A/N: I really like when people interpret Bethany and Lazarus as siblings and make content of them about that, and I feel it's extra interesting with their Tainted variants - this concept was stuck in my head and I had to get it out! ^_^ Cover art by pcholkachai on Tumblr! Warning for descriptions of illness, religious themes, suicide, death, and murder. Please enjoy - I've put a lot of thought into this one :D
He remembers the sister he had once, in a life very far from now - the memories are wrapped in thick bloodied rags, behind layers of hazes of the lie he's been told his whole life of the peaceful darkness that accompanies death. His loving sister, with her neatly parted brown hair, the silver crucifixes she hangs off her clothing, deep blue dresses worn like every day had to be her Sunday best - she was far more bold than him, approaching the world with a wide smile and an eagerness to learn that even he hasn't felt in years. Brighter than him, enthusiastic - but mellow nonetheless, well-mannered and polite, the kind of girl every church elder they knew would love to have for a granddaughter… with a sickly grandson to wrap blankets around and further prove her kindness.
Her nose was in a book a good percentage of the time, eager to learn - about her brother's conditions, about God and anything else from the educational anthologies she picks up from the local library, good manners and the best virtues to have in life: responsibility, perseverance, and faith, all things her brother finds himself completely lacking now.
She cheerfully skipped ahead of him in everything they did, pulling open the blinds every morning with soft hums to let the sun wash over him as he woke up, the brightness of her smile perhaps even rivaling the yellow sunrise through the window. The faintest of drafts fluttered the curtains, chilling him ever so slightly as he shut his eyes for a moment to adjust to the sudden arrival of morning - he feels light and fragile as he reaches for his medication on the nightstand, internally cursing the bright sun and his sister's bright grin, though he still thanks her with a smile through the pain in his abdomen.
She leaned forward to ruffle his hair lovingly, where it's slick against his scalp with sweat. His skin is pale and clammy, though it's hardly anything new, as his sister smiles at him and seats herself at the foot of his bed - crossing her legs and propping her favorite book into her lap, prepared as if routine.
The words she read him are muddy and faded - now, they slip through his fingers like the blood from his eyes and mouth, too much for any human to hold, he thinks, but the blood keeps flowing, and with them, the memory fades. She read to him from her favorite books, but he recalls none of it in his feverish stupors, days blending between each other in light midday sleeps, blue pills crushed into powder thrown up onto the shawl she wrapped around his shoulders, and his legs growing painfully weak with the time spent in bed.
It felt like he was wallowing in his own filth, and his sister only smiled to dutifully change his sheets without even being asked, and he watched from the rocking chair in the corner of the room she'd gently placed him in - too exhausted to thank her as he closed his eyes again, drifting off, and his sister still wears that smile when he wakes, content with little audible gratitude for her work as she hooks her elbows beneath his armpits to lift him back into bed when his feet fall asleep beneath him.
When she brings home dinner, often bought for the two children by generous churchgoers when she doesn't have enough to cook anything, she always sits by his bed as they eat together - and always passes him a sizable half of her dinner rolls and another extra, rarely taking no for an answer. She looks to him before she eats as if waiting for permission he hardly has the right to give.
Their relationship is strange. He hides his face in shame to think now about all the giving and so little taking his sister had done for him back then - he'd done little to deserve it, he thinks, the only prompt for it being her belief in inherent love for every human being, even ones who don't do a damn thing to deserve it; no thanks he gives can ever fully express his gratitude, much less when his limbs are weak and his energy is wavering, and she smiles at him and reads to him and helps him swallow his pills anyway.
The most he can do is listen, when she reads to him and practices her choir pieces for church by his bedside, but she seems content with that - he tries his hardest to be alert, but her soft voice lulls him away like a lullaby. God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, with her little hands clasped in prayer as she sings, her eyes a little wet as she looks upon her bedridden brother, the sickly pallid of his skin stark against his freckles, remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas Day…
She is a very devout believer - both of them were raised Christian, but his sister seems to search for God's light in every step she takes, proud to be walking a world touched by His hand. She prays both with her brother and alone every day, and makes him thank God every time she brings him breakfast or dinner. She is well-liked at their local church, and brings her brother with her when he's able to stand the crowds and harsh light, the allergy-inducing vegetable garden in the courtyard she takes his hand to lead him through - her laughter like light silver bells healing his aching heart, if only a little.
On dreary days, her smile is there for him, and she sings for him and reads from the book she's had since birth, the familiar worn baby blue cover, loved and stuffed with bookmarks and tags - she tells him about a girl with beautiful blonde curls she met at church, who's a part of their choir and makes the most delightful sweets in town. She visits once, the rot in his mouth smothered by her hospitality, in the form of bright red candy hearts and massive sugar cookies. They make his stomach turn - it's out of goodwill, he knows, but he can't help but feel he doesn't deserve it, seeing his sister chatter excitedly to her friend about his story…
The girl with the golden hair is the first person other than his sister he's seen since he stopped being able to attend church - faintly, he remembers her face from his sister bringing him along one old Sunday, and he can't imagine doing so now. Looking at his hands, the pale skin is pulled taut over his bones, with washed-out freckles and visible musculature - the golden-haired girl looks at him with wide, sympathetic eyes as she whispers something to his sister.
