XoFrnk||Frerard AU

Brother

T.W: Mentions of abuse

I briefly waited for my brother Mikey to come out and see if he wanted to walk with me but quickly remembered that I don't want him associated with me- who knows what people would do if they found out he was my brother? I couldn't go through seeing him in pain again.

Mikey is my only friend and the only person I can trust. Our mother walked out on our father as he was never around and always 'looking at men' (which was bullshit, by the way, he was around more than she was and he was the straightest person known to mankind).
After she left, he became addicted to alcohol and started to be abusive towards us. It started off mentally, telling us that we were never enough for him and we were both failures. Then it became physical: almost every night I would come home and he would use me as his punch bag. I'd forgotten what I looked like without dark purple bruises littering my body.
He always said something after he had decided that beating me wasn't enough to numb the pain of his past and tried to drown it out; look alive sunshine.

It was only when he tried to hit Mikey was when I realised how wrong it actually was and that something had to change.

It's funny, you don't realise how bad something is until someone else goes through it. Until you're forced to sit and watch the only person who has ever been there for you be hurt and tortured. Until the images of everything that has happened to someone you care about haunts every second of your nightmares and is the only thing that you can think about during your wake. It was worse having to see him go through it than actually going through it myself.

He was only 12 when it started. He was old enough to know what was going on and that I was in pain. He was also old enough for it to mentally scar him. He is 16 now and he still wakes up in the night, screaming with nightmares and every time I ask him about it he always says the same thing: Dad came back.

He was 14 when Dad had hit him. He had gotten detention for 'poor behaviour' and had gotten home an hour late (yes, an hour. Our school seems to think that the harsher you punish the students, the less they'll misbehave. Bullshit). I'll never be able to forget the anger in his face when Mikey wasn't home before me. He started yelling at me, saying that I'd driven him off, that not only had I disappointed him but now Mikey. That he hated me and he'd never come back and it was entirely my fault.
This carried on for what seemed like hours until he walked in the door, quiet as a mouse as if he was hoping to sneak in. It didn't work though and as soon as he had closed the door behind him, a hand had reached out and grabbed him by the collar and he started screaming at him. The look in my brother's eyes was something that would never leave me: they clouded over with a mist of fear, only broken by the sudden glint of pure sadness which broke through the mist like a knife.

It was like slow motion, I saw him raise his fist preparing to drive it into his jaw. All I could think of was that I had to stop it, that I couldn't let him do to my brother what he did to me thousands of times before. But I couldn't, my feet had frozen to the spot, and I will forever be punished for my mistake is having to see his knuckles, already scarred and bruised from attacking me, collide with Mikey's face like a punching bag.
I had to stand and watch my so-called father spit in his face and throw him to the floor like he was a worthless piece of wreckage.
I had to hear him tell him that if this ever happens again then he'd kill him.
I had to watch as he kicked him in the ribs hard enough to break them, and hear them crack

But that wasn't even the worst of it; I had to hear his timid voice whimper out a string of sincere and pained apologies as our 'father' walked off, mumbling some shit about how he has two panties for sons and that he would toughen us up if it was the last thing he did.

As soon as I had remembered how to function, I ran straight to Mikey and knelt beside him and started crying like he was on his deathbed; of all people, Mikey definitely didn't deserve this: Quiet, innocent Mikey who wears thick-rimmed glasses and has his hair grown into bangs to hide his face so he wouldn't be noticed. Shy little Mikey, who chose to play bass so he would never be the star of the band. My little brother Mikey who gave up so much of his spare time to make sure that I wasn't as alone at home as I was at school because, in his own words, since no one else can appreciate my sparkle so he'll be a disco ball and sparkle with me until they do.

I won't go into detail about his injuries but they were pretty horrific: I think the broken ribs were the best of it. I still feel so guilty about what happened and not stopping it from happening.

If I could go through it instead of Mikey, I would go through it a million times to make sure it never happens again.