Chapter Text
She doesn't know what to do with herself.
Her body itches to move, fidget, pace— something. But her limbs weigh a ton, and she barely has the energy to even breathe.
She can't tear her eyes off of the body.
With every second that crawls by, every minute, until twilight fell upon the dozen or so people gathered around the clearing, Chris scrambles for an answer to the question:
What was the last thing she said to him?
She can’t even begin to guess. Whatever it was, it probably wasn’t friendly.
"I don't want your stupid money, Bry. Just go, please."
That can’t be it. That’s too cruel.
“Have you lost your mind? What do you need the gun for!?”
Was he already gone by then? Part of her hopes so. The other part hates herself for wishing that, by the time she’d accepted her brother really had lost his mind, he was already too dead to witness the cold indifference Chris was beginning to show him. She pushed him away. Maybe when he needed her most.
Gosh, she thought he was sick. She thought he had just… fallen in with the wrong people— that they were responsible for the drugs and the drinking. When Zee told her there was an Obsidian in his head, it’s like part of her didn’t believe it. Not that it would have mattered; he was already in the hospital with policemen watching over him closely. And when they did try to talk to him, they were literally thrown off the road before they could get there.
The whole thing is so hopeless, isn’t it? There was never anything she could do. She couldn’t even sense that there was something deeper going on in Bryan’s life. God only knows how long she spent talking to Dev, never knowing something was off with her brother because that’s just how unpredictable Bryan had become.
They’ve thrown a tarp over him now while they talk amongst themselves and with her family. Her mother sits beside her now, a hand rubbing her back through the shock blanket draped over her shoulders as she listens to the police. Whatever’s being said— Chris doesn’t really care. She can’t force herself to pay any attention to it. Her father’s next to Mom, the both of them barely holding themselves together. And Emily stands off to the side, answering what questions she can.
Streles. That’s the name Bryan— no, Dev— called the stranger before he was killed. Streles warned them before taking off that they shouldn’t mention anything about any ‘Obsidian business.’ In her shock, the words didn’t register, but once she saw the answers to their questions were going to be impossible to believe and even harder to help, Chris and Emily set them on the wrong path. From there, everything fell into place. The rest of the lies slotted in like jigsaw pieces of some grotesque picture.
Bryan didn’t pay his debt on time. To ensure the man (“No, officer, I don’t know his name.”) got his money, he located Chris, (“‘Insurance’, he told us.”) and took her with him. Since she was at Laila’s mom’s house, Emily got dragged in, too. Chris asserted that she didn’t know any of the people her brother got drugs from. She doesn’t know if they’re usually so violent, but (“I didn’t… really see his face, ma’am. He was… male. Blonde, I think?”) she was able to give them something. Not enough, but they seemed satisfied with it.
“Where’d you get the cuts and bruises on your hands?” the police asked.
“He— the guy— tried to manhandle me. I fought back.”
“And the injuries on Bryan’s face? Those weren’t from you?”
She didn’t answer for a long while. They’d probably be able to pull her DNA off of him, right? Lying there wouldn’t have done any good. “I… kinda lost it, I guess. After that guy injected him and ran off, I just… wanted him to wake up. And I was pissed at him for getting himself into this mess… I…”
“I understand.”
She started tearing up, and the woman placed her hand over hers, kneeling down to her eye-level. There was a soft smile on her face.
It’s a lucky thing that the story could very easily have been the truth. It could have happened. Because that’s just Bryan’s life.
But it’s not. Not really. Devos— the Obsidian that stole her brother from her— ruined him right from his birth. If Devos never got dumped into her brother’s head, what would he be like?
It’s like she never really knew her brother at all. Which parts were really Bryan, and which were Devos’ influence? And how can she know if the good wasn’t tainted by Devos in some way?
Has she ever had a genuine interaction with Bryan?
“He loved you.”
“I know he loved me!”
She meant that. But does she mean it now, after the dust has settled? Does she know that?
This is all because she read that damn note from Laila. All because she got nosey and snooped around. If she’d never known about magic and Obsidians, she could have lived in relatively blissful ignorance. At least then, Bryan’s actions would be attributed to his own instability, and not some otherworldly creature’s. At least then, she wouldn’t be here, questioning Bryan’s love and devotion to her, his little sister.
“You’re pretty okay, for an annoying little sister.”
“Yeah well, you’re pretty okay for an annoying big brother!”
“Shoulda had Mom take you back to the warehouse she got you from. I could have had a normal sibling…”
“Oh please. You’d be lost without me.”
“Heh. I guess you have a point.”
Was it real?
-
When they’re allowed to go back home, Chris’s parents look at her expectantly. They want her to come home. Of course they do. But she’s not ready. Especially not now. She can’t walk down that hallway yet. Can’t pass by his door. Can’t listen to the silence again.
And she can’t tell them no. Mom looks… bad. And Dad is trying to hide it, but he looks close to breaking down, too. Then she realizes that while she lost a brother, these two lost a son. A child. One of two. A fourth of their family just broke apart. They want their remaining child to stay as close to them as possible.
