Post IIoI-Brotherly Love and Hate

Post-“Immortal Insanity or Innocence?”

Title: Brotherly Love and Hate
BY LIYUCONBERMA

A/N: I’m not gonna kid about this, guys. I SERIOUSLY teared up when I was writing THIS more than once! Maybe you won’t feel the same, but that was my opinion.

---

It was another morning in the kingdom of Cosium, the sun rising up through a crack in the mountains and spreading its rays across the country. One of the beams shone through the window of one specific room, that of Benonic the Hedgehog who was sleeping soundly.

The door gave the slightest creak as a five-year-old slipped in. The mischievous expression on his face betrayed his intention as he crept closer to the bed on tiptoes. Suddenly his wings stretched out and Kaze sprang into the air, then used the extra height to give more bounce to his landing.

“Wake up, Ben! Wake up!!”

A hyper hedgehog jumping on one’s bed was not only annoying, but also it was an unpleasant way to wake up someone who was most certainly not a morning person. Benonic let out a slurred grumble before reaching out to catch his tormentor in mid-air.

Kaze pouted as his game was forcefully stopped, but he was still pleased to see his brother finally up. An interesting comparison between the two was Kaze’s cheerful face and Benonic’s gloomy and exhausted expression. In Benonic’s mind, as much as he loved the little hedgehog, sometimes he suspected Kaze would be his end.

“Morning, big brother,” Kaze greeted with a certain amount of glee.

Benonic gently placed him down so he could sign back. His hand movements were slower than usual, giving a tired tone to the message.

‘Morning to you too, Little Blue.’  

‘Little Blue’ was a nickname Benonic had given him because, as an infant, his red stripes hadn’t stood out as much as his blue fur.

“Come on, Ben. Let’s get Darren and breakfast!”

Kaze eagerly pulled his brother off his bed, barely allowing him enough time to grab his clothes. Dressing was hard to do so since one of his hands was being yanked and the older hedgehog had to bend down a little due to their difference in height.

Later that day, after lunch, they were in the playroom. Kaze took a small ivory box down and set it on the table. Carefully he pulled a toy out, pausing to gaze proudly at the present his father had given him for his last birthday.

The wooden dragon reared back on its hind legs, glaring with obsidian eyes at some invisible foe. Everything was carved with intricate detail, down to the smallest scale on its tail, and the wings were made from thin sheets of smoky quartz. Supposedly it was painted to look exactly like the dragons in Cliffhorn, and Kaze was always careful when he played with it.

“Come on, Ben. Let’s make a castle and my dragon will attack it!”

He dragged the light purple hedgehog into the large closet to collect blocks, leaving Darren alone at the table. He rested his chin on his hands, feet swinging slowly, but then his eyes fastened onto a high bookcase beside the windows, flickering to life with new interest. Half a minute later he was nearly to the top shelf, stretching on his tippy-toes to reach one particularly thick volume.

Benonic came back just as it slid free and overbalanced the young prince. He streaked across the room, barely making it in time to catch Darren.

“What did you think you were doing?!”

“Getting a book,” Darren replied in a small voice.

Benonic heaved a sigh and retrieved the fallen book, handing it to his brother before signing, “Next time ask someone who’s taller than you to get it down.”

He went back to right the table he’d knocked over in his rush across the room...but a worried noise escaped him as he saw the toy dragon on the floor. Or rather the pieces of it.

Kaze returned just as he was picking it up. The sight of the shattered quartz wings and the broken dragon’s head stunned him into silence.

“Little Blue, I didn’t mean to—”  Benonic started forward, but he froze when he heard Kaze’s next words.

“I hate you…”

He didn’t want to believe his brother had said such a thing, but then Kaze repeated it more clearly and full of rage. When he knelt down and tried to embrace the little hedgehog, he was pushed away so hard that Benonic landed on the floor.

“I hate you, I HATE YOU!! And I wish you would just go away!!”

“Kaze!” Athena stood in the doorway, shocked. “How dare you say something so terrible!”

Head bowed, Benonic slowly stood up and walked away, acknowledging Kaze’s wish. He stepped lightly around his mother and vanished into the hallway. Athena, on the other hand, was very displeased with her son.

“Kaze, you go apologize to your brother this second!!” Athena scolded.

Normally Kaze would have flinched at Athena’s tone of stern authority, but his anger blinded him so that he retorted back,

“He’s not my big brother! He’s a MONSTER!”

With that, he flew out the open window and returned to his room, determined not to so much as look at Benonic for the rest of the day.

And he didn’t, going out of his way to avoid him the rest of that afternoon and the next day. But a child cannot hold grudge or anger too long, especially towards someone he loves very dearly.

