When Hawk came home, Mom was still awake.

She was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a robe over her nightgown, a cup of chamomile tea in front of her. Had she deliberately stayed awake to wait till he came home, or was this just one of those nights when she couldn't sleep, Hawk didn't know. Either way, there she was, her eyes widening with shock as she saw the state he was in, and Hawk had nothing, not one lie or excuse prepared for her.

"Sweetie—" Mom gasped, standing up. "What happened?"

"Nothing," he groaned and walked to the sink to pour himself a glass of water, but Mom was already there next to him, her hands on his shoulders and he had to put the glass down.

"Eli—"

"I said it's nothing!"

He didn't mean to raise his voice at her, but it just happened, and it made him feel even worse than he already felt. As if he was Dad, instead of himself, yelling at Mom who had done nothing wrong.

But Mom didn't leave, she didn't let it go. She brought a hand to Hawk's cheek, turning his face towards her, so that she could better see the cuts, the bruises.

"No. This time I won't have you tell me it's nothing. You come home drunk and bloodied—" her voice broke, she gripped his shoulders tight in her small hands. She was half a head shorter than he was, and suddenly that felt weird. When had he grown to be taller than Mom?

He looked away. The tears in Mom's eyes hurt too much, they made him feel like he had failed her. When had it all gone so wrong, so horribly wrong? When had this swamp of disgusting things grown inside of him, turning everything in him ugly and hateful?

"I'll clean those wounds," Mom said, finding her voice again. "And then we'll talk."

Hawk's stomach turned. "Mom—"

"No. I said we'll talk, and I mean it," she stated, letting her hands fall from his shoulders. "Sit down, I'll get the first aid kit."

Hawk was too tired and sore to argue. He poured himself the glass of water and drank some - even if it hurt, the inside of his cheek was raw and bloodied as Cody's fist had ground it against his teeth.

He sat down and leaned his head heavily on his hands, his elbows pressing against the cold surface of the table as shame and fatigue weighed him down. On his closed eyelids, he could still see Sky's slender frame pressing against Cody's chest, his lips devouring hers. In his ears he could hear the breathless chanting of Sky's voice, calling Cody's name again and again and again and it hurt more than any fist in his face, any knee in his gut, any broken bottle against his neck.

Mom could tend to his wounds all she wanted to, but it would do no fucking good. He was dying inside, the pain in his chest was all he could think about.

Hawk didn't look up when Mom returned to the kitchen and laid the first aid kit on the table.

"Let me see," Mom said silently, and when Hawk failed to comply, she gently took his hands in hers and pulled them away, tilted his chin up as her eyes searched his face. A pained look overtook her features, turning them sharp, but she didn't say anything as she began to peel off the band-aids Hawk had placed on the wounds on his cheek, where Cody's rings had peeled the skin off.

"Oh, poor baby, your nose—" Mom breathed, inspecting the damage. "Did you keep ice on it?"

"Yeah."

"How does it feel?"

He shrugged. "Not broken."

Mom didn't ask more. She picked up some disinfectant wipes and began to clean Hawk's face with them. It burnt and Hawk groaned, sucking down the curses that wanted to spill off his lips, as he forced himself to just sit still while Mom went through the wounds one by one, cleaning them and then covering them with clean band-aids.

The scent of the disinfectant and the chamomile tea, the way Mom softly hummed a simple melody as her careful hands worked on his wounds - it stirred memories of times Hawk didn't want to think about. Of the times when he'd still been Eli, and—

All the times he had come home from school, his knees bloodied and scraped after someone had pushed him down at recess, making him fall hard on the ground. Or that one time when Kyler had shoved him against the lockers, and he had cut his lip so badly that it had kept bleeding even after school, and Mom had kept an ice bag on it for hours. Or the times when he'd had corrective surgeries on his lip, and it had been Mom with him in the hospital, to change the bandages, to give him something for the pain, to help him eat when everything in his face hurt more than he could put into words.

It was no different now. He was hurting, and Mom was there for him.

"Tell me what happened," she spoke silently when she moved to clean the cuts on his throat, the ones that were still bleeding. When Mom peeled off the band-aids, they were soaked with blood, and the cleaning wipe hurt so much Hawk couldn't help a silent curse through his clenched jaws.

