-1A/N: I had this wonderful/horrible idea just now: what if Achenar had survived Revelation? So, this piece of sadness rolled out of my mind. 'Tis my first Achenar story. Enjoy. Or not.

I told myself that I wouldn't cry. That I wouldn't show that I had cared more than I should. He was evil; that was all anyone else needed to know.

But we were two parts of a whole, him and I. We had that bond, though it was often stretched. We were whole, not in that we were opposites, but that we were so similar. Thought, he seemed a more extreme, yet controlled, version of myself.

And I will admit that he was smarter than me. That he knew things. But it scared me, this knowledge. When he figured something out, or when he had a plan that he knew was going to kill many people. . . that gleam in his eyes. That inhuman gleam. His brown eyes became black and cold and I knew I had lost him.

But we had the same goals then. The power, the greed, the desire to harm, the revenge. . . we were still one and the same.

The last time I saw my brother before we were imprisoned, he still had that gleam.

When I saw him, twenty years later, he still had that gleam. I doubt it had faded once during that time. He hadn't changed. I had. But I still wanted to think that he had changed. But he didn't. I don't think he could have changed.

But when he kidnapped Yeesha, I knew I couldn't stand by and let him hurt her. There was no way in any Age's hell that I was going to let that happen, regardless of the cost to me. I knew that Sirrus couldn't hurt me.

But there was one thing that I hadn't expected. I hadn't expected to survive. I hadn't expected to see him. I hadn't expected to look into sightless eyes, to close them myself.

I hadn't expected to have to pick him up, to hold him. He was light in my arms. When was the last time he had eaten? His skin was tight and drawn, veins sticking out from his arms, imprints of bones clearly visible. I smiled in spite of myself. He'd always been like that. So into his work, he'd not eat or sleep for two days. . .

I wanted him to wake. I wanted him to open his eyes and smile and say that I was right and that he could be saved. I wanted to see his brown eyes light up in a human way, something natural and calming.

I couldn't stand any longer. The blackness threatened to pull me under and I sat heavily on the ground. I pulled my brother to my chest and I cradled him, just as I did when we were younger and something had upset him, perhaps a nightmare. But everything was a nightmare now.

I had always envisioned that I would be the first to leave, the first to wander into the unknown afterlife. Never, even in my most horrifying nightmares, and I thought that I would have to see my little brother go.

And I cried.