---

Sunlight flooded in through the windows as Kaze silently sneaked into Benonic’s room, planning to jump onto him as usual. But to his surprise, he found the bed empty and neatly made.

He was half-disappointed at not being able to give his brother a surprise wake-up call, but mostly confused that Benonic had woken up earlier than he normally did. Although...the bed didn’t appear to have been touched at all.

“Wonder where he is?”

Feeling his stomach growling from hunger, Kaze decided to hurry down for breakfast. His brother was probably already there.

He went back to his room, which he’d been sharing with Darren ever since the little hedgehog had graduated from the nursery. He gently woke him up, not in the mood for his usual rough playfulness. After that, he led Darren to the dining hall where the rest of their family waited.

But he only saw his parents and uncle there, eating their breakfast and drinking their morning beverages. No sign of Benonic.

Kaze frowned deeper at this point, because Benonic never missed the breakfast. First he wasn’t in his bedroom, and now he hadn’t joined them at the breakfast table. Where the heck could he be??

Darren clambered into his chair and Athena began to dish food onto his plate. Beside him, Kaze grumpily flopped his arms onto the table and leaned down on them, catching his father’s eye.

“You’re displaying quite a set of bad manners for so early in the morning. What’s wrong, Kaze?”

“Papa, have you seen Benonic?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so, Son. Maybe he skipped breakfast and went to train with Alexei.”

Of course, the training yard!

“Thanks, Papa!” Kaze replied in elation, he jumped off his seat and then he spread his wings to fly from the room. leaving his meal behind, forgotten.

“But, Kaze, you haven’t eaten your breakfast yet!” Athena’s words went unheeded as she watched her son throw open the door and soar away.

Kaze flapped his wings faster, ignoring some laundry-toting servants who dodged to keep from being knocked over. The azure hedgehog took every turn in the corridors with practised precision, only pausing to open the main door. It took him barely over a minute to reach his destination.

There were the familiar sounds of metal clashing and Alexei barking orders. Kaze grinned as he flared his wings and landed just outside the small arena.

“Ben?!” he cried out with mixture of hope and desperation.

But the sight of Alexei training no one but a group of new recruits made him falter. The captain halted his maneuvres for a moment to meet Kaze’s disappointed gaze.

“Is there something wrong, my Prince?”

“Alexei,” Kaze started, “have you seen Ben?”

“No, Prince Kaze. I haven’t seen Benonic since the other evening.”

The words hit the little prince with enough weight to drive the breath from his lungs. His big brother hadn’t stayed in the castle last night and now his whereabouts were unknown! Without sparing another thought for Alexei, Kaze blasted straight up into the air. He soared above the castle, searching for some sign of his deformed brother.

One question repeated in his head, seasoned with worry: ‘Where are you, Big Brother?’

---

After hours of searching, the sun set and night arrived. Kaze carelessly dropped onto his soft bed, exhausted from his day of fruitless searching. Darren wasn’t in the room, which meant he was probably eating dinner with the rest of the family...except for Benonic.

He snuggled into his pillow, not bothering to retract his wings as he simply didn’t care about anything else at the moment.

‘Where are you, Ben?’ Kaze sadly thought. ‘I tried to look for you everywhere. The playroom, the whole castle, the training yard, the town, even the forest...but you’re nowhere!’

Kaze didn’t know that tears were streaming down from his eyes until he started hiccupping and felt his throat tightening. Whenever he cried, Benonic always heard and appeared at his side to comfort and hold him until he stopped. Then he would stay there all night.

But no deformed hedgehog came in. This clenched Kaze’s heart tighter, causing him to sob even more.

When he looked over to his table beside his bed where his dragon toy sat, a full flashback of the other day’s event hit him. He timidly picked up the decapitated toy, a wave of regret and sorrow washing over him.

“Was it because of me? I told you to leave and you did…”

The blue hedgehog angrily threw the broken toy to the floor. It was the reason he cast his beloved big brother away, and he never wanted to touch it again. He covered himself with the blanket and wished this was just a dream, hoping when he next opened his eyes that Benonic would be home again, waiting for Kaze to sabotage his sleep.

But his thoughts were interrupted as the door opened. Light streamed in, illuminating two figures.

“Kaze, are you in there?”

It was Athena, Darren by her side. However, Kaze was in no mood to be lectured by his mother.

“Go away.”

Kaze thought she would take the hint that he was in a bad mood, but he heard Athena’s steps approaching. He grumpily tightened his grip on his blanket, determined to remain hidden. Then he felt his mother’s weight beside him and she gave the blanket a light tug.

“We haven’t seen you all day. You skipped your lessons and missed every meal. This isn’t like you, Kaze. What’s gotten into you?”

