It's been a while, hasn't it? I haven't had any ideas for fanfiction lately. But this came to me and I thought I'd write it down. Please review and let me know what you all think. :)

* * * CHAPTER 1 * * *

The sound of spiny shells ricocheting off the roof of his house had risen to an almost unbearable pitch. Coupled with the flashing blue lights from the explosions, he found it impossible to sleep. But he'd have to get used to it like everyone else, he supposed.

Luigi groaned and turned over in his bed for about the fiftieth time that night, wishing the noise would just stop already. He'd tried everything, from clamping a pillow over his head to drinking a gallon of hot chocolate; playing soothing music in his room and counting sheep. He admitted he'd been pretty desperate by the time he reached that last stage. But he hadn't slept properly in three days, dammit – and although he knew Mario had left him a packet of sleeping pills in the kitchen cabinet in case he needed them, so far he'd managed to resist the temptation to actually take them. He hated using medicines and pills of any kind and would usually rather suffer in silence.

But now... now things were getting ridiculous. He was staggering out of the house every morning with massive shadows under his eyes and his clothes rumpled and dirty; once he'd even put his shirt on backwards and failed to notice until people in the street starting pointing and laughing at him. Luigi worked as a waiter in a coffee shop just to the west of Toad Town. It wasn't a glamorous job but it was usually peaceful and quiet, exactly the kind of atmosphere he liked.

Well, it had stopped being peaceful when his coworkers began to realise how tired he looked. In fact, his boss had even offered him an extra day off so he could catch up on sleep, but he refused. With Mario away, he felt like it was his duty to keep working hard so his brother could one day come home to a well-kept, clean house and plenty of his favourite food. If he ever did come back...

Sometimes Luigi wanted to rage at whoever was responsible for starting this mess of a war. Of course, he knew it was all the fault of the Koopa King – or Bowser as he was familiarly known by his subjects, all turtle-monsters and mushroom-creatures as evil as he was. The King was renowned for being cruel, animal-like in his manners, and insatiably greedy. He was also supposed to rule his land from a towering fortress filled with stone statues of himself. Narcissistic much? Luigi guessed it was. But of course it was all rumours. Nobody knew anything important about the Koopa King, because nobody who'd been stupid enough to venture deep into his burning, volcano-covered kingdom had come back to tell stories.

All Luigi knew about him was that he was evil. And declaring war upon the Mushroom Kingdom was just unforgivable. Worse, he'd kidnapped Princess Peach during a surprise attack on her palace. Now her soldiers were now fighting valiantly to get her back safely, but they were constantly worried that Bowser would threaten to kill her if they breached his castle defences. Why else would the Koopa King have taken her hostage?

The Mushroom Army was now being controlled by Toadsworth, steward and advisor to Princess Peach. But he was old and couldn't fight himself. If something happened to him, the war would be over almost before it had begun, and Bowser would be triumphant. The Kingdom would fall, subject to his leadership or else destroyed.

In spite of the devastation, Luigi and his older brother Mario had never really thought about the war. Most of the real fighting was going on at the border between the Mushroom Kingdom and Bowser's Badlands, far away from the tiny, dear little house they shared on the south-western point of Toad Town, and none of it had ever affected them. But then the attack on the palace came.

Luigi remembered that fateful morning as clearly as if it had happened yesterday. The scene was burned forever onto his memory like a vivid photograph. The red sky filled with airships, spewing bullet bills and cannonballs that rained down upon the dainty white towers of Peach's Castle, destroying them in a heartbeat. The citizens screaming and running for their lives, most being shot down by Koopa soldiers carrying rifles loaded with homing red shells, a special technology invented by Bowser just before the war broke out.

He remembered leaving the safety of his house and coming out, panting for breath, feeling a moment of rare courage surge through his veins like adrenaline as he rushed into the town centre to help the people. Mario had been right behind him, half-asleep and confused, but as he saw the horrors for himself he immediately woke up. And then they both saw Princess Peach.

She was instantly recognisable even from a distant of over a hundred feet, with her pink gown and long yellow-blonde hair blowing wildly around her head as if in a storm. She was standing by the gunwale of the largest airship, her hands tied firmly behind her back and a Koopa soldier's clawed hand resting heavily on her shoulder. She hadn't screamed or cried for help, but Luigi had looked sideways at his brother and seen the inconsolable expression on Mario's face. And that was the moment that he knew everything was about to change.

Few people knew of the Princess' most carefully-hidden secret. She and Mario had been together, as a couple, for nearly six months. And they loved each other; a blind man could have seen that. It had made Luigi slightly jealous at first, because his brother always got things that he didn't, whether it was friends, fame, or even something as silly as better grades in school. And now he had a beautiful, funny, caring girlfriend who wanted to marry him someday. And Luigi had no doubt that they would have done, never mind that it was completely and utterly against the rules of decorum for the Princess of the Kingdom to marry a lowly commoner.

It was a romance out of some stupid fairytale. And Luigi knew his brother, and Peach, had every intention of making it work out – no matter what they needed to do.

Until Bowser took her.

For a full two days after the attack, Mario had been lost. He hadn't eaten, barely slept, and when he did sleep Luigi could hear him tossing and turning in his bed in the grip of a nightmare – or flashback. He tried his best to help his brother, to comfort him, to tell him that the war would end and Peach would be returned home safely, but it only seemed to make things worse. And then, at roughly 5AM one morning, he had gotten up and ventured into the kitchen for a glass of water only to find his brother already there.

And then it was decided that Mario would join the army.

He'd never been interested in fighting, never even held a length of cold steel or pulled the trigger of a green shell gun, but his desire to rescue his beloved seemed to overpower all common sense. Luigi tried to talk him out of it, saying he was only going to get himself killed and then he'd never see Peach again. For a moment, it looked like his arguments were having an effect. Then Mario's face had hardened once more and he'd slammed a fist down on the table and announced that he was going to the war the next day, and nothing Luigi said could convince him otherwise.

And that was when everything changed.

Mario had gone away the next morning just as he promised, barely stopping long enough to give his younger brother a proper farewell. Then suddenly the house they shared, the cute little house with the red-tiled roof that sat right on the edge of the town, seemed empty. Deserted. Mario hadn't come back the next day as Luigi half-expected (and hoped) him to. He hadn't come back after a week. He hadn't even bothered to send letters.

The realisation that he could very well be dead was too much to bear. Luigi managed to convince himself that Mario was just too busy fighting to write anything, that all his thoughts were turned towards saving his girlfriend rather than talking to his brother. (That last bit hurt a little, but he refused to admit it even to himself.) He told himself that he would've received news if Mario was dead, but even that was hard to believe. No-one cared about him. A lot of people in Toad Town didn't even know his name. He'd always been a bit of a recluse, he supposed.

So he got a job at the local coffee shop, replacing Mario's old job as a pizza delivery man. He kept the house clean and tidy and the kitchen well-stocked with pasta and meatballs, all waiting for the day Mario would finally come home. But that day hadn't come around yet.

Groaning again, Luigi shook off his wandering thoughts and slowly hauled himself out of bed, switching on his night-light with a clumsy flick of his hand. He looked briefly at the digital alarm clock; 4.30AM. He sighed. Every morning he was waking up earlier and earlier because he simply couldn't sleep. It wasn't that he suffered nightmares; he just spent too much time worrying and thinking about Mario to actually relax for a moment.

And once he'd woken up, he could never get back to sleep. So he abandoned his bedroom and trudged into the dark kitchen, wondering if a mug of hot chocolate and one sleeping pill – just one – might help him.

He knew it probably wouldn't.