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Black silk spins and swirls out from where he sits, caught right at the centre, stuck in place even as he feels the web shaking around him. The spider creeps closer. Its red eyes and dripping fangs are trained on him, revelling in his struggles to break free.
He can’t
he can’t
he can’t
he has someone he needs to protect he can’t go yet but he can’t stay here.
Not anymore. He cries out for someone to help, to protect him, and then the spider is upon him. She pierces his flesh with her nails fangs and ties him up tighter and tighter as she drains his life, every last dr o p .
There’s nothing left of him anymore. He thinks he can hear someone calling his name and he’s not sure he deserves it. Having a name anymore, that is. That was something given to him by the people he betrayed (but he was just protecting them and theirs, he swears! What are hundreds of lives in exchange for someone he loves, anyway? Why doesn’t he get to be happy for once? He ignores the fact that he wasn’t, isn’t, will never be) and he didn’t feel he could hold it anymore.
He hears someone call his name.
The spider took that, too.
His life, his self, his, his, everything that he could call his was trapped in this web with him and if he could just—
—reach a little further…
No, he couldn’t even see his hands in front of him.
He hears someone call his name.
His wings are crumpled—since when was he a butterfly?
Someone is calling his name.
How is he even still alive? She’s not here anymore but he’s still trapped, still shrouded in black silk and tired, so, so, tired, and—
“Nahyuta!”
He’s unstuck.
It takes him a moment to wake up. It helps to remind himself—ground himself. A simple meditation. He could feel soft sheets, plush pillows, his hair pooling beneath his head, warm hands on his shoulders. Could see floppy brown hair and worried brown eyes and freckled tan skin in the moonlight.
Apollo. Apollo was here. That was… agreeable.
“Nahyuta? You with me?”
He blinked. “Yes—“ He coughed to clear his throat. That one word had come out like the sound of a cat’s claws scratching against tree bark. “Yes, I’m… quite alright.”
Apollo backed off and sat down on the edge of the bed, still keeping his warm gaze on Nahyuta. He ran his hand over his hair, temporarily causing his horns to stick up before they flopped back down. He hadn’t cut it in a while, Nahyuta noted. When his hair was shorter they tended to stick up almost supernaturally.
“Are you sure? You were screaming.”
Blunt as always. Well, Nahyuta couldn’t say it wasn’t refreshing. This was, however, one of the downsides to persuading Apollo to stay in the palace rather than the ramshackle apartment above the law office, which Datz had claimed in his stead—their rooms were right next to each other, and Apollo had keen senses. No brother of Nahyuta’s would live in squalor while he had any say in it, but he wished he’d made better choices when assigning rooms.
He sat up to better meet Apollo’s eye.
“Yes, I assure you. It was simply a… bad dream. I thank you for waking me from it, but I’m alright now.” When had he started avoiding the word fine? It felt too much like Apollo’s thing for him to say it in the incorrect context, he supposed.
Apollo squinted at him. He wasn’t actually wearing his bracelet, since he was presumably asleep before this, which made a small splash of guilt hit Nahyuta. His brother got so little sleep as it was…
“Do you… wanna talk about it?”
“I… don’t believe that that would aid me in any way, no.”
“Alright…” He paused for a moment. Nahyuta raised an eyebrow at him. “Honestly, that’s not really what I wanted to ask.”
“What is it, then?”
Apollo drew in a breath. “Do you remember, when we were kids, and I’d… I’d have dreams about the fire, even though I didn’t consciously remember it? And whenever Dhurke wasn’t there you’d drag me over to his bed so we could sleep next to each other there? Well, uh… I know we’re not kids anymore, but…”
Nahyuta blinked. He… thought he remembered something like that, now that Apollo mentioned it. He didn’t remember it in the same detail as Apollo did, though he was moved by the fact that he’d clung on to that memory. He was a smart enough man to see what Apollo was getting at here. He didn’t need his brother’s perceptive ability to see the way he glanced down at the pillow next to Nahyuta’s, even in the dark.
