for it. She and Coah had never been close-close, but Coahoma’s relative reserve meant she’d never gotten as close as the rest of them to Bryluen, either, for all appearances. Audrianna tested the waters; opened up however minutely about being uncomfortable with something Bryluen had said, recently, and their conversation about distance quickly shifted. Audrianna spilled what she knew in full, learning that Coahoma had heard Astra’s story as well. Not just from Astra, but from Bayer, too: He’d been there and confirmed that Astra’s version of events was factual. Coah relayed with impassive eyes that she trusted Astra and Bayer more than Bryluen, anyway: It turned out that over the years, Coah had taken issue with some of the ways Bryluen had worded things about Bayer, and his and Astra’s confiding in her had been enough additional diceyness to result in her recent drift.
She and Bayer were close, Audrianna learned, closer than either of them openly let on—and in discussing him, Coahoma expressed surprise at the idea that Bayer felt uncomfortable with Audrianna. He was under the impression, Coahoma said, that Audrianna was scared of him to some degree, and he worried about causing her discomfort. That was unexpected—Audrianna had never felt scared of Bayer; quite the contrary. Despite his past and their lack of an intimate friendship, she respected him immensely and felt perfectly safe in his company. Wanting to set the record straight, and to hear his version of October’s events directly, she invited him over to talk with her sometime soon; saying, honestly, that she was feeling overwhelmed by all that had gone on over the past few months and really wanted his perspective on some things. Despite being audibly taken aback, he agreed.

Their conversation illuminated for both of them what Audrianna had already started suspecting; that Bryluen had fed each of them the false impression the other felt uncomfortable. Audrianna made clear to Bayer that she’d never found him scary, and Bayer firmly stated that though he was aware of the difference between their backgrounds, he’d never felt Audrianna to be holding her class over his head; he was unbothered by their differing education level and “not insecure enough to feel bad if people were smarter than him, anyway.” His willingness to listen and his furrowed-brow reaction to having been misled bolstered Audrianna’s confidence in him, and she ended up asking outright about October and what Astra had said—and though he seemed on edge over it, he confirmed Astra’s version of events. Audrianna couldn’t help but want to discuss the other distortions of truth she’d noticed, eventually even bringing out her diaries despite knowing that she might seem like the psycho by doing so. He listened, though, and read, and ended up sitting with one hand to his forehead; his leg bouncing as he doodled amorphous shapes on a napkin he wasn’t even seeing through his unfocused eyes. He suddenly slapped the pen down and shook his head.

“Audri, I’ve known it’s been fucked up—even if I didn’t realize it was this fucked up. But even if everything she’s ever said has been a lie, she’s in tight with Gabe and Ian; with Astra. Them...they’re my job,” he said seriously. “That’s my whole livelihood, right there. My whole life. That’s why I haven’t been talking: If I start anything with her, if I rock this boat, I have nowhere to go.”
“Astra wouldn’t just fire you, though, Bayer,” Audrianna objected; “she knows the truth, too—”
“She’s known the truth and she still hasn’t texted Athena since Bryluen made this an Us vs Them, Audrianna. I need my job.” Bayer seemed halfway devastated but powerless to change it; he heaved a shrug and shook his head again. “I’m glad we talked things out, thanks for telling me all this...but I can’t do anything with it.”

That was it, really, for almost all of them, Audrianna realized. The bonds between them—the criss-crossing, interwoven ties that bind—had become a web in which they were inextricably entangled, so long as Bryluen kept Astra and the twins close, or so long as the rest of them believed in that closeness. But Audrianna had seen the weakness in her grip on Astra already, and in February, all of a sudden, Ian approached her as a confidante.
He was worried about his brother. Gabe had always been the protective one of the twins, looking out for Ian at every turn in life. But something had flipped the script and led to Ian on Audrianna’s couch, saying he was scared for Gabe; that he’d been tailspinning for three months and now was talking about checking himself into a hospital what with how ‘crazy’ he felt…

ℱ𝑒𝒷𝓇𝓊𝒶𝓇𝓎, 2018...

“In January Gabe asked—he asked—he asked me if cutting actually helps,” Ian said miserably; “And he keeps—keeps—keeps talking about how he can’t think straight, or figure out what he thinks or wants…” Ian abruptly went silent and appeared to strain; he was clearly immensely distressed and Audrianna patiently waited for his stutter to allow him to speak again, her concern mounting.

