AN: I'm not dead anymore!

023: half-truths and half-lies.

Early July; 12 years.

On a perfectly temperate spring day, only a couple hours after school, Suzume sits atop a rounded bluff with Hawks. Cut small and neat from the edge of the mountain, it seems like a perch built almost intentionally for two. Despite the marked separation from its brothers behind them, a single oak tree stands tall and proud at the edge of the bluff all the same, its old, heavy branches creaking with wind-whispered secrets. Tucked beneath its shadows, Suzume finds herself feeling almost cold. Despite the near-chill, sweat beads near her hairline and along her upper lip. When she wets her mouth with her still drier tongue, she can taste the salt even through the cloying sweetness of her dessert.

Everything feels awful. Inside her chest, her heart hammers away, a million kilometers a second. It's a wonder her hands aren't shaking.

"Hey, chickadee. Your ice cream – watch it! Can't have made it all this way just to blow it at the finish line."

Suzume inclines her head to the side, brought back to reality by the playful but urgent tone in Hawks' voice a little too late to spare her fingers from the sticky spill of her fast melting treat. Worrying her lower lip with her teeth, she doesn't do anything to stop the pale green rivulets dripping down her knuckles.

It isn't that she doesn't want to. She does. She really, really does. There are so many things she could do, she tells herself. Things she could have done. Things she might try. She could have eaten her ice cream quickly enough and avoided the mess entirely. She could lick the mess off the back of her hand to fix it. If she wanted – and this sounds the most tempting right now – she could even chuck the entire thing off the edge of the cliff and be done with it for good.

Instead, paralyzed by an overwhelming sense of inaction she can't describe, she only watches it slide down her fingers.

This, she thinks, feeling itchy on the inside of her skin where she knows she can't scratch, is her life. The want to do something – the need to do it, even – and the somehow crushing inability to do anything at all.

And then she has another thought: she hadn't even wanted ice cream in the first place. That one surfaces suddenly in the haze of her mind, surprisingly sharp and exceedingly bitter, and it takes every fiber of her being to keep that feeling from coloring her expression. It's not his fault, she tells herself. It's not. It isn't. That isn't fair.

But still – but still! Ice cream had been Hawks' idea. Whenever they meet, these little desserts always are. "C'mon," he says, "you deserve a treat. Just a little one? It's not a big deal, really, right? All this work I do, I might as well do something good with it. Just lemme get it for you."

He says it's for her, and she thinks some part of it is. But really, she's come to the conclusion it's mostly for him in what might be the most selfless way possible:

He wants to do something for her. He wants to buy her things.

Hawks, she has realized, feels guilty about how things have turned out.

After the seemingly endless nightmare surrounding Jun's disappearance had finally died down, Hawks had been forced to trade in his daily visits for weekly ones. It wasn't his choice, he'd assured her; he was just really busy. He was so upset about it. He was very sorry. Surely she understood? He hoped she understood.

Of course she had. How could she not? At night, Suzume watches the news – sometimes with her brother running a scathing commentary, and sometimes without him – and Hawks is there in vibrant technicolor, more often than not. Anyone could see he was busy. Busy and flashy and important. Laughing, and smiling, and thoroughly charming. He has places to be, and people to save. She understood. She understands. Really, she hadn't been upset. She still isn't.

Not about that, anyway.

And really, had it been anyone else but Hawks, Suzume might have assumed he'd have been glad for the excuse to visit less. Chichibu is a nothing place. She feels – both by proxy, and for much greater reasons than Chichibu – like a nothing girl. The part of her that still wants to doubt his intentions is much quieter now, though. When she stops to consider all he's done and continues to do, it becomes harder and harder to doubt him.

It hadn't been enough for him, that much was obvious. It wasn't some excuse. Not content with once a week meetings, Hawks had all but insisted they fall back on phone calls in the interim. He'd be there in spirit, he'd promised her; he'd call every day they were apart.

True to his word, there he was: every day after school, his voice filled her ears, warm and sunny-bright over the crackling connection. "How's life treating you, chickadee?" he'd say, or, "Do anything cool? Play any new games?" or, "Can't wait to see you later on this week."

And sometimes, much more rarely, and much more wistfully: "Wish you weren't so far away."

Sometimes, on nights when her brother comes home late and completely empty of excuses he can't be bothered to make, Suzume finds herself wishing the same.

Those are ugly thoughts, she tells herself. Just like wanting to blame the sticky mess of her fingers on Hawks is an ugly thought.

You didn't even want it, though, a nasty voice hisses inside her head. You took it just to make him feel better.

That's an ugly thought, too.

Earlier, Suzume had told him that she wasn't hungry enough for dessert – but as always, he'd insisted. "Just something small," he'd said, doing his best golden retriever impression. "Don't think of it like a treat, then, if you don't want one – think of it like… like a test, yeah?"

"A… test?" The dubious look she'd fixed him with had made him laugh, softening her resolve.

"Yeah. A – a test!" Excitement written in all of his features, he had snapped his fingers as if struck by sudden genius. "A test of your reflexes, right? See, we'll get you a cone, and then we'll fly over to that mountain on the edge of town. Can see how good you hold it, see if you can manage without making a mess – and when we make it there, the ice cream will be its own reward! Just… you know, assuming it's intact, still. If you want it, anyway."

There was no way he wasn't making all of this up as he went, she realized, but it seemed to mean so much to him.

She felt bad saying no. She wanted to make him happy. He wanted to make her happy.

That wasn't his fault, was it?

"Hey," comes his voice, again, much more softly now – here, now, in the present. "C'mon. You earned it. You deserve it. I didn't mean it like that, y'know. You didn't blow anything. Your flying, chickadee – it's aces. You're getting so good."

Does she deserve it, she wonders? The ice cream? His attention? All this effort? Does she really deserve any of this? Just moments ago, she had been wanting to blame him for her own inability to act –

And even now, with what she knows she has to ask him –

With what she has to tell him –

Her stomach twists, gone sour at the thought and at the sight of the thick slurry dripping down her clammy skin. She tries to smile – thinks she ought to – but even the thought of it feels too much. It makes her feel like she might throw up.

"Hey," she hears him say again, a little louder now. "Hey – are you okay?"

She isn't, of course. And of course he'd notice, not that she's doing an especially stellar job of hiding it. Hawks and her brother are very different people, but they are both alarmingly astute. No doubt he's sensed something was wrong this entire time. Not asking after it has been a kindness, she knows. Hawks never seems to want to push her. Where her brother would bully it out of her, Hawks seems to prefer she come to him of her own accord.

Even he has his limits, though, where concern overwhelms patience.

When she answers, Suzume doesn't look at him. "Hawks-san?"

For a beat, he doesn't respond. And then, after that heavy pause: "Yeah?"

"Um." There's a single drop of sweat working its way down her cheek. She feels it as intensely as she feels the ice cream dripping down her fingers. "I need – I – can I come clean to you about something?"

There's the sound of him taking in a long, deep breath through his nose. She doesn't hear the exhale – not until it comes out in his response in a puff of tense air. "That's a pretty serious um there, chickadee."

Playful, still, in spite of the sigh – in spite of the gravity deepening his voice. An attempt to diffuse the situation, and one he's usually very good at. It's a good attempt, she thinks. It always is.

