A/N: I began writing this looking outside at the most beautiful thunderstorm, where lightening was striking the street behind my house. It seemed to have calmed me down after a minor episode and made me feel proud again. I love nature. It's so beautiful and powerful.

And apologies for the lateness of the update, I've been planning a novelisation of the game "Heavy Rain" and a novelisation of the Apollo Justice game (imagine Law and Order as a book) and have been diagnosed with a skin condition which has made a bit...embarrassed as of late. Oh and I had a job interview at GAME so was freaking the hell out.

*AHEM* anyways...

She held her head under the water as long as she could. Her exhaling causing a stream of bubbles to spew from her jaw for exactly ten seconds. She threw her head back, gasping for air and coughing, wet strands of hair falling onto her face and sticking.
"It...couldn't be..." She shook her head, caught her breath then plunged her head back into the sink full of ice cold water.

But at least that means...he's alive...but then why...?

She reached into her satchel that hung at her side grasping the CD between her slender fingers and holding it alongside her reflection in the mirror.

She scrambled out the bathroom, almost falling out of the toilet doors, rushing to her desk so she could put her head down. As she lowered her head into her hands her eyes flashed open. There another white envelope sat, no postmark, no handwriting.

"Who delivered this!?" Her head shot up and a colleague walking by stopped to hold her arm.
"Some kid off the street, said someone paid him 20 bucks to put a note in the envelope and deliver it to you, he even told the lady at reception what was on the note, she read it and sealed it and dropped it off up here" the woman replied. "What is it?"
"I'll open it later." She slipped it into her desk drawer.

When she knew she was alone, she ripped the top of the envelope open.

We need to talk, I'll text you.

He was lucky enough to have it all, riding on the back of his mother's success anyway, but his mother was in rehab, and his sister was locked away in her room at home all the time. If it wasn't for that idiot guy she was sleeping with, he wouldn't have known about the situation with her. He lived away from the family home, his love for wild parties didn't bode too well with being at home with a stuffy mother at home most of the time.

So he'd begged, and she had moved him into his own apartment, completely funded by his mother, and his work and school paid for his over obsessive parties in the evenings. One such party had just ended, and he was struggling to lift his head from the pillow with the haze of alcohol induced sickness swirling round in his brain. He groped blindly at the cabinet beside his bed, his hand catching a glass of water and a tube of aspirin, he smiled as he opened the medicine's popper top to get the tablet from inside and dissolve it in the water.

A girl half-dressed in just a bra and underwear was smiling in the doorway, a tray of food clutched tight in her hands.
"I thought you'd be hungry, so I figured I'd make you some breakfast before work." She giggled.
"How did you get in?" He asked as he sat up in the bed.
"I used the key under the mat, I figured I'd check you weren't dead after your partying." She sat on the bed and handed him the tray, which was adorned with pancakes and bacon.
"I'm fine." He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

"Have you spoken to your sister?" She asked as he began to eat, almost half a pancake at a time, with a single strip of bacon curled up inside.
"No, why?" He turned to her trying to polite enough to not spit pancake bits over his lover.
"She called me asking about help for work. You and she were never too interesting in academics, you were just lucky enough to have a good maths brain."
"Gee thanks." He rolled his eyes.
"Well it is true. Anyways, I've got class in an hour." He loved having an older girlfriend, a college student, which came with the bonus of having lots of parties on the campus too. She leaned over and kissed him before scooting off. "I'll be back later." She wrapped her arms around him before heading out the door.

He was up and moving before the mail turned up that day. He opened the mailbox and removed all the junk mail and letters from home and glanced at the boxes stacked up on the table. Amongst them was a small box with his name written on the side.
"When do I ever get packages?" He pulled the box from the pile, tossed it on top of the notepad he had full of maths sketches and began to climb the stairs.

He finished the last of his sketches and checked his laptop, noting he didn't have any classes or lectures until the evening, so popped open the top of the box addressed to him. He slid the disc out onto his lap.

-x-x-

"Now on to the prodigal son of the Justice family." Apollo coughed.
"Apollo."
"Mikey." Apollo was quick to say his foster brother's name. "You were the genius one, compared to your sister anyways, you never had to try at maths, and it was amazing."
"Uh...well..." He blushed a little.
"I hope university is well for you, I know you'll know about me by now."
"Indeed I do."

"I'm going to be straight with you, you're smart enough to understand, this disc is not the first disc to be made, and your mother and sister have already received one just like this." Mikey felt the anger swell inside of him, so this was the reason for his mother checking into rehab. "I hope the effect was not all bad."
"You bastard!" He suddenly felt a calm wash over him. "Although you're helping Sasha at least..."

"You were unique, in your mother's and our dad's eyes. A genius and a sports fan, the ideal thing to make both of them proud. You excelled in mathematics like you were born a calculator, and you were excellent at hockey from a young age. I hated you growing up, I guess all children feel jealous though." Apollo shrugged. "But you were also a cruel child, behind all that talent."

Guilt washed through him, he could see where Apollo was going.

"You ritualistically destroyed me, you and your sister. I covered for you both, especially when you were older and going to those dodgy parties to take pills and drink and sleep with as many girls as you could." Apollo snarled. "And yet both of you made my life hell."
"The party was a one time thing..." He suddenly found himself to be rather meek and shy.

