-:-
There are only two reasons for ever doing anything. One is Love, and the other is Fear.
-Call the Midwife.

Sometimes after he wakes up in the Takron-Galtos infirmary, tubes running down his throat and nose, customary bindings around his ankles and wrists so he won't try to get away (as if he would bother) and the usual taste of blood and saline coming to the forefront of his consciousness not drowned out by the excellent numbing drugs pumping into him-sometimes he feels like apologizing to the universe that he wasted his chance when he was young to die.

Mekt knows, yes, that's probably the black shadow that was depression telling him to think that, neural synapses firing poorly and his unnatural abilities reacting to them to make it all the worse, but he can't help it. He thinks of how wonderful it would have been to have drowned in the back of the farm when he was nine and the river had a flash flood that he waded through to a tall tree. He considers the grief that would have been spared if the Lightning Beasts had simply focused on him and burned him to a crisp to leave Garth and Ayla to wait for their parents to pick them up back on the ship.

Accidents and purpose of nature, before his sister went away or after she was brought back to Garth, are the fantasies he indulges in, the way he would prefer to go, not because he is a coward and wouldn't take his own life, but because...

Well, he had promised. Even if he was a scumbag he would keep his word.

Silver Stream Blue. Imra had many chances in the Legion to see Garth get justifiably angry (and even a little without justification) and often because of her expense on the job-his mental pathways were amplified with a feeling of despair and helplessness she hadn't been able to do anything about when she'd been in her healing trance for a long time during the fight against Imperiex and reminded her how much of him was growing into a mature adult and how much of him was just a teenager that came with its own set of problems.

Imperial Army White. But...there is Anger and then there is Fury or Rage. The kind that makes her mentally shut herself off to anything that might come in that she doesn't feel she has the right to know, and also makes her physically on edge without the immediate range of the the person feeling such things. With Lightning Lad, there have been issues he had addressed that bordered on the emotion as such, but never actually dove into it head all entirely under his own will.

Obsidian. And there was something else, like...cold. It seemed to dip into the fear spectrum, but that also wasn't quite right.

Storm Cloud Swirls. Still, Saturn Girl walked into the conference room of the Legion and braced herself as she felt the air charge with electricity hissing with negative energies and found Garth at the communication center, the metal of the table dented, doubtless, from his metal arm squeezing too tight and Garth himself not even noticing her coming in as he made for the bay area for the cruisers at a walk that was barely controlled from turning into a march of destruction. The energy around him didn't cease it's violent behavior, flirting with disaster around him, singing the dust in the air so it smelled like the inside of a laundry dryer and gripping and letting his real hand settle before repeating actions.

"Garth?"

Gloomy Underground Chalk. Her call over to him did not even slow him down, but he did at least acknowledge her before leaving the room in its entirety.

"I'm going to Takron-Galtos for a while. If anyone needs me, somebody had better be dying."

It is only Human Nature that allows for thought that there is a true weakness in staying perfectly still in the face of absolute danger and threat of death. Beings from other planets, Colu, Naltor, Braal-many other planets-think about suicide differently. Some see it as a kind of noble necessity, a person willing to get rid of themselves rather than become a hindrance to their loved ones. Some think of it as a good thing, the weak exterminating themselves so as not to damage the infrastructure of progress. Some see it as something that cannot and should not be stopped as it is up to the individual to decide their own fate and no one else's.

Knowledge that had been gained throughout his time as a Legion founder and team leader and fighter on most fronts had changed the usual thoughts Lightning Lad had on the subject from when he was young on Winath and only had his planet's thoughts on the issue to consider on. On Winath, suicide was such a strange phenomenon-he didn't even know what it meant until after Ayla was gone and he got really very sad and asked what other twins before him had done in situations where their sibling had perished. He did not wish to ask his parents as they had their own grief to swim in at the time and the smallest little thing made his father angry or had his mother fleeing to the master bedroom to lock the door and weep for hours and hours. He wasn't talking to Mekt-and even if he wanted to, he was never home until well after he was fast asleep or neither mom or dad were anywhere to be found (especially their father; dark screaming had issued from the barn one early morning that had woken Garth up just before sunrise, bolting up to go and see what was going on with his pants barely cinched around his waist, his leather jacket on his shoulders in case there was a fire like three years before to keep him from getting burnt and his feet dragging his boots in case it might be a flood terrifying the animals-he got there, breathless and full of adrenaline to find both ends of the barn open, his father breathing heavily next to tools that had been knocked over, a light dripping of blood trailing out of the other exit, "It's nothing Garth, go catch a few more hours' shut-eye,") so, as much as he knew he would be pitied, he went to the public archives. Twins were known to commit suicide under and up to a year after they had lost their sibling to sickness or murder or accident if they didn't have the support from other family because the emotional trauma had tendency to manifest in horrific night terrors, lack of appetite, tremendous desperation and so on.