There was only silence at first, but Athena waited patiently. Finally the blanket pulled down to reveal her son’s downcast face. The sight nearly made her dismiss the thought of punishing her son’s behaviour today.

She waited and waited until little Kaze muttered weakly, “…my fault.”

“What did you say?” Athena curiously asked.

“I…I’ve been looking for Ben all day everywhere! And it’s my fault that he’s gone!”

“What do you mean?”

“The other day I told him I wanted him to leave and called him a monster. I didn’t mean it, honest! I didn’t know that he would actually do it and leave me!”

After the outburst Kaze started bawling his eyes out. Athena’s motherly instinct kicked in, picking him up to set on her knees. He cried into her chest as she embraced her little boy, shielding him from the world.

“Now Ben hates me and he’s gone because of me!” Kaze’s words were muffled by his mother’s dress.

“No, no,” Athena murmured softly. “Ben could never hate you. He loves you too much to abandon you. He probably just went away for a while to give you space. He’ll come back soon.”

Slowly Kaze’s sobbing subsided, but the feeling of guilt didn’t disappear. He wiped his eyes, though the tears continued streaming down. Just when he was starting to regain control of his emotions, another thought occurred to him, bringing on a new overwhelming wave of sorrow.

“What if…what if he doesn’t? What if he hates me so much that he doesn’t want to be my big brother anymore—”

“Kaze, stop!” Athena seized her son to stop his babbling. “Remember, even though you and Benonic are not blood-related, the bond between you is strong and it will take more than a broken toy to shatter it. Your big brother loves you, Kaze. Very much. Always has, even before you were born.”

The statement was reassuring in its own way and made Kaze feel a little better. He let his mother wipe his tears with her handkerchief.

“Now, why don’t I get you some dinner? Ben wouldn’t like to find out that you didn’t eat at all today.”

The queen left the room, and it was so quiet that Kaze completely forgot he wasn’t alone until a short sniffle caught his ear. Darren sat on the floor next to his bed where a pile of books were stacked.

“Dumb book…” he muttered. “Ben wouldn’t have broken your dragon if I hadn’t been trying to get it.”

The five-year-old listened quietly as his little brother explained how the accident had happened, realising at the end that Darren blamed himself for Benonic’s disappearance too. Wanting to reassure him, Kaze suddenly began to understand what his mother had been trying to say to him earlier.

He joined Darren on the floor, hugging the black hedgehog with a tenderness he usually didn’t show to anyone. Being the comforter rather than the one comforted, Kaze felt a new sense of responsibility he’d never experienced before. If this was the way Ben felt towards them, then maybe...maybe he would come back...

That night Kaze went to sleep early. Normally he and his brothers stayed up to roughhouse. Benonic always tossed Kaze and Darren in the air, the younger two would try to tackle him, and then there was a game most easily described as “catch me if you can” (which Kaze usually won because the other two couldn’t fly). They enjoyed playing every night before their parents came in to insist it was bedtime.

Once asleep, Kaze dreamt Benonic came back later in the night. He gently woke him and Darren and played together quietly so they wouldn’t wake up their parents.

At least he could find comfort in his dream. But unfortunately that’s all it was.

He woke in the early hours long before dawn, sadder than he had been the night before. Ignoring the cold stone beneath his feet, Kaze sneaked into Benonic’s room and climbed into the empty bed.

He was accustomed to nestling into his brother’s arms, a bastion against nightmares. That comforting body heat had always been there to warm him ever since he was an infant. He clutched the blanket and wrapped himself tighter, trying to remember the warmth.

Kaze subconsciously sniffed the pillow and recognised his brother’s scent. His arms reached around it as the soft fabric absorbed his tears.

---

Benonic didn’t return that day. Or the one after. Darren didn’t say much, but Kaze made it obvious how he felt. In the afternoons when they would have played with their big brother, Athena took time away from her queenly duties to be with them. Alexei cut training the regular troops short so that he could work with Kaze for two hours instead of their usual half-hour.

It didn’t completely fill the void, but it did distract the boys. At least until the sun went down and they lay in their beds with nothing to do but remember. And regret.

Five days passed, and although Kaze stopped being so verbal, the guilt continued to blister inside, unseen. His parents didn’t seem at all concerned for their eldest, which bothered him. They kept saying not to worry and “He’ll come back when he comes back.”

And so on the sixth morning after Benonic’s disappearance, Kaze habitually glanced into the room, saw the untouched bed, then left with a leaden numbness filling his chest. A few minutes afterward, when he pushed the dining hall door open, he froze.

Benonic was standing there with Athena, chatting. They stopped as they noticed him.

A moment later Kaze dashed forward, slamming into his brother so hard that they both fell to the floor. But he didn’t care, only concerned with making sure Benonic was really there. A mixture of anger and relief swirled around inside.