"Tell me," she said again, pressing clean dressings on the wounds to make the bleeding stop. "Eli, you have to tell me. Who did this?"

He shook his head, fighting the tears. Who had done this? He had done this to himself. He had fucked up everything, and this was the price, he had lost Sky, he had lost the fight to Cody, he was nothing but a loser, a pathetic loser who came home to cry to his Mom like a fucking pussy.

"Eli, if you don't tell me, I'm going to have to call the police and tell them my son was assaulted. And then you'll have to talk to them." Mom said sternly and finished bandaging the wounds on his neck.

"No police," Hawk groaned. "Mom, please—"

"Why not?"

"Because I started it." He admitted, his voice breaking. "I started the fight. It was my fault."

Mom was silent for a moment. She started packing the plasters and the dressings, the disinfecting wipes back into the first aid kit, and throwing the used ones in the garbage bin. There was blood on her hands, and Hawk watched silently as she wiped them clean with a wet wipe, her fingers trembling slightly.

"Why did you start a fight?"

"Because—" the words were a lump in his throat, a lump that wouldn't move no matter how much he tried to swallow it away. "Because– he was kissing Sky."

"Who?"

"It doesn't matter. You don't know him. Mom—" his voice broke, his face twisted as tears broke free. "Mom, Sky is with someone else. She has someone else."

And then he was crying, ragged, violent sobs breaking through his chest, and he couldn't stop them. It was that kind of crying you didn't want anyone to see, that violent, ugly, raw crying that was supposed to happen only when he was alone and not even then really, a man was never supposed to cry like this. But he couldn't stop it, he couldn't stop the burning tears.

"Oh Eli," Mom said, pulling him near, and he pressed his face against her stomach, hiding his shameful tears in her bathrobe. "Oh, Eli, I'm so sorry—" the same soft voice that had always been there to comfort him, and he wasn't Hawk anymore. He was Eli, and he was crying, and he wanted so badly to believe that Mom could fix things, that she could fix this, that she could fix him.

"And I— I hit him. I hit him. He didn't— even want to fight, but I— I just kept hitting him, until he—" he was sobbing the words out, sobbing them against Mom's stomach, his hands gripped the back of Mom's robe and she hugged him as if he was deserving of such love. "Until he– he—"

"It's okay, hon," Mom was saying. "It's okay. You're going to be fine. I'm here—" and little by little his sobs calmed down, his tears dried. He pulled back because he couldn't breathe, he was choking on the tears, and Mom passed him a tissue so that he could wipe his face, to blow his running nose, but—

But it hurt damn too much, and the crying had made his nose bleed again. There were bloodstains on Mom's favorite robe now too, the lilac-colored cotton bathrobe she loved to wear over her nightgown in the lazy mornings when she sat at the table drinking her coffee and solving a crossword puzzle. Hawk felt so bad for ruining that robe, but Mom said nothing of it, she just gave Hawk more tissues to hold on his nose, got the ice pack from the freezer to make the bleeding stop.

When it finally Did and Hawk could take the ice and the papers off his nose, Mom gently wiped his face clean again with a cool, wet towel, cleaned the tears and the blood, and then pulled a chair for herself so that she could sit down next to him.

"Is that why you broke up?" She asked, after a short silence. "Because Sky likes someone else?"

"No," Hawk sniffled. His voice was rough and broken after all the crying. "The breakup– it was my fault. She– she did nothing wrong."

Another short silence. Mom glanced at her hands, then turned her worried gaze back to Hawk's face and he could see the hurt, the hesitation in her eyes. The cup of chamomile tea stood forgotten on the table, the tea probably gone cold by now, and Hawk felt bad for that too, for ruining Mom's night in every way imaginable.

"Why do you say it's your fault, Eli?" she asked silently. "What did you do?"

"I broke her trust."

That wasn't the only thing he had broken, but to tell Mom about the rumor he had started about Sky - no matter how unintentional that had been - or about destroying the science presentation, breaking Demetri's arm—

He couldn't. Not yet. Maybe never.