Making up her mind, Chris fidgets in her place on a fallen log. “I need to… get my stuff from Emily’s.”
Mom reluctantly nods, sending Emily a tight smile and a gesture for her to come closer. “I’ll follow you to your place?”
Emily doesn’t sound like her normal, bright self when she smiles back and says, “Sure thing.”
All the ‘I’m sorry’s have been said already. Condolences have been passed around like candy. All that’s left now is this weird, awkward tension between Chris’s parents and the woman their daughter, for some reason, feels more at home around than them.
“I just… wonder if it’s something we did…?” Mom asks Dad once the three of them are settled in the car. “Did we push him to this?”
They’re going to agonize over this the same way Chris is. Aren’t they?
Dad reaches over to take her hand. “Hon, no. Not you. You didn’t do anything wrong, you hear me?”
“We were never home,” Mom continues, voice getting weaker and more frail with each second. “Maybe he needed us. Really needed us, and we weren’t there.”
Dad has nothing to say to that. It’s true, after all. Not the whole truth, but still a factor.
But Chris was there. She was home with him a lot. “I…” Her mouth opens before she can stop it, a single word passes through her lips before she shuts them.
But Mom heard it. She turns in the passenger seat to look at her. “What is it, Chris?”
More tears streak down her face. She wipes them roughly with an already-soaked sleeve. “I was there. I was home. I knew.”
Mom’s face falls, but Chris doesn’t see it. “Chris, baby, you’re not responsible for this.”
She disagrees. Vehemently. But she doesn’t reply to that. She can’t, without revealing the truth of what happened tonight. Last week. The week before. Maybe it’s not her directly, but she didn’t help.
Someone is responsible. Maybe it’s Streles. Maybe it’s someone above him. Whoever it is, Chris is going to find them and—
… And? And what? What can she do? A small, weak human who knows nothing about these people— these things. It’s not like she’s allied with any of them. Zee is nowhere to be found, Laila…
And nothing. She’ll do nothing. She won’t even find them, either. They’re too elusive. Too powerful. Too everything she isn’t.
She’s useless.
Hopeless and useless.
-
Emily invites Mom and Dad inside for tea while Chris gathers her things. It’s almost a funny sight, aside from the dire circumstances that brought them here. Her parents were never ones to have tea. The tension followed them in here, too. But mostly, Mom and Dad grieve in silence on the sofa while Emily takes a seat on the recliner contemplating everything that’s happened to her in the last week. No one’s in the mood for forced politeness or manners.
She stashed her bag away in Laila’s room, with a few clothes having been in the dryer and her toiletries in the bathroom. It’s not a lot, just a couple days’ worth of stuff, but she takes her time with it.
It’s in Laila’s room, as she’s folding her clothes from the dryer and putting them in her bag, that she hears her mother break down once again. It’s a similar sound to what Chris heard from Emily during the couple days she’s been staying here. The keening of a mother grieving the loss of a child. A sound that causes even the most soulless of people to tear up just from the sheer agony seeping out of it.
As a daughter— as her daughter— the wailing tugs at Chris’s heart painfully. And as a sister— his little sister— the despair flooding the house like a fog sends a sharp lance into her gut that twists and twists.
Sniffling, Chris brings her hands up to her face and admires the split, red skin along her knuckles. The blooming black and blue bruises that twinge as she opens and closes her fist. Her fists that collided forcefully with Bryan’s face when she lost it.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do…” Mom cries. Her voice barely holds itself together.
No one answers her, because there is no answer. There’s nothing she can do other than ride it out and hope the pain goes away someday. Hope that there’s nothing more to her son’s death than a debt left unpaid.
Pain shoots up Chris’s arms as she grinds her fists into her eyes to wipe away at the damn tears that just won’t stop pouring.
As she loses the strength and will to continue holding herself up, she drags herself over to Laila’s bed, leaning her back against the side of it. Her knees are drawn up to her chest in a futile attempt to make herself smaller, like shrinking would magically expel all of the sorrow and bitterness festering inside her.
-
By the time she gets home, she could feel herself spinning out of control again. Desperate to drown out the noise in her head, she stuffed her ear buds into her ears, turned her music up to an almost inaudible degree, and brought up a book to read on her phone.
In her window nook, she leans against the wall, clutching a throw pillow tightly to herself, enough to agitate her bruises. One leg is stretched out, her foot shaking restlessly as she waits impatiently for her painkiller to finally knock her out. Her head is pounding, spikes of pain shooting through her skull, probably from either stress, lack of sleep, or her injuries from the crash. All the words on her screen are becoming fuzzy and bright as the migraine starts affecting her senses.
With a huff, she tears the earbuds out as the noise becomes too much.
She knew this would happen. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep, even with a pill, and that running from her mind would prove futile. Tonight of all nights, because her luck just sucks that badly, she’s the most restless she’s ever been. The most in pain she’s ever been. She’s hurting, inside and out. Her ears are ringing, vision swimming, stomach churning. Her back hurts. Her head hurts. Her heart, her chest, her nerves, her soul— everything hurts.
She wants her brother back. She wants her best friend back.