She just wishes it were working better, now.

Another small silence settles between them, and then his hand settles over her forearm, giving her a gentle squeeze. "It's okay," he says, encouragingly. "You can tell me anything."

Suzume wonders about that – really, really wonders about it. Hawks sounds like he means it. When he talks to her, he always sounds like he means everything. His sincerity is always so profuse, and a little painful. She remembers her father having that same kind of charm in front of the cameras, and in front of the right kinds of people.

But Hawks has held onto this for so long, now –

That just maybe…

Maybe this will be okay.

(It has to be okay, she tells herself. It has to be. There are no other options. There are none. There is nothing else.)

"My grandmother's sick," Suzume starts, speaking slowly, as if she might delay this further – as if she hadn't already pushed this to the absolute wire. "Well, I mean… she has been. I told you that before."

Giving her arm another squeeze, Hawks makes a sympathetic noise. "Shit," he says, wholly respectful despite the minor dip into foul language. "Is she getting worse?"

"Well, um… that's the thing." Unable to keep up the attempt to seem even remotely interested in her ice cream, she lays it down in the scrubby grass at her feet where it begins to seep out into the dirt. Transfixed by it, she watches it with a kind of woozy terror. "She, um… so, she's – she's actually been sick for a while. Really – really sick. For a long while. And pretty early on after I got here, she took – she took a bad turn. And she went into the hospital."

The ice cream is more of a slurry now, congealing among the grass in a thick, pudding-like puddle. It looks disgusting. "And um – she didn't… she didn't come out of the hospital, either."

There is the sound of the wind in the trees, and between the two of them. Down, down, down the mountain, Chichibu looks very small, its buildings like tiny models set in a pastoral but artificial landscape – the kind Suzume had seen during a visit to a children's museum, once, at a model train exhibit. It feels like she could reach out and touch them, like she could move them around like toys. Shake things up. Change them. Move them around.

An elaborate game of make-believe, to suit any occasion.

A pretty, quaint little lie, she thinks – done up in spring time colors.

Beside her, whether to speak or move, Hawks doesn't stir. His hand remains on her arm, though, the warmth of his palm lacking in any of the intensity of her brother's heat.

(It burns like a familiar brand all the same.)

"What?" He asks, finally. He sounds – what does he sound like? Not angry, like she'd expected. Well, not angry like she almost wishes he would be, like she feels she deserves. She knew he wouldn't be angry. It's hard to imagine Hawks angry.

No, he sounds bewildered. And, worse than that –

"Your grandmother – she's been in the hospital?" Dazedly, he repeats what she says, and she has the sense that he's trying to process the implications. Trying, and failing. In the thick quiet that fills the space again, she can just make out the plop-plop-plop of ice cream hitting the grass. In the hand not gripping her arm, Hawks' own ice cream drips down his fingers, too.

"Wait," he says, finally, "for how long?"

Suzume wants to push his hand off her arm. She wishes he would let her go. More than anything, she wants to bury her face in her hands. Like with everything, though, she finds herself unable to move – unable to act. "Maybe… maybe a couple of months after I got to Chichibu. I don't really remember it all that well."

"Oh, Suzume." When he says her name – her full given name, and one no one has used with her in what feels like years – it's quiet, and soft, without a hint of admonishment.

He sounds so terribly, terribly sad.

It would be so much better if he was angry, she thinks, bile burning in her throat. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it?

No. No!

"I'm sorry – " The apology spills out of her before she can stop it. For days and days now – weeks and weeks – she has planned this. She knew she'd have to apologize, but she didn't know just how much she'd mean it when it came time to say it. God – she means it so much. There's a sob building up behind the words, a too-strong current behind a too-weak dam. In her lap, she opens and closes her fingers, making repeated fists, feeling her arm flex weakly under Hawks' still-firm grip. "I'm sorry – "

"Why didn't you tell me?" The words leave him in another soft exhalation. Not quite a sigh and not quite a whisper, it's low and gentle all the same. Suzume can feel the weight of his gaze on her – feel his eyes searching her burning face for an answer he won't find in her guilty countenance. Slowly, his hand moves down her arm, and then his finger tips are gliding across the sticky hills and valleys of her small knuckles. "Chickadee – "

"I just – " Of course he'd ask this. Why wouldn't he? Anyone would. And she knows any answer she can give – any answer she can give him without admitting to the real one will sound pathetic. But she has to try. She has to. There's so much at stake. So much she stands to lose by trying and inevitably failing to solve this on her own –

By sitting around doing nothing.

What else can she do? What else?

"I know that if I told anyone about it that – that they'd find somewhere else to put me. With an agency, or – or with a family. Strangers. And I… I didn't want to go. Please, you have to understand that I just – I wanted to stay here. I wanted to be where Mama grew up. And more than that – more than that, I think… I think I just really wanted to be alone."

Suzume isn't lying, she tells herself, guilt gnawing toothily at her roiling insides. She isn't, right? Every bit of that is honest, and not an exaggeration. She doesn't want to go and live at an orphanage. She doesn't want to be placed with a family.

Safe and alone, she wants to stay here, in Chichibu.

(Safe and alone with her brother.)

It's the truth, she tells herself, again. It is. She just doesn't voice that last part aloud. And that's not lying, right?

Right?

Silence, again. Hawks is so very quiet. Eventually, she forces herself to turn and face him. With bushy brows drawn, he regards her with a seriousness that somehow does not become him at all and also seems to suit him all too well.

But he doesn't say anything. With his golden eyes fixed to her face, he only watches her, mouth pulled tight and straight as a blade. His face is a still mask – and Suzume's mind is a rush of panic.

What does he want? Has she misjudged him? No – no. Maybe… he wants more? She would, she thinks. Trying to swallow the lump in her throat, she almost gags. She tries again. It feels like broken glass, all the way down, gashing a path all along her throat and into her stomach that burns and burns and burns. In her lap, twisted together between her legs, Suzume's hands shake.

When she speaks again, her voice shakes, too. "I… back at the big house – when I was with my dad, I mean – I was kept in a room with almost nothing. It was like that for months and months. I had some books, if I listened and… minded him well enough. He even let me keep a few games. It could have been a lot worse, I know. I wasn't homeless, or anything. He gave me a roof, he said. I should be grateful. But I – I couldn't do anything else. I couldn't see anybody, anybody except my dad, and I never had any choice when I had to see him. When I had to be with him.

"And when I got out, and when my grandmother got sick… suddenly I could do whatever I wanted. I could – I could go where I wanted. I could be alone, when I wanted. And… and it was my choice, you know? I wasn't alone because he made me be alone. I wasn't around anyone because he was making me. I didn't have him pushing his way into my life, anymore. And sometimes… sometimes, it was lonely. But it was something I was used to. It wasn't really a bad kind of lonely. It was like – like when Mama and I moved out, and she got the apartment. It was like that."

Hawks' eyes, much like her brother's often are – another of their rare similarities – seem so bright. Too bright. Turning away from him, Suzume opens and closes her mouth, willing the words to come out. Eventually – finally – they do. "It was a little hard, being there. At the apartment, I mean. Mama didn't make much money. But I'd… really, I'd never been happier than when we lived there. Away from my dad, and all the – all the things he did. And Mama was gone a lot, sure, but the apartment felt safe, and I could go where I wanted. Do what I wanted. And when my grandma got sick, I thought… it was just the same as the apartment, right? It was fine. It was. I'd already done it before. I could take care of myself. And my grandma… we were basically strangers. In a messed up kinda way, I think I welcomed it. Liked it, even, I think."

