"Seventeen...Nik...seventeen". He turned back to me, something dark in his eyes.

"It's fifteen candles, Cal. "I corrected him. "Don't tell me you're forgetting how old you are." I joked even though my heart wasn't in it. Cal had been apathetic about his birthday for most of the week. It seemed like he didn't care I wanted to make this day special.

Still I put on a good front, we both needed something happy in our lives. I had decorated the room we were currently staying in with a dollar bag of balloons, the cake was a half stale artery clogging chocolate mess from the discount aisle, dinner was an even more artery clogging delivery pizza and the spindly birthday candles were the cheapest package I could find. Still it was the thought that counted, right?

"You're wrong..." Cal had insisted. He had watched my other preparations with a disinterested eye. But when he came to survey the lighted cake something about it agitated him.

"Wrong...it's wrong." He kept repeating the words as he stared at the candles. He got like this sometimes. Small stuff bothered him, only later I would find out whatever he was experiencing then was flashing him back to a memory of his time as the Auphes' captive. This time though I had no idea what it was about the candles.

"Okay, Cal calm down. I'll add some more."

He fell quiet at that and watched as I added two more candles. "There, seventeen candles, even though you're only fifteen. " I shook my head in resigned exasperation.

"I'm seventeen Nik." He insisted again, his time more urgently.

I had no idea why he continued to say that. But I knew how he was when he got an idea in his head, it was better to correct him early or later it would be almost impossible, like the time he had refused to wear shoes and his feet had gotten sliced open and bloody. Only later had I found out that the reason was because he had worked out in his head he was a monster and monsters didn't deserve to wear shoes.

The candles were burning out behind me, and soon nothing but pools of wax would be adorning the cake, but I ignored that and turned to face Cal. It was time to assert reality, something that he frequently needed ever since getting back from the Auphe. No , you're not a monster, yes, I don't care what you did while you're away, yes you're my brother. It was little things, but those small things meant the most to Cal. They kept him grounded.

Patiently I asked him. "When were you born, little brother?"

He stared at me blankly for a moment before answering with the correct date. "Okay then, how many years has it been since then to now."

He hesitated then answered. "Fifteen ."

"Exactly so you're fifteen years old."

"I'm not Nik. I'm seventeen."

"Cal , you're fifteen—" I started to say.

"You're wrong, you're wrong!" Cal startled me by yelling. Before I could stop him he had swept the cake and pizza off the table. The candles hissed and sputtered out as the flames smothered in chocolate frosting. For a moment he and I just stared at each other. Then he turned running to the only place in our one room living arrangements where he could hide. The door slammed as Cal barricaded himself in the bathroom.

"Cal, open the door." He didn't answer just as I expected , and a quick check of the door handle revealed it was locked. I sank to the ground, dirty carpeting rough against my feet, the hard bathroom door digging into my back. This had been our lives every since almost a year ago when the Auphe had taken him. It wasn't enough that his first fourteen years he had spent living with a mother who would have liked nothing more than to kill him. Life couldn't give us a break, instead Cal had to be kidnapped by monsters and forced to do only god knew what and then come back as a shell-shocked half-crazy version of my little brother.

That was our lives...fucked up in every manner possible.

Just for a moment, I allowed myself the luxury of resting my head against my knees and imagining a different life. Something I had only read in books, a mother who loved me, a father who knew me, warm dinners, a monster free existence, not this constant running and scraping by just for the necessities, but then reality asserted itself. This was the here and now, that was a dream more like a nightmare because a life like that would have meant no monsters and more importantly no Cal.

Cal was the one person who made all this bearable. He was the only reason I bothered to get up each morning. He was worth giving up everything I never had and never would have.

The sound of breaking glass brought me to my feet again. "Cal!" I banged on the door. "Open up." I tried the door handle again and then swore. This was bad. I had no idea what Cal was doing but that didn't stop the thought going through my head. On one instance when Cal had locked himself in I had opened the door just in time to find him with blood dripping down his arms and a shard of mirror still hanging in his grip. "I want to get the monster out Nik" He had whispered as I dropped to my knees heedless of the spattered blood and wadded a ragged motel towel against the slashes to his arms.