“It’s okay, there’s no rush,” she offered, which seemed to bring some kind of aggrieved conflict to Ian’s eyes.

“I know it’s annoying,” he blurted out, the corners of his mouth jerking downward; “I know it’s annoying, it’s probably part of it. Gabe always—Gabe never—Gabe always was defending me, so he didn’t get to have so many friends, and I’ve been pushing—pushing—too hard with dad—and he won’t tell me because he feels obligated to take care of me, but I know he’s mentioned to Bryluen…”

Audrianna froze and sat up straighter. “Bryluen told you Gabe thinks those things?” she asked, as neutrally as she could. “...What else has she told you, Ian? Because I definitely don’t think your stutter’s annoying. And I don’t believe that Gabe is suffering because of you, either...”

∼∼∼∼∼

That conversation had been a turning point, and what Ian told her became integral; a lifeline, a truthline: A bead on what had happened in October and past that, because through the lens of what he shared, untwisting the facts became easier. And of course...all the lies Ian had been funneled had been where it finally all came down.
Three months later, the dust had finally settled; settled enough for them all to want to try and rebuild whatever they could.

Gabe and Astra had both already tried reaching out to EoI, but had gotten no responses; Bayer’s text to Anarchy a month ago had been met with a non-hostile but firm, “Now really isn’t the time.” Audrianna knew it still might not be the time, but closure felt too important to forego attempting to find. Who would hear her out on all of it, though? Who wouldn’t have blocked her number? Who there would pick up or call back?
With a deep breath, Audrianna scrolled through her contacts and tapped the ‘Call’ button beside the name of the one member of EoI she felt might, despite the hurt and undoubted anger, be willing to truly listen to her and all she had to say. She pressed her phone to her ear, crossed her fingers, and hoped.

When Audrianna’s name popped up on Aetos’s caller ID that first evening, interrupting the music he used to block the rattle of the Q24’s windows, he didn’t necessarily know what to make of it. He hesitated even in picking up, but Audri herself hadn’t been involved in everything, really, and had always been decent before. So...Aetos took the chance. 
“...Audrianna?”
“Oh thank God, ‘Tae. I thought you might not pick up. How, uh...how are you?” Audrianna’s voice was strained.
“I’m fine. On the bus. Heading home from work. Why are you calling, Audri?” Aetos asked. He had little interest in awkward small talk, not now and after everything. He heard her sigh.
“...I know this is out of the blue. And I know it’s been too long and you don’t owe me—or any of us—anything, after we all went ghost. But I wanted to at least try to...to explain. And apologize. Do you have time to hear me out?”
“...Yeah, okay. Sure.”

With his go-ahead, Audrianna launched into a new tone, something driven and determined, but frantic at its edges:
“Okay, so—I know...I know that what happened last year was messy as hell, and I know we have a lot to account for. Please believe me that it was confusing as fuck for us, too. Us being...everyone aside from Bryluen. There were a million things all of us could have done differently and I’m not going to try and offload all the blame, I promise, but a really, really big part of what happened...Is her. And how she played all of us. How she was playing all of us.”
Aetos’s attention was piqued; he crossed one ankle over the opposite knee and pressed his earbud in more securely, to block out the conversation of the women seated in front of him.
“...Okay,” he said, his intonation making the word a prompt.
“Well...I guess I can just start in October,” Audrianna said, the insecurity that fringed her voice bringing up the mental image of her wringing her hands; “Since that’s where it all broke down…”

Audrianna’s story came out as an apologetic rush and ended like a wince; Aetos couldn’t help but curl his lip at the warped version of events all of Nightshrike had been presented with.
“Well, that’s a way to spin it,” he said after Audrianna finished describing what Bryluen had told them. “Did she mention what the something she said to Kato was?”
“No, she didn’t... Astra sort of tried but Bry shut her down; twisted the story back to how she wanted it. She was victimizing herself, all this stuff, and we didn’t know what to think; none of us were there other than Bay, but he...”
“No, sure, you weren't there,” Aetos said sharply, “But you just took her at ‘Kato’s a psychopathic brat faking two suicide attempts’? That’s effing callous, Audrianna. He was delirious with dehydration when they found him, just waiting for his body to die, and you—”
“No, I know! Or I didn’t, not the details like that, but please…Please let me keep talking, I know I don’t have a right to it, but please.”
“Fine, yeah. Shoot,” Aetos said, and could almost hear Audrianna’s flinch through the phone.

