Title: All We Know of Heaven
Disclaimer: God have mercy on us all if I ever get my very own wrestler. Remember Elmira from Tiny Tunes with her animals?
Rating: PG-13 for language and angsty sap.
Plug o' the Moment: "Heliotrope" by pandora1017 – go find it on fanfiction.net! Now! It's awesome, and she deserves feedback. :)
******
I never thought it would come to this. It took a stupid, meaningless, longtime rivalry to tear us apart in a moment's notice, and after months of ignoring each other or giving each other dirty looks, it took a devastating loss to bring us back together. The little wars we've been fighting since we were old enough to yell at each other just kept piling up until they grew into one big war between the two of us, and it really makes me feel like less of a person for not being strong enough to ignore his insecurities. I'm the older one. I'm supposed to be the wiser one, the stronger one that holds us together. We're brothers. We fight. It's normal.
But tonight I went too far and I honestly don't know how to make it better.
We were never the perfect example of the ideal brother/buddy relationship, but we were always close. We fought over girls and then plotted revenge against a fickle ex-girlfriend for breaking the other's heart. Being the one with more common sense and street smarts, and probably the one more likely to get arrested, I helped him sneak into movies without paying and write that horrible expose in high school about our principal's lingerie fetish. I'm surprised we didn't get kicked out for that one. He, being the smarter one, frequently ended up doing my homework in return for small nominal fees. He helped me with my eleventh grade science project that exploded in the middle of my presentation and started a small fire on my teacher's desk, which, naturally, forced the entire school to evacuate.
Man, that was a really awesome project, too.
After I graduated I always made sure to come back and pick him up for lunch, which almost always meant not going back to school at all. Sometimes we'd go to the mall and test the new video games on display until we got kicked out. Other times we'd gorge ourselves on fast food junk and bullshit like most normal brothers do. Then there were times when we wouldn't do anything, just slack off in our cousin's comic book shop and indulge our shared love for gory horror books.
I miss those times. I never thought they'd end. I should have known that below the surface, behind the smiles and laughs, that Christian was seething and hoped against hope that I'd just drop dead so that the spotlight would be on him. I just never realized why exactly he felt that way until recently. Sure, I noticed the enraged looks he'd give me all the time, but I attributed that to simple jealousy and an inability to approach me about it.
Now that I look back on it, maybe he had a right to be angry. I was the first born, the special one. Christian was supposed to be a twin, but freak complications left my new baby sister stillborn and Christian fighting for his life. I used to joke that he probably choked her with the umbilical cord in the womb because she was going to be born first. Wrong of me, I know, but it wouldn't have surprised me if I'd been right. Christian wasn't expected to live for more than a week, but that was only the first time he laughed at someone who told him what he was and wasn't supposed to do.
So I had a baby brother. We're two years apart, but sometimes it's more like ten years or two months. We finish each other's sentences half the time. The reason we make such a good tag team is because we have an uncanny ability to know what the other is thinking at any given moment. It happens freakishly often and entirely too much for my tastes, but Christian's always thought it was neat. Grandma Edna says I should have been his twin.
Then there are times when I think the only thing we have in common is the color of our hair – and that's only on a day when I notice I need to have mine highlighted again. I'm generally reserved and keep to myself, but I do appreciate a good joke now and then. If I don't like someone or something they're doing, I'll tell them to their face. Christian, meanwhile, is outgoing and sometimes obnoxious, practically has a nervous breakdown every time a carefully worked plan goes wrong because he's so damn high-strung, and is always conniving and scheming. I don't think it's so much that he's cowardly, because I've never known my brother to back down from a fight once challenged, but if he can wreak havoc with someone's mind, he'll do it.
When we were little, I was really the handful that caused our parents so many problems. If there was trouble to be found, they could rest assured that I'd be the one to find it. I don't think there was a peewee league I wasn't on. Basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, volleyball . . . I played everything. Christian, having an unfortunately weak heart and pair of lungs due to being born two months early, was relegated to porch patrol, as some of my teammates cruelly termed it. He couldn't run or even overexert himself at all without collapsing in a wheezing, coughing heap. I felt sorry for him, but there really wasn't anything I could do. I wasn't going to become a couch potato just to make him feel better. I tried to incorporate him into my active life as much as I could – I brought him to games with me, took him to watch the 'Leafs play a few times and even bought him souvenirs. He resented my charity, though, simply because I was using the spectator role as a luxury and that was all he *could* do.