Did he want Apollo to stay? Their relationship was still somewhat tenuous, even after months of living and working together, many a family dinner and many more boxes of late night fast food between them. There were gaps that hadn’t been bridged, not just yet. However… would they be bridged at all if they didn’t even begin the work?
“Would it help if I said I had a bad dream too? That’s why I was already awake, actually.” Apollo glanced to the side and ran his hand through his hair again. He didn’t seem to be lying, just… nervous.
Nahyuta’s brow furrowed. “Are you alright?”
Apollo snorted. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. Just… maybe it’d help us both feel better? To not be alone, y’know?”
Letting his protective older brother instincts guide him, Nahyuta scooted over slightly and lifted the covers in a silent invitation. Apollo was right that that was all it took to convince him. Apollo, for his part, suddenly seemed rather awkward despite it being his idea. He hesitated, sucked in a breath, then shuffled over to crawl in beside Nahyuta. Once they’d both settled back in, they fell into a slightly tense silence, looking up at the ceiling.
“Would you… like to talk about your dream, Apollo?” Nahyuta said after a long stretch, whispering into the still air. Apollo sighed.
“It was kinda just a memory, honestly. The… the courthouse bombing.” Apollo paused, sucked in a breath, then closed his mouth.
Nahyuta turned to look at him. “I sense there’s something you’re leaving out.”
“It wasn’t exactly the same, it was… Mr Wright, a-all my friends, and you and Rayfa all got caught in it too, even though it didn’t make sense for you to be there. I was the only one that got out alive, so I was—“ he cut himself off.
“You were what?”
“Alone again. Like when I first moved to the US. And I think I’d lost my memory or something in the blast, because I couldn’t remember how to speak English anymore, so I kept getting lost and ignored when trying to get help.”
Moved to the US… What a charitable way to phrase it. Nahyuta pursed his lips and let out an almost imperceptible sigh through his nose. Abruptly, impulsively, he reached out an arm to tug his brother closer. Apollo made a small noise of surprise but gladly settled into a new position, curled into Nahyuta’s side with his head resting on his shoulder. His hand curved around to bury itself in Apollo’s soft hair, blessedly free from gel and hairspray. He took note that Apollo was shaking slightly, and promptly decided not to mention it, instead simply stroking his hair and keeping his heart and breaths steady in hopes that it would encourage him to calm.
The memory came back in full force, then. Apollo, perhaps around 6 years old or so, waking in the middle of the night with a sharp yelp that he couldn’t muffle fast enough to avoid waking Nahyuta, the only other person in their small shack at the time. Nahyuta was always a light sleeper as a child, something he’d somewhat grown out of due to his consistent meditation. He’d sat up on high alert, wondering what the danger was, only to spot nothing but Apollo curled into the corner of the room with his hands covering his mouth and his head downturned. He cried in the way children only did when they were really, truly frightened.
Even at his young age Nahyuta knew that silent sobs were the worst kind. The need for silence meant a feeling of danger lingering in the air—it meant palace guards, it meant spies.
It meant nightmares and not being quite awake enough to get out of them.
So he had done what he could think of to do. He’d stirred his baby brother and carefully led him to the slightly larger bed jammed into the far corner near the back, seating him on the mattress. After grabbing both their pillows and blankets he turned the bed into something of a nest. He made Apollo lay down and then pressed into his side, using one hand to pet his hair, just like he was doing in the present.
In both times, Apollo let out a slow breath and draped an arm across Nahyuta’s chest. He was fine.
“Thanks…” he mumbled.
“I plan to never allow you to be alone like that again, Apollo. I promise you.” He felt his brother smile against his shoulder, small and uncharacteristically timid, and his heart felt light. “I’m even going to follow you around when we both reach the Twilight Realm. You’re effectively stuck with me now.”
Apollo laughed under his breath at that. “Hey, when we get there—hopefully not any time soon—maybe I can introduce you to Clay. I dunno if you’d get along, he’s… kind of obnoxious, I guess?”
