A/N: Resurrecting this fic with my take on the mirror references from the published scripts.
They all remember the Silly Mirror. Roman remembers sobbing face down on his mother's bed, although he can't remember what he was so upset about. His mother didn't really do physical comfort, but she sat him at her dressing table and held a large mirror in front of his face. "There. See how silly you look. You don't want to look silly, do you?"
Roman stared at himself in the mirror. Eyes red, snot dripping down his face, his mother's hand firmly on his shoulder.
"No," he managed to say, wiping the tears away. "Thank you."
His mother kissed him on the top of the head. "My brave boy. That's better."
Years later Kendall insists that it was Logan who made them look in a mirror when they were crying to see how silly and ugly they looked, and Shiv corrects him saying that was Mom. Only Roman remembers what really happened.
"It was a nice thing," he insists. "Mom was trying to help us. To make us feel better." Shiv looks sceptical, always wanting to think the worst of their mother, and Kendall is still adamant that it was Dad.
Roman still uses the trick of looking in the mirror whenever he cries. It calms him down, the thought of not wanting to look silly.
He tries this method on the day of his father's funeral, standing in the bathroom at the wake, staring in the mirror until the tears have subsided. By the time he returns to the crowded room, he's feeling dignified and ready to face people. But then Mencken calls him Tiny Tears to his face and Kendall says Easy today, yeah? but Roman can't hear his brother through the ringing in his ears. Then he hears the video of himself sobbing being circulated to snickers and concerned whispers, and so he flees.