He started school and I'll admit I was terrified for him. I knew how heartless kids could be, and despite our differences, he was my little brother and I loved him. I wanted to protect him, whether he wanted that protection or not. If he got into it with a bully I'd back him up. If someone picked on him, I returned it in kind but twice as bad. I didn't understand then that I was only setting myself up for rejection and betrayal.
As I got older, girls took prominence in my life more than sports, and eventually I ended up dropping all my team sports and pursued a dream of wrestling instead. Christian, never happy to settle for being the weaker brother, immediately followed, flying in the face of the doctors, his parents, and everyone else. I tried reasoning with him and telling him that he'd only end up hurting himself if he went through with this insane desire to be some huge wrestling superstar, but Christian was as stubborn as ever. He followed me with my dream and went after it with a passionate desire I'd never seen him have before. Oddly enough, he was far more successful than I think either of us had anticipated, bad health and all. Every pain in his chest and every gasp drove him on that much stronger.
One night we had a show for an indy circuit we were both involved in and put on a helluva ladder match. He came backstage and everyone was slapping him on the back, congratulating him for the awesome job and his shiny new title. He tracked me down and gave me that dopey grin of his seconds before I pulled him into a hug. I could see he was incredibly proud of himself, and even while I was a little upset that he'd upstaged my own match earlier that night, I was happy to see he'd finally found something he was good at and he liked doing. That was also about the time his breathing became troubled and he collapsed in my arms, immediately unconscious and taking shallow, choking gasps for air. He came to about twenty minutes later in the locker room with a trainer holding his left eye open to shine a flashlight in it. The trainer, though not a doctor, made it clear that Christian had no business being in the ring in his condition, but as he's proven time and time again, tell him not to do something and he'll go after it with twice as much determination.
I prayed for the longest time that he'd listen to all of us and just go after a safer career. You can see how that turned out.
So we ended up in the WWF, in a business with people we'd idolized since childhood. But as always, his jealousy came through and we started falling apart. I was taller. I was bigger. My voice was better. My hair was fucking blonder. My name came first – it was always *Edge* and Christian or *E* and C. Even in our most successful moments he was forced to take second place, always a half step behind me but behind nevertheless. I never meant for it to be that way. He didn't believe me then and he doesn't now, but I can't help that.
Maybe I shouldn't have ignored all the hints like I did. I wish I could say that I didn't see the turn coming, but part of me did. I just didn't want to admit that my brother hated me. We loved each other and would never do anything to hurt each other, or so I continued to tell myself every time I had the slightest clue he was only going to end up turning on me. At the time, I thought it was true. Strange as it sounds, deep down I still believe that. Christian's a nice guy, just that he has poor judgment and he's a very impulsive person when he's angry. He's much too smart to act without prior consideration to the matter, but that all becomes null and void when he gets mad. It's an unusual combination to find in a person, but that's my baby brother for you. Always the enigma.
Mom was crushed when she found out we were fighting for real. She's a mom, so she's used to her sons fighting all the time about stupid shit like we always have, but then she realized it was serious and we weren't planning on making up anytime soon. I can't count how many times she called me wanting to know if I was talking to him yet, and from what I've overheard him say she's been doing the same to him. And, because we can't stand to be within fifty feet of each other now, we're essentially punishing her, too, since that rules out any possibility of us being in the same room together with her.
It's just sad that the first time in months we come together as a family is at a funeral.
It was one of my rare days off, and I was spending it in some annoying, flashy club, buying Matt drinks and letting him drown his sorrows in whatever I set in front of him. His latest fling had dumped him – for a second time, no less – and Jeff was understandably tired of dealing with Matt's inability to understand why insisting all his ex-girlfriends move in together is a bad idea, so that left me to babysit him and keep him from drinking himself into a coma. I wasn't doing a good job of that, but at least I was providing him with someone to talk to. I can justify my being there with that, but I'm pretty sure he would have had a riveting conversation with a shot glass if no one had been there to hear.
I was ready to reach across the table and smack him in the head when my cell phone chirped from its spot where I put it on the table when I sat down. Before I could reach it, Matt grabbed it and fumbled drunkenly for the mouthpiece, grinning like a moron at me when he realized it was built into the base of the phone. He answered it and got this look on his face like . . . I don't even know how to explain it, but he pushed the phone across the table and just stared at me. That's never a good sign when he's drunk and still manages to keep some of his common sense intact.
Mom was on the other end of the line, though I could just barely make out anything she said because of the all the noise in the club and the background activity from where she was. I could tell she'd been crying, and I figured it was another guilt trip about how we should act like brothers and blah blah blah, same garbage. When she finally regained the ability to talk, she said that she'd tried to get a hold of Christian but never did, then asked me to come home. Not my favorite way to spend a day off. I figured that since we were in Michigan anyway it wouldn't kill me to go see what was going on. God knows I wasn't expecting half our entire family packed into our living room.
