Title: My Big Brother
Rating: PG
Summary: Rafe and Evelyn's daughter thinks about her big brother's pain.
Disclaimer: Don't belong to me except the plot.
Nobody ever talks about him. It's like some kind of unwritten rule in our house, one that no one dares to go against and not even my big brother Danny does and he's broken more rules than anyone I know. Mom and Daddy only mentioned him the one time, when I was about twelve years old and starting to ask questions. See, I had to wonder why our Danny is the way he is. You know, like why he never calls our daddy Rafe, why he always looks at our parents with such angst-ridden brown eyes and why he seems to hate the world around him.
Why he seems to hate me.
It turns out that our daddy isn't really his. Well, not in the biological sense anyway, I mean my daddy adopted him so legally he *is* his son, just not by blood. It gets worse though, his real daddy is *my* daddy's old best friend who died years and years ago before our Danny was even born. That makes me kind of sad; I mean Daniel Walker never got to meet his son; he never got to tell him he loved him or that he was proud of him. He never got to hold him. Hell, he never even got to *see* him. And that's enough to break anyone's heart.
Mom said things used to be different though, before they had this same talk with Danny. She said my brother used to be so full of life, so loving and so carefree.
He even used to be happy.
I can sort of remember him being like that, only little things though. Like this one time when I was about five and I begged and begged to go play one man hunt with him and his friends but mom wouldn't let me. So Danny sneaked me out of the house, made me promise not to whine and then let me join in the game. I ended up getting tired after just ten minutes but instead of him yelling at me like most brothers would've done, he just smiled at me and swung me up on his back. He carried me about like that the whole day in the hot sun and didn't complain even once.
Its memories like that one that allows me to forgive him, that allows me to block out the hurtful things he says to me now, that allows me to ignore the cruel remarks and the taunts.
Because I *do* love him. And love certainly isn't something to be taken for granted.
I've learned that from my father's dusty old photographs. From my mother's story of what really went on while she, daddy and Daniel were stationed at Pearl Harbor.
But mostly, I've learned that from my brother. From the sobs he thinks no one hears during the night, from the angry look in his once smiling eyes, from the cold silence that exists between him and my daddy and from the early morning visits to Daniel's grave.
He never got to see the love between his parents.
If it was ever really there.
Rating: PG
Summary: Rafe and Evelyn's daughter thinks about her big brother's pain.
Disclaimer: Don't belong to me except the plot.
Nobody ever talks about him. It's like some kind of unwritten rule in our house, one that no one dares to go against and not even my big brother Danny does and he's broken more rules than anyone I know. Mom and Daddy only mentioned him the one time, when I was about twelve years old and starting to ask questions. See, I had to wonder why our Danny is the way he is. You know, like why he never calls our daddy Rafe, why he always looks at our parents with such angst-ridden brown eyes and why he seems to hate the world around him.
Why he seems to hate me.
It turns out that our daddy isn't really his. Well, not in the biological sense anyway, I mean my daddy adopted him so legally he *is* his son, just not by blood. It gets worse though, his real daddy is *my* daddy's old best friend who died years and years ago before our Danny was even born. That makes me kind of sad; I mean Daniel Walker never got to meet his son; he never got to tell him he loved him or that he was proud of him. He never got to hold him. Hell, he never even got to *see* him. And that's enough to break anyone's heart.
Mom said things used to be different though, before they had this same talk with Danny. She said my brother used to be so full of life, so loving and so carefree.
He even used to be happy.
I can sort of remember him being like that, only little things though. Like this one time when I was about five and I begged and begged to go play one man hunt with him and his friends but mom wouldn't let me. So Danny sneaked me out of the house, made me promise not to whine and then let me join in the game. I ended up getting tired after just ten minutes but instead of him yelling at me like most brothers would've done, he just smiled at me and swung me up on his back. He carried me about like that the whole day in the hot sun and didn't complain even once.
Its memories like that one that allows me to forgive him, that allows me to block out the hurtful things he says to me now, that allows me to ignore the cruel remarks and the taunts.
Because I *do* love him. And love certainly isn't something to be taken for granted.
I've learned that from my father's dusty old photographs. From my mother's story of what really went on while she, daddy and Daniel were stationed at Pearl Harbor.
But mostly, I've learned that from my brother. From the sobs he thinks no one hears during the night, from the angry look in his once smiling eyes, from the cold silence that exists between him and my daddy and from the early morning visits to Daniel's grave.
He never got to see the love between his parents.
If it was ever really there.