The pity is nicer coming from his family than a stranger, he thinks through a coughing fit, retching into a waste bin and pretending to be asleep under the golden-haired guest's gaze when she enters his room again. He tunes out the lively discussion of his sister's favorite book, and the laughter over tea - his stomach cramps to think about drinking anything past the water his sister brings him, now collecting dust on his nightstand after only managing half a sip.
Above all, she prays for his health. May God bless him with His loving care, renew his strength, bring him vitality, for no healing is impossible under God's will and loving name - she recites this nearly every night and makes sure every church knows their names and has them etched on every prayer card, her dark eyes wet as her brother trembles under mounds of blankets, hair thinning and stringy, cheekbones and ribs jutting against his skin no matter how many meals made with love she brings - with no medicine on Earth to cure his ailment.
There are days he can hardly lift his head from his pillow, and his lips are cracked and dry, tearing open and bleeding as he cries out in pain, the tears drying before they even reach his cheeks - he feels his heart loud in his chest, and though his sister cries and prays over his bed and cleans his sheets of blood, no one can do anything about its slow to a stop.
His death is slow and painful - both physically and emotionally, the agony of throwing up blood mixed with stomach acid as the light outside makes his head feel like exploding, and the pain in his sister's eyes as she realizes that no prayer can help her brother now. The peaceful darkness never enveloped him - no warm hug, not from Death and not from his sister, his body is too frail and cold to feel the comfort of anything, and he couldn't even offer her any final goodbyes: the God she trusted in so cruel as to take him in the middle of the afternoon, in one of the few moments she steps out of his bedroom to try and prepare a last-ditch medicine.
Slipping away into the cold darkness as the pain in his stomach and chill in his bones slowly subsides, he isn't present to hear the most heartbroken cry his little sister has ever let out at the sight of her brother's prone form bled dry on his bed. He remembers stories like this where people near death would hear loved one's voices saying it wasn't their time - but he finds nothing in the cold darkness. There is nobody who loves him but the girl crying over his body now, and she is alive, as painfully as her brother is dead.
He is prepared to see the Lord, and greet Him at the pearly gates like he believed would happen at the end of it all, but the haze is too thick for him to remember any of what really occurred after he left his body. It felt like mere moments - as if a switch in his brain was flipped off and back on, as his soul aimlessly flew about from corner to corner of an empty void. The pain was gone, but there was little relief in it - little of anything, as he forgets his name, his life, and it all is pulled from his being in preparation to wash his soul anew and bring it eternal rest - whatever destiny has in store for him now, he will soon lose the capacity to care.
Until the end, his brain clings to a single thought, the thought of the pain in his sister's voice, this innocent little girl who's never done wrong by anyone in her life suddenly faced with such a tragedy - how could he move on and leave her alone and wanting? How could he move on before he's even an adult - he'd hardly lived a fulfilling life, did God really see fit to take it away from him…?
The empty void, where little emotion and life can reside, flares with his sudden resolve, but he is as weak in death as in life, and soon it all slips from his fingers: the worry about the life he's leaving behind pooling away in his hands like the blood on his deathbed. A lonesome spirit pulled into the ether, the light at the end of the tunnel, the…
A familiar sun flickers through his blinds.
On impulse, his eyes narrow in annoyance at the bright light, before processing - he's back in his room, but… no, that isn't right, he's dead, isn't he…? He smells the blood on his face, feeling his frail, nude form wrapped tightly in rags and blankets to staunch the bleeding and waste that must have been pooling beneath his corpse, it's all so hazy, all he can see is the sun, stark against the dark walls of his evening bedroom, harsh and bright against his fragile eyes…
Chills dance across his skin, his fingers stiff, his legs completely numb as if fallen into days of disrepair. A fly is buzzing close to his ear, the sickening taste of molder permeates his mouth, his eyes dry up and burn the moment he's awake enough to register the pain - he is rotting, he realizes, but the worry pales into another question, why am I alive…?
A familiar girl in pigtails stands over his bed, her features hardly visible in the dark, and there he realizes it's not the sun coming through his window.
Small orange balls of flame dance around her, one casting light on her face like a campfire - and she looks haunted, with her eyes sunken into their sockets and tears streaking down her face. A book unlike any he's seen in her shelves is clutched in her hands - a symbol drawn in a silver sheen gleams against its dark and foreboding cover, shaking in her grasp, his sister's innocent gaze completely foregone in favor of a haunted, tragic determination etched across her features.
The face he knows returns in seconds. Her tired eyes soften, and her grip on the odd book loosens - loving, astounded recognition, tears swelling in her bloodshot eyes as her lip faintly quivers past a sob. The small fires orbit her at a steady pace, soft crackling like a lit fireplace - but no heat or smell of smoke accompanies them, and he wants to believe, for the foreboding feeling in the back of his mind, that his illness is merely deteriorating his senses.
He has little time to think before his sister drops her book, holds him close, and sobs, the black moon outside seeming to give way to a soft, light, cloudy night sky. It's a miracle, she cries, though his bones feel like they're breaking beneath her touch, and as he hugs her back, he realizes his skin is even whiter than his filthy sheets - pale as exposed bone, the fingers he clutches her shoulders with almost skeletal. The wisps around them crackle disconcertingly.