Well, everyone except Christian, but I hadn't expected him to be there anyway.
Mom was a wreck, clutching Aunt Paula's hand and rambling on and on about something I couldn't hear. It was a little unnerving that as soon as she saw me come through the door she lost it and started crying twice as hard. She and Paula led me to sit down with them on the couch, and then I've got a dozen people all trying to talk to me at once, none of them making sense. All I heard was a fast blur of words in different voices all from different faces – dead, heart attack, this morning, Dad.
Dad.
I don't think it really hit me until then what they were trying to break easily to me. Granted, Dad and I were never especially close, but he was still my dad and I still loved him. I sat there staring at the carpet for the longest time before Mom squeezed my hand and asked when Christian was showing up. I lied and told her 'in a little bit.' I figured he'd at least be a decent person and come around for his father's death.
As it turned out, I wasn't exactly wrong. He did show up 'in a little bit', depending on what your definition of that is. With Mom trying to get everything together and no one else in the family really wanting the job, it fell on me to deliver the eulogy at the funeral. Far from a pleasant experience. Nevertheless, there I was in front of everyone, finishing off my speech, when I saw him walk through the doors, losing himself in the back of the little chapel like I'd never seen him. Not that I'm as heartless as I sound, but Christ, he looked like shit. Even from as far away as we were I could see his hair was a mess, his clothes were wrinkled, his face was shallow save for a few red splotches here and there. I'd forgotten how close he and Dad were, and I felt a sudden twinge of guilt for not checking up on him.
But then again, I couldn't force myself to be too sympathetic; I was the one having to give the eulogy.
I worked past the lump in my throat and finished with a line that came from nowhere. It wasn't written on my paper, and I have no idea why I said it at all other than I recalled it from twelfth grade lit class and I thought it fit. "Parting is all we know of Heaven, and all we need of Hell." Or at least I'm hoping that's what it was. It probably wasn't, but I've never claimed to be a literary genius.
Later that night we were once again gathered in my house. Mom was still having trouble coming to terms with all of it, Paula was still holding her hand, and we were . . . us. Making mean comments to each other when we thought no one else was listening. Glaring. I don't even remember what it was, but I know he said something that set me off. We started arguing louder and louder until the whole house got quiet, everyone just standing around watching us.
"God, Christian, why don't you just fucking grow up already?" I screamed, ignoring Mom's yelling for us to stop. "I've been hearing this from you for so long now, and I'm sick of it! Can't we just get along for a day? Can't you even let our dad be put in the damn ground before you start your shit with me again?" He winced at that one. I should have stopped there. I know I should have. I knew *then* that I should have, but he's not the only one with poor judgment. I closed in on him like some predator moving in for the kill. "I wish Anna would have been the one to live, not you."
I swear, I thought he was going to burst into tears at that one. He didn't like talking about Anna, his twin that never was. That one was out of line, and I honestly don't have any idea where it came from. The damage was done, though; he drew back and stared at me with his eyes watering, mouth working like he wanted to say something but unable to get anything out but little tiny whimpering sounds. He knows how to make me feel like a jerk, that's for sure.
That was when Paula screamed at us both to get out of the house. I don't know why she yelled at him, since I was the one who was causing most of the trouble, but we both complied, both heading in different directions. He took off on foot, heading along the path we used to take all the time to get into a little park by our house, and I just sat down on the porch steps and stared at my shoes. I don't know how long I sat like that, just watching the tips of my boots as if I expected them to run away from me. I do know it was a good two hours before I registered just how very cold it was outside and that Christian had taken off without telling anyone where he was going.
But that was okay. I knew where he was going. I always did. There's this little fountain in the park we used to play around. It's got a concrete barrier around it, and we always used to test our balance by walking along it. If we fell in . . . well, we got wet. I figured that'd be the best place to look first.
And that would bring us to where we are now. I'm standing here watching him. He's sitting on the barrier, staring down into the water at the base of the fountain but not really paying attention to it. I don't know if he knows I'm behind him, but I don't think he particularly cares. He probably doesn't want anything to do with me, and I can't blame him.
Not having much of anything to say besides the dumb "I'm sorry" line, I sit down beside him and meet his gaze in the reflection of the water. We sit like this for a few minutes, just watching the other in the water and not moving as if afraid if we did the reflection would vanish and we'd be stuck in some horribly awkward moment forever. The silence gets to be too much for me, though, and I push my hair back from my face.
"Christian, I'm sorry, man. You know I didn't mean any of that."