Suzume takes a deep breath, and then another, filling her lungs with air, and with the drive to continue. Every word feels like more of that broken glass in her mouth, tearing her up, lodged under her tongue and between her teeth. Everything hurts. She doesn't want to continue. She does, anyway. She has to. She does. "And things were fine. They were. Good, even. But then a month went by, and then a few months more, and then it seemed like she wasn't coming out. And she's not. She's not getting better. Not at all. She's – she's actually getting a lot worse. And now they don't… they don't think my grandma's gonna last more than a month. Probably a few weeks. And then – and then, well. You know."

Suzume shrugs her shoulders. The gesture is a little jerky, a little wild. Manic, almost. It's so stupid. Everything is so dumb that she feels the insane urge to laugh frothing up inside of her like some great riptide. Instead, she takes another breath, this one significantly more unsteady than the last. It's getting harder and harder to fight the fast-mounting feeling of panic welling up inside of her. She wishes he would say anything. "And… you know. Everything's gonna come out. And if it does… what do I do? What if I get sent somewhere else? What if wherever I get sent is like living with – with my dad, again? Put away in a room unless I'm – until I'm needed – "

Finally breaking his silence, Hawks interrupts her. "You could have told me," he says, his voice nearly as rushed as her own. "You know – before now. I would have – god, chickadee. Don't you know by now? I would have kept it for you. I would have."

It's hard to hold his gaze. Not as hard as it is with her brother when he's being difficult, but hard, still. Looking anyone in their face – Suzume has always struggled with that, even at the best of times.

And this feels like the worst. Hawks' eyes are wider than they should be, and he looks…

Crushed.

Her voice is weak when she asks for clarification. "Kept what?"

"Your secret."

My secret. Internally, she repeats those two words, over and over. But which one? Which secret? There are so many now, so many that Suzume often feels like she's drowning in them. Secrets from her brother. Secrets from Hawks. Secrets from her social workers.

Secrets from herself.

Rubbing her free hand up and over her arm through her thick sweater, she shakes her head. The yarn is soft against her damp palm. It might stain, she thinks, distantly – but the thought holds no real consequence. She doesn't care; not really. It's hard to care about anything besides making sure her biggest secret isn't found out –

And that she won't lose her brother for a second time.

"Hey – hey, it's okay." Drawing closer to her, Hawks' face fills her field of vision, creased with such an honest concern she finds she wants to pull back from him. It makes her heart ache.

She doesn't deserve it.

Not that he knows that. He doesn't know anything. What would he think if he did? What would –

"Don't – hey, don't cry." His voice is slow and gentle, as if speaking to something small and easily startled – something that might scatter and disappear at any moment. "Don't – don't cry. I wasn't scolding you, okay? Wasn't mad, neither. Promise I wasn't. I was just surprised, is all. I'm not mad at you. Not upset with you – not like that."

Is she crying? Everything feels so far away, all of a sudden. Everything feels so numb. There's a chill that has buried itself down deep in her iron-wrought bones, leeching late winter cold into her muscles. Hawks is so close, but she doesn't really see him anymore – not really. And then, he's moving, and then his hand is on her face, cupping her cheek, and then the back of her head, pulling her into him. Warm and pliable, Suzume sinks into his chest, an awkward spill into his lap. It's only with his cheek pressed up against his shirt that she realizes he's right.

She is crying. Her whole face is wet. Now his shirt is, too.

"I get it. I get it. I do." Behind his ribs, his voice is a tender but deep rumble. Against her ear it reminds her of the far-away sound of summer thunder rolling across the horizon, heralding much needed rain. "You got the taste of freedom, and you don't wanna let it go. And no one does – what's better than freedom? After what you went through – shit, no one could blame you. I'd feel the same. But god, you're just… you're just so young. Living all alone, and – "

"People do it all the time, though," she whispers against him. They do. She does. Especially since her brother has been gone so often as of late –

"People do. And – and kids, too," she continues, raising her voice a half-pitch in a warbling attempt to sound determined. Confident. If the way he sighs into her hair is any indication, she's not sure it's working. But she has to try. She has to.

"Mama worked so much, and I was alone a lot when I was even younger than I am now! I – I can do it. I've been doing it. Nothing is even gonna change. I can – I can take care of myself."

"Chickadee – "

"Some kids get their own apartments so they can go to far-away schools, even! It's… it's just like that, right? Not a big deal – "

"Yeah, okay, sometimes," he allows. It's an obviously reluctant concession. "But they're, y'know, usually bigger kids. Older. High school ages. Not little bitty babies who – "

Pulling away from his chest, Suzume stares up at him through wet lashes, a tremulous note of triumph working its way through her. "Usually. You said it, not me: usually! That means – that means that sometimes younger kids do it, too, and I mean, I've already been doing it, so – "

"Okay, okay, alright – hold on there." A hint of laughter tinges his softhearted admonishment, fraying the edges of his words like a well-loved blanket. "It's clever. That's pretty clever. Real lawyer-like. But this ain't a court, chickadee. I'm not gonna let you get me on a technicality like that."

"Too late for that," she insists, rubbing the back of her arm against her soggy eyes. "You said it!"

Smiling, Hawks looks down at her. His eyes, though, look sad. "Chickadee…"

Suzume doesn't like how that sounds – doesn't like that hesitant, anguished expression settling over his features.

No, no – no. She can't fail here. She can't. She can't lose everything –

If Hawks doesn't help…

"Please – " The triumph is leaving her as quickly as it arrived. "Hawks-san, please – please. You said – you said if I told you, you'd have kept my secret. Can't you still keep it? I – I know it wasn't fair of me to keep it, but please – please…"

"Listen – chickadee." Taking her face in both his hands – one of them sticky with ice cream – he gives her head a mellow shake. "I gotta confess: you're not wholly barking up the wrong tree, here. I'd be down for some general skullduggery with you – or, you know, solo, in your honor. And I'd like to think I'm a pretty talented guy, and that I can pull off a lot of shit I probably shouldn't be able to, but… I just don't know how well I – or anyone, really – could hide the fact that your grandma's about to, uh, well – y'know. I mean, she's in the hospital, presumably surrounded by doctors who are hopefully a lot more observant than your obviously trash social workers are. If she dies, it's not like we can hide that. Pulling a stunt like that off involves a level of deception – bamboozlement, if you will – that I'm not sure I can manage. Or anyone, really, barring some very unique quirks." Hawks pauses, his eyes searching Suzume's face. "Though I'm flattered you think I'm that adept at uh, hornswoggling people to that degree. I think. Maybe."

"No, no, I know, but – " Suzume exhales so sharply her breath stirs in Hawks' bangs. In her own mind, she sees herself minutes before, watching her ice cream melt all over her fingers. No, she thinks. No. This time, she has to act. She has to do it now, because there won't be time soon. It's already so late. Maybe too late. "But can't you just… can't you put in a word for me, maybe? Can't you… I don't know, can't you talk to the people in charge of looking after me and vouch that I'm fit to take care of myself if… when she dies?"

