Note: This story has multiple endings. If you want Sean to sacrifice his brother's freedom to stay in this current life, please read on. If you want Sean to restore the original timeline to give Daniel his freedom, please go to the next chapter.

Sacrifice Daniel Ending - Cicatrices

Sean stands in his front yard and stares at his sneakers he bought a few weeks ago. It's like that old song his dad likes:

Should I stay or should I go now?

If I go there will be trouble,

But if I stay it will be double.

It feels like fighting himself. He imagines his own hands around his throat, pushing himself beneath the surface of a lake as the water burns his lungs. Dad sets a hand on his shoulder, and he lets himself be led to the door. In the house, Sean flips through the sketchbook at the kitchen counter, and Dad cooks frozen french fries and homemade chicken tenders with a bit of Mexican seasoning. It's a baby meal, but it was Sean's typical lunch when he was little.

The stool beside Sean creaks as Dad sits down and slides a plate in front of him. Sean walks his father through every shitty thing he wrote about in the sketchbook, but the chicken tenders taste like comfort, like being safe—and in that other life, Sean forgot what safe was.

When he reaches the last page, the drawing of Daniel in the motel near Away, Sean removes the photo paper-clipped to the top. In the photo, he and his brother are shirtless; Daniel has the wolf tattoo sharpied onto his chest. They're flexing, despite their total lack of muscles, but they're happy.

Sean didn't think he could be happy.

But Toby makes him happy. So does his job. And then there is Dad. This has been the best day of Sean's life, and if he goes back, he will never have a day like this again.

The plate slides across the counter as Sean pushes it with the back of his hand, and he lays his head in his arms. "I am a bad brother," he sighs. "Because I do not want to go back."

Dad's hands feel heavy as they rest on Sean's shoulders. "Daniel would feel like a bad brother if you went back," Dad says. "He wants you to be happy."

"How can I be happy leaving my hermanito to rot in jail?"

With a grip strong from tightening bolts on engines, Dad squeezes Sean's shoulder. "When I left Puerto Lobos after my parents passed," he says slowly, "people said I was wrong, that I should stay. However, though he did not want me to go, my best friend Eduardo told me that if I left Puerto Lobos, then I had to make my new life worth it. And, though I have known more heartbreak than I knew I could bear, my life here—especially you and Daniel—has been worth it. There is bravery in living a good life, too, mijo."

Sean's vision blurs as he raises his head, but he blinks, and the sketchbook comes into focus with the douchey shirtless selfie beside it. Sean picks up the sketchbook, and gripping it feels like he is back on the road, back on the run. "If I stay," Sean says, "I have to stop staring at the past. I can't keep holding on to it."

He flips through the book one more time, lingering on his sketches of Brody. Claire and Stephen. Finn, Cassidy, Jacob and the gang in Humboldt. Of Joey. Mom and everyone in Away. And, of course, Daniel.

Everyone who was a part of the story that he wants to write himself out of.

And then he shuts the cover, pulls his lighter from his pocket, and heads outside.

# # #

In their driveway, Sean's palm sweats against the Puerto Lobos lighter. He lights it, but he cannot bring the sketchbook to the flame. This is it—the end of the wolf brothers' story. An ending where he is no longer the "hero" but just some kid from Seattle.

"Adios," he whispers, and he holds the lighter to the sketchbook. The orange fire laps at the cover but finally bites, and the flame eats the paper, curling the pages as the heat chews at Sean's fingers. He holds on to it a as long as he can, but the pain becomes too much, and he tosses it to the pavement.

He watches the fire in his driveway consume a year of trauma—a year that no longer has to define his life.

His father's warm arms fall around him, holding him like he's a small boy. It reminds him of that day he and Daniel spent at Mt. Rainier. They had played together, made some legit good memories, but as they fell asleep next to their campfire, Sean stared at the embers and realized everything was going to be different from then on.

# # #

The guard's hand is firm on Daniel Diaz's arm. He isn't sure what the other prisoners or guards think of him. He's quiet but tries to be 'friendly,' as friendly as you can be in prison.

But, also, no one fucks with him.

Because they get fucked up if they fuck with him.

The door to the visiting room swings open, and Daniel pulls down the sleeves of his orange jumpsuit, double-checking that his forearms are not exposed. This is the only room in the prison with an air conditioner that actually works, so the cool air chills his scalp through his buzzed-down hair. Sean sits at one of the bolted-down tables—oddly, without their father. It's hard for Sean to make it from LA, Daniel wishes he could see him more, but even the fakeness of Sean's forced smile makes him grin.

Daniel hugs his brother, and Sean hugs him back so tightly his bones pop. And though the guards get uneasy if you touch your family members too long, Daniel feels Sean sigh into his neck before they sit in the hard, metal chairs.

"Happy birthday, mi hermano," Daniel says. "Only one day late."

"Gracias, enano," Sean says, picking at his fingers. They muddle through the small talk, go over how Dad is, and Daniel ignores the itching in his wrists.

