He was quiet, assured. For the first time, he didn't tremble in the darkness that surrounded the two of them. It wasn't a complete darkness, besides; the single candle he had lit was dripping hot wax on the dusty wooden table. He felt unspooled suddenly, as the wind scratched at the window panes, whining around his secret place for entrance.
Pensive, he sipped his tea.
"Luigi," his brother said. The man in red's voice was a quiet rasp, lilting slightly with an accent mostly discarded in panic. A quiet panic, though; the kind that settles in and grips your lungs because it isn't quite immediate, and you don't quite know what's going to happen.
"Mario," Luigi returned, face mostly hidden except for revealing flickers of candle-light.
"What is this?" his brother asked.
The two were sitting on the stage of Luigi's favorite theatre, one abandoned for more than a year now. A simple round table, rough with lack of sanding and use, sat between them like a barrier. Somebody had scrawled "toads for licking" on the wall in red paint, lavishly decorated with arrows and the blue gritty shadows of graffiti.
Luigi had discarded his hat; it lay in a pile of old wooden slats and dust bunnies, looking sad and worn as a doll forgotten, or a frayed marionette.
He was looking at it now, smiling without happiness. "I don't really need it, do I?" He turned back to Mario grimly, setting his teacup down with a clack. "After all, it's just yours with a different color. A letter, I suppose that's all that differentiates us in your mind. Right bro?"
Mario was pale and quiet, struggling to hold his cool in fear-greased palms. Or sweat-greased anyway, as they were tightly pressed and bound together behind his back. He shifted in his seat, circulation pinching, rope rough as a cat's tongue against his wrists.
Luigi continued to look at him, eyes vacant and then bright. Leaning forward suddenly, he plucked the cap from Mario's head and turned it over in his gloved palms. He caressed the stitching, the brim, with a reverence that turned to spite as he tossed the hat on the table between them.
"Iconic, isn't it. The red." Luigi looked broodingly out the dusty window, the shutters clattering in the wind causing flashes of moonlight to flit in and out like lightning.
"Luigi, what..."
"Yes, bro?" Luigi smiled suddenly at his brother, disarming him startlingly.
"What do you want?" Mario was still in the twisting-nausea of not knowing whether to panic. His insides knotted firmly, and he gave a little cough. Luigi just looked at him, face unreadable; not deep in thought, but blank, blank and frightening. The plumber in red swallowed as silently as he could manage, but Luigi's eyes noticed and followed the motion of his throat.
"I'm not sure what I want. I know what I wanted." The green-clad man suddenly became tight with tension; the air filled with it and set Mario's nerves on end, screaming danger danger danger.
Luigi looked down, hands folded almost prayerfully around his teacup. His eyes were hidden in the shadows as his voice just barely cleared the volume needed to pass across the rickety table.
"I just wanted to go with you."
Mario's heart, throbbing in his ears, suddenly twinged with uncomfortable regret and pity. He cleared his throat, which suddenly seemed thick, and managed to whisper back, "but we went on plenty of-"
"No!" Luigi, forcibly loud, looked up with eyes flashing. "I wanted to be important. I wanted to be recognized and praised and thanked just like you!" His teacup was pieces in his hands. "I wanted you to take me with! I wanted to help! I wanted to be the-" he choked suddenly and then fell unarguably silent, face shadowed and mouth pulled into a grimace. Mario just sat there, thrumming with shocked inner quiet, two feet from his brother and yet a million miles away. He couldn't breach the distance between them if he tried; the distance that he was just realizing had been there all along. He was a lonely stranded thing on the beach just as Luigi was a lonely stranded thing out in the open ocean. So far.
"I'm so sor-"
"I don't want an apology." The man in green was brisk now, carefully gathering his crumbled china into a pile on the table. He brushed his hands together as if to shake off the dangerously emotional frissons that leapt in the air.
"I don't," he said again, softer now.
Mario started to shake, just lightly. "What do you want?" So quiet he wasn't sure his brother heard.
"This isn't for revenge. I'm not petty..." Luigi rose from his rough wooden chair with a sigh. He half-circled the decrepit table, floorboards creaking beneath his step like half-swallowed screams, to where his brother sat. He ruffled Mario's hair with a frighteningly fond hand. "And you're too important for them not to come looking for you soon. You won't come away from this scathed in the slightest..."
Luigi paused to pick his dusty hat up from the floor boards. He didn't brush it off before putting it on; a second-place trophy from some unnamed attic atop his head.
"I just wanted to have this moment with you. I wanted the blissful ignorance gone from your step." Luigi drew close again, looking carefully into Mario's guarded face. "I wanted to see that look you're wearing now." The man in green nodded, eyes narrowed with bare understanding. Mario couldn't picture what his own expression held.
Luigi backed away, taking the single candle between his hands as he descended the stairs from the stage. Wax dripped onto his glove without notice, and Mario could only stare at his brother's back as Luigi hesitated before the theatre's entrance door.
"You're famous, bro. You're the star. Nobody would leave you behind."
He blew out the candle, leaving Mario in the dark.
A/N: So I wrote the first part of this a long time ago, and just finished it tonight on a whim. It's weird and too deep (for hell's sake, it's Nintendo fanfiction!). You get cookies for finding any symbolisms (purposeful or otherwise). I have no idea where this came from. My muse is a goblin that eats my common sense often. Hope you enjoyed it besides. =] -Coru