PR15M: Guilt (Ink)

 PR15M: Guilt

By Ink

Those first days after Ice’s return were overwhelming and, if for me, then how much more so for Ice. I could feel it radiating from him in waves that pulsed in my temples and throbbed in my chest and yet there was precious little I could do except be there for him in the quieter hours of the night after the doctors and the visitors finally left him to some measure of peace.

It wasn’t surprising. Hae-jin and the Black Dragon security team managed to keep a great deal of the media at bay, but news of his return slipped out despite their best efforts. Journalists camped at the hospital doors and did their best to make it to the private room the company had transferred Ice to and so security around him was tight. Then, naturally, there was his actual physical condition to take into consideration, which wasn’t great, and the questions. So many questions.

His physical and emotional condition led to many of those questions. It wasn’t only about where he’d been, about what had happened to Taehyun, (a subject he couldn’t seem to voice but which only reduced him to silent tears and clenched fists), but mainly about why he was scarred and broken far beyond made reasonable sense for the journey to freedom he claimed to have made.

"Some of these breaks and scars date back years," the specialist said. "I normally see these in fighters and active combat soldiers, not children."

I might point out that there was precious little about Ice that spoke of a child, except when it came to any mention of Taehyun, but I guess that wasn’t the point the specialist was trying to make.

From the very first night, I took to sleeping alongside him and though the private suite had a far bigger bed than a standard hospital bed, it was unnecessary for all the bed-space we required. Ice would cling to me in his sleep and often he would confuse me for Taehyun in his restless, fevered dreams. I did nothing to stop him. Held close to him or with him held close to me was the only way he would eventually settle and sleep and though it should have felt awkward, it didn’t. Instead, there was always an adrenalin rush through me every time he reached out to close his arms around me and press his body to mine which I put down to being reunited with him, even though there was a shadowy corner of my mind which questioned if that was all it was.

I didn't pursue thinking about it. I only wanted to stay close to him because there would be no losing him again. Or so I kept telling myself.

If I was lean and fit and well-muscled for my age after years of training with Casper, he was lean and well-muscled in a completely different way. It was true we were still clearly identifiable as twins, despite our differences in hair and eye color, but there was something else about Ice, something harder and colder and… angrier. I knew this shouldn’t come as any surprise, given he’d been separated from everything familiar the better part of his life, but his anger ran indefinably deep, so deep that perhaps I was the only one to be able to truly appreciate the depth of it. Was it to do with Taehyun's absence? His loss? Whatever had happened to Ice, to Tae, he was not the brother I'd imagined finding and, if I was honest with myself, even though I could not and would not separate from him, he also scared me, just a little.

On the surface, he was merely quiet. Not cowed but reticent. He gave passive answers to the multitude of questions he was bombarded with hour by hour and steadily withdrew further and further into an ever more profound silence. It gradually became clear to me, if seemingly not to anyone else, that if I wasn’t to lose him again, in a more spiritual rather than physical way, it was time for me to intervene on his behalf. I went to see Hae-jin.

Why Hae-jin and not my father? Why not my mother? Because I don’t think they would have been able to comprehend what I wanted to say. It was a time of immense emotional pressure for all of us. Ice had returned. All the years of searching had been vindicated even if, in the end, he’d found us rather than us finding him. Stopping to consider the implications of this for Ice was difficult when the only thing anybody seemed able to focus on was that it was somehow all over.

It wasn’t. Not even remotely. In actual fact, it was perfectly clear to me that, for Ice, the worst was yet to come. The transition from being separated from us to being returned to us was huge. Especially when he was bearing the guilt of not having returned with Taehyun at his side. And there was something about Taehyun he wasn’t telling, and not just with regard to his absence. Which was why I went to Hae-jin.

“We need to take Ice home,” I said bluntly, finding Hae-jin on the hospital rooftop with a smoke in his hand.

“I agree. He’s not doing well, is he?”

“He’s not coping with the questions or the people or the pressure. He needs some time to recover, quietly. He’s never going to get well here. In fact, he’s only going to get worse.”

“I agree.” Hae-jin pushed himself away from the wall against which he’d been leaning and casually flicked the remains of his smoke over it. “It’s about Taehyun, isn’t it.” Not a question. An observation.

“Yes,” I agreed. “We all know he’s dead, right?”

“If he was alive, Ice wouldn’t permit us to rest until he’d convinced us to go look for him. You’re right, he’s dead and it’s eating at Ice. I’ve seen it before, far too many times. It’s what we call ‘survivor’s guilt’. I guarantee whatever happened wasn’t Ice’s fault but he blames himself. Because he’s alive, and Taehyun isn’t.”

I didn’t bother to tell him there was a whole lot more to it than that, something I couldn’t deny after sleeping the better part of a week in Ice’s bed. I myself didn’t quite know how to handle the knowledge I’d acquired, because my twin, born only minutes after me, had returned with a lifetime of experience beyond mine, and I suspected, no, I knew, that Ice had lost more than his friend; he’d lost his lover.

I didn’t mention this to Hae-jin because some things are best left unsaid and that was a secret that belonged exclusively to Ice until he was ready, if he would ever be ready, to share it.

My personal secret, which left me with my own measure of guilt, was that I wasn’t so sure how I felt about Taehyun not having returned alongside Ice.