“Okay...yeah. Anyway...No, Aetos, we didn’t...necessarily take her at her exact word like that, but things came at us really quickly. She had this way of talking where you’d have to shout over her, and we were all in...shock, I think, and she was throwing herself under the bus as best she could—”
“And how did she manage that?” Aetos interrupted icily. “Okay, she was manipulative, she was spinning a story—but one that persuaded all of you to drop us flat on our backs? When both Bayer and Astra were there, too?”
“It’s not that simple!” Audrianna sounded frustrated and partway to scared; by how her voice got briefly muffled, it sounded like she might have grabbed her phone with both hands in some desperate attempt to break through.

It was the grief and betrayal of her tone more than her words that really did it. She was on the defensive but talked like someone in need of comfort, like despite the fact that she was the one offering an explanation, some part of her wanted him to offer one as well: For why her close friend had never really been that. For why Bryluen had had so carefully engineered everyone’s relationships with her and with one another; made each of them feel too entangled to ask too many questions; to voice too much defiance. There was a pleading note to her talking about how trapped they all had been, how Bryluen had used her friendship with Astra and the twins as an almost-forcefield.
Audrianna had apparently only started to figure it all out because Astra had confided in her, but the messiness and manipulative nature of everything had dragged things on for months.

“...Sometime maybe in February, though, Ian came to me,” Audrianna said; “He started out saying how he was worried about Gabe, who was...honestly losing it, it seemed like. But Ian ended up telling me more...you know how he had that self-harm relapse out of the blue in mid-October?”

“Yeah, we all were really worried about him,” Aetos said. “We, you know, reached out and all to try and be there for him better.” He knew he sounded somewhat accusatory.

I know, I know all of you were on his side. Our side. I’m sorry,” Audrianna said heavily, But anyway—that, back in October, for Ian? That was actually because of Bry. None of us even knew it, but she’d been feeding him all sorts of stuff. He’d come to her about various things—like all of us would, you know, she acted as everyone’s confidante—but he’d talk to her about stuff with his and Gabe’s father, how that process was going. And she actually—God it’s awful—but she made some implications about maybe his father finding his ‘running interference’ on mental health stuff frustrating or out of line or something, and that Gabe felt resentful over being ‘forced’ to reconnect...…and that everyone would make fun of Ian’s stutter behind his back, or at least found it annoying to put up with...We didn’t know at the time though. We all were so worried about him and couldn’t get why he felt so bad about himself all of a sudden...But it was her, it was Bryluen. Thank Christ I dug it out of him eventually…” Audrianna sighed, and Aetos couldn’t even find the words to ask questions, really starting to understand the Why? he’d heard in Audrianna’s voice before: Because Why? Why divide people like that, why ruin relationships and tear people down? For what purpose? Control and nothing else?

“How did you?” Aetos asked. “Dig it out of him? What happened?”
“Well…I know it didn’t look like it, but losing you, like, you all, was a real blow. Gabe…Gabe took it really hard. Ian told me in February that Gabe had given him reason to think he was having thoughts of self-injury, and was thinking about sectioning himself because he felt so crazy, and when Ian started saying how scared he was that it was partly his fault, for the ‘undesired’ reconnection with their dad and his ‘annoying stutter’ driving people away, I ended up able to have a conversation with him about why he thought those things. And who the ‘why’ really was.”
“It was a long road trying to persuade Gracian to talk to Gabe,” Audrianna said, her voice drawing Aetos from his whirling thoughts; “Finally I just told Gabe outright what was up and said to ask Ian to confirm. He did...and that’s where Bry’s empire of glass started to shatter, really. Gabe pretty much lost it when he heard all the stuff she’d told Ian, and he wasn’t going to hang out in...brainwash purgatory, trying to make sure everyone else was on the same page, the way I’d been trying to do. He confronted her—cut ties and all that; told everyone what she’d done to Ian, and...we’re Nightshrike, you know, we’re...them. Everyone stuck by him and Ian: Bry’s out of the picture now. It was messy for a while there, but she’s gone.”