A gift from God is what his sister calls it. They bask in the light of His mercy, to let her dear brother recover at the final moment, truly what a miracle it is… but he knows he died that day.
There's a passage he remembers, one his sister prays over him as he drifts off to sleep on occasion - Let my soul be at rest again, for the Lord has been good to me. He has saved me from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. - and he thinks dryly of her faith next to his. His waking up from the grave with the film of rotting flesh on his tongue no matter how hard he brushed his teeth, and the horrifying light at the end of the tunnel far from God's warm, loving hands - his sister doesn't speak of the colorful wisps that danced around her, or her odd new book with a frightening symbol etched on its front, but he can sense it: God had no hand in this miracle.
Now, he doesn't remember which of them is the older sibling - if some maternal part of his sister activates when she sees him, the instinct to shield and protect a young child, or if she's a naïve little girl simply trying to cheer up the only family she has… He remembers little of their parents, or even any life outside of this musty old bedroom, with the winding days spent playing cards with his sister and listening to her ramble about the sermon the bishop gave that Sunday… he hasn't seen his own face in a long time - his sister brushes his teeth for him, and saves up money from caroling around the neighborhood when Christmas comes to buy him a bedpan and rudimentary catheter (something that pains him to think about, someone so loving having to spend all her money on all that filth - on keeping her idiotic brother alive) - but he feels his hair fall out on his pillow and itch the back of his neck, and touching his face, he's as thin as he's ever been.
Did he die, or was that a feverish hallucination as his body worked itself into dust to try and stay alive - were the fires around his sister's face and the Satanic symbol on the book in her hands nothing more than the result of some deeply sickly delirium…? It made more sense than the alternative - perhaps he just really couldn't accept living again, not when he was so prepared to stop… ah, he looks at his hands, knuckles gnarled and visibly pushing against his skin, fingernails dutifully clipped and cleaned by his sister every week hardly hiding their corpselike states.
She dedicates all of her time to him, all of the meager money she earns at such a young age spent on him, and he just barely has the heart to tell her he doesn't need it. He doesn't need the gifts, or the fresh new blankets, or the expensive medical equipment keeping him alive - because, for all intents and purposes, he shouldn't be, but he lets that last part trail off, hanging in the air. She doesn't need to hear it - but even without that painful truth, her eyes become downcast and her hand stills.
Taking care of him is all she has. Two children in a tiny house on a hill, all alone, standing on their feet only by the power of God's mercy, her faith helping keep her brother alive. She nearly lost him once, and her heart shattered into pieces - she adds no mention of the things he suspected she had to resort to, whatever magic in that ominous book brought those little fires, but the regret in her eyes is confirmation enough as she pauses crushing familiar blue pills beneath a stone pestle to wipe away a tear. She has to protect him. She almost lost him once already.
He murmurs through cracking lips and a dry mouth that he wants her to live for herself. She looks half as tired as him - her chestnut hair still held in her favorite pigtails, but longer, unkempt with loose strands spilling from the bands in a way nobody but the brother who lives under her finger would ever notice. Wet brown eyes with light bags beneath them look just like his - at least, as much as he can remember.
Those brown eyes well up, and the pang of regret in his stomach twists once more. It's what he'd felt for all these years - why does a growing girl with so much potential, so much love and kindness in her heart, waste it all on someone who shouldn't even be alive? - but the words leave his mouth and he suddenly feels like he's dying again. He apologizes, roughly changes the subject by asking about a new book she's reading, and vows to keep those horrible thoughts to himself.
Was it ungrateful…? Cruel? Truthfully, he doesn't think so - it's crueler to let her work herself half to death for someone who doesn't need it, right? - but the pained look in her eyes silences him. He doesn't understand how she thinks, why she does so much for him - love, a sense of purpose, for her faith…? - and feels a tinge of bitterness at living to her whim. She's more of a caretaker than his sister now - he can just imagine her bragging to other churchgoers about how she takes care of her brother all by herself, how proud God must be of her - and the pity he felt instead flares into a deep-seated annoyance.
She doesn't talk to him as she settles him into bed that night. Her visits, though routine, become less common over the next few nights, as she recluses herself into her books - her brother's words like a knife in her chest, even when he meant nothing wrong by them. Live for something that isn't me. She takes those words to heart, it seems - spending more time over the next weeks in her room, helping volunteer at church, out living a life he didn't know she had, but his skin prickles with shame, knowing what she got out of his words: ungratefulness.
She misses his medication on some nights, but he finds nobody to blame for this but himself, staring up at the ceiling and stewing in his thoughts.
What a horrible brother he is. He holds his head in frustration on one of those sleepless nights, dinner from hours ago sitting painfully in his stomach, and his hand comes back flaked with thinning red hair and smeared in dark blood - almost the color of sewage, staining the sleeve of the brown robes she'd fitted him in for a week straight now, bandages crusting beneath them - he feels filthy, laying there in his own sweat and blood and waste, stark against the heavy, soft blankets like a gilded prison.
His mind is addled and feverish - he's unsure anymore if his death was a delusion, if his sister really lost him forever that day and pulled him back from the brink… if it was a dream, or a simple medical scare driving both children in this house into madness. He can only feel the frustration at his confinement - towards who, he doesn't know, his sister for letting him live, himself for being so ungrateful, whoever put them in this situation - God or their parents, he doesn't know, and no prayer he's given has ever worked quite like his sister's.