He doesn't answer at first. I wish he'd say something, anything. I wish he'd hit me. I want him to make some kind of move to show he's even still with me here. I don't care if he tells me I'm a bastard and he never wants to see me again if it makes him talk to me. He's never at a loss for words, and it's really creeping me out to see him so . . . cold. Empty.
Dead.
I shake the thought away and reach out to touch his shoulder, but he jerks away from me and turns his head. Yeah, I've really screwed things up this time.
"Chris, it's . . . it's just been really bad the past couple days. I mean, I know it's been really hard on you, too, but I've been trying to keep Mom from falling apart, and –"
"Do you wish I'd died, too?"
I'm stunned at the question, and for a moment all I can do is stare back at him and blink like an idiot. "No! Christian, of course I don't. You're my brother. I love you, no matter how much we fight. You know that."
"No," he corrects, looking back to the water, "no, I don't." He turns back to look at me, smiling this little half-smile that breaks my heart because I see that I've broken him this time. "But I forgive you anyway." He holds out his arms for a hug, something he hasn't really done since we were little kids, and it makes me smile. I press a kiss against his head and wrap him up in a hug, wishing I didn't have to ever let go because I know as soon as I do we'll just start fighting again.
"I love you, Christian."
He doesn't respond immediately, and when he does his voice is quiet and shaky, both of which are very uncommon to hear from him. "I love you too, Edge."
A loud noise sounds, and there's a sudden sharp pain in my gut. I try to reach for it but I can't seem to force my hands to move. I look up and he's staring at me, and it's the last thing I remember seeing before falling over backwards into the water. Thankfully it's shallow, but I don't really think that would help matters right now anyway.
It's all turning red around me and I can't figure out why. I can't figure out why there's a gun on the barrier and why my insides feel like they're burning with fire and why Christian's crying and why is the fucking water red? It's not supposed to be red. I'm not supposed to be here, I'm supposed to be sitting on my porch steps waiting for Christian to come back and we can make up like we always do. And then we're going to go help Mom clean up after our guests and pretend like we're one big happy family.
God, it's so cold in here. Why the hell doesn't he pull me up out of this water? Why is he just standing there looking at me like some lost puppy? Oh, he's coming over here. I guess he figured out I lost my balance and he's going to help me up, just like we always did when we were little.
I can't really feel much right now for some reason, but I'm aware of him lifting my head into his lap and pulling my hair back from my face again. I look up into his eyes, realizing for the very first time how very much like mine they are. It's hard to understand what he's saying because everything's sort of blurring together, but he's barely said five words the whole night. I owe it to him to listen now.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, petting my hair like he did when we were little and he was scared. "I had to, Edge, I'm sorry. I want it to just be *me*, not Edge and Christian, and this is the only way I could be certain it'd happen." He pauses, and I wince from his tears running down his cheeks and falling into my eyes. They burn like the pain in my stomach, but I know he didn't cause that. We're brothers. We love each other. We'd never hurt each other intentionally. "Don't you see, Edge? I only ever wanted you to be proud of me."
But I am proud of him! I've never told him, but I am. I'd tell him now but my mouth doesn't wanna work right. It just keeps moving up and down and making these little noises I don't remember telling it to make. It's hard to breathe. The fire in my gut is moving up, settling in my lungs, making me gasp for air, and all Christian does is sit there crying over me. I wish he wouldn't. I don't like it when he cries.
"Say hi to Dad and Anna for me, okay?" He asks with this tiny voice that's as pathetic as his crying. I try to reach up to touch his face, to tell him everything's alright, but I still can't move my arms. I can't move at all. The world's fading at the corners of my eyes, pulling in on itself and collapsing and I'm convinced it's the end of the universe. This is how it ends – not with a bang or a whimper but in my brother's arms, surrounded by water that shouldn't be red and covered in Christian's tears. I'm watching him, hoping he'll get his nerves together and stop bawling like a baby, but he's getting so dark and far away. He's talking, but I can't hear him. Seconds pass and he becomes a little pinhole of light, the only thing I can see now, and I'm terrified. I reach out to grab the light and pull myself back through, because my brother's vanishing and I've never done anything without him and I'm so scared. I don't want to go on to do anything without him.
Then the pinhole fades like an old television set once it's turned off, and there's nothing but blackness. Anywhere I look, everywhere I turn – though I'm standing still – there's just blackness. I wish Christian would come back and help me out of the water. It's cold in here.
But just as the thought crosses my mind, I realize I don't feel cold anymore. I don't feel anything. The pain's gone, but so are his arms, his tears, the fountain.