“What’s ‘messy’ mean?” Aetos asked. It was the only question that felt like it could have a clear-cut answer.
“Mental health stuff for almost all of us and her threatening G² with legal action if they didn’t take down songs she’d guested on or agree to split the profits. That kind of messy.” Audrianna sounded exhausted. “Gabe tried calling K-O right after he cut Bry out but it went straight to voicemail, and he didn’t get any responses by text. Everything was still hitting the fan and all of us were pretty damaged; Colin actually went with Bry at first and needed to be fished out, so…we decided we needed to get our lives together better again before we could justify reaching out to you all, anyway. But…Astra and Gabe haven’t been able to reach Athena or Kato. Bayer says Anarchy responded to his text in April but just told him that he thought right then wasn’t a good time to try patching things up.”
“No, yeah, Kato blocked all of your numbers in December or January,” Aetos said. “And I think Athena might have done the same, or at least deleted contacts, ‘cause waiting around in silence was eating her up so bad. Anarchy didn’t say anything to me, but…Yeah. There’s been a lot going on for ‘Key and all of us. He was probably right about the timing.”
“Is he still right?” Audrianna asked dispiritedly. “Or…Do you think by now anyone else on your end would...hear this out? If not...would you at least be willing to tell them what happened and that we’re sorry? I know Astra can’t pull herself out of her head about it. Gabe’s still beside himself, too.”

Aetos tucked his tongue to his cheek and frowned. He’d had no expectations going in, but the conversation had defied them anyway; he felt distinctly headspun and in need of time to mull over all that had been said.
“I need to think about all this, Audri,” he said. “I’ll call you back. Tomorrow or sometime.”
“Okay, yeah.” Her voice seemed meeker than it had ever been back when they were friends, and he’d go to her for advice or to talk academia. “...Thank you, Aetos.”

———

By the time he let himself into his apartment and kicked off his shoes, Aetos was deep enough in thought to be drowning and no amount of pacing or prayer was bringing him closer to clarity. He felt in too deep and wanted an opinion from someone objective, someone uninvolved. He propped his elbows on his window sill and dialed Chey’s number.
Click; “H—!”
“Chey, I need to talk to you about something,” Aetos said immediately after hearing Chey pick up, interrupting his greeting; “How much do you know about what happened last year?”
“Oh—Enough, I think,” Chey said, his tone growing serious, though apparently unperturbed by Aetos’s relative brusqueness; “I know that Gunner tried to off himself after he and Fawkes broke up…and you all ended up losing a group of long-standing friends. ‘Nightshrike?’ After one of them was cruel. And I know that Seth cut his throat afterwards. Am I missing anything?”
“No, that kind of was all of it until now,” Aetos said slowly, “But Audrianna just called me…”

Aetos managed to cobble together some sort of interwoven explanation-and-summary for Chey; even if it lacked some nuance about how everyone in Nightshrike had interacted before the end of October, it felt functional enough and had already taken the better part of an hour, so Aetos wrapped it up:
“...and I don’t know, I think maybe I’m still too upset about it to make an objective call,” he said, briefly biting his lower lip; “So what do you think—should we try this? Reconnecting? Or d’you think it would just reopen old wounds?” Aetos stared out the window and frowned. “...It still hurts Kato, I’m sure it does, and I don’t want him backsliding. I’m sure that was ‘Key’s reasoning, before.”
“I’m sure, too. Audrianna is cool, though? She’s someone you think is trustworthy?” Chey asked. Aetos affirmed, and Chey’s voice took on a more pensive tone. “...Then...I think this might be the sign to try and heal. Even if not everyone ends up reconciling with one another…? All of this needs to see the open air. Once the truth is out there, the real healing can start—for everyone. In whatever form that takes.”
Aetos nodded as he took it in, his heart rising and sinking in equal measure; a buoy riding the conflicted swells of his emotions.
“Yeah...you’re right. So...I think I need to call Ian; I want to talk it over with him, too. And Audrianna again. Then I guess...I guess I’ll get in touch with Athena after that.” Aetos listed each of them out on his fingers, abruptly feeling at risk of overwhelm. “...I have no idea how this will work out.”
“I can lay some groundwork for you here with ‘Key and K-O,” Chey offered. “Like, just mention that you called and that there’s stuff going on in that sort of...social...zone.”
“Please,” Aetos said gratefully. “And...when you do—could you do me a favor and get me a barometer reading on Kato about it?”
“You’re worried about him.”
“He self-destructs when he’s upset and all his guns are just in Anarchy’s closet,” Aetos said grimly; “He’s not me; he wouldn’t need a step stool to reach them.”
“We’ll keep him safe, ‘Tae. Don’t worry about it.”
“Okay, thank you. Talk to you soon.” Aetos hesitated for a beat. “Really, thank you. I guess we’ll see how this all goes.”