His legs stick together with sweat and waste, a sickening taste of rot in his mouth, his hair falling out, his nostrils caked with mucus, the acute pain of simply being alive anymore suddenly too much to bear through the horrid thoughts of rising intensity that he shouldn't be alive and he doesn't want to be making him double over and feebly try to vomit - not out of sickness, he doesn't think, but mental anguish, and at this point he wonders if that's all it was all along.
The gagging noise usually makes his sister come, no matter the time. Always, always - in rain or in snow, she'd be here for him, no matter how much he thought he didn't want her to be. And she would bring him water and medicine and ask whatever he needed and he'd always say nothing, but she would sit beside him anyway because she was scared for him… but tonight, she doesn't - perhaps she's sleeping too deeply, or too engrossed in her own little world reading some new thick book, but it sparks a horrible match in his mind, a vague impulse drifting by - one that would leave if she came for him, maybe, maybe some tale in her book she would recount to him would make him forget.
Maybe there'd be something convincing him to stay, he thinks, but there isn't - he admits he's not nearly as religious as his sister, his sickness jading him to the idea of an all-loving God, but he finds a sign in that. A miracle - his opening.
He hates it here, he thinks as he rolls over, fitfully grasping his bedsheets to pull himself closer to its edge, there's nothing he wants more than to just die, to stop being his sister's pet, and thinking those words makes him wince, as a more rational part of him asks how could she love someone who thinks these horrible things about her?
Both these thoughts spur him to crash to the floor, rudimentary medical equipment tugging at his skin, trying to drag him back to his prison - IVs pull at him like a puppet's strings, the pain at ripping them almost making him want to crawl back into bed and cry for his sister - but the thought of making her do another thing for him pains him more. In what way, disgust or pity, he doesn't know anymore.
Tar splatters from a puncture in his vein. It looks like the waste in his bedpan, like sludge - the blood on his hand and in his hair resembles sewage water more than anything else. It pains him to crawl on his hands and elbows, his legs completely numb with how long he'd just been laying there. It burns his lungs to move - but he knows it's worth it to endure, to reach a destination he's not even sure why he's dragging himself towards.
He shakes his head at his own garbled thoughts. The angel and devil on his shoulder lead him to the same destination. He drags himself along the floor, the wood of a house he both knows so well and hardly remembers - winding hallways he feels like he hasn't seen in years. She hasn't taken him outside of his room since his condition worsened, and he smacks himself mentally for ever rejecting her hospitality - he can hardly crawl on the floor of his own house, and he thought her kindness was too much…?
His kind, kind sister, with her eagerness to learn and her unwavering faith and her love for all living things, how she wanted to bake like the girl she met at church but never could get recipes quite right, how she sang Christmas carols door to door with the local choir to raise money to buy her sick brother medicine, her smiles, her infectious joy…
…the exhaustion in her eyes, pushed to live for her brother by the goodness in her heart refusing to stand by and let a sick boy lay alone in his own waste.
The potential she would have if it weren't for him… the things she could do with her life if she didn't waste it all on her useless brother. The things she could buy for herself if she didn't have to spend it all on nonsense herbs and chalky blue medicine. The childhood she would be able to have if she wasn't forced to become a full-time caregiver before she was even old enough to consider anything else…
He's able to pull himself to his knees, his heart he didn't think could beat anymore pounding in his ears as he stretches himself on shaking legs up to the bathroom door. The wooden floor changes to marble beneath him, making his palms and knees ache, but he's able to swing open a vanity drawer to grip like a railing as he pushes himself to his feet, heaving with exhaustion at even that simple movement.
It's pitch black - late enough at night for her not to answer his grunts of pain. A moment of independence, he thinks, feeling a sense of fleeting freedom despite the circumstances. She has no idea where he is or what he's doing, any idea that he's not huddled in his disgusting, moth-bitten bed right now… it's as relieving as it is heartbreaking. Leveling himself towards the smeared mirror, though he's embarrassingly shorter than his sister even standing at his full height, he catches a horrifying sight - it nearly makes him drop to the floor again.
A dark liquid has dried in his hair, dried down his face, nostrils crusty with a substance he can't even make out. His eyes, bulging in surprise, are sunken into their sockets, his lips dry and his teeth yellow, his skin pale and clammy and hanging off his practically skeletal form - Lord, she tries for him, she dutifully brushes his hair and washes his face but he never feels any cleaner, any healthier, like she's just given a kid's bandage to a bloody harpoon blast. Like washing a filthy spot on a plate that will never leave, his rot is eternal.
She'll be happier without you.
She doesn't need to dirty her hands with all of this rot, with all the blood and shit and pus and vomit that's come out of his disgusting form and left him nothing but a frail shell of a boy. Her favorite book, about all the heavenly virtues one needs to honor God, smeared in filthy fingerprints, his awful breath curdling the pages, her book, his sister's favorite book…
His shaking hands find a shaving razor, and it gores open his palms as he attempts to dismantle it. Sewage splatters the sink. His ears ring with the pain, and a small part of him thinks letting the muscles in his legs go and dropping to the tile floor and cracking his skull open would be easier than this - but for the first time in his life, he's determined.