"Daniel, I have to tell you something," Sean suddenly sighs. No good conversation has ever started this way, and Sean stares at the tiny drop of blood from the piece of his fingernail he pulls away. "You don't have to worry about me 'doing something stupid' anymore because . . . I can't change the past back to the way it was."

"Oh?"

"I, uh, burned the sketchbook."

Suddenly, it is like the floor has become an ocean, and Daniel is adrift without the shore in sight. He never thought Sean would destroy the sketchbook.

But this—this is what he wanted, Sean staying in this life.

Sean is awesome. Sean is the best brother. Sean deserves all of the good things he can get.

"That is awesome," Daniel says, steadying his voice with the concentration that a pilot uses to fly a plane through a canyon. "I am happy for you."

"It means a lot for you to say that, enano."

The rest of the conversation passes as a blur as Daniel focuses all of his energy into smiling, lying like he has never lied before. And when Sean hugs him and leaves, Daniel goes back to his cell, collapses onto his cot, and sighs like a punching bag leaking sand. He pulls up his sleeves and stares at his forearms.

On the right, done by a guy named Nailz with an ink pen and a needle, is a messy tattoo of a skull—the sign of the number-two gang in the prison that is aiming to be number-one.

And on the left is a two-inch scar, a cut Daniel made with a shiv he has hidden beneath his mattress, a cut that, at the time, he could not bring himself to make any deeper. A cut that Sean must never know about.

# # #

Sean stops at the gates of the prison. In that other life, he imagined the end of his sentence, and, sure, he has visited Daniel and passed through these gates before, but this time it feels real, like walking through them means he is finally free.

He's heard about guys who leave prison, and they are so used to the fucked up rules and structure that they can't function in real life anymore. And as he passes through the prison gate and walks across the parking lot, a cold shiver passes through his body. The breeze on his face feels impossibly cold; the sun on his neck, impossibly harsh. They are wonderful yet terrifying at the same time.

When he gets to his father's car, which he borrowed to come down here, he sits in the driver's seat, glances back at the prison, and he imagines Daniel sitting in a cell, deflated the way Sean always was after their visits in the other life. Sean sets his head on the steering wheel and sighs.

Maybe this is another thing I fucked up.

When he sits up, his forehead has an indentation, and he rubs it as he picks up his cell phone which he left in the passenger's seat. It has three notifications:

The first is an email from his former supervisor Jared: Hey Sean! I just got a gig working on this animated reboot of Teen Wolf (the shitty MTV show not the shitty Michael J Fox movie). We need a storyboard artist and this sounded up your alley. Hit me back if you are interested.

The second is a text from Toby with a link to a couch from IKEA: I refuse to let your shitty futon in our apartment, and I found this and it's cute like you. What do you think?

It is a pretty cute couch.

The last is a message from Dad: How did it go?

Sean types and deletes a message five times before he just calls. When his dad picks up, Sean says, "It went okay."

"You do not sound like it went okay," Dad says.

"I'm scared," Sean says, and his eyes trace his tattoo of the two boys with their wolves, tries to remember where his scars were on this arm. He studied them so much in prison, but he can't remember if the scar on the inside of his elbow was on this arm or the other one. "I know 'scared' is a weird thing to feel now, especially after all the for-real scary things that have happened to me. But it's like I have spent so much of my life worrying about the next bad thing that is going to happen—getting caught by the cops, everything that can happen in prison, the 'storm' I knew was coming for changing the past. But now, I'm beyond that, and it's like all this space is freed-up in my brain, in my life . . . and I don't know what to do with it. Like, I got so used to expecting not to have a life, that I'm not sure I know how to live one."

Dad is silent for a long moment, and then he says, "I think coming back to the house and letting me order us a pizza would be a good start."

"Sure, Dad," Sean says. His fingernail is still bleeding, and it tastes the way pennies smell when he sticks it in his mouth—a taste that became too familiar in the life he has left behind. "Actually, I have one thing. I've been thinking about what you said about the lighter, how you thought it should see its home again. Sometime, maybe next summer, would you take a road trip with me to Mexico? So I can finally say I made it to Puerto Lobos?'

"Of course, mijo," Dad says. "It would mean the world to see it again and with you."

When Sean hangs up, he sits in the car long enough for sweat to drench his shirt before he finally starts the engine. He's terrified. But excited. Heartbroken. Yet hopeful. And as he leaves the prison, he suspects he is at the start of his hardest journey yet—living for himself.

Soundtrack – Outro: "Tell Tale Signs"

by Frank Turner

This has been "The Bravest Wolf in the World"

A Life is Strange 2 Fan Fiction

Episode Four: The Storm

Cicatrices Ending


you'll always remind me of scars on my arms that i know will never fade

and it's not like its something i think about each and every day

i just occasionally catch myself scratching at them as if they'd ever go away

but these tell-tale signs are here to stay

and in the end, you know that's okay

'cause you will always be a part

of my patched-up, patchwork, taped-up, tape-deck heart