"Take my mind
And take my pain
Like an empty bottle takes the rain"

🌊❄ Sets in Ice's POV ❄🌊

"Oh my gosh!" cries a familiar voice. "Gempa, you're hurt!"

"Taufan," our eldest brother sighs, "it's just a little scratch. No biggie."

"But still!" The wind elemental adds, before running upstairs and getting something. He gets himself a first-aid kit box as run down the stairs and does what it needs to be done. "You should be careful next time, Gem Gem!"

"Eh? I just needed to help the cops to capture some runaway robbers. It's not really a big deal," Gem gets on the sofa, having bandages wrap around his arm and some plasters paste on his cheeks and hands.

"Well, it is a 'big deal' when they started throwing those radioactive barrels at you," Halilintar groans---as he usually does---helping his two brothers out.

"And it's a good thing they didn't hit the civilians, Hali! Think about thousands of lives could've gotten hurt and turned into something else!" Solar growls, his arms folding over his chest with his brows knitted quite close to one another.

"Guys, no need to argue about this. Gempa will be fine, okay? Okay," Taufan quickly ends the argument. "Now, where's Blaze? Heard that he got hit by one of the barrels and has a bruise on his head."

"Oh, he's in our bedroom," I reply, a thumb sticking out pointing up the stairs. "He's hiding underneath the sheets, by the way."

Taufan only inhales deeply, as he smiles and picks up the first-aid box to the second level of the house.

Everyone look at our wind elemental brother, seeing he's been acting strangely for the past few weeks. It's something unusual for us to witness. Sure, he can be serious even for a jolly lad, but him switching to become overcaring is very concerning.

"What's up with Upan? He's acting a bit . . . weird, lately," Thorn finally breaks up the silent atmosphere.

Nobody knows why.

But whatever my twin is dealing inside his room, I do hope Taufan could help with it. I may be his twin brother, but other times, he just doesn't want me to be near him---or he'll use his fire powers to hurt me.

I've tried to console him so many times today. I honestly did. But I just guess that Blaze never likes someone who's kinda apathetic to try and help him figuring things out. And so, I leave him be, hopefully Taufan could settle our brother.

Night has fallen, and whenever one or two of us are down or sick, we would try to a short role play on any theatrical play we know. And somehow, my brothers like to pick me as the producer and director for each role play---perhaps due to my expressionless face and knowing that I've been involving with liberal arts a lot.

We're doing The Merry Wives of Windsor for the night, but modernized the Shakespearan language  and shortened it. And well, since Gempa and Blaze are in a bad shape---and let's just say that Blaze is still having some, personal 'issues' too---these two, Tok Aba, and Ochobot will be our spectators.

And dare I say, Taufan is absolutely magnificent acting as "Dr. Caius", the French doctor who speaks with a French accent and broken English for his speeches. And him acting out with the accent just goes by smoothly.

"Vere is Mistress Page? By gar, I am cozened," Taufan---or "Dr. Caius"---says. "It is not Anne Page. By gar, I am cozened!"

And out comes Halilintar, the poor guy has to be Mistress Page and be in a red gown for the act. Although, he was willing to take up the challenge to show how much of a 'man' he really is.

"Why?" He speaks in the most lady-like manner in an English accent, "Did you take her in green?"

It entertains our four spectators in the end, and they really enjoy it. Despite the smile he's shown to us, Blaze has a change of mood with a sudden frown forms on his face. It breaks me to see him like this.

"Ah! O' dearest brother!" exclaims Taufan, walking over to him. "Come with me, and I shall lead thee to thy room."

And so, they do it; Taufan leads the broken Blaze upstairs to his room. I honestly don't want to think too much about them right now, since we are cleaning up the 'stage' we've created.

After everything's done, we head to our respective rooms, ready to call it a night.

I just finish brushing my teeth, and see Taufan singing a lullaby to Thorn in his green bedroom. Thorn has always been the type to tuck in early, and gets all cranky whenever his brothers or Atok aren't telling a bedtime story or singing a lullaby just for him to sleep.

Heh, he's such an innocent child---even for a fourteen-year-old.

Brushing off the thoughts, I go to my shared bedroom with my opposite twin. It makes me smile to see him finally sleeping soundly in bed. I tiptoe over to him, and give a gentle brotherly kiss on the forehead, wishing him the best of dreams he could have.

Silence fills up the house, and everyone is probably deep in their dreams.

Despite the nice slumber I have, I would go hungry in the middle of the night or during the wee hours in the morning. And tonight is one of those nights where I just need some consumption on anything I can find inside the fridge.

