(Even When It's Not) About You

Place To Start

When Rob first left Los Angeles, two days after the show at the Hollywood Bowl, he couldn't answer the other guys questions.

Where are you going?

When are you coming back?

Is there anything we can do to help?

He remembered how Mike just watched with hollow, tired eyes as Rob shrugged his shoulders, not bothering to move the shaggy hair away from his own eyes. He didn't want to be seen. He didn't want to be heard. He didn't want to be there anymore. He needed to be away, from the band, from his brothers, from Mike.

It hadn't been his idea, the tribute show. The "Celebration of Life" as Mike named it. Rob had sided with Brad. How could they go on stage without Chester? Mike didn't have an immediate answer, but he felt strongly about doing the show, and Phoenix was right there with him, encouraging everyone. It didn't take long for Joe to cave, and then Rob had found himself mired in a never ending swamp of rehearsals where nothing sounded right. Nothing felt right. Nothing would ever be the same again, no matter how much they all tried to fight the reality of it. It was painfully obvious that night, that three-hour never ending hell of a marathon he'd been forced to run. Chester was gone. Rob had fixed his eyes on his drum set and tried to pretend that Mike wasn't high, hadn't come to the set having smoked enough weed to get him through the nightmare of his own creation.

Even though he knew it was irrational and wrong, Rob blamed himself for Chester's death. How many years had he sat silently from his perch behind the drums, watching things unfold? Watching Mike issue the commands, the orders, while Chester blindly obeyed? While Brad tried to argue but never won? While Dave ran interference and Joe made jokes, and nobody seemed to see or hear as Chester slowly and surely descended into the private hell in his mind? While Mike turned a blind eye to what he was doing, what was happening?

Rob watched the past month silently, as silently as he had watched the past twenty years unfold, and that silence took away their friend. Took from the band their brother and their singer, all in one fell swoop. He should have spoken up. He should have told Mike long ago what he saw, while it still could have made a difference. Mike could have gotten through to him. Mike could have changed everything, if only Rob hadn't pretended to be blind. Mike could have changed everything, if only Rob hadn't been so selfish. Was it fair to place all of that on Mike? Were they all just one argument away from laying all the blame on him?

When he stood up from the table in Brad's kitchen and grabbed his wallet, he didn't say goodbye. Rob walked out, leaving his phone in the center of Brad's table. No backwards glance, no explanations. Just that he was going. The only ties he had were to the band. No wife. No children. Not even a dog. The aimless sensation he'd felt since Chester left them was the only tie he had to anything anymore, and he was ready to cut that one, too. He never knew that losing someone could cut so deep. Someone he loved, and someone his brothers loved. Someone that Mike loved. Despite everything, Rob knew that Mike loved him. It was the reason Rob got up and walked away. Because Mike loved Chester.

He'd watched that, too, from behind his drum set in the studio or atop his riser in their touring days as his in-ear monitors clicked time and fed him just the right mix of Mike and Chester's vocals. There was no denying that together they were stronger than they were apart. And even though they didn't think he knew... Rob knew they were lovers. He could see their love for each other. He was the only one who got the rear view of their grasping hands and lingering touches.

The thing about being the quiet one is that everyone around you thinks you don't see anything because you don't say anything. He wanted to pull Mike aside now and say, I know everything. I know how you two fought, I know how you made up. Against the wall in dressing rooms. Hidden away in hotels. I know how you loved him, and he loved you, too. I watched it all. But how could he say anything, when Mike looked as though he'd dropped twenty pounds overnight and been pulled through the smallest opening imaginable and spit out on the other side? How could Rob add more to what was already a burden of guilt heavy upon Mike's shoulders?

He couldn't, because what nobody knew, what Mike didn't know and Rob could have gone his whole life without admitting, was that he loved Mike. If he wanted to be honest with himself, he always had. But now Chester was gone, and somewhere inside, Rob felt guilty for that. Guilty that he hadn't saved his friend. Guilty that Chester was gone, but Rob Bourdon was still there. And Mike didn't see him. Not really. All he saw was the void where Chester should have been. It was dark and deep and nobody could hear the screams from inside. Rob didn't know if Mike would ever see the other side of that pit.

So he left them - left Mike - and went out on his own for the first time since before the band. Before Chester, before Linkin Park, before the six of them became the world's biggest band. He went out to find himself. Who was Rob Bourdon, when everything was stripped away, down to the core. When he wasn't behind the drum set, who was he?