Despite his confident declaration that he was able to talk now, Kuroko fell silent for a long moment. He leaned into Kagami's side, one hand instinctivelyclutching Kagami's shirt, and his breathing was short and jerky. Aomine sat facing them, his expression layered with concern, sadness, and an intense attempt at listening. Kagami felt Kuroko's shoulders tense under his arm.
"Kuroko?" he asked. "Did you change your mind? Is this...is it too much right now?"
Kuroko shook his head. "If I can't speak now, I'll never be able to. I just...don't know where to start."
Nigou was sleeping curled up in a fluffy ball by Aomine's knee. He scratched a hand through the dog's fur, his eyes never leaving Kuroko's face. "Why don't you start at the beginning?"
"The beginning?" Kuroko sounded like even that was too confusing.
Kagami shuddered, though he tried not to let Kuroko feel too much of it. "The first time...the first time your father hurt you."
"Oh." Kuroko's head fell limp on Kagami's shoulder. He was staring into the distance, taking himself far away. Kagami found it disconcerting, but maybe it was necessary. Maybe Kuroko needed to feel some distance from these events so he could talk about them.
"I was...I was eight years old."
Kuroko and Aomine looked at each other, matching dismay in their eyes. This had been going on for all this time? How had they never noticed?
Kuroko shifted uneasily. "Kagami-kun... I told you that my father is not well. It's the truth. The first time he hurt me, he was hallucinating. He thought I was a demon. He thought he was fighting for his life." He fell silent for a moment, still staring sightlessly away.
Kagami did not feel like this was a good excuse for hurting your son. "What happened?"
"I went to him...with a ball... I wanted to play catch in the garden. I remember that much. We had a house then, my father and my mother and I. He was sitting by himself, hunched up with his hands on his head, and I didn't realize that he wanted to be left alone. I was a selfish child. I just wanted to play. So I went to him. And he looked at me...and there was something awful in his face. He was pale, and now I know that it was terror I saw in his face, but I didn't know that then. I should have left him alone."
Aomine and Kagami looked at each other again, anger in their eyes. They hated hearing Kuroko blame himself for something that had happened when he was eight years old.
"And he...punched me in the stomach. He punched me a lot, actually. My mother had to intervene. I don't remember much of what happened next. There was...a hospital. My stomach hurt terribly." He rolled his head sideways on Kagami's shoulder to look in his face. "I told you I knew what that pain was like. Internal damage. I was in the hospital for a while." He looked away again.
"When I came home, my mother took me aside and told me what had happened. My father had a sickness in his head. He was taking medicine now, but I needed to be careful. If I saw that look in his eyes, I needed to run away and find her so she could take care of it. So I did. I learned to be good at watching. I learned how to make sure he couldn't see me when he had that look on his face.
"My father was unstable for a while. It took time for the doctors to find the right medication and the right dose for him. Once they did, though, life became good again. We moved to Tokyo, and I discovered basketball. That was a great joy and pleasure in my life, despite the difficulties. We had good years."
Kagami squeezed his shoulders. "I'm glad," he said. "You deserved it."
He and Aomine shared another look. At least Kuroko hadn't been constantly tormented for the last eight years. Obviously something had gone very, very wrong recently. But it was an immense relief to know that Kuroko had had good times, too.
Kuroko nodded. His hair brushed against Kagami's neck. "When I was eleven, my mother was hit by a drunk driver while she was taking a walk. I miss her very much."
Kagami stiffened. He had figured that Kuroko's mother must be gone. He could not imagine the woman in that photograph letting her son be treated the way Kuroko had been treated. But it was one thing to surmise that something had happened, and quite another to hear it laid out in Kuroko's blank, impassive tone.
He could feel Kuroko trembling against him, so he knew that his heart was not as emotionless as his voice. He even understood, at least a little, why Kuroko needed to shut himself down like this. Not only was it part and parcel of the invisibility he had cultivated over many years, but it was entirely possible that Kuroko would not be able to talk at all if he did not force himself to be this cool, this detached.
Kuroko had spoken frankly to Aomine earlier because fever had loosened his tongue and shaken his wits, and he was off-balance and vulnerable after all of his barriers had been cracked by yesterday's emotional storm. But even all that was not enough to enable to Kuroko to share his history. Not without this distance, this blankness.
It was still disconcerting to listen to, though. And somehow the words seemed all the more stark and harsh, spoken in that neutral voice.
"I'm sorry, Tetsu," Aomine said softly.