After grabbing some butterscotch-flavoured cookies---which Solar likes hiding the jar on the top shelves---I go up to my room, only to hear some soft hiccups and sobs from one dark corner of the upper level's living room.

I look around, my eyes searching for the source, holding tight to my jar of cookies in case if any one of my brothers would jump up and scare me.

"H-Hello?" I whisper, walking amidst the darkness. "Thorn? Is that you? Gempa? Hali? Solar?"

Or it's that Blaze?, I think to myself.

"Go away . . . " The voice speaks from the shadows.

I squint my eyes to see better, but to see a figure with his back facing at me. And I know too well of the dark blue pyjamas he wears.

"Leave me alone, Ice . . . Please . . . "

"Upan? What are you doing out here?" I ask him. "And why aren't you asleep?"

I step closer to him, only to feel something wet and warm on the tiled floor.

I dare myself to look down, gasping to see a shiny object on the floor. I recognize that thing---it's a knife?

But why a knife, big brother?

"Just go away, Ice. I don't need you to worry about this."

"That's a knife---on the floor."

"Good, you've stated the obvious."

I walk closer again to him, a hand on his shoulder.

"Taufan, is there something wrong?"

He begins sobbing again, shaking his head and burying his face into his legs.

I sit beside my brother as he continues crying, just giving him some space to let his heart out.

Some time later, he voices out between the hiccups: "I help to heal people a lot of times . . . But I can't seem to help healing myself."

I can only stare at him.

"It's useless. It's pathetic. I do everything to make them feel happy, to mend their broken parts. But nobody seems to know what broken parts I have and to deal with everyday."

Silence.

"I'm their healer. Our healer. I have to be---I must be our carer. I need to keep our family together despite the hate they send to us after what Blaze did to that firework factory."

Yeah, the firework factory near to this housing area. And the firework factory that was on fire and exploded and let out raging fireworks that hurt a lot of people and burnt down their houses and properties. And ever since then, Blaze gets all the blame, but this, somehow, includes us to be blamed at for not being 'good' brothers.

I mean, what could we do? It was another one of Adu Du's plans to foil the whole siblings, ensuring the townspeople to believe that we have become the bad guys. And Blaze really loses his temper on that day, causing the firework factory, the place where we're fighting that alien and Probe at, took a turn of events when his anger blinded him.

Blaze handles the hate pretty bad, and Taufan can't stop helping him to smile again. And more and more of us are getting hurt from many of Adu Du's shenanigans, and here, more and more crimes are rising around Rintis Island---which is worrying to many who put a lot of trust on us to protect the town and island.

And Taufan? As usual: he helps what he thinks must be helped, he heals what must be healed. He's becoming our 'second mother' after Gempa; taking care of us, making sure that everyone is fine and content with the situation we're in.

Unfortunately, it's never enough . . .

"I don't know how long I can handle this, Ice. I just can't take it anymore," he sniffed. "Our family is tearing apart---and it's all because of the hate!"

"Taufan," I dare myself to speak up. "Out of all of us, I'm glad it's you."

"Huh?"

"You have been doing us a great favour to keep our family together, and I've been noticing you doing it even in our younger years," I say to my big brother, a hand carressing his back in circles. "Gempa may be the eldest, but even he is struggling to keep himself together. And you? You did the impossible: you tried to stitch yourself and us as hard as you can. You never gave up on us."

I see him to look up at me.

"And you never once did, hoping that Blaze will be better, hoping that everything will turn out the best in the end," I scoot a little closer to the wind elemental, hugging him as tightly as I can. Because of my expressionless face, the only way my brothers can tell my mood is by seeing my ice powers making various kind of shapes to represent what I'm feeling at the moment, other times, it's my actions or body gestures that will be doing the talking.

"You've done well being a healer to us all, Upan. Please allow me to be your healer . . . "

He covers his mouth, nodding and hugging me back. And he cries as if he doesn't even bother what the world thinks of him.

"Thank you, little brother. Thank you . . . "

And the night is then filled with silence, but a silence that I will cherish the  moment Taufan has his purest form of smile back again.

× × × × × × × ×

Well, this took longer than it's supposed to be...

Also, this would probably be the longest and most absurd plot yet for this challenge🙃 Sorry for the long story, I'm still trying to shorten as much as I can for the challenge since I'm kinda used to writing long chapters😅

The acting scene is inspired from the Little Women movies (both 1994 and 2019 versions)/novel, but I used William Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor play.