This is what it's like to be truly alone.
Disclaimer: God have mercy on us all if I ever get my very own wrestler. Remember Elmira from Tiny Tunes with her animals?
Rating: PG-13 for language and angsty sap.
Plug o' the Moment: "Heliotrope" by pandora1017 – go find it on fanfiction.net! Now! It's awesome, and she deserves feedback. :)
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I never thought it would come to this. It took a stupid, meaningless, longtime rivalry to tear us apart in a moment's notice, and after months of ignoring each other or giving each other dirty looks, it took a devastating loss to bring us back together. The little wars we've been fighting since we were old enough to yell at each other just kept piling up until they grew into one big war between the two of us, and it really makes me feel like less of a person for not being strong enough to ignore his insecurities. I'm the older one. I'm supposed to be the wiser one, the stronger one that holds us together. We're brothers. We fight. It's normal.
But tonight I went too far and I honestly don't know how to make it better.
We were never the perfect example of the ideal brother/buddy relationship, but we were always close. We fought over girls and then plotted revenge against a fickle ex-girlfriend for breaking the other's heart. Being the one with more common sense and street smarts, and probably the one more likely to get arrested, I helped him sneak into movies without paying and write that horrible expose in high school about our principal's lingerie fetish. I'm surprised we didn't get kicked out for that one. He, being the smarter one, frequently ended up doing my homework in return for small nominal fees. He helped me with my eleventh grade science project that exploded in the middle of my presentation and started a small fire on my teacher's desk, which, naturally, forced the entire school to evacuate.
Man, that was a really awesome project, too.
After I graduated I always made sure to come back and pick him up for lunch, which almost always meant not going back to school at all. Sometimes we'd go to the mall and test the new video games on display until we got kicked out. Other times we'd gorge ourselves on fast food junk and bullshit like most normal brothers do. Then there were times when we wouldn't do anything, just slack off in our cousin's comic book shop and indulge our shared love for gory horror books.
I miss those times. I never thought they'd end. I should have known that below the surface, behind the smiles and laughs, that Christian was seething and hoped against hope that I'd just drop dead so that the spotlight would be on him. I just never realized why exactly he felt that way until recently. Sure, I noticed the enraged looks he'd give me all the time, but I attributed that to simple jealousy and an inability to approach me about it.
Now that I look back on it, maybe he had a right to be angry. I was the first born, the special one. Christian was supposed to be a twin, but freak complications left my new baby sister stillborn and Christian fighting for his life. I used to joke that he probably choked her with the umbilical cord in the womb because she was going to be born first. Wrong of me, I know, but it wouldn't have surprised me if I'd been right. Christian wasn't expected to live for more than a week, but that was only the first time he laughed at someone who told him what he was and wasn't supposed to do.
So I had a baby brother. We're two years apart, but sometimes it's more like ten years or two months. We finish each other's sentences half the time. The reason we make such a good tag team is because we have an uncanny ability to know what the other is thinking at any given moment. It happens freakishly often and entirely too much for my tastes, but Christian's always thought it was neat. Grandma Edna says I should have been his twin.
Then there are times when I think the only thing we have in common is the color of our hair – and that's only on a day when I notice I need to have mine highlighted again. I'm generally reserved and keep to myself, but I do appreciate a good joke now and then. If I don't like someone or something they're doing, I'll tell them to their face. Christian, meanwhile, is outgoing and sometimes obnoxious, practically has a nervous breakdown every time a carefully worked plan goes wrong because he's so damn high-strung, and is always conniving and scheming. I don't think it's so much that he's cowardly, because I've never known my brother to back down from a fight once challenged, but if he can wreak havoc with someone's mind, he'll do it.
When we were little, I was really the handful that caused our parents so many problems. If there was trouble to be found, they could rest assured that I'd be the one to find it. I don't think there was a peewee league I wasn't on. Basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, volleyball . . . I played everything. Christian, having an unfortunately weak heart and pair of lungs due to being born two months early, was relegated to porch patrol, as some of my teammates cruelly termed it. He couldn't run or even overexert himself at all without collapsing in a wheezing, coughing heap. I felt sorry for him, but there really wasn't anything I could do. I wasn't going to become a couch potato just to make him feel better. I tried to incorporate him into my active life as much as I could – I brought him to games with me, took him to watch the 'Leafs play a few times and even bought him souvenirs. He resented my charity, though, simply because I was using the spectator role as a luxury and that was all he *could* do.
He started school and I'll admit I was terrified for him. I knew how heartless kids could be, and despite our differences, he was my little brother and I loved him. I wanted to protect him, whether he wanted that protection or not. If he got into it with a bully I'd back him up. If someone picked on him, I returned it in kind but twice as bad. I didn't understand then that I was only setting myself up for rejection and betrayal.