Kuroko nodded. He raised a shaky hand and swiped at his eyes. "She would have liked you. Both of you."
They were silent.
"How did your father take it?" Kagami asked reluctantly. Something must have changed between then and now. There was no other explanation.
"Badly," Kuroko said, and there was a touch of fierceness in his voice. His hands clenched into shaky fists, though he did not lift his head from Kagami's shoulder. "He loved her. We both loved her. My father is a good person, Kagami-kun. I know you don't believe it, but it's true."
Kagami held his tongue. No, he did not believe that at all. Not even a little bit. But Kuroko wasn't able to hear arguments about it, not right now.
Aomine did not have the same self-control. His bristled where he sat like a jungle feline bunched up into a tight coil, ready to spring. His fists were tight and his teeth were clenched. "How can you say that?" he demanded. "After what he did to you..."
"You don't understand!" The blankness in Kuroko's voice fell away, revealing the raw pain underneath. He pulled away from Kagami's side and sat straight, facing Aomine head-on. His hands were clenched into fists, too.
"Then make me understand!" Nigou twitched and whimpered in his sleep, and Aomine lowered his voice abruptly. "Explain this to me." He was shaking, too, though not as much as Kuroko. "Explain to me how you can call the man who beat you until you bled a good person."
"Because that wasn't him!" Somehow, Kuroko made whispering sound like a shout. "It was the sickness in his head, it had to be, he wouldn't... He wouldn't do that if he wasn't sick, if he wasn't... He would never..."
"Kuroko..." Kagami reached out for him. The moment his fingers landed lightly on Kuroko's arm, Kuroko turned to him. His face was wrenched up in sorrow, but Kagami only saw that for an instant before Kuroko fell into him, wrapping his arms around Kagami's middle and hiding his face on his shoulder.
Kagami's heart all but fell out of his chest. "Kuroko..."
Kuroko was shaking so hard that he shook Kagami, too. His fingers clenched in the back of Kagami's shirt, fists pulling tight. "He wouldn't," he choked out. "He wouldn't, he wouldn't."
Kuroko had to believe that. Kagami understood. This was a necessary thing.
"I know," he forced out through gritted teeth. "I know."
Aomine's face was pained, too. He opened his mouth to protest, then closed it when Kagami glared at him.
Kuroko sagged against him, rapidly losing power. Kagami's heart thumped in alarm. If Kuroko ran out of strength to tell the rest of the story now, he didn't know when they'd get another chance. Some instinct told him that this was now or never. Once Kuroko told it once, he might be able to tell it again. But they had to get through the first telling tonight, someway, somehow.
"Kuroko..." Kagami patted his head, light and nervous. "Kuroko, let's lie down, all right? You're exhausted."
Kuroko nodded into his shoulder. Kagami eased them down into the pillows. He ended up flat on his back, his feet sticking outside the fort. Kuroko curled up against him with his head still on his shoulder, Kagami's arm around him. Aomine watched them with a strange look on his face, then seemed to come to a decision. He lay down on Kuroko's other side, after gently shifting Nigou to the side to make room for his legs. It was like the way they'd eaten pancakes, except not at all.
Kagami lay still and listened until Kuroko's breathing calmed. His heart felt like a burning coal in his chest. Kuroko had reached out to him twice today, first wordlessly asking for a hug, and this time not so much asking as demanding. Kagami didn't know if it was a measure of the trust between them, or just how very, very badly Kuroko needed touch and reassurance. Or if it was both. Either way, Kagami felt incredibly moved.
And he felt responsible. Kuroko was depending on him. He couldn't let him down.
Kagami opened his mouth to ask a question, to prompt Kuroko to go on. But Kuroko drew a deep breath and started talking on his own.
"This is why I couldn't tell anyone. Because I knew it would be like this. No one would understand. There's too much prejudice in this country against people with mental illness. Everyone thinks that this is how it is, that they're all dangerous and violent and should be shunned by society, and it's not true. Do you know why we moved to Tokyo? It wasn't because my father got a promotion, or because my mother found a job here. It was because my father's family disowned him. My parents wanted to get away from their hometown.
"And you don't know... Nobody knows... You don't, you can't possibly understand... Just how, how good my father can be. He's kind and hardworking and funny, and we didn't get to spend a lot of time together, but it was always so good when we did. I miss that, I miss him, and I wanted so, so much to fix everything, to bring him back, and I couldn't. I failed. I failed my father and I failed my family and I failed myself."
