Title: Stitched

Author: Obi the Kid

POV: Cal

Rating: PG

Summary: Niko returns from college for the weekend to find Cal needing a little big brother support.

Disclaimer: All hail Rob Thurman! No profit here, I'm just having fun.

I knew something was up long before Sophia walked past and snarled her malicious comments in my direction. "Oh goodie, Saint Niko is home. Your trash is bleeding all over my kitchen, so you may want to fix the filthy little monster. Oh and by the way, the abomination came at me with a knife, so I stuck a bottle in his eye."

And with those few hateful words, she was gone into the Friday evening twilight.

I hurried into the trailer and found my brother slouched sideways in our rickety wooden kitchen chair, a red-stained rag pressed against the right side of his face. The first aid kit that I retrieved from under the sink certainly wasn't hospital worthy but I'd made certain that it always housed the basics. I set it on the tiny kitchenette table and immediately pulled the rag back from my brother's contorted and pained face.

"Cal, let me look."

"Nik."

The single word came out slightly broken. A sign that the thirteen-year-old boy in Cal – the boy that still yearned for a life akin to normalcy – was still there, not completely lost in the abuse-ridden childhood and the snarky exterior that had become so prevalent in his last few years.

I didn't ask about the knife. That story had been nothing more than an ordinary Sophia lie. Despite her detestable actions, Cal, as a minor, wouldn't risk taking violent action against her. He wouldn't risk doing anything that would split us apart so close to me being able to set him free from this home from hell.

"It's okay, little brother. I'll get you fixed up."

"She…she was talking you down, Nik," he finally said, dropping his hands to his lap and allowing me to work. "Cursing you and telling me how you couldn't wait to run away to college every weekend just to get away from your monster kid brother. How much you hate me and how much you've hated being chained to me for so long. She was trying so damn hard to get a reaction. But I didn't hurt her, I swear." He flinched as my now blood-covered fingers manipulated the impacted area on his face.

"You know it's not true what she says."

"I know. She's just…" We paused in tandem a few seconds as he adjusted his position in the chair.

"Stay still. The glass missed the actual eye, but you've got an unsightly cut running up the side of your head." I'd managed to slow the blood flow. "I suppose you just wanted to give me a chance to practice my much-improved stitching skills, right? You do enjoy being a guinea pig."

"Yeah, that's me," he snorted a shaded laugh, "Guinea pig on the outside; monster in the inside."

"Stop it, Cal," I replied, quick to gently chastise my brother whenever he referred to himself as a monster. The Cal I knew – the Cal I'd raised - was no monster. Annoying, snarky and a royal-sized pain the ass, yes, but he was not a monster. "And, little brother, you should know better than to worry yourself over her words about me. Just words. That's all they are."

Cal coughed softly to clear the unwanted emotion from his throat as I dabbed a clean damp cloth onto his wound. He never believed that words were just words. Especially being the target of such a barrage of them for his thirteen years. And most especially…when they were directed at me.

"Just words…maybe to you, Nik. You give a shit about me. That means something. She doesn't."

I smiled inwardly and continued my first aid. My brother's face twisted as the brown antiseptic bottle, now in my hand, emptied into the gash.

"Well, she certainly seemed in prime hateful form as she left here. What else did she say to you before she started hurling bottles?"

"I'm always on her verbal target list, you know. But her names for me this time were much more creative than usual. I can't even remember them all." The half-fib was an attempt, but I could see through it. Bottom line, while he may not remember all of the hateful names bestowed on him today by that woman, I knew with absolute certainty that he remembered the inner pain that came with Sophia's rants. No matter how hard he tried to blow those things off, no matter the façade, underneath it all, the words hurt. "She seemed happy with her name calling too. She must've had a good week, huh, Nik? Good news all around for Cal when mom has herself a decent span of days. She was really shitty, Nik, but…not like…not like…them. They…" The hesitation and I knew what was coming. Me being away at school for the week, I couldn't protect him as I always had in the past. I couldn't protect him from Sophia and more importantly, I couldn't protect him from the shadows of the Grendel who continued their never ending crusade to stalk and terrorize my brother. His voice shook again, sounding years younger than he was. There was little sign of the resilient and smart-assed young man that had become my little brother as he'd grown into his teenage years. This Cal was worn and beaten.

"They were here, Nik, every morning, every night," he finally continued. "Watching and taunting, and…I tried to not look at them or see or listen, but they wouldn't leave. No matter what I did, they kept on. They're different when you aren't around." The emotion returned to his throat despite further attempts to suppress it, but he persistent anyway. "And Sophia was there, and then each time after, when they left…she would lay into me mouthfuls of evil spat and hatred and rage…and…between her and them…and it was just me and it was…it was too much, Nik, you know? Just too damn much."

Stopping my work briefly, I set a hand on the back of my brother's head to steady him. Sophia tossed out verbal abuse like Mardi gras confetti. If there was ever a human born without a heart, she was it, in all her inglorious flesh and blood, leaving Cal in her malicious wake. And in the meantime, that boy within Cal? The one hidden under the hardening exterior? He hurt and he ached…and if you tear a child down enough times, he stays down.