As I got older, girls took prominence in my life more than sports, and eventually I ended up dropping all my team sports and pursued a dream of wrestling instead. Christian, never happy to settle for being the weaker brother, immediately followed, flying in the face of the doctors, his parents, and everyone else. I tried reasoning with him and telling him that he'd only end up hurting himself if he went through with this insane desire to be some huge wrestling superstar, but Christian was as stubborn as ever. He followed me with my dream and went after it with a passionate desire I'd never seen him have before. Oddly enough, he was far more successful than I think either of us had anticipated, bad health and all. Every pain in his chest and every gasp drove him on that much stronger.
One night we had a show for an indy circuit we were both involved in and put on a helluva ladder match. He came backstage and everyone was slapping him on the back, congratulating him for the awesome job and his shiny new title. He tracked me down and gave me that dopey grin of his seconds before I pulled him into a hug. I could see he was incredibly proud of himself, and even while I was a little upset that he'd upstaged my own match earlier that night, I was happy to see he'd finally found something he was good at and he liked doing. That was also about the time his breathing became troubled and he collapsed in my arms, immediately unconscious and taking shallow, choking gasps for air. He came to about twenty minutes later in the locker room with a trainer holding his left eye open to shine a flashlight in it. The trainer, though not a doctor, made it clear that Christian had no business being in the ring in his condition, but as he's proven time and time again, tell him not to do something and he'll go after it with twice as much determination.
I prayed for the longest time that he'd listen to all of us and just go after a safer career. You can see how that turned out.
So we ended up in the WWF, in a business with people we'd idolized since childhood. But as always, his jealousy came through and we started falling apart. I was taller. I was bigger. My voice was better. My hair was fucking blonder. My name came first – it was always *Edge* and Christian or *E* and C. Even in our most successful moments he was forced to take second place, always a half step behind me but behind nevertheless. I never meant for it to be that way. He didn't believe me then and he doesn't now, but I can't help that.
Maybe I shouldn't have ignored all the hints like I did. I wish I could say that I didn't see the turn coming, but part of me did. I just didn't want to admit that my brother hated me. We loved each other and would never do anything to hurt each other, or so I continued to tell myself every time I had the slightest clue he was only going to end up turning on me. At the time, I thought it was true. Strange as it sounds, deep down I still believe that. Christian's a nice guy, just that he has poor judgment and he's a very impulsive person when he's angry. He's much too smart to act without prior consideration to the matter, but that all becomes null and void when he gets mad. It's an unusual combination to find in a person, but that's my baby brother for you. Always the enigma.
Mom was crushed when she found out we were fighting for real. She's a mom, so she's used to her sons fighting all the time about stupid shit like we always have, but then she realized it was serious and we weren't planning on making up anytime soon. I can't count how many times she called me wanting to know if I was talking to him yet, and from what I've overheard him say she's been doing the same to him. And, because we can't stand to be within fifty feet of each other now, we're essentially punishing her, too, since that rules out any possibility of us being in the same room together with her.
It's just sad that the first time in months we come together as a family is at a funeral.
It was one of my rare days off, and I was spending it in some annoying, flashy club, buying Matt drinks and letting him drown his sorrows in whatever I set in front of him. His latest fling had dumped him – for a second time, no less – and Jeff was understandably tired of dealing with Matt's inability to understand why insisting all his ex-girlfriends move in together is a bad idea, so that left me to babysit him and keep him from drinking himself into a coma. I wasn't doing a good job of that, but at least I was providing him with someone to talk to. I can justify my being there with that, but I'm pretty sure he would have had a riveting conversation with a shot glass if no one had been there to hear.
I was ready to reach across the table and smack him in the head when my cell phone chirped from its spot where I put it on the table when I sat down. Before I could reach it, Matt grabbed it and fumbled drunkenly for the mouthpiece, grinning like a moron at me when he realized it was built into the base of the phone. He answered it and got this look on his face like . . . I don't even know how to explain it, but he pushed the phone across the table and just stared at me. That's never a good sign when he's drunk and still manages to keep some of his common sense intact.
Mom was on the other end of the line, though I could just barely make out anything she said because of the all the noise in the club and the background activity from where she was. I could tell she'd been crying, and I figured it was another guilt trip about how we should act like brothers and blah blah blah, same garbage. When she finally regained the ability to talk, she said that she'd tried to get a hold of Christian but never did, then asked me to come home. Not my favorite way to spend a day off. I figured that since we were in Michigan anyway it wouldn't kill me to go see what was going on. God knows I wasn't expecting half our entire family packed into our living room.
