Fateful Mistake

[barush]

Title: Fateful Mistake
Author: Barush
Fandom: Linkin Park
Genre: Angst
Rating: PG
Description: (drabble, implied Braz) “He fucking killed himself.” “Yeah, he said he would.” “I know, but still, I thought…” “Yeah.”

“He fucking killed himself.”

“Yeah, he said he would.”

“I know, but still, I thought…”

“Yeah.”

The room was crowded. It didn’t matter that it was quite a small ceremony, the hall was still overcrowded, much like every small club venue they had ever played.

The air was heavy and breathing was almost impossible. Its former freshness was ruined by the disgusting smell of sweating bodies mixed with the salty odor of all the shed tears.

Nobody tried to hide their sorrow. Family, friends, fans, everybody attending the ceremony were silently or not so silently, in case of Mike’s mother, weeping. Also, she was the only one who refused to acknowledge his suicide. Her Christian soul couldn’t bear the fact that her beloved son would carelessly slash his own wrists, so Mrs. Shinoda tried to convince anybody she could reach that Mike’s death was, in fact, only a tragic accident. ‘Sure’, they would respond, just to allow her a little peace of mind.

But little did Mrs. Shinoda know that she, in fact, was right. Mike’s death was only a tragic accident, if not in the proper sense of the word.

His closest friends could refer to her about this subject, if only they didn’t bury it deep inside their minds and let themselves believe that Mike’s depression was to blame for his heart-breaking act.

Only, Mike hadn’t been depressed at all. Far from it, even. He had been just an attention-seeking brat and everybody knew that damn well.

Therefore, when he had announced his attempt on suicide Mike had been only greeted with a “go ahead” attitude from his friends. They had all been used to his crazy ideas how to become the middle of the universe that they hadn’t really paid any attention to his threats.

Sitting in the first row at Mike Shinoda’s funeral, the two of them considered it the biggest mistake of their life. Each of them from different reasons though.

“We should have done something before it was too late.”

Chester was Mike’s true friend. The only one. He was genuinely devastated by Mike’s death and blamed himself for not doing anything to prevent it.

“You know how he was, Chaz. He’d do anything to be in the spotlight.”

Brad, on the other hand, only pretended to be Mike’s friend. In reality, he didn’t give a damn about him and was gutted about his death only because it threw Chester into depression. The little brat had an ability to ruin everything even after his death. In this case, Brad’s sex life.

None of them knew though that while the life had been slowly escaping Mike’s body along with his blood, he had been waiting to be saved. Waiting for his friends, true or not, to get him out of the shit he had gotten himself into, as they’d always do. Not even the last desperate attempt to call himself an ambulance had helped him though. He had bled out in his own bathroom tub before the paramedics had gotten there.

Chester clutched tightly Brad’s hand and listened to Rob praise their friend and band mate.

Now they could only think about what they should have done differently and drown in their guilty conscience.