Cal, however, he kept doing the impossible. Time after time, he kept climbing back up, much to her detestation. But this time…this time had been different. The years of maltreatment had begun to wear him down and that child – that craving-for-normal child – within, was there now, perched anxiously on the surface waiting for his world to finally break apart completely and leave him as nothing more than a frail hollow shell.

I didn't engage him again as I worked the stitches. It didn't take long. The thread marks weren't perfect, but they'd do. Healing the physical was straightforward; healing Cal's fresh emotional wounds…not so much. My arrival home this time had become the catalyst to allow him to finally let go of an extended period of anguish and torment. For the first time in months, he gave in easily and on his own, leaning his head into my chest as I stood next to where he still sat. There, he buried himself and shuttered through a long string of strongly hitched breaths and muffled sobs. I set a hand on his neck, curling inward and holding tight – offering what no one else could. The affliction of these recent months and especially these last five days no longer confined.

Eventually – though longer than I figured him for - he pulled away, clearing his throat, and accepting the much hated brotherly hair ruffle I offered. Cal wasn't fanatical on mushy moments, despite actually needing them from time to time, so I didn't dwell on the past few minutes.

This wound too, was on its way to healing.

As it was, for the second time in just over an hour, I'd managed to apply the stitches needed for my little brother to continue to cope with the reality of our lives.

"Come on," I finally said, restraining myself from tossing in another hair ruffle, "We'll go into town and grab dinner. I made a few extra dollars at the dojo I'm currently working on weekday evenings. We can splurge."

"Oh, great, we get to take a ride in the crap-mobile and then feast out on kelp, soy and bulgur. I assume you are still ingesting flowers and roots as well?"

I snorted. Clearly, he was starting to feel better.

"Going on a year now," I replied as he wandered in and then out of the bathroom and slipped his feet into the world's grimiest pair of sneakers. We then stepped outside to stare at my ride.

"Damn, Nik. The rust has actually expanded just since last weekend! It's like the blob from that old movie. But it's completely road worthy, I'm sure. Safety first, right? Oh it's supposed to rain tonight. Better make sure we're not actually in the car when that happens. One more slap of moisture on this beauty and it'll rust right out from under our asses. But what's life without a shit load of corrosion, right?"

Yes. Undoubtedly, Cal was feeling like Cal again.

"Say what you will, but it will get us from point A to point B."

"With unscheduled stops at points X, Y and Z in the process."

I flicked him in the ear. "Impudent child. Get in the damn car."

A smile made its way back to me. The first one since I'd been home; and most certainly the first one since I'd left last Sunday evening.

Cal didn't get immediately into the car. Instead, he paused after opening the passenger door so that he could see me across the roof; his bandaged wound partially obscuring the corner of his right eye. I could see the mirrored gray orbs clearly enough though. Both had turned suddenly solemn and the brief grin had quickly faded to a shadow.

Beyond all of that, however, I could see the positive. I could see what I'd been needing to see during my trips home on the weekends. The tension - in the shoulders and face - had lessened considerably in just the short time since I'd returned. The creases in his forehead and around his eyes – both less. Good signs, all of those things.

These weekends were our time and I needed our time together to be about us as brothers and not about Sophia or monsters or hatred or evil or any other major negative in our lives. It was vital that it just be about us and nothing more.

Sensing those same things too, Cal tapped the hackneyed and tarnished roof of the car. A few raps of his knuckles against the rusty brown metal allowed him enough pause to find those simple yet desperate words he'd been building towards.

"I'm really glad you're home, Nik."

Now there was the brother I knew and loved. The one I'd raised since his very first breath.

"I missed you too, little brother," I returned, offering him one of my rare smiles; those usually reserved for Cal and for Cal alone. And then, as quickly as it came, the brother moment was over as I carped, "Now, would you please get in the damn car? I didn't drive four hours in stop-and-go traffic so I could sit around playing Doctor with you. Some of us are actually hungry after long exhausting days."

"Ninja boyis hungry? I thought you could just mediate that right out of your system? Sit on your ass, cross your legs, do some of that Ommm crap and bam! I am in need of no food; I am fed only by my mind. No can do, Gandhi?"

And there was the other side of the brother that I knew and loved. Yes, Cal had officially made the descent into Cal again.

"One. Two. Three." I glared.

"You know that only worked when I was five, right?"

"You know that I can still smother you with a paper napkin, right?"

He nodded and tapped the roof again. "I'll get in the damn car. But I swear, Nik, if you make me eat seaweed and pickled beet juice, this whole brother thing is over, got it?"

Putting the car into gear and assisting it in its strained endeavor to jerk into forward momentum, I patted Cal on the arm. "Whatever your say, little brother, whatever you say." And then after a purposeful pause, I raised an eyebrow curiously at Cal, and questioned…"Pickled beet juice?"

The End