Well, everyone except Christian, but I hadn't expected him to be there anyway.
Mom was a wreck, clutching Aunt Paula's hand and rambling on and on about something I couldn't hear. It was a little unnerving that as soon as she saw me come through the door she lost it and started crying twice as hard. She and Paula led me to sit down with them on the couch, and then I've got a dozen people all trying to talk to me at once, none of them making sense. All I heard was a fast blur of words in different voices all from different faces – dead, heart attack, this morning, Dad.
Dad.
I don't think it really hit me until then what they were trying to break easily to me. Granted, Dad and I were never especially close, but he was still my dad and I still loved him. I sat there staring at the carpet for the longest time before Mom squeezed my hand and asked when Christian was showing up. I lied and told her 'in a little bit.' I figured he'd at least be a decent person and come around for his father's death.
As it turned out, I wasn't exactly wrong. He did show up 'in a little bit', depending on what your definition of that is. With Mom trying to get everything together and no one else in the family really wanting the job, it fell on me to deliver the eulogy at the funeral. Far from a pleasant experience. Nevertheless, there I was in front of everyone, finishing off my speech, when I saw him walk through the doors, losing himself in the back of the little chapel like I'd never seen him. Not that I'm as heartless as I sound, but Christ, he looked like shit. Even from as far away as we were I could see his hair was a mess, his clothes were wrinkled, his face was shallow save for a few red splotches here and there. I'd forgotten how close he and Dad were, and I felt a sudden twinge of guilt for not checking up on him.
But then again, I couldn't force myself to be too sympathetic; I was the one having to give the eulogy.
I worked past the lump in my throat and finished with a line that came from nowhere. It wasn't written on my paper, and I have no idea why I said it at all other than I recalled it from twelfth grade lit class and I thought it fit. "Parting is all we know of Heaven, and all we need of Hell." Or at least I'm hoping that's what it was. It probably wasn't, but I've never claimed to be a literary genius.
Later that night we were once again gathered in my house. Mom was still having trouble coming to terms with all of it, Paula was still holding her hand, and we were . . . us. Making mean comments to each other when we thought no one else was listening. Glaring. I don't even remember what it was, but I know he said something that set me off. We started arguing louder and louder until the whole house got quiet, everyone just standing around watching us.
"God, Christian, why don't you just fucking grow up already?" I screamed, ignoring Mom's yelling for us to stop. "I've been hearing this from you for so long now, and I'm sick of it! Can't we just get along for a day? Can't you even let our dad be put in the damn ground before you start your shit with me again?" He winced at that one. I should have stopped there. I know I should have. I knew *then* that I should have, but he's not the only one with poor judgment. I closed in on him like some predator moving in for the kill. "I wish Anna would have been the one to live, not you."
I swear, I thought he was going to burst into tears at that one. He didn't like talking about Anna, his twin that never was. That one was out of line, and I honestly don't have any idea where it came from. The damage was done, though; he drew back and stared at me with his eyes watering, mouth working like he wanted to say something but unable to get anything out but little tiny whimpering sounds. He knows how to make me feel like a jerk, that's for sure.
That was when Paula screamed at us both to get out of the house. I don't know why she yelled at him, since I was the one who was causing most of the trouble, but we both complied, both heading in different directions. He took off on foot, heading along the path we used to take all the time to get into a little park by our house, and I just sat down on the porch steps and stared at my shoes. I don't know how long I sat like that, just watching the tips of my boots as if I expected them to run away from me. I do know it was a good two hours before I registered just how very cold it was outside and that Christian had taken off without telling anyone where he was going.
But that was okay. I knew where he was going. I always did. There's this little fountain in the park we used to play around. It's got a concrete barrier around it, and we always used to test our balance by walking along it. If we fell in . . . well, we got wet. I figured that'd be the best place to look first.
And that would bring us to where we are now. I'm standing here watching him. He's sitting on the barrier, staring down into the water at the base of the fountain but not really paying attention to it. I don't know if he knows I'm behind him, but I don't think he particularly cares. He probably doesn't want anything to do with me, and I can't blame him.
Not having much of anything to say besides the dumb "I'm sorry" line, I sit down beside him and meet his gaze in the reflection of the water. We sit like this for a few minutes, just watching the other in the water and not moving as if afraid if we did the reflection would vanish and we'd be stuck in some horribly awkward moment forever. The silence gets to be too much for me, though, and I push my hair back from my face.
"Christian, I'm sorry, man. You know I didn't mean any of that."