The head of the razor twists off. He knows better than to get his fingernails into it, but he doesn't have it in him to try for anything else.
It hurts. He wants to cry for his sister more than anything, and he hasn't even detached the razor blade yet. It's covered in mud, dripping from cuts in the web of his hands that shouldn't hurt as much as they do - what is he, a baby?
Finally, he manages to get the razor blade into his hands - or at least a segment resembling it. He can't tell in the dark, but it's sharp, and that's all that matters, and in the bathroom - where filth belongs. The dark slop in his veins will cover the bathroom at this rate, and it'll be a disgusting sight for his sister, and it brings him pause to remember her sobs the first time she lost him - the horror and dismay, to the lengths she went to save him, the book and the wisps he never got an answer for and has resolved himself to the fact he never will.
Maybe she loved him. Maybe it was all for her own ego. Maybe it was all for God.
In painful moments of clarity as he slashes his wrist and sees red blood well out, the smell of iron overpowering the filth he found omnipresent until now, he realizes it's most likely the former. His simple, loving sister, who cared for the only family she had above all else, who just wanted the brother she loved so much back after he'd been taken away in an instant - who was he to want to take him away from her again…?! And why would someone who'd do such a horrid thing even deserve to live?
One arm, then two, and he wonders why he's done this - no amount of flinging the blame between himself and his sister can bring him a satisfactory answer as his vision blurs, a sound like projectile vomit splattering marble as his arms bleed against the tile. He's notched some major vein - or artery, he doesn't know the difference - more blood than he thought he could hold in his pitiful sack of flesh flooding the divots in the tile beneath him, and he begins to think it'll fill the whole room like a tank full of water, and he loses his balance, slips, falls - and prepares to drown.
His forehead cracks open against the countertop, splattering his face in blood, the white marble swirling into an angry red in his delirium - the hot blood and hot pain fading all too quickly into a familiar, empty cold.
He doesn't expect to wake up.
…he hadn't expected to wake up the first time, either.
Why did that happen to me? is a question he asks himself over and over, the answer he keeps returning to - the scent of burning wax on his sister's clothes, her hair growing unkempt and her eyes listless, a growing attachment to books he's never seen before - one he doesn't want to accept. Disbelief - it's preposterous, what, does magic to bring someone back from the dead really exist? Is that really more likely than what his sister cried out as she held him, a miracle of God?
Blurry wisps and Satanic symbols haunt his dreams.
When he first comes to, he doesn't expect to have been miraculously saved - at first, he thinks it a dream, if not a dream as he's pulled out of his body, then a horrifying nightmare of slashed wrists and bathrooms drowning in mud he's glad to finally awake from. He feels his cushions beneath him - something he's not aware enough to determine how to feel about, as his glassy eyes attempt to focus through the harsh, splitting pain returning to his forehead.
Maggots crawl the back of his head, hanging limply to the east and aching like it had been there for years. A film of dirt along his skin, wet, thick pores, the smell of sweat and blood filling the sore crook in his neck. He feels the grease of his hair slipping down his face before he can fully open his eyes.
His thoughts fade in and out, unable to think about much but the pain and confusion as he returns to his senses, feeling his body shake and tremble against his will - before realizing he's thrashing in agony, and then realizing he's screaming. His wrists burn, his forehead burns, the agony of what he'd done to himself flying back full force without the delusional internal ramblings to justify them - what was he thinking?! What was he thinking?!
The back of his skull smacks against the wooden headboard, and the pain is nothing compared to the gash in his forehead or his wrists that look like the skin's been carved clean off, and so he bashes again, again, until he can feel what's either grease and dirt or the mush of his brain splattering about -
He knows she's here before he even feels the hand grasping his shoulder and gently tugging him back to reality. The world is dull as he opens his eyes - the moon is high in the sky, backlighting the cross atop the roof of the nearby church, dead leaves fluttering about in the wind and branches occasionally scratching against the window, a cool night evening… but everything is dark and fuzzy, dusted in coal, and even when he can feel his eyes sting as they bulge in their sockets, his vision is spotty - flickering, as if he's just on the brink.
Cracking his head in two against the bed frame might have had something to do with it, he so wisely thinks, a fleeting thought swallowed by the stabbing pain in both wrists. The air nips at the lacerations in his hands from fumbling with the razor - punishment for his hastiness, as if the pain wasn't enough. The strained moan devolves into a shaking sob at the blurry sight of his sister.
The only reason he's alive right now, the bullseye point of every thought he's had for all of this time - ever present in his life, the dutiful sister any weak little boy would want to have caring over his bedside, the first thing he saw waking up every morning… yet looking at her now, it feels like he hasn't in years. Everything he has to answer her for, everything he'd never told her, the horrible sludgy thoughts he kept to himself until they drove him to slash his wrists in the bathroom after walking there by himself for the first time in months, stares at him with…
…shadowed, half-lidded eyes.
He throws his head back - meeting not hard wood, but a flimsy pillow. The unfamiliar glare shot a chill up his spine, briefly making him forget his wounds. The dirt crawls beneath his skin, into the folds of his nerves, burning his muscles and suffocating his veins - he heaves, tears pricking his eyes, he's not going to cry in front of his sister, not ask for her sympathy after all he's refused from her…
A bony hand with mechanical movements, as if he'd look up and see strings stretching from the ceiling, threads into his hair, slick with grease and mats, tangled in clotted blood.