“Wh…WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN??” Kaze screamed in his face.

“I…” Benonic started, but Kaze clutched his clothes as if he never wanted to let go. It took him a minute to get loose so that he could communicate clearly. “I was trying to get something to make up for your birthday present.”

“M-My birthday present?”

“Yes, but those kind of toys are hard to find. I looked in all the nearest towns, and even left Cosium for a couple days.”

“But you’ve been gone almost a week!!” Kaze screamed again, grip tightening.

“Well, I was hoping to find carvings from Cliffhorn in one of the main trading ports, but I couldn’t find a replacement. I looked for a long time, though I didn’t want to be gone so long.” The apology was evident in Benonic’s eyes. “I know it’s not the same, but I made this while I was travelling over the last few days.”

Kaze felt Benonic place something in his hand. The prince’s eyes widened as he looked down at a little dragon figurine. It wasn’t painted and its wings were wooden rather than quartz, but it was made with a surprising amount of craftsmanship.

“It won’t replace your favourite dragon, but I really hope that you like it anyway.”

But his heart sank when he watched Kaze put down the little wooden figure. Benonic felt he had disappointed Kaze again and signed with sadness,

“You don’t like it? I understand it isn’t much, but maybe it’ll do until I can find—”

But he didn’t get to finish because he was tackled by Kaze’s embrace around his neck. Benonic gave a little confused grunt.

“I want you more! The wooden dragon is beautiful, but just having you for my brother is the BEST gift ever,” Kaze declared, nuzzling into the fur of Benonic’s chest.

Benonic returned the hug instinctively, but then he heard sobbing and hiccuping coming from his little brother. Kaze spoke in high-pitched voice, “I’m sorry.”

The light purple hedgehog’s eyes widened in surprise as he pulled Kaze slightly away to meet his teary gaze, but they continued to hold onto each other. He didn’t understand why his little brother was apologizing when he himself was the one who had done something wrong.

The young prince gave a huge sniff to suck the mucus into his nose. “I…I called you a monster. I told you to leave. And when I didn’t find you, I….*hic* I really thought you left because of me!!”

Kaze couldn’t hold in his tears as he cried once more, only this time both sad and happy at once. Benonic’s amber eyes softened as he patted his back and hugged him tightly to let the little hedgehog know that he was not going anywhere. But Kaze repeatedly cried, “I’m sorry!” over and over again.

“Please don’t leave me ever again! I understand you won’t ever forgive—”

A quick grunt interrupted Kaze’s speech. “I already have.”

“But I thought…*sniff* I thought you hated me.”

“I can never hate you!”

“But I said mean things to you! You should hate me!”

“Never!” Benonic held firmly onto Kaze, trying to make his point clear. “You are my little brother. Even you hit me or push me aside, I will always love you no matter what.”

Lips quivering at the declaration, Kaze threw himself into Benonic’s arms, trusting his big brother would always catch him without fail.

---

That night before Benonic reached his bedroom, he felt a weak tug at his clothes. He looked back and saw his little brother, head angled downward.

“Can I…can I sleep here with you tonight?” Kaze asked shyly, not looking him in the eyes.

Benonic knew Kaze was afraid that he wouldn’t be there the next morning. Making a little crooning noise, he lifted him up and started towards the bed, but then stopped. A hoarse chuckle came out and he freed one hand to sign.

“Looks like someone beat you.”

They gazed at Darren where he sat on the pillow, face tense. He’d been happy to see his brother again that day but hadn’t said much, making Benonic think he didn’t have to worry about him.

“You’re not going to leave again, right?” the black hedgehog asked, fear in his voice.

It pained Benonic to hear such a tone coming from his little brother. They were both afraid of losing him.

“Until the day you no longer need me, I am sticking with you boys.”

He sat down, hugging the two princes close. They nuzzled up against him, content to just be there doing nothing. Darren fell asleep within minutes, but Kaze was able to stay awake long enough to say what he’d been keeping inside for this moment.

“Thanks for the gift, big brother. I love you.”

He let out a cute yawn before sleep consumed him.

Smiling warmly at the small forms in his arms, Benonic let exhaustion take over his body. He was aware the flow of time was fast...that Kaze and Darren would depend on him only until they learned to do things themselves. Then his relationship with them would change. How different it would be, though… That was hard to say, and in a way it frightened him.

So Benonic held onto this special moment, burning and imprinting it into his mind. Because he would definitely miss the times when he held Kaze and Darren in his arms. It wouldn’t be long before they’d both be too old for this sort of thing.

But he pushed those thoughts aside. Right now he had two little brothers to comfort.

---

The End