Miles had been keeping to himself the last few days, which was unusual and a bit unpleasant for him. He wanted Esme to come to him, though, not the other way around, and he felt too awkward about… well, about how awkward he'd made sure to make things with Winston to spend much time with him. He had wondered if perhaps him and Maya could be friends again. Proper friends this time, not just "in-love-but-not-in-a-relationship" friends.

It was the middle of the day when Miles saw Grace leading an upset Maya down the hall.

"What's-?" Miles began.

"Not now, rich kid," Grace interrupted as she kept leading Maya away. "She just got doxxed."

"She what?"

Grace clearly wanted to keep moving, but Maya stopped and looked over her shoulder at Miles.

"My info was posted online," she told him with watery eyes but a weirdly calm voice. "My address, my phone number… everything."

Miles' jaw dropped.

"What?" He asked again.

Grace rolled her eyes, and when she started moving again, Maya followed her. Miles wanted to help somehow, but Grace had seemed to have control of things. Maybe he should have invited Maya to stay at his house, as she had let him stay at her's, but by the time Miles thought of that, Grace and Maya were out of sight. Besides, he quickly realised that such an offer would have been of no help, after all: Maya likely didn't want to be near Hunter. Sure, she hadn't heard him call her a bitch, but….

Something hit Miles so hard that he almost lost his breath.

At least he didn't say it to her face, I guess…

Tristan's words echoed in his mind.

Oh, the dramatic irony, it was as taken out of one of his own short stories.

But could Hunter really have…? Did Hunter have that in him…?

Miles slipped into a nearby bathroom and leaned heavily down on the first sink.

Old Hunter didn't. The Hunter Miles had teased and played with and kept from playing with him and Winston… he couldn't have done this. The Hunter of the now, though...? The Hunter Miles would meet when he got home...? Did Miles know what that Hunter was capable of…?

Miles splashed water in his face before he left the bathroom. A deep dread in the bottom of his stomach held more answers than any of his conscious thoughts.

It felt like Miles had been the very last person to take notice of the harassment Maya was facing. He'd looked at her social media, and all of them were filled with gross and hateful comments, comments that made him want to beat the crap out of whoever had written them. And of himself, for only noticing now. He always had been self-absorbed, but this was absurd. How the fuck had he not known about this?!

It couldn't be Hunter. He couldn't have done this. Sure, he was moody, and he could be nasty, sure, and he had turned that nastiness on Maya before, true, but this? This was way further than Miles could ever imagine his brother going. It couldn't be Hunter.

And… and yet. It kept eating away at Miles. He couldn't leave it there, which was how he found himself in Hunter's room.

"Hunter," Miles said, but was ignored. "Hunter."

When the repetition went ignored too, Miles walked up on Hunter' side and yanked his headphones off.

"Hey!" Hunter yelled. "What are you doing?!"

"Talking to you," Miles said.

"Get out of my room!" Hunter demanded while he fought to get his headphones back from Miles.

"We need to talk, Hunter," Miles said, searching for his brother's eyes. "Hey, hey, look at me!"

Miles grabbed onto Hunter's should and attempted to make him meet his eyes

Get off of me!" Hunter screamed and pushed him away with a lot more force than Miles had been expecting.

Miles stumbled a few steps back and stared at his brother in horror. He intense anger he found in Hunter's features told him what he'd been dreading was true from the moment the thought occurred to him.

"You did do it, didn't you…" Miles said quietly.

Hunter didn't get a chance to do anything but send him a sullen look before Frankie burst into the room.

"What is going on?" She exclaimed.

"He's been…he..." Miles took a steadying breath and a few steps that put his back to Hunter. "He's been harassing Maya, sending her threats, doxxing her…"

"What?" Frankie said, looking from Miles to Hunter and back again.

For a moment, none of them said anything. Then all hell broke loose.

"You've been doing what?" Frankie screamed, in an not altogether different tone than Hunter had screamed his protests a few moments ago.

"She's the one who shut our club down!" Hunter yelled back.

"What's wrong with you?!" Frankie demanded.

"Okay, we need to calm down..:!" Miles attempted, but his siblings were screaming at each other now, their words mostly unintelligible due to how they merged together.

Miles was yelling too in an attempt to make them stop yelling, which, predictably, mostly just merged together with the rest of the yelling and certainly didn't do any good.

