A/N: Sorry for the super long wait-time for this chapter! I'm the worst person ever lol. I was planning on detailing their fight in this chapter, but it was already super long and I want to describe it in great detail, so it will have its own chapter .. at some point! Hope you enjoyed, would love to hear some feedback! And a big THANK YOU to everyone who left reviews on the last two chapters, I greatly appreciated each and every one!

"Bye, Zack!" called the boy behind the counter, sounding remarkably cheerful, Zack thought, for just starting a shift at the hellhole they called work. "Have a good night!"

"Bye, you too," Zack replied, sounding significantly less happy than his counterpart. He waved a final time before plowing his way through the front door, noting with pleasure how it slammed resoundingly behind him. I hope it breaks.

Glaring up at the golden arch that was the bane of his existence, Zack began to walk home, turning his back on work. His eight hour shift had done nothing for his sour mood. He was now off and should obviously be feeling a lot more pleased about the situation than he did. But Zack rarely felt happy anymore unless he was under the influence of something – a fact that he would never admit to anyone, simply because of how utterly terrible it sounded.

He was taking his usual route home, and so he never took much notice of his surroundings anymore. But something caused him to pause and glance into the playground, and that's when he saw them.

Blond twin boys, who couldn't be more than five years old, were the only children present at the moment. They so reminded Zack of him and Cody at that age that it took his breath away, and he couldn't help but stop and stare at them. The boys were running around the playground excitedly, exclaiming over each new feature that they discovered. A woman, presumably the boys' mother, looked on from her perch on the bench on the edge of the playground. She glanced down at a magazine laying next to her every once and again, but most of her attention was directed toward the boys.

One of the boys clamoured to the top of a slide eagerly, climbing the ladder with no problem. The other boy hesitated at the bottom and began crying for his mother, who sighed with resignation and stood up. She lifted him to the top with all the patience of a mother accustomed to doing this everyday.

"Nate, honey, why don't you try to climb the ladder?" she suggested gently. "Ben had no trouble with it." Nate, the boy in her arms, shook his head in protest, and she laid him at the top of the slide. Ben, the other boy, had already gone down the slide and was halfway up the ladder once again.

That one's Cody, Zack thought about Nate, almost laughing aloud at how perfectly the boys matched him and his brother. Zack watched with interest as Ben, the braver boy, urged his brother to go down the slide. Nate hesitated, looking down at the ground with fear.

"Let's go together!" Ben suggested, sitting behind his brother and wrapping his arms around him. This seemed to comfort Nate, and with Ben's urging, the two boys came down the slide together.

And that one's me... Zack thought wistfully, watching as both little boys stood up at the bottom of the slide and cheered. Their mother clapped her hands, and both boys beamed up at her proudly. Zack could see the similarities between their mother and his own, too, and suddenly things were hitting a little too close to home. He turned and continued on his trot back to his apartment, trying in vain to dislodge the thoughts which were now swirling through his brain.

He thought of all the times he'd had to comfort Cody in a similar situation. Cody had always been the more cautious of the two; while Zack wouldn't hesitate to jump into anything, Cody had always thought long and hard about what the consequences of his actions would be. Zack could recall quite a few times when he would have to urge his brother to do something that was outside his comfort level.

Memories flooded Zack quite unexpectedly. He remembers five-year-old Cody being scared to ride his bike without training wheels; fast-forward a few years, and Zack remembers eight-year-old Cody afraid to step into water than was any deeper than his waist. Zack remembers these incidents clearly, remembers how he comforted his brother and urged him to take a risk. He told Cody that everything would be okay, and it was. He remembers how Cody finally relented, all the while watching his brother for support. And Zack had been there for him.

Most of all Zack remembers the nights when they were very young, before their parents got divorced. He remembers the fights that would occasionally rage just outside the boys' room, after their parents thought the twins were asleep. Cody would plug his ears and cry into his pillow. Zack would climb into the bed with his brother, and wrap his arm around him, and whisper into his ear that 'everything will be okay, don't worry, Mommy and Daddy will stop screaming soon, I promise everything will be okay.' This would be all Cody needed to hear.