Statistically, from those records, Garth had gone over repeatedly in one sitting area for five hours straight, he had as high as a 62% probability of becoming entirely unhinged and going to join Ayla in one way or another.

So began his sort of Dance of the Hours. Counting days he was helpful, moments where he wasn't thinking about telling Ayla something from his day, being useful on the farm, helping his mother try to laugh and his father avoid secretly smoking or getting into the hard liquor kept under lock and key. Counting how many nightmares he'd have in a week, how many meals he could skip before feeling dizzy and giving in to at least have milk or fruit, if he could bath instead of shower without blowing up the water pipes by accident, tallying the insults thrown his way now that he was not only a filthy Solo like his brother, but also a scarred freak.

By the time the ninth month rolled around, his dreams had begun to wane and almost simmer on a low light in the back of his mind; flickering bubbles in a heated pan of water with the flame dying out from lack of oxygen. He was doing well in school despite never having been as smart as his sister and his control of his abilities was no longer similar to trying to lasso the wind and hope it caught a storm.

And Mekt had wanted to die.

After all, loneliness is not the same poison as being alone. One can kill someone like a jump from the top of a very large bridge into a river that is mostly dark sharp rock under mere five inches of water, while the other is something lived in, touched and eventually consumed that corrodes the insides and makes it impossible to do anything but let it fester until the end or cut out the veins to make it less enduring.

Garth remembered the month of fall near its tail and winter coming to its short stay, nosing its way into every door and window so that his parents kept reminding him to put on warm jackets, knitted socks and to please shut his window-!

"But I didn't..."

Garth paused from calling over his shoulder down the stairs as he heard the door shut, mom and dad leaving for a farmers organized meeting to talk about one of the fields that hadn't been doing well several acres from the Ranzz farm; rot and sown reeds that choked at the seeded grains a kind of devastation for that family that Garth hardly knew anything about, except that the young adult twin boys that still lived there played on the sports teams for the Intergalactic Games and each won high honors.

His window was shut, but it was still pretty cold and he could feel chill creeping from down the hallway.

Mekt was an idiot, of course he was, but he hadn't done anything to anger or disappoint their parents in over a month, so why would he leave his window open when the snow was likely to come down today?

Walking out of his room, chilled fingers zipping closed his jacket and clicking at the button on top that always gave him a hard time because it was so small and his fingers were all stubby and wrinkled from that morning's breakfast dishes in soapy water, Garth set his face into the usual frown he had for the elder brother and stomped up the staircase that led to Mekt's room. His was the door that was always shut and stood a hallway over from the entrance to the attic and the tiny linen closet Garth and Ayla used to hide in before they were eight and could still fit to play spy and seek with Mekt; the both of them holding their breath as he pretended not to find them just so long as it took them to get antsy and ready to run screaming by the time he popped the door open with 'Hah! Gotcha!'

Garth's scarred eye landed on the door he was going to pound on until his brother got up to hear his younger (only) sibling order him to shut the door before ice started coming into the hallway, but the door was already open. Not like Mekt, he kept it locked, liked his privacy, hated to think that anyone would go in and look through his belongings or take them out when that was just ridiculous, nobody wanted anything from the white haired child, but-

The blood in Garth's mouth made him blink back from his thoughts and run his tongue over the sizable groove his teeth had left in his lower lip, red dragging after his pink tongue before he swabbed it with more spit and swallowed it, bitter and copper and all.

A/N: So I'm back from fan limbo in this section and decided to add to the insignificant pile for the Ranzz siblings because while I love what's out there, I want my heart torn out over the brothers SO MUCH MORE than anything to do with Ayla, and if that makes me a bad person, then I am guilty, take me to a dungeon so I can be fattened up and baked into a pie-I do not care.

Also, this is going to be a two-shot if I have to hunt the other plot bunny down with a sniper rifle. This is a gift for Fire Night Sky and Kirra Kills. The first because, while this isn't the sequel that was requested of my previous Ranzz fic (that was a lot softer and less spiked around the edges) it's something, anyway. And Kirra hasn't been around lately so this is more or less to see if this would be a good hook to line.