Hawks' eyebrows loft upwards. "Okay, second confession: I kinda wanna push your social workers straight into traffic. And not just in front of a car, either, you feel me? I'm thinking maybe a bus, or a garbage truck. I'll settle for stringing them up, though. Not sure how well I could manage a civil – let alone productive – conversation right now, or maybe even ever – "

"Hawks-san, please!"

"I…" Trailing off, he rubs the back of his neck, a little sheepishly. "I mean, I guess… I guess I could try. But the whole kid-living-on-their-own-thing, y'know, like with the high school stuff I mentioned earlier… it's usually kinda contingent on the kid in question having somewhere for them to go – or someone for them to go home to if things don't work out right. And you don't…"

Hawks doesn't finish the statement. He doesn't need to.

And Suzume doesn't need him to. She knows what he was going to say. She doesn't need to finish it, either – but she does, anyway:

"And I don't have anyone."

She doesn't mean for it to come out so dramatically – but it does. It's petulant. Whiny. Self-pitying. Her throat tightens, so raw now, cut to metaphorical ribbons. The stupidest part of it all is, it's not even really the truth – she does have someone. She does. But she can't tell anyone about him, because telling them about him means they'd take her away from him. And what would they do to him? Her brother – her ghost boy in the park – the constant shadow in her soon-to-be-dead grandmother's house.

Her savior.

Even through her blurred vision – because she's crying again, because of course she is – Suzume see's Hawks' expression blanche. "Shit, I didn't mean it like that." Always so genuine, his words are heavy with regret now, too, and a weighty compassion she just isn't used to. It doesn't feel right to say anything. It isn't fair, what she's asking, and she knows it, and even though she knows she has to try – has to fight, tooth and claw for what she needs – she can't bring herself to, anymore.

When she doesn't answer, he repeats himself again, a little desperate. "Chickadee – I promise, I didn't – "

It makes her feel worse to hear that frantic edge bleeding into his words. Scrunching her face up, Suzume shakes her head, digging her fingers into her eyes. "I know," she says, trying so hard to sound normal and failing, miserably. "It's – it's fine. It was a stupid thing to ask. It was stupid. I shouldn't – I shouldn't have said anything, but I just – I just – "

"It's not." Letting go of her face, Hawks scrubs a hand across the stubble on his chin and exhales, sharply. "God, come on, be real – none of this fucking is, so don't say that. You don't have to say that."

When she shrinks back a little, nearly spilling out of his lap, he's quick to catch her by her shoulder, pulling her back against himself. "No – no, I don't mean it like that. I just mean – it's okay that it's not okay. I'm not asking you to.. I don't want you to feel like you gotta pretend, all right? Like you gotta put on a brave face for me and put your feelings aside and all that. It's okay that it's not fine. We'll we'll figure it out, okay? And in the meantime, it's okay for it to suck."

Oh, Suzume thinks, feeling dizzy and light-headed and sick. I don't deserve this. She doesn't. And just like his anxiety hurts her, so, too, does this awful, utterly selfless concern. She wants to get up, and she wants to apologize for everything. Tell him she's sorry, that she's not worth his time, or his kindness, or his compassion. He has real things to worry about. He has better people to save – good people, she imagines. Honest people.

Not her. She's selfish. A liar.

"Please," she says, and she sounds so pitiful to her own ears. The tears have become a storm, bubbling out of her. She is the worst. She is terrible in every single way, and she does not deserve this.

She begs for it anyway.

(She cannot lose her brother.)

"Hawks-san, please." It's easier, she thinks, if she closes her eyes. She can't look at him anymore. "Please – I'm so scared."

That, at least, is the truth. Right?

But this game she's been playing with herself lately – this childish game where she tries to find things to say with double-meaning so she can lie to herself that she's not really lying to the people around her – it's not working the way it used to. It's hard not to take a step back from herself every time and see herself for exactly what she is:

A two-faced fake.

(It would be easier, she thinks – it would be easier if she didn't like Hawks so much. If she didn't like her brother so much. How can she lie to the people she likes most? What does that make her?)

"Chickadee," Hawks says, quietly. And then, after a moment, he continues: "Suzume. It's okay. We'll figure it out."

He sounds confident. She opens her eyes and looks up but his face is a wet smear of color through her tears, spots of vivid, shining gold gleaming in the sunlight that filters through the trees. It draws closer, and then his hands are on her cheeks again, holding her so very gently.

"I'll figure it out," he says. "I promise."

A lie is a lie is a lie, she thinks. She hates how often she has to tell them. She feels sick with it – terrified of it. But what else can she do? What else?

Her brother has killed for her, she reminds herself. For her. For love.

And that makes it not as bad, right? Her brother – her ghost – her shadow – her hero. It's the motivation that makes the action. It is. It is.

Isn't it?

Another game, she thinks. Another stupid game.

It's all she has, though: these games.

Little white lies, and the bigger, nastier ones.

"Thank you," she whispers.

(At least that isn't a lie.)

The next few days go by in a blur of uneasy routine.

The early parts of them are at least mostly normal. Suzume wakes up, and washes her face in the bathroom. Then there's the ritual of making breakfast and packed lunches for both herself and her brother, something that he's almost always present for and even occasionally helps out with, especially if there are knives involved. At his most mellow in the mornings, her brother is – if not exactly kind – a little less caustic. Setting aside his typical tyranny for something almost sweet, he steals little samples of her cooking and says things like, "Not bad," or "Pretty good." Considering how ravenously he eats and how often he pilfers food off her own plate, she takes these comments as the glowing compliments she knows they're meant to be.

Then it's back to the bathroom where she trades elbows to the ribs with him over who gets the mirror while they wash their faces and brush their teeth. That's a losing fight for her, every time. A second nearly-lost fight always follows: can she successfully herd him from the bathroom so she can get changed in peace? This one he allows her to win – eventually, anyway – but stubborn as he is, he rarely makes it easy. Sometimes it takes her a few seconds. Sometimes it's whole minutes. Ultimately, a combination of her physically shoving him with her whole body and a hefty dose of pleading does the trick, and he'll slink back out into the hall with an oil-slick smirk surfacing across his scarred, smug face.

(That always makes her feel some very complicated kind of way. She hates it – she does – but that rotten look on his face makes something in her stomach do all kinds of gymnastics that she finds she likes a little more than she thinks she should.)

Goodbyes come next. By then, her brother has usually retreated to the common room where she finds him sprawled out across the tatami with the TV on, sound off. It's usually a coin flip whether his attention is on his phone or fixed on her when she enters the room.

(Lately, though, it's been far more of the latter than the former.)

Ever the sentimentalist – at least, that's what he calls her – Suzume sweeps into the room so she can plant a clumsy and, to her chagrin, frequently flustered kiss to the side of his head. While he usually responds with a muted grunt, it always makes her happy to see him sit up when she approaches, as if to give her easier access.

And a lot of the time, that's it – that's where they part. But this week has him behaving a little more erratically, and twice she finds herself intercepted by him as she's leaving the house, his hand snatching her wrist so he can tug her back into the cage of his arms. Nuzzling his face into the crown of her hair, he works his way down to brush his hot mouth against her forehead in a kiss of his own. It is, of course, neither clumsy nor flustered. It also isn't quick; his lips linger against her skin, his breath tickling her through her hair.

