Since the first 'chapter' was just the Preface, and not very long, I decided to upload the real first chapter right away too. I don't know how frequent I'll upload, it'll depend on the response. If you're still reading, thanks!

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CHAPTER 1

Frank Hardy shot up in bed with a gasp, panting and drenched in sweat. He flitted his gaze wildly around him, expecting a different scene to be in front of him than his dark bedroom as he heaved in air to his desperate lungs.

After a few moments when his pounding heart had stilled slightly and the fiery images in his mind had fled, the dark-haired boy took a slower, shaky breath and ran his hand through his damp hair. Like every night for three months, he'd relived his brother's death, and had woken up just as it had happened.

The clock next to his bed said 2:11 AM, and he knew he wouldn't be falling asleep again tonight. Frank buried his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes, which were already tearing up. He couldn't live like this. He was afraid to sleep, to close his eyes, for every time he did he saw Joe's face, just as it had been seconds before he'd died.

Frank stumbled out of the van the instant it stopped, having already noted that the old, abandoned house was on fire. The blazing flames stood out harshly against the night sky. He understood the abductors had lured him here to probably fall into their trap, but he didn't care—he couldn't risk his little brother's life for his own safety.

He frantically searched the glowing windows, trying to find any sign of him. "Joe!" he called out, wondering if he was even here. Finally he caught sight of the blond-haired boy in a second story window, obviously secured somehow and unable to move much, looking out at him with desperate eyes, shouting something he couldn't hear.

Knowing what was coming, Frank shook his head, trying to push the memories back before he had to experience the whole thing again, but he didn't try very hard, already aware it was pointless. He could barely keep the tears from spilling down his face as he let the memories wash over him, just as they had moments before in his sleep, each wave becoming more painful.

Just as Frank was about to sprint forward to try to get to Joe, something crashed into the back of his head and he saw stars. He staggered to one knee, immediately on the defensive, though his vision blurred and his head spun. The assailant whom he had yet to see kicked him in the back and the Hardy brother went down. Before he could attempt to stand himself and fight back, his mind screaming that he had to get Joe out of there, the man grabbed him by the back of his jacket and hauled him up before forcing the boy to face him. Though his vision was still spotting and the street light threw his attacker's face into shadow, he immediately recognized Garth Crowe, the ex-convict they had been after. He vaguely caught the sound of something metallic hitting the ground—the crowbar that had hit him.

He shuddered as a shiver ran down his body. Every time he dredged up the face of the man, no...animal, that had done this, he was filled with a white-hot rage. The man had wanted revenge on the Hardys, Fenton in particular. Well, he had gotten it. Frank could not think of anything worse than taking Joe away from the world, from his family, from him. His younger brother with a heart of gold had been the happiest, most carefree, if sometimes impulsive, person he had ever known. God, he loved that kid.

The huge criminal gripped the front of Frank's coat, practically lifting him off his feet, and growled in his face, "Maybe now you and your father will learn to stay out of things that don't concern you." In the background Frank heard the sirens of police and an ambulance rapidly approaching as he fought fiercely to stay conscious.

The elder boy would do anything for his little brother to be alive again, and the thought laden with guilt that plagued him day and night was It should have been me. If nothing else, this he was sure about; if he could turn back time, he would've taken Joe's place.

Earlier that same day, Frank burst into his father's office, knowing he was doing research on their case while he and Joe had been following up on a lead. Fenton jerked his head up and took in his elder son's expression, realizing something was wrong at once. "Dad, they took Joe."

He slowly moved his legs so they were hanging off the bed and settled his feet on the floor. He leaned forward and rested his now thin arms on his now bony knees, and dipped his head covered in now dull and unkempt hair.

Today was Frank's nineteenth birthday.

That realization overwhelmed him for some reason, and darkened his thoughts even more. He didn't feel any different and he didn't care. The one thing he wanted was impossible to have, and nothing could change that. What would have been his brother's eighteenth birthday three and a half weeks ago had been the second worst day of Frank's life. He had mourned the idea that his little brother would never be eighteen, officially an adult, and the nightmares had been more unbearable than ever that night.

Now the thought that he would move on to be a year older while Joe remained forever at seventeen overcame him with such feelings of deep sorrow that he felt he could never return to an existence even close to what he had had before. He would never be able to go through a birthday without thinking of his brother, frozen in adolescence. Never again could he envision his life having any light in it, just an endless, smothering blackness.

Hit with a wave of nausea and a need to get a drink of water, he wiped his face and gingerly stood up. Frank sighed wearily as his eyes adjusted to the darkness and he looked down at himself to see how loosely his clothes fit. In the past three months he had barely slept more than a few hours per night, maximum, and had barely eaten, hadn't worked out or exercised, played any sports...he ate and drank what he had to so he didn't collapse, but that was all.