She pulls, and he can feel her glare without looking at her. Clumps break apart in her hand, rotten strands of dull ginger hair poking at his skin like the sharp ends of a feather. Wincing in pain, he finally brings himself to raise his head and look her in the eye.
It's an expression he's never seen her wear before - ever.
Sadness he knows to expect from her - it's rare, and leaves a divot in his heart to see, but she's cried before, over him, over the cruelty in the world… he knows his sister isn't a beacon of sunshine. Their miserable home life affected her as much as it did him - she simply had the connections and faith to smile through it, even in the nights where she was too tired to do anything more than tearfully smile his way.
Anger, though… not even, no - there was force in her tug, but there is no deep-seated rage in her expression, no callous swears waiting behind a forked tongue, no furious rant prepared for the moment her idiot brother wakes up… she simply looks tired.
He doesn't know how much time has passed, and feels the blood streaking down his arms congeal against his skin.
Her mouth is drawn in a tight line, with an unspoken I lost you forever, once - do you know how scared I was? right behind it. Her fingers trace the scars on his wrist - no, he can't even call them scars yet, the blood is dry but he still feels the gashes like he'd just made them - and he clenches his teeth in pain. Usually, her touch is a relief, a comfort, but the wounds of his hacked-open wrists are too fresh. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes as he tries to pull his arm from her grasp -
- and the fruitless tug only pains him more. It feels as if his nerves have been stretched like a rubber band, and nearly snapped just then. He lets out an involuntary cry, his voice cracking, as vulnerable as he's ever been - a small, frail, sickly little boy needing his sister's constant guidance, and for once he fears he may not get it.
At a point, he realizes he can slightly bend his elbows, but can't move his hands. She's holding one of them in a vice grip, but the other feels just as strained. Ears ringing, he drops - stops struggling, simply tries to catch his breath, eyes wide staring up at the ceiling. Just breathe, just breathe… Why are you afraid of her? Didn't you die for her only moments ago - how much of a flaky coward can you be?
Candles are propped about his bed, resting dangerously on the bedpost - no wonder she forced him to stop thrashing, he thinks, his breathing only quickening with a fear he wants to think is irrational. Black wax spots his sheets. A dark curtain hangs over his bed, and there's an odd smell permeating the air, different from the usual wooden old must the house usually had - his nostrils are too clogged and his mind too hazy to fully take it in, but his first thought is something horribly burned… something that's not candle wax.
He manages to bring his gaze to his sister - her book is sitting in her lap as she holds him down, and her features are difficult to make out between his swimming vision and the brief candlelight, something that gives a twisting feeling in his stomach. The quietness is unlike her, the coldness - nothing like his first death, when she sobbed over his body and thanked God for a miracle, spoiling him for weeks on end. Now, she simply stares at him, and the expectation of an answer he can't give makes him writhe painfully.
Rags hang off her body - old robes he faintly recognizes as his own, covered in dirt and dust neither of them thought to brush off. Her hair is matted - overgrown, even, choking the cute little barrettes she never went anywhere without, bangs she often swept out of view shadowing her uncharacteristically empty eyes. It's everything he feared - his filthy rags on his sweet sister's skin, tainting her, soiling her, whatever's happened with her, it has to be his fault…
Beth, he whimpers pathetically, small voice making him think back to being a pitiful little baby, 'Beth, Beth…' he repeats, his skin oh-so cold and needing comfort, wanting to ask what's going on, but knowing he has far more to answer for than her.
Her eyes don't move. Glassy and dull, like a cracked, dusty doll, her body looking half as frail and weak as his beneath those filthy robes. He trembles beneath her gaze, the painful grip on his wrist, as she simply watches him - trying to intimidate him, trying to tell if he's cognizant, he doesn't know, and little terrifies him more.
Finally, after what feels like an eternity, something dark and bloody behind her eyes fades, and she softens - her hard, cold expression melting into plain exhaustion.
'I'm sorry,' she mutters - she is not the bright-eyed, naïve girl he knows, wearing her heart on her sleeve even in the face of the horrible tragedy of losing her brother the first time… but he thinks, miserably, that he must have worn her down, her voice is low and weary now, her eyes reddened with dried tears, and he wonders how long she's just been sitting here, silently watching him, with no sobs or screams of anguish left to give - after all, a natural death is easier to accept than him crawling out of bed to slash his wrists in the middle of the night.
'You know you're my everything, don't you?' she asks, taking his hand, careful to avoid the cuts on his palms now, 'I would walk into Hell to keep you safe, Laz, and you…' she lets herself trail off, before shaking her head with a sniffle - her eyes glisten in such a human way that it makes his heart twist to think he ever doubted her, as she apologizes again. 'I'm sorry. I shouldn't say those things - I know you were going through so much, and I didn't get it, I just…'
Her voice cracks, and her brother can only cast his gaze aside in guilt. If he succeeded… what would she be thinking now? Would she suspect - no, he cuts himself off, know it was her fault…? Would she know how crushed he felt under her kindness, that awful smothered feeling he had no right to let influence him in such a horrible way… His throat is thick with phlegm, the familiar taste of filth in his mouth - the horrible thought of how selfish he truly is.