The first time he does it, she's too startled to do or say anything but stand there gracelessly. It isn't an unwelcome thing, really. He's been so much less touchy with her lately, and she's mortified by how much she finds she needs it. The sensation of his body pressed flush with her own has her breath hitched so tightly inside her that it takes her until well after he's unwound himself and retreated wordlessly back into the house to find it again.

The second time, though, his fingers slither up into her hair and guide her face until her cheek is pressed to the divide where the ruined skin of his throat and shoulder meets the unblemished flesh of his chest. Counter to his slow, languid movements, his heartbeat there is a lot faster than she's used to it being –

And very nearly as fast as hers.

In response, her own heartbeat picks up, and suddenly she's light-headed and dizzy, her own fingers working haltingly into the fabric of his low-necked shirt. "Nii-chan…"

It comes out a breathless kind of whisper – and that earns her a sudden and unceremonious push right back out the door.

Bewildered and a little hurt, she catches his gaze as she struggles to right herself. His expression is its usual mask of indifference, an almost-smile quirked in the corner of his lips –

But his eyes are wide, his pupils deep and black and blown out almost entirely.

"Catch ya later, Suzu," he says. His tone, nonchalant as ever, matches his expression where his eyes do not.

And then he turns, and then he's gone, back into the house.

God, she thinks, hands balled up into fists; it isn't fair.

It isn't!

(But then, when is he ever? When is it ever?)

On the way to school, much as she usually does, Suzume spends most of the walk trying to imagine the things her brother gets up to when she leaves. When he goes, where does he go? If he stays home, what does he do? Years ago, she'd asked him those questions almost every day. When he felt inclined to answer, which was almost never, he was always deliberately and infuriatingly vague. "Went out," he'd say, if he copped to leaving. Or, "Stayed home," with no elaboration. More frequently she'd be met with a smirk and a, "Yeah, I bet you'd like to know, huh?" or a shrug of his shoulders, similarly matched with a toothy leer. These days, she asks him much less often. Stubborn and starving for answers as she is, there are only so many times she can make herself try the same things day in and day out without being crushed by the proverbial boot-heel of disappointment.

It's not something she finds particularly comforting to think about. Somehow, though, it's infinitely better than imagining what might happen to the two of them should the magic Hawks claims he's working fall through – another recent and infuriatingly recurrent brainworm.

Then, at the end of all that fast-paced and fretful walking, there's school. Both a blessing and a curse, school is the same as it ever is. The lessons give her something else to think about, and she throws herself into her studies, eager to give her brain something to stew in besides the constant low-grade terror that seems to be gripping her lately. In the quiet moments though, like when Suzume sits at her desk eating her lunch alone, it's hard. She thinks about her brother, and she thinks about Hawks, and she thinks about her brother some more –

And she just feels so helpless.

You've done what you can, she tries to tell herself. It took her weeks to work up the courage to ask Hawks for help, but she has done all she can. Now, all there is to do is wait:

Wait for the end of school. Wait for Hawks' calls. Wait for news – good, or bad.

In the beginning of the week, after school when he does call, Hawks doesn't have much to tell her. If anything, his calls are shorter than normal.

"I know it's time-sensitive," he says Tuesday, sounding very apologetic, "so I'm trying to take the spare moments I got to get it done ASAP. 'Spare moments' are kinda in short supply for me, though, so I'll call it early today to make some more calls to the appropriate suits."

"I'm sorry," she mumbles back, meaning it and feeling well and truly awful for adding so much more to his already fully-stacked agenda. "It's – it's really selfish of me to ask you to do this when you're already so busy – "

His laughter filters through the phone, easy and comfortable. "Aww hell chickadee, don't worry about that any. I don't mind. We gotta make sure you're okay, yeah?"

Wednesday, he has a little more time to talk. When he tells her about a meeting he has lined up for Thursday, his voice carries a bright note of excitement that makes her feel like this is meant to be promising news. Too queasy for details even in the face of some potential positivity, she tries asking him about his day, instead.

"Same-old, same-old," he says, breezily. She can imagine him flapping his hand about, as if waving the question off. "Nothing worth talking about, really. What about you?"

"Pretty much the same," she admits. "A lot more than yours, I bet."

This is an answer Hawks never allows her, and now is no different. "Naw, c'mon; don't gimme that. Tell me what you're learning – or, if that's too boring, tell me what you're playing. What you're reading. The other day you said something about that sci-fi mystery you picked up, right? Gimme an update on it – not like I got time to read."

Belied by the smile she can hear in his voice, it's hard to take his insistence very seriously. Suzume obliges him, regardless; his enthusiasm is contagious.

School, though, is terribly boring, so she spends the rest of her walk home recounting the story in exacting detail. Not content with a simple summary, he prompts her for the names of characters and the places they travel to, pointedly needling out bits of lore she tries to breeze over. As with everything, his fascination seems real. By the end of the walk, he has a solid enough grasp on the plot that he's able to join her in her theorizing over potential explanations for one of the book's overarching mysteries – so much so that his own suggestion seems surprisingly plausible.

"Gotta catch me up when you find out," he says, enthusiastically.

Later on that night, the news features cell-phone footage shot from earlier that morning of Hawks saving no less than thirty people from a burning office building. The man recording the footage is nearly shrieking in hysterical exhilaration at every flashy sweep of Hawks' feathers while they whisk people through the air. The news anchor – a pretty young woman with a heart-shaped face – seems similarly star struck. There's a glow to her cheeks that there hadn't been earlier when she'd been recounting the details of a foiled bank heist moments before.

Same-old, same-old. Suzume can hear it in Hawks' voice as she watches him deliver a crying, soot-faced little boy into his similarly weeping mother's outstretched arms. "Oh, god, thank you," she cries, her voice hoarse from what Suzume suspects is a combination of smoke inhalation and emotion. "Thank you, thank you…"

Same-old, same-old.

Thursday, Hawks calls and tells her he has his meeting in an hour before confessing, "I tried to schedule it so I'd have some time to kill before you got home."

Suzume thinks about that boy and his mother and all the other people on the news. "You don't – you didn't have to," she says, quietly. "You're already doing so much. I feel like – I feel like I'm eating up so much of your time."

"Aww, chickadee. Don't do that." His voice is softer now, too, soft as scarlet feathers. "C'mon, I want this. I know you asked, but I'm doing it for me, really. Lemme have this."

Why? In her mouth, she turns that word over and over like a hot coal, trying to find a way to handle it that doesn't burn. It's a question she's afraid to ask him – as if asking him might make him actually stop to consider it, might make him realize that there is no real reason to be putting himself through all this extra work.

Might make him realize that she is nothing but a colossal waste of his time.

"I – I guess," she says, lamely, trying and failing to bury that question down, and down, and down. "If you say so."

"Yeah, well, I do say so, so you're not allowed to let it keep eating you up like that, yeah? You're not good to me if you wear yourself ragged and can't finish your book and tell me if I was right or I was right about how it ends."

"You mean right or wrong?"

Charmingly confident, he laughs. "Ohhh, I'm gonna be right!"

At that, trying to match his energy, she manages a weak but mostly honest laugh, and for a moment she thinks she has herself distracted enough to smother that nagging, urgent need to understand.