"Eli..." Mom hesitated. "The things you said to Sky that night, on the front steps. I only heard some of it, but—"

Hawk let out a desperate groan, burying his face in his hands again. That fight, the things he had yelled at Sky's face. He could see now that they had been the catalyst to all that had come after that - his cruelty had destroyed everything between them, it had broken something in Sky. His words had pushed her to Cody's arms, because had it not been Hawk who had said Why would anybody be with you? To get some pussy. So he couldn't blame her for believing it, he couldn't blame Sky for thinking she deserved no better.

And now Cody Bishop was fucking her, using her, and Hawk couldn't blame anyone but himself.

"It was just a stupid fight," he groaned, unable to even look at Mom. "I– I just wanted to make her leave. I didn't mean that stuff. None of it was true."

"You should just tell her that, then. She must be hurting so much."

"She doesn't want to hear anything I say."

Mom shook her head, pulled the dark strands of her hair back behind her ear, and looked at Hawk with sad, worried eyes. "You don't know that—"

"Yes, I do, Mom! I— I kissed someone else too. Sky doesn't even want to see me, not after tonight." A brief memory of Maya's trembling thighs around his hips flashed through Hawk's mind, but he wasn't going to mention that to Mom. There were things she really didn't need to know about him.

"Oh, Eli," Mom sighed, her frown deepening. "You've really made a mess."

Her words hurt because they were true. He had fucked up, and it wasn't just him paying the price, it was Sky too. He didn't want to think about the way she had looked at him when she'd seen him with Maya, like something was shattering inside of her soul. He didn't want to think about the moans he had heard through that wall, the way Sky had called Cody's name, but that was all he could think about. It made him sick to his stomach, sick with jealousy and worry because Sky deserved so much more, she deserved the world instead of getting used by some drunken asshole who didn't give a shit about her.

"I just... I just miss her." he breathed, his voice thick and raw with emotion. "I miss her so much. Mom—"

"It's okay, hon," Mom sighed. "I know. Come here."

Mom pulled him close, his head against her shoulder. She held him when he fought the tears, his shoulders trembling with effort as he bit his lip not to cry.

"It's okay, you can cry," Mom spoke softly. "It will make you feel better."

He shook his head, sucking down the tears with all his might. Crying hurt too much, his nose felt like it was on fire, and he didn't want it to start bleeding again. All he wanted was to go to bed, to forget this night had ever happened, forget the fight, Sky's tears, the way she had called Cody's name—

"You know," Mom started talking, still gently holding his head against her shoulder. "When you first started karate, I was so happy for you. You were working so hard to change your life... and you got friends, you got a girlfriend. You were happy, and I was happy for you."

She took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling, telling of how hard it was for her to talk about this, how difficult it was to make the words come.

"But lately, Eli— All this fighting, these secrets—" she paused to take a breath, her voice was thin, strangled. "The way you act. It's like you're angry all the time, or sad. I know you're not happy. I can see it. And I can't help thinking, that maybe—"

He knew what she was going to say, even before she said it. He started shaking his head, pulled away from Mom because he couldn't stand the words she spoke.

"--that maybe if you just quit karate—"

"No!" he groaned, and stood up in one, swift motion. "No, I can't quit! It's the only thing I'm good at!"

"That's not true," Mom looked at her like he was breaking her heart. "That's not true, sweetie. You are good at so many things."

"I won't quit karate!"

"Then maybe another dojo–?"

"What, I'm supposed to join Miyagi-Do?" He almost shouted, anger and despair breaking his voice.

"Would that really be so bad? Mr. LaRusso is such a nice man—"

"He's— he's the fucking enemy!"

There he was, yelling at Mom again, and he hated it, hated this man he had become, but he didn't know how to be anything else anymore. This path he had chosen, it was the only path there was left for him, no matter how miserable it was making him feel. There was no way out.

"Eli–!" Mom's eyes teared up, she brought a hand to her trembling lips.

"Cobra Kai is for life," Hawk said, sucking up his tears, his stupid emotion, his weakness.

With that, he left, slammed the door behind him, and walked away from Mom and her tears.

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