'I'm sorry,' he says, and means it, tears mixing with the dried dirt and blood in his face - the pain of his cracked skull still makes his ears ring and blurs his vision, his sister fading in and out of existence and peeling apart like he's thumbing through a stack of papers. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…'
He heaves into a sob. The air bites at his wrists, and he balls his fists until his hands go numb from the force - his grip is tight around her hand, he's breaking it, he fears, he's breaking it, but for once he just wants to hold her and never let go…
All he can do is apologize. He wants to cry, to think of the heartbreak and terror he put his sister through, the weights he placed on her shoulders just by existing, then the audacity he had to want to throw it all away, take the one thing in his sister's life that she cared about and cut it open and throw its corpse on the tile before her very eyes…
…but a small part of him cowers for another reason. The black candles, the dark curtains, the burned herbs powdered on the ground… he looks at the gashes on his wrists, horizontal slashes thick and deep enough as if he'd been carving his arm like a turkey, the blood splattering against the floor in that moment sounding like a spilled pot of water crashing down, the corner of the old marble countertop driven into his forehead like a stake, his paper-thin skin and disgusting mushy insides as frail as toothpicks even without losing blood…
Who lets this pitiful, miserable, selfish existence persist? (He has an answer, the answer he's told himself over and over, the answer he's convinced himself is just a delusion, but what do you do?)
He can't think like this - no, he can't, he can't keep longing for death, not when… no matter the horrible things he thinks about her, no matter the pile of useless dead weight stinking up her house and sucking away her hospitality like a leech he's convinced he is, she lives for him - and despite everything, he can't bear to hurt her.
He shuts his eyes tight, trying to purge the thoughts of how little sense this makes, trying to push the smell of candles and blood and burning incense from his head… it shakes him to his very core, this supernatural terror gripping his heart when he should just be happy to see his sister again, right…?
She runs a hand through his hair - filthy, ragged, and stuck together with blood, grease, and dirt. It crusts her fingernails, smearing her skin - the robes she wears are soiled and unwashed, as if she'd just pulled them from the muck of a trash heap. Bloody rags drape across her form, making her half as small and frail as him. There is not the smell of his sister - the pleasant aroma of vanilla and lavender, bringing a bit of the church gardens she wandered home with her, the closest to the outside world he's felt in a while… - instead, what clogs his senses is mud and viscera, and for a moment he can't tell if it belongs to him or not…
'I couldn't lose you.' She pulls away, and here he can finally see her clearly - her bangs stick out in every direction, the skin on her face wrinkled and worn with exhaustion. A faint flame flickers in her dead eyes - the wisps from Hell she brought out of a demonology grimoire, crushing her faith over her knee for her brother to be given another chance, he heard her sobbing for the Lord to forgive her in a dream after that fateful day.
Yet there are no sobs tonight. Her fingers gnarl around him, with dirt sticking to his dried wounds, crawling up his skin. A haunted, set determination in her eyes tells him that there is no Lord to forgive her now. His cuts ache and burn, the pain hardly lessened from the moment he wrenched his fingers into the head of the razor blade, slicing his hands to ribbons before lashing his wrists in two - he feels mush of his brain leak out of his ear, sticky blood clots suffocating his skin. Slick gore like the remains of a cadaver peeled off a hot road cover the sheets, his arms, his robes, everything - but he feels no heartbeat, no pulse, the pain fresh yet the blood all too dry.
His teeth clench together in agony, the seconds ticking by of his consciousness returning not healing the tendons in his wrists ripped apart, nor the dried blood from the crack like linoleum in his skull sticking to his eyelashes. What happens when someone can't die at the time God commands it - the fatal wound prolonged days after the blood dries? For all his hair has fallen out, for all his wasting away into little more than a skeleton, the pain prolongs, the ringing in his ear constant - a horrific snapshot never to be replaced.
The robes his sister wears are stained and ragged, with dirt and mold crusting the torn old cloth. He vaguely remembers the original color to be a soft beige, always weighty against his small form, sleeves coming up past his fingertips as a small child, now closer resembling brown cobwebs in texture - dark brown muck up to the elbows like she'd been digging around on her hands and knees for hours on end. Her eyes, lit ominously by the candles, drift towards the grimoire in her filthy, unfamiliar, blood-coated hands.
Maybe he's confused - liquid mud, the filth permeating this whole house with his presence - but his sister's fingers are slick - fresh, leaving behind red streaks, wet, alive, not from his crackling, dried corpse… why, why? Why would that be? Her hands are covered in blood, and he can hardly compute it - what would dirty them if not him?
(It's not his.)
No - no, no, he thinks, smacking the thought away immediately, smashing the annoying bug buzzing around his ear into bloody mush, that wasn't right - not his innocent sister with her kindly smile who sang in a choir and was always hopeful and bright and glowing, who marveled at the vegetable gardens in the church courtyard and read to her poor sick brother in the morning and prayed for his safety at night, always so sure she was safe in the palms of the Lord, smiling at every hardship He gave her, the kindest person he knew - he'd killed himself because she was the kindest person he knew…
…but what does he really know? What does he know about her life - save for the selfish assumption that it revolves around him? How can he say she'd never do this when the proof is right there - the cursed black candles, the demonic book with passages highlighted in blood, the circle of burned plants around his bed, the golden hair on her robes belonging to neither him nor her… ah…
He shuts his eyes tight, a growing nausea in the back of his throat - nothing to do with his wounds. Beth, why me? What did you do? he wants to ask, desperately, but he can't bring himself to question her - not after she's sacrificed everything, everything, for him…
(Is the golden-haired girl still alive…? Does this kind of magic need a death in his place…? Did his sister's best friend die alone, die screaming, wondering what on Earth possessed her poor friend, what she needed her blood and entrails for, what could possibly be worth such horrible pain and betrayal? Would she understand if she saw him - saw the pitiful little shell of a boy she'd died for?)