The doorframe to the bathroom was thick, it would take more time to kick the door in then it would to pick the lock. One bent paperclip and a half a minute later, I swung the door open. As I expected the mirror was lying in shards on the floor. Cal, was huddled in the bathtub, hands wrapped around his knees, head buried against his chest. I approached the same one would a wary animal, sidestepping mirror fragments and squatting by the side of the bathtub. He didn't have any injuries that I could see and I let out a grateful sigh for that one mercy.

"Hey, Cal." My voice was as soft as I could make it.

Cal didn't speak for a moment or two but when he did his voice was muffled. " 'm sorry Nik."

"What for?"

He raised his head this time, black hair flopping forward into his face. "For the cake, for me. I know you worked really hard to fix everything."

It took me a moment to realise Cal had included himself in the list of things that needed to be fixed and by that time he had mumbled. "I keep screwing everything up for you."

I climbed in the bathtub at that point. Cal had tucked his head back down but I gripped his shoulder forcing his eyes back up towards mine. "You don't screw stuff up for me Cal. "

Instead of being mollified by my vehemence he just looked more tired. "Yeah, I do." His hands tightened against his knees and his fingers laced together. Cal stared back at the ground . "I'm a mess."

It would have been great if there some way that I could make him understand but no matter how many times I said it to him he never would believe it. Cal had self loathing that was bone deep, years of Sofia's words , that I couldn't ever erase, and probably his own sense of how he was different than everyone else on earth made him feel less than human. I was always better , everyone was always more deserving, because in comparison to him—Cal, the monster—how couldn't they be.

He was shivering now and it wasn't the warm air of the apartment. Memories of another time, that wasn't so long ago were coming back. I knew that look as he raised his head again and his voice broke on the words. "I'm—I'm seventeen." Shadows of something dark, memories of things he had at first unwillingly then later as the Auphe brainwashing took hold, willingly done, flashed through his mind. The tub was damp and the porcelain cool, but I ignored the discomfort and climbed in opposite Cal. He needed the closeness not just for comfort, but a reminder that he was here on Earth, not the hell he had been dragged too.

As he kept repeating the words like it was some horrible mantra , a sick though donned on me. And I studied my brother—really studied him. I was twenty and Cal was fifteen. I remembered the day he had got back from Tumulus, he had changed, not only his mind but his body. He looked older, taller. His features were harder, leaner. Some part of me assumed that maybe time had ran differently in that place that was so far removed from our world. Maybe a few days to me were a few weeks in Tumulus, now some part of me realised how wrong I probably was.

"Cal."

He didn't stop, this time he was rocking back and forth. The words endlessly repeating.

I tried again.

"Cal."

"Cal, look at me!" I reached out grasping his shoulders and stilling his movements. He stiffened at my touch, but his eyes met mine. "Why do you keep saying you're seventeen?"

And that's when he told me. Cal hadn't been kept by the Auphe for weeks or even months. It had been years. Two years in hell while two days on Earth passed for me. They had told him so and he had counted some of the days off until finally in a fit of rage and madness the escaped.

I felt sick at end but that was nothing compared to how Cal must have felt. During the confession he had drawn inward more and more until now his body was the smallest he could make it and shaking in silent sobs.

"I—I'm evil Nik." Cal had raised his head and was staring at me as he spoke. "You don't know what I did...you don't know the things they made me do...the things I wanted to do."

He was right. I heard pieces from the throes of screamed nightmares. I saw the results in his every action. I didn't know it all and a very large part of me never wanted to. But there was something Cal didn't know either.

I leaned forward pulling him into my arms, ignoring the tears now being dripped onto my shirt, or the sobs muffled against my chest . My voice was threatening to break but I steadied it. "I love you Cal."

There was something else he needed to hear and I said it with as much conviction as I could. "And there is nothing, past, present or future that could ever change that."

He curled up further in my arms then. And the sobs were stronger, he was shaking so hard I could hear his teeth chattering. I let him cry and held him tighter like I could protect him in some way.

I tried to protect him before, from Sofia, from the Auphe. But this time I wouldn't fail. Both arms were wrapped around Cal, but I could feel the hard blade of a knife digging into me from my hip pocket. It was a reminder to me of my options.

Whatever I had to do, Cal wouldn't be taken again.