He doesn't answer at first. I wish he'd say something, anything. I wish he'd hit me. I want him to make some kind of move to show he's even still with me here. I don't care if he tells me I'm a bastard and he never wants to see me again if it makes him talk to me. He's never at a loss for words, and it's really creeping me out to see him so . . . cold. Empty.
Dead.
I shake the thought away and reach out to touch his shoulder, but he jerks away from me and turns his head. Yeah, I've really screwed things up this time.
"Chris, it's . . . it's just been really bad the past couple days. I mean, I know it's been really hard on you, too, but I've been trying to keep Mom from falling apart, and –"
"Do you wish I'd died, too?"
I'm stunned at the question, and for a moment all I can do is stare back at him and blink like an idiot. "No! Christian, of course I don't. You're my brother. I love you, no matter how much we fight. You know that."
"No," he corrects, looking back to the water, "no, I don't." He turns back to look at me, smiling this little half-smile that breaks my heart because I see that I've broken him this time. "But I forgive you anyway." He holds out his arms for a hug, something he hasn't really done since we were little kids, and it makes me smile. I press a kiss against his head and wrap him up in a hug, wishing I didn't have to ever let go because I know as soon as I do we'll just start fighting again.
"I love you, Christian."
He doesn't respond immediately, and when he does his voice is quiet and shaky, both of which are very uncommon to hear from him. "I love you too, Edge."
A loud noise sounds, and there's a sudden sharp pain in my gut. I try to reach for it but I can't seem to force my hands to move. I look up and he's staring at me, and it's the last thing I remember seeing before falling over backwards into the water. Thankfully it's shallow, but I don't really think that would help matters right now anyway.
It's all turning red around me and I can't figure out why. I can't figure out why there's a gun on the barrier and why my insides feel like they're burning with fire and why Christian's crying and why is the fucking water red? It's not supposed to be red. I'm not supposed to be here, I'm supposed to be sitting on my porch steps waiting for Christian to come back and we can make up like we always do. And then we're going to go help Mom clean up after our guests and pretend like we're one big happy family.
God, it's so cold in here. Why the hell doesn't he pull me up out of this water? Why is he just standing there looking at me like some lost puppy? Oh, he's coming over here. I guess he figured out I lost my balance and he's going to help me up, just like we always did when we were little.
I can't really feel much right now for some reason, but I'm aware of him lifting my head into his lap and pulling my hair back from my face again. I look up into his eyes, realizing for the very first time how very much like mine they are. It's hard to understand what he's saying because everything's sort of blurring together, but he's barely said five words the whole night. I owe it to him to listen now.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, petting my hair like he did when we were little and he was scared. "I had to, Edge, I'm sorry. I want it to just be *me*, not Edge and Christian, and this is the only way I could be certain it'd happen." He pauses, and I wince from his tears running down his cheeks and falling into my eyes. They burn like the pain in my stomach, but I know he didn't cause that. We're brothers. We love each other. We'd never hurt each other intentionally. "Don't you see, Edge? I only ever wanted you to be proud of me."
But I am proud of him! I've never told him, but I am. I'd tell him now but my mouth doesn't wanna work right. It just keeps moving up and down and making these little noises I don't remember telling it to make. It's hard to breathe. The fire in my gut is moving up, settling in my lungs, making me gasp for air, and all Christian does is sit there crying over me. I wish he wouldn't. I don't like it when he cries.
"Say hi to Dad and Anna for me, okay?" He asks with this tiny voice that's as pathetic as his crying. I try to reach up to touch his face, to tell him everything's alright, but I still can't move my arms. I can't move at all. The world's fading at the corners of my eyes, pulling in on itself and collapsing and I'm convinced it's the end of the universe. This is how it ends – not with a bang or a whimper but in my brother's arms, surrounded by water that shouldn't be red and covered in Christian's tears. I'm watching him, hoping he'll get his nerves together and stop bawling like a baby, but he's getting so dark and far away. He's talking, but I can't hear him. Seconds pass and he becomes a little pinhole of light, the only thing I can see now, and I'm terrified. I reach out to grab the light and pull myself back through, because my brother's vanishing and I've never done anything without him and I'm so scared. I don't want to go on to do anything without him.
Then the pinhole fades like an old television set once it's turned off, and there's nothing but blackness. Anywhere I look, everywhere I turn – though I'm standing still – there's just blackness. I wish Christian would come back and help me out of the water. It's cold in here.
But just as the thought crosses my mind, I realize I don't feel cold anymore. I don't feel anything. The pain's gone, but so are his arms, his tears, the fountain.
This is what it's like to be truly alone.