Miles didn't know whether to thank god their mother wasn't home or to wish she had been. She could complicate things even further, but she could also have gotten the twins to shut up - a feat he had never been capable of performing.

"You're sick," Frankie said when they'd all worn their shouting voices out. "I've seen some of those threats and you're fucking sick, Hunter."

Both of Miles' siblings looked wrecked. Frankie was crying a bit, just shaking her head repeatedly as she looked at her brother. Hunter was beginning to shake, his hands clenched firmly at his sides. When he lunged, Miles was grabbed by fear that he would hit Frankie, but Hunter slammed his fist into the wall. And then he did it again. And again, and again, and again. Over and over till he started doing the same with his forehead. He was screaming again, but this time it wasn't words, it was broken and not quite crying but as heart wrenching.

It took a moment for Miles to snap out of his shock, but then he threw himself at Hunter and tried to drag him away from the wall. He was completely out of it, he wildly threw himself around in Miles' grasp with seemingly no regard for his own well-being.

"It's okay, it's okay, it's okay…" Miles heard himself saying, the same way he could vaguely hear Frankie crying in the background. "You're alright, you're safe, it's okay, it's okay…"

It wasn't okay, of course. Nothing about this situation was. Not the harassment, not the screaming, not the self harm. But Miles didn't know what else to do. He just wasn't equipped to deal with this.

"Call mom," Miles told Frankie when Hunter had calmed down enough to stop fighting against him. He was just crying now. Miles' couldn't remember the last time he'd heard his brother cry, but he knew it hadn't sounded this broken and desperate then.

It was saturday. This saturday was dissimilar to any saturdays Miles had had recently, in that he had been at home for it up till now and wasn't planning on going anywhere. After getting home from the hospital, his mom had suggested through implication that he stay around, but even if she hadn't, Miles still would have. He didn't know what he could do for Hunter, but being around seemed superior to running away from his problems like he usually did.

So here he was, getting his ass beat at Risk. He'd usually beat both of the twins at it when they were younger, but the few times they'd played in the last couple of years, Hunter had always won.

"Okay, I give up, I'm not throwing a single die more," Frankie said and went out towards the kitchen.

"Looks like you won," Miles said and threw a forced smile at Hunter who didn't return the gesture.

None of them had really smiled much the last few days. Real smiles were a somewhat rare commodity in their home, anyway, but ever since their mom had brought Hunter home from the hospital, bandages on his hands and a referral to a psychiatrist in her bag, none of them had felt much like smiling.

Their mom had left Hunter with Miles, sending him a significant look before doing so that tended to mean "don't fuck this up" or so Miles liked to think of it, before disappearing into her office for a long phone call with the principal.

Miles didn't know what had been said during that phone call and he had even less of an idea how to feel about Hunter, whether to feel angry and disgusted at what he had put Maya through or sad, just endlessly sad, that his brother was feeling this way.

In a way, Frankie had been right, though how she meant it hadn't been. Hunter was ill, just like Miles was. Well, not just like , but there had been something oddly recognisable about Hunter's breakdown. Miles had imagined himself screaming and kicking and hitting his head against the wall enough time for Hunter's actions to feel like a mirror image.

What Miles did know, however, was that Maya's main harasser was gone now and the doxxing taken down. It had been a bandwagon and Miles was sure others had been on it and their harassment wouldn't stop just because Hunter's did, but… this did matter. It had to.

"Do you ever wonder why we're all like this?" Frankie asked when she walked in.

"Like what?" Miles asked.

Hunter didn't say anything. He'd been saying even less than usual since the hospital.

"Messed up," she simply said.

Miles smiled his sardonic smile.

"Why, Frankie, you must know that being messed up is a proud Hollingsworth tradition," he said. "I'm sure it's somewhere on the crest."

"Yeah, dad must have been lying about the motto all these years," Frankie snarked.

"You can always ask him tonight," their mother said as she entered the room.

Frankie shut a look at Miles, which Miles barely registered. He was too busy feeling his chest tighten and his stomach dropping.

"What?" he croaked.

"He's coming for dinner tonight, I thought I mentioned," she said.

"You didn't," Miles just said and got up from the couch.

"Where are you going?" his mom demanded.

"Out," he just said.

"Miles!"

"When are you going to get that when he's here, I'm not going to be?!" Miles shouted over his shoulder. "You make your choices, I make mine!"