It was harmless at first, teasing comments, little jibes, nothing much. None of it was supposed to hurt, not meant to harm. They were just words, just letters strung together to make insults and taunts. And those insults and taunts and jibes, they grew and grew until they were big, so big the words jumbled and mixed and echoed inside his head until he couldn't hear anything else. Words like 'stupid' useless' 'lazy' all reverberated inside his skull, never letting him escape the endless cycle of self-torment.
While normally comments like these wouldn't hurt him, they wouldn't even affect him. His mind would lock each word in a vault in his head and that crypt unlocked at night. At night the words would play over and over, plaguing his sleep with nightmares. This patterned continued to the pint where harmless words didn't seem so meaningless. Where teasing words and jokes turned into something a little bit meaner, a little bit crueler.
Of course he had friends who supported him, he had a brothers who would pick him up when he needed it. But sometimes it was too much and he had to take a break, moment to himself think. Occasionally his best friend would come and the two of them would sit together, they would sit side by side in a comfortable silence. Usually these quiet moments were enough to break him from his melancholy thoughts and usually he returned to his normal self.
But it didn't take long before these cherished moments of companionship, these fleeting flashes of love from his friends and family weren't enough. It wasn't long before he discovered a mask, the perfect mask. The perfect cover to hide behind, a shield that, when in place, would let every damaging word said to him slide right off. So he hid, he cowered behind his mask for so long that no one could tell the difference.
This cowering went on for years, it got to the point where he couldn't even remember the real him. The him who could talk for hours with his best friend, the him that could spend days with his brother doing nothing important. Instead when his friends asked about him he'd brush it aside, tell them it was nothing, act like it was nothing. Soon enough people stopped asking, if he said he was fine he must be, right? No need to question it.
But when he dawned his mask he didn't know, didn't realize, didn't understand that a mask, a mask is a fragile thing. That no matter how unbreakable, impenetrable it seemed each taunt or insult or teasing little comment would hammer relentlessly at the delicate slip of webbing and carefully organized lies. Eventually this thin, brittle shield shattered, burned into ashes blown to the wind. Gone
Then that vault, the vault in his mind that collected every word that sold down his slippery mask, opened. The lock blocking those painful memories broke releasing a flood of words, words with malicious intent if not use. Because those masked years weren't spent idle, there wasn't a lack of teasing.
When the final blow hit he was in a crowded room of his peers. It hadn't even been as horrible a remark as you would think, just a whispered word under another faceless person's breath in a crowd of dull miners and he just collapsed. Not literally of course, he had an image to maintain, even if it was just a cleverly woven illusion meant to distract himself from the cruel people surrounding him. So he left, quietly and subtly only to be found by his brother.
Now, when that mask of his fell into place even his brother was enraptured by what he believed to be a new side of him, a 'better' side. But when is twin found him, he was curled in his room, a pool of blood around him. It was then his brother realized the face his brother has shown him for the last few years was just that, a face.
The brother, his brother, was the one to hold him in his arms, the one to comfort him until those relentless sobs dimmed into quiet whimpers. His brother was the one to discover the bitter truth, the one to help him except the bitter the truth. His brother, his big brother who had always tried to be there for him held his hand as those friends of his left one by one not caring if the damage they dealt.
Gone, until only one remained, one who remembered the boy from before the mask. One who regretted more than anything not asking 'how are you' more often, not pushing a little harder, not telling a soul as he watched his best friend transform. That's what he did, he watched as the heroic, loud, and cripplingly cheerful boy he used to know turn into a robot, a cyborg, cold and unfeeling.
And in that moment the two teens, left to pick up the broken pieces of the one person who they had once known so well, vowed that they would save him. They wouldn't let this repeat, they wouldn't let another lost soul fall into the same trap their friend, their brother had.