But only for a moment.

And then, suddenly, it's back, twice as ravenous as it claws its way back up and through her, scratching like a rabid animal at the inside of her teeth.

"Hawks-san," she says, and swallows.

"Uh-oh." His attempt at mimicking her seriousness is much more passable – at least until he laughs again. "You forgot the 'um' this time. Does that mean it's not gonna be quite as earth-shattering as it was a few days ago?"

"I'm sorry – "

This time, he mimes the sound of a loud buzzer, his voice taking on a robot's mechanical affectation. "Brrrrzzzzt. No. Incorrect. No more apologies." It's a poor but silly imitation, endearing in its childishness. She can't help the way it steals a second laugh from her.

"There we go," he says, and he laughs again, too. "That's more like it. What is it, chickadee?"

Halfway between school and home, Suzume stops in the middle of the sidewalk and looks up at the sky. There's not a cloud anywhere, and all that wonderful and endless blue stretches on for a comfortable infinity in every direction. Suffused with the sudden desire to drop her backpack and let her wings out – to close her eyes and spin and follow whatever direction takes her first as she spills up and into that perfect sky – she fights back the sting of tears at the realization that she shouldn't.

That she can't.

She's always running away. Always waiting, and hoping, and never doing – never, until it's too late.

So, she forces herself to ask the question she's been terrified to ask:

"Why?"

Far away, wherever he is for his meeting, Hawks is quiet. And then: "Why what?"

"Why are you doing all this?"

Another pause. And then there's a noise, something that might be a sigh, or a laugh, or just a particularly heavy breath. Suzume isn't sure. "Well," he says, "you know. 'Cause I like you."

The simplicity of that answer takes her by surprise. "...what?"

"You know, the other day, when you told me your secret… I really wasn't mad. Not even really upset – not like I think you were worried I was, or might be, anyway. I was sad, though. Bummed you didn't tell me earlier."

There's a tension in her chest, like a cold, stiff hand gripping her heart. "I – "'

"Hush," he says, firm but gentle. "No apologies, okay? I'm not trying to make you feel bad about it or anything. I just wanted you to know – want you to know, if you need anything…"

Trailing off, Hawks seems to consider his words carefully before continuing. "Anyway, you're never a burden. And is this all really so weird? Isn't helping out what you're supposed to do for people you like? It's what I wanna do, so it's what I'm gonna do, but I guess I also don't really know. Like, I'm kinda doing this all blind. I gotta be real with you, chickadee: I ain't really been one for functional friends or family or things like that before now. I guess that's kind of a secret of mine, actually. And now you know it."

Clear as crystal, Suzume can hear the voice of the man who had recorded Hawks saving all those people. "Holy shit," she remembers him shouting. "Holy shit – look at him – look at that!" The news had tried censoring his colorful language, but the sheer electric admiration in the man's voice had come through even the poorly-timed bleeps. She can imagine the breathless news anchor, too, touching her face while she repeats in starry-eyed awe just how many people Hawks had saved.

"There's no way." Suzume is dumbstruck. "I mean, I guess – I guess family – I don't know about that. About them. But – but everyone else loves you. I see it. I watch the news. How can you not – how can you not have friends?"

"Ouch!" The sudden interjection threatens to drown Suzume in a fresh wave of guilt, but his laughter is a lifeline, reeling her back in before she can even begin to apologize. "Nah – nah, it's okay. I'm not upset! And yeah, I guess the public likes me well enough. But y'know, they like me 'cause I provide a service they think is cool, or neat, or convenient. It's not like they really know me, though – and I sure don't know them. And that's fine. I'm not being bitter or mopey about that. I'm fine with it, actually. I like to think it means I'm doing my job passably enough.

"But that's just it – it's my job. And I do it 'cause I wanna help in a general sense, and 'cause it feels good. But it's still my job. They're my job. They aren't my friends, or my family… or, well, you know. It just isn't the same."

A soft wind rustles through the trees, and through Suzume's hair. She imagines what it might feel like, higher up. She wonders if it's windy where Hawks is, too.

"Am I like… a job then?"

"Naw, not at all," Hawks says, emphatically. "It's different with you. I mean, sure, I help you out 'cause I wanna, and 'cause I like it, so I guess in a way it's sorta similar. But it feels different, right? It feels different, somehow. I do the hero work 'cause I'm good at it and 'cause I wanna make the world easier. Make things a little better. Not to sound hoity-toity and self-righteous or anything, but I think people who can help others should. And I feel good about doing that, doing what I think is right, so I do it. Don't really think much more about it than that. Kinda like breathing, in that way. Feels like it's just a part of me, now.

"But, I dunno. It's different with you. It's a lot different. I think about it a lot, I guess, 'cause it's personal. 'Cause I like you. With you it's not about anything as grand or impersonal or indistinct as making the world a better place. In a way, it's a lot more selfishly motivated than that. At least, I think so. I wanna help the world to make it better, but I don't really care if they like me or not. With you, though, I like you, so I wanna help you out… but I do it 'cause I want you to like me, too. I wanna make you happy, 'cause seeing you happy makes me happy. Does that make sense?"

Suzume isn't sure what she was expecting as an answer – but it absolutely wasn't whatever this is. This level of conversational vulnerability – at least, devoid of all her brother's barbed edges – is completely foreign to her.

In her ear, Hawks lets out a breath in a huff of wan amusement. "Sorry," he says, sounding almost bashful. In her mind's-eye, she can see him stuffing his hands into his pockets, his shoulders pushed up to his ears. "That was a lot, huh? Prolly too much."

"No – " Suzume starts, then stops, floundering herself. "I don't – well, I don't… I don't know. I don't think that's selfish, though? It sounds… totally unselfish to me."

"Isn't it?" Another laugh, this one with a bit more colorl. She isn't quite sure why he keeps laughing. This all feels so peeled-back and raw and serious in ways she struggles to process. "Again, I don't know. I don't really know how feelings or friends or this kinda shit is supposed to work, but… it feels like if it was selfless, I should be doing it outta the kindness of my heart. Like, maybe I should be willing to do it for anyone. And hey, I'll save a guy from a burning building, sure, no problem… but you wouldn't catch me dead dealing with suits willingly for pretty much anyone but you."

This is just like him, Suzume thinks – from wholly unguarded to silly in an instant, laughing everything off as if he hadn't just ripped open and bared the still-beating innards of his own heart with all the casual simplicity of someone bending down to tie their shoes.

(Or to politely stitch themselves back up out of sight.)

What does she say? More than that, what does she feel? It would be a lie to claim she doesn't want Hawks to like her. She does – even if she sometimes wishes she didn't. No, she absolutely does, and not just because she needs his help. Amiable and endlessly kind, he's easy to get along with. Despite how much she's dragged her heels and fought him like something feral and terrified nearly every step of the way, he's succeeded in making her like him.

Because she does, now, she realizes. She does like him. A lot.

But his unexpected confirmation of fondness is a blade with two edges. Knowing it offers security. It even soothes her shatter-glass and very fractured sense of self, however minutely. But it also feeds that oily, impermeable veil of guilt that has settled itself over her.

She's hiding so much, now – so much, and from everyone.

(All two people in her life, anyway – which is basically her whole, entire world.)