“I get along well enough with you, don’t I?”
“Hey!” Apollo lightly thumped his shoulder and pushed himself up slightly just to playfully glare at him. At Nahyuta’s sweet smile he rolled his eyes and laid back down.
Nahyuta knew of Clay. Amara had, in some attempt at being motherly, asked Apollo about his friends back in the US, and inevitably Clay had come up. His first friend in America, his best friend, killed right before he could achieve his dream of floating among the stars. This was the first time Nahyuta had heard Apollo mention him in the present tense. That was normal for Khura’in, not so normal for Apollo. He’d never been quite as religious as Nahyuta, or even their father, but he’d never rejected Khura’inism as a child and seemed to be embracing it again now that he was welcomed home. It warmed Nahyuta’s soul.
“Truthfully, I believe I would be honoured to meet him. I’d like to thank him for looking out for you when… when I could not.”
Apollo sighed and held Nahyuta a little tighter for just a second. “You know I don’t blame you for that, right? You were a kid too.” His voice was shockingly soft.
“I suppose…”
“I’m serious. I’ll… I’ll admit that I still kind of resent Dhurke for sending me away sometimes, even though I understand the why better now, but I never once blamed you. I think I just always wanted you with me, honestly. At least then, I… It would’ve been easier.”
It wasn’t hard to draw a connection between his own dream and Apollo’s. Both rounded back to the fear of losing their loved ones, being unable to hold on tight enough. Different roots growing and twining into the same tree. Much like their relationship, in a way. Different roots, same family tree. How poetic.
“In my dream,” Nahyuta started, unsure why he was admitting this now, “I was a butterfly trapped in a spiders web. I was torn between attempting to escape and letting the spider kill me in order to protect everyone. As though if her attention were on me then anyone else that got trapped would be able to use the distraction to go free themselves, to live out their lives in my stead.”
He left out his guilt over the lives lost because of him under the DC Act, innocent and guilty alike. That was an understood thing by this point, something he was working diligently to atone for in any way he could. It never felt like enough.
A stretch of silence almost a minute long.
“Is that how you felt under Ga’ran?” Apollo all but mumbled.
Nahyuta turned his head to bury the lower half of his face in Apollo’s hair. It smelled like fresh strawberries. “Something to that effect. While our experiences diverge at a point—“ at 9 and 10 years old, to be exact “—you are not alone in feeling that those you care for are endlessly torn from your grasp. My mother, you, our sister, our father… they have always been just out of reach, and I thank the Holy Mother each day that I have been granted the blessing of having you all safely by my side once more.”
Apollo held him tighter again, for longer this time. “I don’t plan on ever letting you be alone again, either. Even when… or, if? I don’t know. If I move back to California we can still call each other, and visit and stuff. I-I mean, you’ll still have Rayfa and Amara, but—“ He cut himself off with a yawn.
“I’d like that.” Nahyuta said simply. “When I said all, I meant all. I would feel incomplete without my dear brother beside me, even if only metaphorically.”
“Yuty…”
“Regardless, I think we should attempt to sleep again now, as we intended to do originally. I’m sure one or both of us has a trial scheduled tomorrow.” Nahyuta let the feelings and memories that came with Apollo in particular uttering the childish nickname wash over him. Fondness and nostalgia and the pang of not getting to grow up alongside either of his siblings—
Apollo loosened his hold slightly with another yawn. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s our emotional chat quota for the month done, I guess.”
“We really should begin working these into our schedules, they always happen at the most inconvenient of times.”
“Yeah.” Apollo snorted. “I’ll see if I can pencil the next one in for our shared day off next month.”
“It would be appreciated. Goodnight, Apollo.”
“‘Night, Yuty.”
Nahyuta stayed awake for a little while longer, just petting Apollo’s hair until his breaths evened out and he fully relaxed. Then, with a prayer for his brother to have sweet dreams, Nahyuta allowed himself to drift off once more into his own blessedly dreamless sleep.