"When I was younger, it was almost as if you both knew what would make me happy. It's like you were both Kevin from the book We Need to Talk About Kevin" Knowing he had never read the novel, Apollo waited a bit before continuing. "You both saw the weaknesses in me, both took joy in ruining what I loved and took pride in, but you did some particularly nasty things."
"I know you didn't forgive me." He hung his head low, as if he was a young puppy being scalded for chewing the furniture.

"Do you remember that book collection I had? When I was about twelve?" Apollo began. "You two spiteful brats didn't understand the pride I had in that collection of five books, five books in a series. You two had never seen what it was like in foster home, or a children's home, where you were forced to share everything!" There was acid in Apollo's voice, but after a moment of quiet, it had returned to that disquieting calm Mikey had been afraid of. "I'd been in that home for as long as I could remember, and I had squirreled away and gathered up those books as a personal treasure. When I was out one day at school what did you do?"
"I threw them into the fireplace." Mikey winced.
"You fucking burned them!" His anger exploded from nowhere. "You destroyed something I had set my heart on all those years, a focus of mine!"

"I know!" Mikey cried out. "But it was just cause...you and dad were..."
"I know me and your dad were so much closer, in fact, he isn't going to receive one of these discs. I tried to record him one, but he hadn't bought me no harm, if anything, he was the one that kept on the path I was on, he took me and fled from your harpy mother and you two drains on my life. He raised me, he inspired me to go to college, not forced me like your mother did you." It felt like a stake to his heart, but Mikey knew Apollo was right, no matter how hard he had fought his mother, he was going to college whether he wanted to or not.

"Then there was the ultimate betrayal..." Apollo's voice fell eerily from the disc, and Mikey approached his CD player with caution, checking to see if the CD hadn't got jammed or suddenly stopped. "You stole her from me."

"You never sold me out for that man." Mikey could already feel the tears from the shock of recalling the events Apollo was about to refer to.

-x-x-

He hadn't seen Apollo for weeks, and despite everything else he had done to him as they had grown, this was the one thing he truly regretted. He crossed a line, he had slept with Apollo's friend, some girl from the children's home where he had grown up. He did it purely out of spite.

He had no love for her, he hadn't even asked her name.

Yet she knew him, and that was why he was there, hunkered down in the car, watching her. She was alone, out on the lawn on her cellphone. He had to stop her telling his mother, or worse the press who he was, it could ruin his mother's career and strip him of his college scholarship.

He knew he was drunk when he lost his temper and hit the accelerator, he knew he'd probably popped a few pills too.

But she was there, over his hood. And he had seen Apollo rush towards her to pull her out of the way, if he had been a few seconds later, it'd have been him over the hood instead. Mikey had never seen so much blood, and he could feel all the alcohol and pills swirling in his system, desperate to escape for air.

The rest was a blur. He felt as he was pulled from the car and slapped. Hard. He felt Apollo crying, and being angry and yet, he also felt Apollo carry him away from the wreckage. He had just killed his friend, and yet Apollo carried him away.

-x-x-

"You were sixteen, still had a whole life ahead of you, and it was enough to stop you doing pills and alcohol again. I miss her..." Mikey fell into a deep brooding silence.
"I still remember something you said the following day as you stood in the door at the hospital..." Mikey wimpered.

"You don't deserve what I did, you bastard. My friend is dead because of you, and if you needed any reason to change you lowlife piece of scum remember you murdered my friend and made my life hell, and I was still a good enough human being to stop you destroying your life." Both Mikey and Apollo's voice said in harmony.

Then, after reeling off his goodbyes, and leaving his usual instructions, the recording ended, and suddenly the room began to shrink around Mikey, leaving him broken, crying and suffering.

"H-hello?" The shy voice answered the phone.
"Hey sis." He sniffled. "Fancy some company. I uh...I got one of Apollo's discs."

-x-x-x-x-xx-

The text had simply given her an address, a time and a message saying the door would be open.

She felt a nervous lump in her throat as she pressed her hand to the door of the dingy looking apartment. Of all the places in the world, Apollo had chosen here to hide.

The shadow in the windowsill was what immediately caught her eyes, and she cautiously pressed the door shut behind her, as soon as the resounding click echoed across the hollow room a pair of hazel eyes shone bright in the gloom of the apartment.
"A-Apollo?" She asked, nervously backed against the door, as if it was a trap. Suddenly, as if a flash, the figure was before her. "A-Apollo!"

And as if by instinct, she punched him in the face.

He landed on the floor with a loud thud, which reverberated through the floor below.

"You lying bastard." She glanced down at her swollen knuckles and then to his bruised face, before panicking and rushing to grab a damp cloth.

By the time he came back to consciousness, the smell of the room around her had gotten into Ema's nose. Coagulated and old blood had a distinct scent, and no matter how often she tried, it made her wretch. It was the true reason behind her Snackoo eating habit, at least the chewing sensation gave her something new to focus on, so she wouldn't vomit whenever at a crime scene.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." She dabbed at his eye once more and he winced and pulled away.
"It's the least I deserve." His voice was lower, his skin and eyes had lost their glow, and she could tell he was in no fit state.
"Apollo!" She sobbed as she wrapped her arms around him and pushed her head into his chest. "W-why?"
"Because being me has always been tough, and being famous is the bane of life." He threw his head back against the door and placed a hand against her head and held her close as he inhaled her scent and felt her cry.

So yeah, sorry for the lateness and all just stuff and life and stuff ugh. I do miss writing when I don't get a chance to sit down and let the creative juices flow. Anyways, as always leave reviews (positive and negative) favourite and follow :)