Cody had needed him, once.

Heaving a shuddering sigh, Zack shook his head, hoping that the motion would clear the thoughts that were rattling around his head, as dusty and neglected as cobwebs. It was to no avail. Suddenly Zack wanted to see his brother and mother very badly.

Tears were welling up quite pathetically in Zack's eyes. He thought about how his relationship with Cody had changed over the years; as they'd gotten older, Zack's actions had gone from protective to teasing. Suddenly, it wasn't cool to stand up for the dork who was doing all AP classes and wouldn't ride his bike without wearing a helmet and a pile of knee and shin pads. It was easier to make fun of him. But he hadn't meant it, really. Sure, Cody could be a dweeb, but he was still his brother. And Zack still loved him fiercely – he knew that much.

The last few years of their relationship hadn't been easy. It wasn't like they always fought, but it definitely happened much more frequently. They'd made separate groups of friends, and they'd often been at odds about that; Zack called Cody's friends a bunch of dorks, while Cody argued that it was better than hanging around with the dumb jocks that Zack preferred. They'd even made new 'best friends', although Zack knew that his best best friend would always be Cody, and Cody's him.

And then there'd been the big fight; the fight to end all fights. The one that had changed things for good, the ones that had sent them careening into opposite realms. Cody had catapulted into something great, while Zack...well, Zack had gone the completely opposite route.

Zack had never been great with academics; where his brother excelled, he barely scraped by, and any good marks that he got in school were typically from Cody helping with (or flat-out doing) his assignments. While Cody had about a billion and one opportunities available for him when he graduated high school, Zack did not.

Predictably, Cody got accepted into one of his first choices of schools, Yale. Meanwhile, Zack wasn't even sure where to apply to school, or even if he wanted to. He knew that his parents, especially his mother, wouldn't be pleased if he didn't go to any secondary school, though, so he finally applied to Boston College, where he got accepted into the carpentry program. Zack had enjoyed wood-working when he was in high school, and felt that this was something he could work with. He knew it wasn't a super-fancy, brainiac job like this brother was sure to get, but Zack didn't care. Zack didn't think he was stupid, or anything, but he knew that he didn't have the willpower to try to get some crazy job that would require a bunch of studying. Zack would leave that up to Cody.

They had gone to their separate schools and done their own thing, although they'd still kept in contact everyday. It was definitely an odd feeling, Zack thought, to be without his brother (at least for a long amount of time) for quite literally the first time ever. It wasn't entirely bad, though, Zack had to admit. Although he missed his twin, it was nice to have professors not expect anything from him. In high school, teachers always assumed one of two things about him. Some of them assumed that he was going to be super-smart because they knew Cody was. Others, however, had heard about the 'lazier' twin in advance, and were wary of him before he even stepped into their classrooms. At Boston College, no one was expecting anything of him, because they didn't know who he was, or who Cody was. Zack could be himself, without Cody, which was an altogether new experience for him. Things had been going great, umtil jealousy had reared its ugly head and wrecked it all.

Zack was drawn out of his thoughts when he realized that he was back at his apartment, thankfully. He didn't want to think about this anymore. He didn't want to recall the fight, think about the terrible things he and his brother had said to each other.

Zack wasn't mad at Cody, not anymore. He'd been very angry for a long time, but that anger had long faded to a resigned sort of acceptance. Cody had been right about him. He wouldn't ever do anything with his life. He would forever be a bum living in a shitty little apartment, working at McDonald's for the rest of his life, drinking away his sorrows everytime he got the opportunity. This was his life; he'd come to accept it as such.

He didn't want his mother to see him this way, didn't want Cody to look down on him with the knowledge that he'd been right about Zack, all along. He didn't want his shame thrust upon them.

Zack mixed himself a drink, noting as he did so how his hands were shaking. He settled himself in front of the TV, flicking it on and and mindlessly channel-surfing, waiting for the calming release of his drink. It was going to be another lonely night.