———

Aetos was grateful to have Chey as an ally over the following couple days, during which he talked over with his friends what he’d heard from Nightshrike as best he was able and fielded endless questions he could only sometimes answer. Attitudes varied, both across the band and within individuals: Kato wasn’t the only one flipping like a lightswitch; Athena nearly got into an argument with herself while thinking out loud, and even Sethfire seemed to pendulum-swing between warm and icy ambivalence. Still, they were listening, they were thinking about it, and Aetos was able to relay at least that much when he FaceTime’d Audrianna that weekend.

“I’ve talked to everyone; they know what’s up, generally, and they were willing to listen,” he said, aware of his equivocal tone and reluctance to feel or voice any hope. “There’s a lot still up in the air and there were questions I couldn’t answer...But I guess if everyone was indifferent, there wouldn’t have been questions. So...maybe reconnection can happen in some way.”
“You think?” Audrianna asked; she seemed to perk up, however slightly. “So…how should we do it, then? All together? Like the first time we met?” Her voice was still anxious but there was a tentative hopefulness beneath it that made Aetos shake his head.
“Nostalgia won't buy us anything at this point, Audri,” he sighed, sitting back in his chair and looking out the rain-flecked window. “Stuff is broken and we can’t build bridges for anyone else. We’ve put the groundwork down; it’s free will from here. I don’t know how it will piece back together….but I really do think it’s going to have to happen in pieces.”

📅 a week or so after Nightshrike’s outreach

Kato didn’t want to look at Gabe. Athena had somehow talked him into agreeing to hear an apology but now Kato didn’t even want that. Gabe had been the go-between for a thousand arguments Kato had had with Athena before, but now she was the middleman and Kato felt so livid he was beginning to think she’d have to step up into being a bodyguard. He stared furiously at the ground but as soon as he sensed Gabriel’s presence in the room and heard the door shut, his fist was already clenching his knuckles white.

“Nope, fuck it, get him the fuck out of here,” he heard himself say to Athena. “If I look at his fucking face it’ll only be long enough to smash your damn lamp into it.”
“...I’d deserve that, honestly,” Gabe said, and Kato couldn’t keep his eyes on the floor.
“You would! You FUCKING ABANDONED ME,” Kato yelled, snapping his head up and jumping to his feet. A pen rolled off the coffee table. His throat burned. “You were the last person I texted, you know that? Before I went out to fucking die?”

“Yeah, we figured that out while we were trying to find you,” Gabe said softly. “I read that message a million times in four days, trying to figure out if I was supposed to have guessed. I still have it memorized: ‘Yeah, she and I were just too much alike, I think we were doomed from the start. I hope she’s less like me than I am, though.’”
“You could memorize my last text but couldn’t fucking call me back after I got back home and shit went down, then?” Kato asked bitterly. He felt like crying and hated himself for it. “You could memorize my last damn words on this fucking planet but couldn’t talk to me face to face for half a year?”
Gabriel seemed worn down; he used to be sharper tongued and quicker on the draw, how else could they have become friends? But now he looked weary. Resigned.
“Bryluen kept saying…” he started, then stopped. “...No, Sorry. I listened to Bryluen. And I’m sorry for it. I put my trust in the wrong person.”
“So did I,” Kato said coldly. He turned around and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“...I know you want to do that to me because I did that to you, K,” Gabe said softly from behind him. “I turned my back, just like that. I know and you don’t have to forgive me for it. But I’d really like if we could talk about it this time.”
“Who turned you into a fucking guidance counselor, Gabe?” Kato snapped to Athena’s couch instead of turning around. “You sound like one of the ones at school; ‘talk it out, communicate, let’s all make up and sing fucking kumbaya’!” 
“That’s not what I’m saying. But I do go to therapy now, and I probably talk like it.”
“...The fuck, why are you in therapy?” Kato’s brow furrowed; he felt curious against his will. Gabe had always maintained he didn’t need any sort of psychiatry; that it was the world that needed fixing and not him.
“Because having someone fuck with your head as long as Bry did with mine does some shit to you, K. You don’t cut a couple of your best friends out of your life when told to because you’re right in the head.”

