I will follow the trail to tomorrow with my loneliness, with sorrow, all through the night.
"Boxing Day" - Blink 182
Ethan watches Christian carefully after Sammy dies. He sees him slipping back into his old habits, the ones that kept him distant from the others and perpetually in trouble. He starts skipping classes and won't talk to Tara or Kat. The final straw for Ethan is when he leaves Abigail hanging for a partner dance they have two weeks into Third Year. The summer away with his father hadn't done much to realign his priorities, and Ethan's girlfriend seemed to be the one suffering most from her partner's selfish ways.
"Dude, you have got to get it together," Ethan told him harshly one afternoon when they were supposed to be out running. It wasn't fun and competitive like it had been when Ethan was still at the Academy. Even Christian could see that the choreographer was only doing it out of a sense of duty. Abigail had asked him to talk to Christian since no one else could get through to him. They were all starting to get desparate. "My sister is constantly worried about you, Tara says you won't even speak to her at all, and Abigail nearly failed last week because you couldn't be bothered to show up. I know that you're going through stuff, but they deserve better than you're giving them."
"We can't all be perfect like you, Karmakov," Christian bit out bitterly.
"You think I'm perfect?" the blonde scoffed. "I am sleeping on the floor of the room my girlfriend shares with my sister because I can't afford my own apartment and I'm too proud to ask my father for help. I only came back to Sydney because Barcelona didn't want me and Abigail did. You call that perfection? I call it disaster."
"Everyone I love leaves," Christian said seemingly out of nowhere. "My mom and then Sammy, you know? I haven't seen my brother in ages, and my dad couldn't bother to stick around when I was a kid. I guess history was bound to repeat itself too because he left me stranded in Byron Bay when he got an offer for some custom work in Melba."
Ethan suddenly understood that it wasn't just losing Sammy that had him in such a funk, but rather than comfort his friend, he just listened. Guys like Christian needed to work things out for themselves, and interfering now would only send him packing. "And I usually talked to Sammy about these things because he was my family, you know? He was more like my brother these past two years than my actual brother. I just miss him, man, and it's not fair. He should be here. Why did it have to be him? Why couldn't it have been me? I probably deserve it for all the things that I've done."
"Okay, man, you can't talk like that," Ethan interrupted him. He knew that they were headed for dangerous territory, and he needed to get in Christian's headspace before he could completely drag himself down. "You are not alone. You might have been when you came to the Academy, but those days are long gone. Whether you want them to or not, these people care about you. Kat, Tara, Ben, Abigail, Ollie - they aren't just your classmate. They're your friends, your family, just like Sammy was. You have Kayla, and I'm your friend. We love you, dude. Even Zach and Miss Raine, you have people on your side."
"It's not the same."
Ethan knew that he was right. It would never be the same. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to have to go through life without Kat. Sammy might not have been his biological brother, but Christian loved him as such just as Ethan loved his sister.
"Maybe not, but I have it on pretty good authority that I'm an excellent brother," Ethan countered. "I'll be your brother. I have really great references."
It's not much, but it's a start. It's that little subtle push that Christian needs to make himself start believing that he still matters to people. He takes an out-of-program hip hop with Kayla and goes fishing with Kat and visits the farm with Tara for a long weekend. He takes a roadtrip up the coast to go surfing with Ben and Ollie and finally apologizes to Abigail with a new pilates mat and high scores on their retry. And he runs with Ethan every single day, just the two of them back like it was in the beginning.