"Is… is your meeting today with people in suits?" It's a dumb question. A nothing question. A silly question. It was his decision to stitch himself back up, Suzume tells herself. A peek at his heart was enough. He'd have left it out if he wanted her to show him her own.

Right?

Hawks heaves a very over-dramatized sigh. "Meetings are always put together by people in suits, chickadee. If someone isn't wearing a suit, it's not a meeting – not a real, proper, capital-M Meeting, anyway. No suit, and you got yourself a hang out instead. Maybe a get-together. Possibly a party of some variety, or more rarely a shindig."

Overhead, set against the spilled-blue of the watercolor sky, a single bird sails gracefully along an invisible current. As far away as it is, she can't quite make out what kind. Closing her eyes, she tries to picture Hawks instead. "Are you – are you wearing a suit?"

"Unfortunately," Hawks confesses with a groan.

"Well," she says, halfway between a laugh and something more teary than that. "I'm – "

"I swear – if you say you're sorry, you might just push me to do something bombastic, potentially dangerous, and most definitely heinous," he warns, feigning severity.

That pulls her back again, some. Grounds her – gives her something to chew on. "Please don't push me into traffic," she says, very solemnly.

"Never!" This time his laughter sounds much more full-bodied and lively, like it comes from somewhere deep in the gut. "But I was sincerely thinking about doing that to one of the people I gotta meet with today… which may or may not have been the bombastic, dangerous, and heinous thing I was suggesting. Can't say anything about that too seriously, though. Don't wanna implicate myself in anything if someone does end up accidentally walking in front of a bus."

"I wouldn't snitch!"

"Ah, chickadee – your kindness? Boundless. Fidelity? Unmatched."

Fidelity. Too shy to ask him what that means, she asks her brother instead, begging him to look it up over dinner.

"Don't need to look it up," he tells her, after swallowing a mouthful of eggplant. "I know what it means."

"Well?"

"Why d'you wanna know?"

Imitating the way he'd do it, Suzume shrugs with practiced indifference. "I read it in a book."

Picking up another piece of eggplant with his chopsticks, he slips it past his lips and chews with deliberate slowness, staring her down from across the table. In the thick silence, she can hear the crisped, roasted skin of it crack sharply between his teeth, even with his mouth closed.

Then, he swallows, and in an entirely too-casual tone announces, "Y'know, you've been acting kinda sketchy, lately."

Seized by a sudden bit of arrhythmia, Suzume's heart skips several beats before resuming a frantic and almost violent shudder behind ribs that suddenly feel too small for it. There's no helping how her face twists; she can feel her brows furrowing and her lips pulling back in a frown.

Desperately, she hopes he takes it as disgust and not fear. He doesn't know. He can't. He can't.

And anyway, she's doing it for him. It wouldn't even be fair for him to be angry – "Have not."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she says, and then adds, a little bitterly, "You're projecting. The only one of us who's sketchy is you. You're sketchy – you're sketchy all the time."

Humming in mock thought, her brother eats another piece of eggplant, watching her, unblinking.

"I bet you're lying, anyway," she adds, much quieter now.

One black eyebrow quirks upwards a single millimeter – maybe two. "About what?"

"Knowing what fidelity means."

Whether as a distraction or as bait, Suzume doesn't expect that to work. The grin that surfaces across his mouth seems to confirm that –

At least until he licks his teeth and says, still smiling, still staring at her: "It means loyalty, Suzu."

Oh, she thinks, sinking deeper into that oil-pit of self-loathing shame and wishing it hadn't.

It means loyalty.

Of course it does.

Friday comes with more of the same. Wake up. Get ready in the shadow of her brother. School. On the walk home, Hawks only has a few minutes to talk before he's gone, rushing off to another surprise meeting.

"This one's virtual, at least," he says, "which means I only have to wear a suit jacket and shirt and no slacks."

"You're not wearing pants?"

"Naw, I am – just not the fancy kind. Brought out my clown pantaloons to match the vibe."

She laughs. He laughs. Then he has to go.

The rest of the long walk home is spent in silence. When she gets home, there is even more of the same: her brother, unsurprisingly, isn't there.

It is an all together terrible day.

The weekend arrives the next day, bringing a surprise late-spring storm. Startled awake by the crackle-crash of thunder, Suzume tears herself out of bed and moves quickly through the groaning house, shutting shoji doors and windows against the sudden gusty torrents filling the place with steaming, wet breath.

In an uncharacteristic act of clemency, her brother gets up to help, too.

By the time they're done, they're both considerably soggy. Overhead, the hanging lamp of the common room flickers like candle light caught in a cross-breeze, casting sharp angled shadows that whirl and skitter across the walls. They remind Suzume of twitchy, hungry scavengers pulled fresh from a nightmare and gone out stalking for prey.

It makes her uncomfortable. Her wet clothes do, too. Peeling back the clingy, damp fabric of her brother's shirt off her stomach, Suzume squeezes her eyes shut as another peal of thunder rocks the house so hard the window panes rattle in their frames.

"Shit's bad," her brother says from somewhere close by, just a little behind her. "Power's probably gonna go out."

It's not like she needs him to tell her that; she can tell herself. Behind her closed eyes, there is light – and then there isn't. And there it is, and there it isn't. And then there it isn't, and there it isn't, and there it isn't –

"Uh-oh, Suzu." Wry delight colors her brother's tone a shade as dark as the writhing things crawling across the walls. He knows very well how terrified of storms she is. It's something he always seems to enjoy. "Whoops. There it goes."

"God – you're such a… such an ass," she hisses, blindly balling her hands into fists around the wet, squelching fabric of her stolen over-sized shirt. It's a risk to actually curse; her brother never likes that. Somehow, though, her normal plethora of subdued insults don't seem to fit the situation –

Or her spiking annoyance.

"Whoa." The common room is small, and her brother's laughter fills it easily. "And you're 'bout to get yours handed to you for that kinda language."

"C'mon, can't you just – can't you just be nice to me, sometimes? Just once?" Untangling her hands from the shirt, she lets her arms hang loosely at her sides, eyes still closed as she rolls her head back along the tense line of her shoulders in undisguised frustration. "I hate this. I hate this so much."

Outside, lightning splits the sky and boils into the room. Filling the places where her brother's laughter was only moments ago, it lingers briefly before it, too, evaporates, chased out by the thunder that comes snarling at its heels.

Unexpectedly, that edge of his from moments ago seems to dull. Over the sound of the television-static rain, her brother says, "I'll go get the candles." The downpour is so loud she can only just barely make out his footsteps carrying him out of the room and into the kitchen.

A handful of seconds later, another sound breaches the storm's cacophony: the ringing of her ancient cell phone from the other side of the house.

Startled, Suzume's eyes fly open. Phone calls from anyone are few and far between. Occasionally, she'll get a call from a social worker, and much more rarely, someone from the hospital will telephone to discuss visitation or other health updates with her grandmother. Even the only real constant – Hawks, with his weekday calls – never reaches out to her outside of his regular hours.

Until now, no one has ever phoned on a weekend.

On quick feet, Suzume darts down the hallway back towards the bedrooms. Between the power outage and the cloud-choked skies, the storm casts the entirety of the house in a hazy, greyscale murkiness, and she nearly stumbles over her unnoticed backpack into the room she shares with her brother.