Kato turned around, if only to see what expression Gabe was wearing or if his posture corroborated his tone. It did; the hunched shoulders seemed adjacent to grief, his face looked older in some way. Worn, like his voice. Kato frowned.
“...What made you do that shit to me, then, Gabe? Explain it. What was it about her?” Kato asked, and was startled by how hollow the questions sounded. Something had scraped some of the rage out of his tone and now the emptiness in them reflected how he’d felt the previous October, faced with silence from his friends: Gutted. 
“She told me I deserved to be punished. She said that to my face and then you all still sided with her. Was I meant to think it wasn’t true? After that? I wanted to die so bad. I wanted to die so bad. They locked my guns in ‘Key’s closet because I would’ve used them. They’re still there.” Kato hated how weak his voice sounded; sad, like a child’s—but Gabe flinched like he’d been yelled at anyway.
“I’m sorry, K-O. I’m so sorry. Bry lied her ass off about you and she...she had a framework about who she was. She’d done her dirty work over the years with me and Ian. We both felt like we owed her everything, ya know. She poured her money into us, sang with us, promo’ed us, and Astra was tight with her, it was almost like...not believing her felt like a non-option. She seemed like our entire life and she’d spent years convincing us that she...was.” Gabe tucked his arms to his ribs. 
“It cuts me open to think I let myself kind of buy it, like...There’s some shit I dunno if you can forgive yourself for and looking that in the face just kills me. You deserved better than I gave you, K.”

“...How could you, Gabe, though? How could you let yourself believe her?” Kato looked at the floor, his eyes burning, and wondered what the scene looked like to Athena: Him and Gabe, both visibly fighting tears, unable to look at one another. It soothed something within him that Athena was staying closer in distance to him. God, if anyone deserved better than they were given…
“...I barely could, K.” Gabe sniffed and Kato felt shocked that he wasn’t the first to cry; Gabe wiped a sleeve across his eyes. “It was that, ya know, it was you versus her in my head and that fucked me up so bad. I had to believe her but I couldn’t quite think that bad about you so I just felt fucking crazy. I was confused all the time; dizzy, sick, I’d get lost and forget stuff, I’d go to the doctor and they’d tell me I was fine. I wasn’t. Once Ian came home and found me just staring at my arms and I was like, ‘Does it help?’ Cutting, yanno. I never did it, but I felt crazy.”

Kato scowled at the floor and hated his situation. Things seemed too gray, too muddy; he felt bad for Gabe but worse for himself and angry with everything. Throwing the lamp at something was seeming an inviting option again but it was Athena’s place and trashing it would have been rude. He bit his lip until he tasted blood.
“Well I did,” he ended up spitting. “You never cut, good for you, I never fucking stopped. Did it help? No. It didn’t change shit about the fact that one of my best fucking friends up and left me in the dirt, so no.” Kato sniffed and looked away, feeling the tears in his eyes but willing them not to fall. “Sorry shit was bad for you, whatever, sucks to suck. I’m not taking the hatchet out of my back to bury it so you feel better.”
“You don’t have to bury it. Hold it in case you gotta hit me with it, whatever. The goal is to take it out of your back though.” Gabe took a step forward, then another one. “I can’t stand here and talk at you until you’re not hurt anymore. I know that,” he said, crossing the room; “So please, just give me the chance to prove I’m going to be here for you again, man, because I’m fucking going to be!” He stood in front of Kato, thrusting his hand out in front of him to expose the tattoo on his wrist; an infinity symbol with a feather comprising part of the loop. Tears were rolling down his cheeks again. 
“Let me earn the right to have this tattoo again; I swear I will.”

The appeal of petty bitterness gave ground to the chance of having Gabe back, back for real, and Kato couldn't quite cling to his outrage; it fell away. Gabe was right in front of him, shaking, his posture open. Kato forced a tch through his teeth and grabbed Gabe's open palm, pulling him into a one-armed hug.
“You fucking suck, Gabe,” he said. He couldn’t keep the tears in his eyes anymore.
“I know,” Gabe laughed into his shoulder, his voice cracking, “I’m working on it, though.”