No. It couldn't be, it mustn't be so. It was impossible, a dream, a terrible nightmare. Yes, that's right. He was dreaming, this wasn't true, he wasn't here. It never happened. He would wake up any minute now and everything would be as usual… -
But he wasn't dreaming, and it had happened. It was for real.
His whole life had changed in a second. Everything he had known was gone now. He was alone now. Left alone.
But how could it be so? He had never been alone before, always the two of them together. This just couldn't be. He wouldn't let it be. There must be something he could do, some spell, some hocus-pocus and everything would be fine. After all, he was a wizard. What was the use with magic otherwise, if it couldn't fix this? If it couldn't be fixed…
It couldn't be fixed. It was definite. Absolute, nothing to do about it. There was no way to make it undone, to prevent this from ever happening. Oh, how he wished he could make it undone. How he wanted to go back in time, change it all. To avoid it, or if it wasn't possible, then to take his place, to be the one to die. How he wished.
How he wished. How he wished to stop this pain, this unmerciful, heartbreaking, breathtaking, never-ending pain. How he wished to remove the source of this pain. Remove death. Undo death. Undo it all.
Why, why, why did it have to happen? There were others, others who would have been willing to die instead of him, to take his place, sacrifice themselves to save his life. Why couldn't it have been anyone of them, or just someone else. Anyone else.
Even anyone else in his family. How terrible it was to think that thought, but how true. Because it was true. How shameful ever the thought was he knew that how hurting the pain ever would have been, it would never have been this bad. For he was torn apart, his other half stolen from him. He wasn't complete anymore, something was missing; someone was missing. He was empty on everything but the pain. This bloody, fucking pain.
He must get rid of the pain. Someone must be punished. That son of a bitch who did this must pay. But how? The one who did it hadn't been at his own control, and the one who had put the curse on the man, and therefore was guilty to this, was dead. There was no one to punish. No one to put the blame on. No one to take all of his anger, all of his pain, all of his guilt.
Because, yes, he felt guilty. Wasn't there anything he could have done to stop this? Anything…? If he had been at his brother's side, protecting him, would this have happened? But he knew he shouldn't think like that. He couldn't have done anything. No one had seen it coming. One minute laughing, the other one - dead.
Dead, gone, finito. Never coming back. Never, ever coming back. Never getting older, never getting family of his own, never, ever more doing pranks together. April Fools' Day would never more be the same. It would be a day of sorrow, a day of sadness, a day of grief and pain.
A lifetime of grief and pain. That was what he had to expect. For how could he ever get over this? He didn't want to get over this. Because, if he got over it, wouldn't that be the same thing as forgetting? And he must never forget.
That was what hurt the most. To forget it for one second, and then. To realise again. It hit him like a fist going in one thousand miles an hour. And the guiltiness of knowing that he had forgotten about it, even if just for a second. How could he forget his other half, his brother, his twin? How, how, how?
He didn't know anything. What to do, what to think, how to deal with this. All he knew was that he didn't want this at all. All he wanted was to have it all undone.
He wanted his brother back.