There are no answers he can give - he just watches the wisps summoned from his sister's horrible, horrible book casting her face in a ghoulish purple light, hearing no heartbeat from himself and maybe not even any from her, unable to expunge the images from his pain-riddled mind of his sister with a knife, standing over her friend he didn't even remember the goddamn name of and stabbing her over and over, in the head, in the face, in the eyes, ripping her hair out with her hands when she attempted to flee, treading blood through the house and screaming and crying, unaware the only other soul here was long, long dead as her time runs out and the cute little mezzo-soprano she sang O Little Town of Bethlehem with grabs her by the hair and crushes her toes with her shoes so she can't run anymore and twists the knife into her stomach until she throws up blood on the floor, enough blood to drown a bathroom in, enough blood to bring back a poor sick little boy blissfully dead one room over…
Trapped between life and death… he can move his eyes, and just barely move his limbs, but the blood is dry and there is no heartbeat or rise and fall of the chest - it disgustingly sticks to his skin, but there is little he can do as he only watches his sister with wide, terrified eyes - in turn, her eyes are shadowed, half-lidded, the emptiness of someone who once had faith and love and all the best virtues in life she'd spent years reading about… but had since lost all of it.
Her bangs are matted and unkempt, and for a moment, a breeze from the barely cracked window brushes them aside, blowing out a single candle as he can only just make out something horrible carved into her forehead.
Carved…? Set? He can't place it - it only seizes his still heart, and he believes for a moment that he's gazing into the pupil of whatever's done this to his sister, the wretched demon that needed a blood sacrifice and a captive victim, a relentless zealot who only wanted to kill for its Satanic Lord - watching from the shadowy hole in his sister's skull, puppeting her body with its ghastly, cold hands, driving this innocent little girl to the most depraved, violent acts imaginable for its sick glee…
…
…no.
…no, no. What reason would a demon have to keep him alive? Confirming it means confirming his worst fears, the darkest pits of his imagination - that he'd truly soiled his sister with his filthy hands, that she wouldn't have done this if not for him, that he'd irrepressibly ruined the one person who loved him - but what looks back at him is no possessed, undead child, no lifeless puppet.
There are no fangs in this person's mouth - no horns coming out of her skull, no cloven hooves or barbed tail, no claws at her fingertips… her neat brown hair is rugged and unkempt, the marks of old, old tears streaking down her dirty face, a rotting corpse's old robes and burial rags hanging off her body, with dark blood coating her delicate, soft hands, those big round brown eyes, the first thing he saw every morning of every day, now bloodshot and weighed down with thick dark circles, barely lit by flickering candles and odd purple wisps giving her skin a cold pallor… He knows her face - her youthful round cheeks, the inquisitive little way she purses her lips, the small button nose and the way she tucked her hair back - and recognizes more of it here than he wants to. It's his sister. Undoubtedly.
How long it's been since he cut open his wrists, he has no idea… but he can smell and feel his organs cannibalizing eachother inside of him, the blood on his arms now a truly ghastly dark brown, the consistency of dried caramel… given longer, his flesh will ferment against the bedsheets, his hair will all fall out against the pillow to be feast to the maggots no doubt crawling his bed and waiting for his third and final death, unaware it's not coming, unaware the horrible forces the humans in this house have channeled to bring about eternal life…
'…Beth…' he whimpers, again, feeling as if it's all he can do anymore, unsure if the familiar way his sister tilts her head when she listens to him speak makes him feel better or all too worse. 'I'm sorry… I'm sorry… I'm sorry…'
She only gazes back at him with searching eyes - her soul is heavy and exhausted. The horrible thought enters his mind that his sister will go to Hell when she dies - God can't forgive what she's done, can He? Defying His will and harming an innocent to do so… he wants to cry, though he knows how fruitless it is to cry for a murderer, wanting to believe the deed was done out of some loving innocence, a kind little girl who really had no choice, but… he can't confirm even that.
It's such a silly sentiment. I'm sorry. What will I'm sorry do, for a girl who's turned her back on all she'd ever loved - God, her friends, her innocence - for the sake of someone who can't offer any more than a pathetic, pitiful I'm sorry? For someone who trembles and cowers and cries when someone he loves kills for him, for someone who is still, still, ungrateful, for someone who, even now, just wants to die to avoid his sister's piercing gaze?
His wrists ache. He wants to finish the job - how, he doesn't know, because if he could hardly move from his bed before he sure can't now, and the thoughts that enter his head of clawing his wrists open with his fingernails and opening the wounds and trying to bleed out again are, somehow, easier than the lingering ones about his sister and what he's done to her.
A faint sob wretches its way out of the back of his throat, and he is met with nothing in reply.
What a horrible brother he is.