A flash of lightning carves out the details of the typically benign room in brief but somehow terrifying relief, and beneath her feet the floorboards quake in the wake of the following thunder. Anxiously, she goes to the corner where she leaves her phone to charge –

Only to discover it conspicuously missing from the long, black charging capble.

It takes her a moment to catch the sound of the phone again over the deep, rolling growl of the storm, and, half-blind in the gloom, she chases it to the complete opposite side of the bedroom –

Where her brother tends to keep his things.

Sifting through a pile of his clothes with near-shaking hands, Suzume finally discovers the phone when it slips free from the pocket of a pair of his pants set aside for the wash. The thunk it makes as it clatters to the floor is swallowed up by yet another rumble of thunder, its tiny screen lit up by a number she's too far away to see.

At first, she can only stare at it, unbreathing. The phone rings once more, and then goes quiet, the meager light offered by the front screen snuffed out by the unanswered call. Eventually, though, she manages to will herself to unhook her numb fingers from her brother's pants and pick up the phone from the floor.

Flipping it open, she's greeted by the missed call log. Stark black text on a white background announces a number she knows by heart:

Hawks'.

It's an unsaved number. All of the numbers Suzume deals with regularly – of which there are only a small handful – are unregistered in her phone. When she had first reached out to Hawks, it had occurred to her that it might be smart to not save it. Considering all the effort she'd gone to to memorize it, it hadn't been hard to do without the saved contact.

At first, Hawks' number had been the only one she'd opted to leave nameless. The other numbers had names like 'Baabaa's Room,' and 'Machida - Social Worker,' and 'Nurse's Station.' Ultimately, though, she'd come to the conclusion that if she ever forgot to delete a call from Hawks that the lack of a tag compared to the other numbers might seem especially suspicious.

So Suzume had memorized everyone's numbers, and cleared them all out.

(Sometimes, Suzume desperately wishes she had more friends –

And sometimes, it turns out, there were benefits to having almost none at all.)

"Who was it?"

Behind her again, her brother's voice is low – so low she can barely hear it over the steady onslaught of the rain. Quiet as it is, it's suddenness startles her. Nearly dropping it a second time, Suzume only just barely manages to snatch the phone out of another attempted freefall with sweaty, clumsy fingers. Whirling to face him, she finds him maybe an arms-length away, a pair of long candles wrapped in one hand.

In her mind, the possible answers to that dangerous trap of a question branch out in many spiraling directions – like a video game, she thinks. There's the honest one, where she comes clean. (Absolutely not.) There's the more morally nebulous one – the half-lie that's got enough truth to it that, if she's calm enough, she just might be able to pass off as a full-truth.

(She goes with those the most, lately.)

Then, of course, there's the nuclear option: demanding to know why her phone was in his pocket. Why did he have it? What was he doing with it?

Not that she needs to ask him those questions. She knows the answers already: he's the only one allowed to have secrets; not her. It's his right. It's his business. Does she have a problem with it? Too bad, Suzu. He doesn't care.

That question isn't for answers, though. It's not even for misdirection, really. It's for the deep, rancid wound his consistent absences have left rotting inside her. It's for the injustice of having to play the part of a manipulative liar with Hawks in a last ditch attempt to protect what she has with her brother – all when he seems hellbent on avoiding her most of the time and spending what little time he does have with her tormenting her.

"Well?"

Much like a video game, the time limit she's been given to answer is ticking down. Her brother has always made it very clear to her that he isn't a particularly patient person. With that edge from before back twice as sharp, it doesn't seem like the best time to test that.

(Not that it ever is.)

Truth. Half-truth, half-lie. Nuclear. Three choices. They all feel wrong, and she certainly can't beg her brother to look up the conclusion of each choice on his phone for her like she might in a real video game. No save scumming, either.. Suzume bites her lip, and then sets her teeth. Her jaw aches. She's scared – petrified, almost.

But she's also so angry.

Third option, then. "Why – "

But there isn't only three options. There's four. Clutched tightly in her hand, that surprise fourth option begins to ring – a sound that very succinctly makes the decision for her.

Suzume doesn't look at her phone. She looks at her brother, who looks down at her. "Nice," he says, in a way that makes it very clear he doesn't think it's nice at all – or, like maybe he thinks it's very nice, actually, like how he gets when he's about to very much enjoy something that makes her very miserable. "Looks like we didn't miss out, after all."

The first ring ends, and then picks up again. In spite of finding it very difficult to breathe suddenly, Suzume manages to grit out: "It's just social worker stuff. You're making this into… something stupid."

"Yeah?" Tossing the candles onto their shared futon, he keeps staring, flexing his now empty fingers. "No big, huh? Cool. So answer it."

"I can answer it – later. I can call them back, later. I don't wanna deal – don't wanna deal with it on the weekend, I – "

"Answer it, Suzu." Her brother takes a small step towards her, bending down until his face is level with hers. "In fact, why don't you put it on speaker phone? Y'know, let your big brother get more involved in your life. Lemme see what's up."

She wants to scream at him. It builds up in her, a pressure in her lungs, an indignant fire in her throat. Equal parts terrified and furious, she's tempted to hurl the phone out into the storm and play it off as a fit, a childish, heel-stomping tantrum. But not answering Hawks' call is its own kind of danger. Even halfway across the country, he could easily be here in a few hours if she doesn't answer. With how keen he seems to be about fretting over her, Suzume has little doubt that he would.

(And she absolutely cannot invite him into this.)

"What?" In her own ears, her voice sounds foreign, all acid and sharp knife edges building up and spilling out in scathing reproach. "Like you let me into yours?"

Third ring. Narrowing his eyes, her brother reaches out to her and takes hold of her shoulder with a deceptively light hand. "Fucking answer it," he says, very softly, his thumb working a couple of slow and lazy circles just over her collarbone, "or I will."

Goosebumps raising all over her arms, Suzume looks down at the phone. Same number as earlier, just as expected: Hawks. Wetting her lips, she lifts the phone to her ear, pushing her thumb against the hinge to force it open.

Maybe, she thinks wildly, he'll forget –

But her brother never forgets anything. Abandoning her shoulder, his hand traces down her arm and catches her wrist in a bruising grip right before she manages to fully open the phone. "Aht. Don't forget, Suzu." He says it almost sing-song, mock playful over the incessant noise of the phone and the storm. There's a wide, rictus grin creeping over his face like fast-moving decay that doesn't even come close to touching his frighteningly cold eyes. It's a stark and disquieting contrast to the hot breath that fans her face and stirs like his fingers often do in her hair. "Speaker phone."

She wants to put her hands to his shoulders and push him away, right out into the rain and the thunder. She wants to cry. Even now, the threat of tears burns in her eyes. Why is she trying so hard? Why? It isn't fair. It isn't.

It never is.

"Yeah," she says, in the voice of what she imagines a soon to be dead girl might sound like:

Near hysterical and yet resigned, somehow, all at once.

"I remember."

And then, with visibly shaking hands she can't hope and doesn't bother to try and hide, she answers the phone on the sixth ring.

AN2: This isn't my main account, that's over on AO3, so if for some reason you're interested in hearing me babble, there's more of that over there. That all said, I am planning on being more present - got the bug again, woooo.