The challenge word this week is break and my nervousness about how the season 8 Trials will conclude led me here. I hope very much this is not where the season takes us. The watcher I am sure is Jody Mills, the brother is...well, you decide. Three hundred words precisely. Thanks for reading.
"You wanna take a break?"
I know what the answer will be before I speak but I ask anyway because seeing him like this rekindles the unconditional love I used to be able to feel before I lost my own family and I am fearful that my heart might break along side his.
He raises his eyes to mine, shaking his head just once like the effort to do more will undo him and he won't be able to hold it together as he has so far.
He is raw with grief and I hate myself because I cannot call back the sob that the panoply of loneliness I see in his exhausted gaze tears from me.
He presses a precise final fold into the old shirt in his hands and places it in the box on the bed, laying it with infinite care on top of the other meager few possessions that are the scant tangible testimony to his brother's too-short life.
"I wish it had been me..."
His voice is a broken whisper and I nod, knowing that he would have done anything to have had God's trials take him instead.
He reaches to the nightstand and reverently reclaims the old photograph from it's place there and his hands shake as he takes in the face of their mother.
I stand in silence as he commits the soft curve of her smile, the gentleness of her eyes, to his memory but I cannot hold back my tears any longer when he settles the precious image into the small worn box.
"Look after him, Mom..."
The words are almost lost as his breath hiccups into sobs and I step the few paces forward, gathering him in my arms and rocking him as he finally succumbs to his grief.
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