The once-athletic boy's 6'1 frame—though he never had been as muscled as his younger brother—was now nearly skin and bones, his skin pale. He had probably lost close to thirty pounds, mostly in muscle. In addition, he never went anywhere, had shut out his friends until they had given up on trying to console him, barely said a word to anyone, even his parents. He was grateful it was the summer months and he wasn't made to go to school, to bear all the heavy, sympathetic stares he'd had to endure amid the final weeks of school a couple months ago.

Frank had always been the more logical, more rational of the two Hardy boys, but without his brother...he had completely fallen apart. He was no longer himself, just an empty shell of what he used to be. Without his brother, he just didn't see any point in any of it, and couldn't force himself to care. Why should he bother himself with things such as eating full meals or running or grades or talking when Joe would never even breathe again?

Shaking his head again, Frank silently walked to his doorway, forcing himself not to let his eyes move towards the door of the bathroom that connected his and Joe's room. He already knew what effect that had on him, and couldn't bear much more emotional assault at this point without collapsing under the bleakness of it all.

Frank paced as he waited for his father to finish talking to Ezra Collig. He glanced at the door as he could hear his dad shouting in the next room on his cell phone, undoubtedly disagreeing with something the Chief had said, though the boy knew it was only because he was worried about Joe and wanted action as soon as possible.

He was just passing by the home phone in his circular path around the living room when it suddenly rang, and he jumped, startled. He quickly grabbed it, hoping it was somehow Joe calling to say he'd escaped. The young man's heart tightened and his face paled as he heard a deep voice. "If you ever want to see Joseph alive again, come to this address within thirty minutes..."

This sudden recollection, though common for Frank now, nevertheless caught him by surprise and he faltered in his pace. He leaned against the door frame and breathed heavily, choking back the guilt and tears he could feel burning behind his eyes. How could he do this? It seemed anything and everything would cause a memory to be triggered. They came enough on their own, without the help of simple objects or random thoughts.

Within another minute or two Frank had suppressed his emotions enough to be able to walk again, and he stepped forward into the hallway and down the stairs until he made his way to the kitchen where he hovered there, unmoving in the dark.

Every night, in his unconscious mind, he either relived the memories of the few hours before Joe's death, and then the actual happening in maddening slowness. Or his imagination would conjure up something more horrible, his brother calling out to him, asking why he didn't help him, save him, which only cemented the elder brother's feelings of helplessness and guilt.

But the worst he had experienced had been on the night of his brother's birthday—he would never forget—when he hadn't been able to close his eyes for more than a few minutes before his blackened mind brought up images of his brother burning right in front of him, pleading and screaming for Frank to make it stop, while Frank stood rooted to the spot unable to respond, move, or look away... Frank, save me! Why don't you help me? Please, make it stop, it hurts so much! Frank! Frank...Frank...Frank! It tore Frank's heart more with every beseeching cry.

He cast away the torment viciously; he didn't need this, not when being awake was his only refuge.

He knew his parents were concerned about him, didn't like that he shunned everyone, barely ate, and never smiled anymore. They urged him to see—or at least call—Callie, his girlfriend (though to be honest he wasn't sure what they were anymore); he hadn't spoken to her in at least a month, probably more. They said she was worried about him. They had also tried to convince him to see a counselor, but he couldn't do that either. He knew that their son's death had been just as hard on his parents, but they at least were finally able to come to terms with it, just like his friends had. Nobody understood, could ever understand what he had lost. He'd lost more than his little brother, he'd lost his partner, his best friend. Plans of his second year at college, a career in stopping criminals, of the whole future were now left unknown.

He'd wanted revenge at first. Frank had wanted nothing more than to take down Garth Crowe, to lock him up forever and avenge his brother's death that shouldn't have happened. But working on the case forced him to think about Joe, and the fact that he was dead, gone, slapped him in the face every time he woke up to another day of vigorous research. So he gave that up, unable to face the pain any more, choosing instead cold numbness, futile though it was. Now, even though his father still spent every waking hour trying to find the man that had torn this family apart, without Joe the despairing young man couldn't bear to even think about going back to detective work. Not ever.

"Frank...this isn't healthy, and it doesn't help anyone. You need to get out of this room, you need to see your friends...you need to eat." His aunt Gertrude's voice seemed to drift to him like through a fog. Fenton's sister, who lived with their family now to help out, gazed sternly at her nephew, but he just stared through her with dark, empty eyes. This shook her for a split second before she steadied herself and continued more gently. "This is hard on all of us, Frank. But do you really think Joe would want you to-"

The sound of Joe's name cut through the fog and caused a sharp stab of pain to shoot through Frank. "Don't. Just don't," the boy said coldly, his eyes hardening. He turned away, a clear dismissal.