Kuroko wasn't crying. His voice was soft and blank and utterly, completely desolate. This was the loss and emptiness he felt. This was the grief that was tearing him apart. It wasn't for himself; it was for his father.
"Tetsu." Aomine's voice was quiet, all of his anger and indignation hidden away. "What changed?"
Kuroko went still. He all but held his breath. He was like a tiny animal trying to avoid the eye of a predator, but it was already too late.
"Your dad didn't develop an allergy, did he? But you had some kind of warning that something was going wrong. You got Nigou out of there before he got hurt. When I saw you, everything seemed fine. Something happened. What was it?"
Kagami waited. He could feel Kuroko's tension, and he knew it was about to break. There was no need to push any farther—Kuroko had said he was going to tell them everything, and he would keep his word. But there was something about this last part that was worse than the rest.
Soon enough, Kuroko cracked. He let out a breath and went limp, all of the stress running out of his body at once. Then he drew a breath, shaky, faint, and opened his mouth.
"A little more than a month ago, my father told me that he had a chance at a promotion at his job. But to ensure his success, he was going to need to socialize with his bosses in the evening. That meant drinking. His medication...doesn't mix well with alcohol. So he decided to stop taking it."
It took a moment to process this. Then Kagami almost choked on his rage. The bastard chose. He knew he was dangerous, he knew what could happen, and he still chose. For a chance at a promotion...
He put financial success over the well-being of his son. His only child. He knew full well what he was doing and he did it anyway.
"I asked him not to," Kuroko admitted softly. So he knew, too. "He said it was only temporary. But after a few days..."
"Tetsu..." Aomine's voice was shaking with the same fury Kagami felt in himself. "This is not convincing me that your father is a good person."
"It wasn't that bad at first," Kuroko protested, but his voice was weary and ashamed and very, very small.
"What does that mean?" Kagami asked. It took every ounce of strength he had to keep his voice sounding relatively normal. "He only hit you once in a while? He just grabbed you by the arms and called you names? He didn't take a belt to you?"
Kuroko was quiet for a long moment. "...Yes."
Kagami breathed, in and out. Aomine sat up suddenly, his body a tight coil of anger, and hunched in the dimness. His shadow was a silhouette on the flimsy wall.
"You said you failed," Kagami said. "You were trying to fix it. You tried to convince him to start taking his medicine again?"
"Yes." Kuroko struggled for breath. The atmosphere was thick and heavy, as if they stood under an encroaching storm. "But once he started seeing me as an enemy..."
"Nothing you said could convince him." Aomine's fist curled tight against his body. "Nothing you did meant anything to him."
Kuroko held his breath for a moment. "I tried...so hard…"
Kagami reached up to pat his head again. "I know. I know you did."
The tight coil of Aomine suddenly released. He lurched forward, scrambling to get out of the close space. "I need some air," he ground out. "Does that balcony door open, Kagami?"
"Yeah. Go ahead."
The entire structure shivered as Aomine forced his way out. They listened to him all but run the few steps to the balcony. A cool breeze blew through the apartment as Aomine rushed outside and closed the door behind him.
"He'll be back in a little while," Kagami said. He understood why Aomine had to leave. He also knew he would return.
Kuroko nodded hesitantly. "I just hope...Aomine-kun won't be too angry with me, once he gets a chance to cool down."
Kagami's breath halted in his throat, every muscle locking in place for a moment. "Oh my God, Kuroko. He's not angry at you."
Brief silence. "...Are you sure?"
"One hundred percent. I'm not angry at you either."
Kuroko said nothing.
The depth of the misconception here took Kagami's breath away. Kuroko thought he was a failure. He thought it was his responsibility to take care of his father, instead of the other way around. He thought that Aomine and Kagami were angry at him for not succeeding at an impossible task.
Kagami had a sudden glimpse of the days ahead, of all the work that needed to be done before Kuroko would be completely healed and free of this tragedy that had overtaken his life. What had Himuro said? Post-traumatic stress and self-esteem and probably depression. Yeah, all of those. Himuro had been right.
Treating the physical damage...that was the easy part.
"Kuroko?" Kagami asked. "Do you believe me? I'm not even a little bit angry at you. Neither is Aomine."
After a moment, Kuroko nodded into his shoulder. Kagami had no idea if it was a lie.
This chapter was a little more difficult to write, for various reasons. I hope I'm not slipping into OOC territory, but I couldn't seem to write it any other way. Kuroko NEEDED reassurance.