Completely forgetting about getting a drink of water, he suddenly had this unsettling feeling in his gut that he had somewhere to be, and he knew it had to do with Joe. He had to get out of here, somehow distract himself from musings that would only consume him deeper in the depression that had hung over him for the last three months.

The escaped convict, hearing the nearby sirens, gave the dazed young detective one last shake before throwing him hard to the ground. The impact knocking the air out of him, he wheezed, trying to pull in a breath and watching through bleary vision as squad cars pulled up and surrounded them in a semi-circle. Officers as well as Fenton jumped out, guns at the ready. Frank saw Crowe pull out a gun of his own and point it at the prone boy, while in his other hand he held up what could only be a detonator.

"Any one of you makes a move, and I shoot 'im, then I blow the other sky-high!" Crowe cocked the gun and started backing up, waving the detonator threateningly and still keeping the pistol directed at Frank, who had yet to catch his breath and was trying not to black out. He had one thought: Gotta get to Joe...

Now unaware of anything else at the moment, he slowly raised himself onto his elbow and moved his eyes towards the window where he had spotted Joe. He saw him again, though his brother wasn't near the window anymore, and it looked like he was grappling with a person whom the boy outside couldn't see.

His lungs taking in air again and his vision steadily clearing, Frank's frantic brown eyes locked with Joe's worried and distressed sapphire ones moments before flames leaped up in front of the younger Hardy, blocking him from view. "Joe..." Frank rasped.

Only fifteen seconds had passed since Crowe had pulled out the gun, but it felt like an hour. None of the police had made a move yet for fear of Frank being shot or the house being blown up.

Frank was lurching to his feet in preparation to run to the house, oblivious to all else until Crowe's evil laugh reached him through his hazy concentration, sounding distant, and then in sharp contrast, a deafening boom. To his horror, as the ground shook and he fell to the ground again, the house that trapped his brother went up in a blast of flames and smoke and shrapnel.

No...This couldn't be happening...

Frank leaped up and blindly ran in the direction of the blazing wreckage, but strong arms grabbed him before he got too far. He struggled against the iron grip in desperation. "No, JOE!" he gasped before screaming, "NOOOOOO!"

He didn't know how long he fought before realizing it was hopeless, and he suddenly became weak and stopped resisting. He sunk to his knees, sobbing out his brother's name as the arms of his father, now shaking, wrapped around him, along with a cold, suffocating darkness that he knew would remain inside him forever. "Joe...Joe..."

Joe...he was gone. Frank wasn't a big brother anymore.

In all the confusion and chaos, Crowe slipped smugly away.

The teen exhaled a heavy, choked breath, his whole body trembling with emotion. That had been the worst minute, the worst second of his life, and his tortured mind slammed him with it every time he slept, and he'd always wake up with a gasp, or even shouting his brother's name some nights. And he always wondered why. Why hadn't he been able to feel it? He'd thought—since he and his brother had been so close that they'd always been able to sense when the other was in danger or needed help—that he would have felt something more, something other than this deep, fathomless emptiness that now filled all of his body and mind. That was it; he felt nothing. Nothing other than a grief and loneliness so great it knocked him flat, and a jagged hole in his heart that was incurable.

Frank finally succumbed to his mental anguish and let the tears flow silently. He wandered into the dark living room, lost and unsure of what to do, though something still gnawed at him, something trying to make itself known. He absently scanned the room, not sure what he was seeking. His watery gaze caught sight of a reflection—the moonlight hitting a picture frame.

He numbly stepped forward until he was standing in front of the photo, and he picked it up off the table to examine in the light of the moon shining through the window. The light barely gleamed off the dark, bedraggled hair on his bowed head. He sobbed and blinked back fresh tears as he recognized the photo, taken last winter during a skiing trip in the mountains. His mother, Laura, had taken the picture, and it showed Frank and Joe laughing as they teamed up against their father in a snowy wrestling match. They all looked so happy and everything seemed so effortless; everything as it should be. His throat closed up and he carefully set the frame back in its place.

He aimlessly scanned the dim, empty living room. Then it came to him. Closure.

He needed closure. It definitely wouldn't solve everything, not even close. But it would, maybe, help him take a step closer to being better, to dealing with his pain and accepting things could never be the same. He owed at least that much to Joe, who he knew wouldn't want this life for Frank. He wouldn't understand though, Frank grieved. He doesn't know what it's like.

But how? What could he possibly do? The young man wracked his brain, trying to pull something out of his whirling thoughts, and then he remembered. Joe's grave. He had only been there once, on the day of the funeral. And even then he had run out, before they had lowered the casket into the ground along with the remains of Joe. Too young, his own brother...

He glanced at the clock on the wall. 2:40 A.M. It was still the dead of night, but it couldn't wait, not if he didn't want to drive himself crazy first. He now knew where he needed to go, and it had to be now. The cemetery.