Nobody moved into the house beside his and Ludwig was glad. He wouldn't be able to look someone in the eye and know that they were stepping into a kind of play that had started so long ago, that they would have no idea about window meetings and art and the cornflowers struggling up in the backyard. Ludwig tried to take care of them, but he didn't know how, and he was always too rough with them. He left them alone after that, and a few still bloomed sometimes.

Life kept sliding onwards, and Ludwig kept his head down and studied. People never talked about Gilbert anymore. It was easier if they didn't, because it was almost like he had been some strange mirage in the heady hot weather before August storms, and all his wounds were scar tissue. Gilbert couldn't hurt him if he had never existed, Ludwig had thought, but he sometimes stared too long into the bathroom mirror and saw the shadow of red eyes and white hair grinning back. They looked more alike the older he got. Ludwig didn't tend to look at himself much after realizing that, and he always wore his hair up. His brother was gone and he wasn't going to come back, and Ludwig tried to live life without him by his principles of always being strong.

Not everything was perfect. Perfect would have been golden eyes and a laugh that made his chest tight and everything else that Feliciano Vargas was, but there were hundreds of miles between them and sometimes Ludwig lay awake at night watching the stars through his window and wondered if Feliciano was thinking of the distance, too, or if he was even thinking of him at all. Sometimes he thought of other things like the husky rasp of Feliciano's voice when he was tired and the soft noise he had made when Ludwig kissed his neck.

That kind of memory never hurt, not like his memories of Gilbert did. Feliciano never hurt him, but some places still rang with his touch. Ludwig stopped going to Francis' art store, and hid his drawings under textbooks. He still listened to the music, but only in private.

Antonio kept his promise to take care of him. He came by some weekends while Vati was away, but it was never for long. Antonio wasn't Gilbert, and they both knew it, but sometimes that was better. Antonio didn't run away. He sat and listened and didn't keep so many secrets. He tried to bring up the club where people met, but it was too soon. Eventually, he stopped talking about it.

The months still felt like dreaming sometimes, like Ludwig would wake up to Feliciano and Gilbert and everything would be right again, but he knew they weren't coming back. School was a welcome escape, but slowly, home became better. It was usually quiet, with Vati reading and Ludwig studying, but Ludwig would always take quiet over arguments. Vati knew a lot about the First World War, and he talked about how and what each side had innovated in a race to win. Ludwig was intrigued, and he had the feeling his grandfather was grateful to have someone to talk to.

They didn't talk about the incidents with people like Gilbert on the streets. Ludwig always turned the channel if the news started talking about it. Vati was tired of arguing, and Ludwig didn't dare break their fledgling peace for something like this, no matter how much it made him feel twisted and guilty and wrong. What was his secret compared to a quiet home? It wasn't worth disagreeing on this, Ludwig had convinced himself. It didn't matter.

He wouldn't let anything break that peace, even Antonio.

'My father is the pastor,' Antonio said one day. Ludwig nodded; he knew. Antonio ran a hand though his rumpled curls. 'I was thinking of...telling him. I am eighteen now, and I have a job, so when he-if he decides it is unacceptable...' He trailed off. What he was meaning hit Ludwig a second later.

'You're going to come out to him.'

'Yes,' Antonio said, eyes shining with tears.

'No. No, you can't.'

'Ludwig-'

'Gilbert,' Ludwig said. His eyes stung, but he would not cry. He was not the baby brother anymore, because there was nobody left to call him that. 'He did that and he's gone now.'

'This is my decision, Ludwig. I know what I'm doing.'

'You don't!' Ludwig was frantic. 'You can't. Why can't you just-just stay quiet?'

Antonio's face closed off. Ludwig realized he'd said what the pastor had, sometimes, and hot shame flooded his stomach, but he didn't back down.

'I thought you'd…understand,' Antonio said finally. His voice was cooler than normal. He left. Ludwig studied until his eyes hurt and then worked out until he couldn't move, but the accusing look in Antonio's eyes wouldn't leave him alone.

Sometimes Gilbert's last words to him flashed through his head. Baby brother, what are you doing up? Like a hand ruffling his hair and the soft hiss of a laugh. It made him feel hot and furious and helpless, because sometimes all he wanted was his big brother back to explain the world and make everything make sense again.

One day, Vati laughed, and Ludwig realized he'd never heard him laugh before. Vati's smile faded, and he stared at Ludwig, taking in the details of his face. It made Ludwig too aware that he fell together in the same lines that Gilbert had. People looked at him when they first saw him like they were expecting him to burst out in runaway poetry and bloody knuckles once he turned sixteen, like he was a bird fledging wings with black hawk feathers. But Ludwig wasn't like that. Gilbert had said Ludwig was the good kid, and he was. He had to be.

'You look like her,' Vati finally said. 'Your mother. She had a way of looking at people like you do.'

They never talked about his and Gilbert's mother, and Ludwig sat forward, trying not to betray the surge of feeling.

'What was she like?'

'She was always a...shooting star, I heard people call her. Wild and unrestrained.'

She sounds like Gilbert, Ludwig wanted to say. Vati looked like he wanted to say it, too, but he pressed his lips together and sat back. Gilbert still haunted the silences between them.

Antonio had taken over the role of explaining the world. When school started mattering more, he had sat Ludwig down at his kitchen table and asked him seriously what he wanted to do.

Gilbert would have answered that easily, was Ludwig's first thought. Gilbert had never had problems deciding to grab a path with both hands and devoting himself in his entirety to it.

'What have other people decided to do?' Ludwig asked. He didn't let his voice shake.

'This isn't about...other people, Ludwig. You need to do what you feel is right. I chose to study literature and its history because of how it affects me. Francis chose fine arts because he loved all things beautiful.'

'And?' Ludwig pushed. His throat felt tight. This was the first time he'd said anything about Gilbert to anyone for months. Antonio's jaw tightened.

'Some people choose engineering. They can also choose to take secondary courses in...music.'

Ludwig didn't say anything more about it that day, but he chose the engineering classes. Antonio didn't come back for two weeks. When he did, he said one thing.

'Ludwig, you are your own person. Nobody can influence you.'

Ludwig ignored him. It was easier to follow orders. After the choices Gilbert had made, Ludwig didn't want to destroy things by rushing into his own decisions.

One day in June, Antonio arrived with his hair tangled and his face flushed with life, looking better than he had for-

Ludwig realized, with a jolt, that it had almost been a year. A year of the silence where Feliciano's vibrancy had been making his words stick in his throat, a year of memories and slow change. Antonio was swaying slightly on his feet, and his face was painted with two blue circles again.

'They're parading,' he said. 'People like...me.'

'Oh.' Ludwig didn't know what to feel. He wanted to agree to what Antonio was offering-the dizzy, heady, golden happiness. But that was with Feliciano, and without Feliciano, Ludwig wasn't brave enough to do this by himself. Not after what had happened last time.

'Don't get in the way of the cameras,' he said, and turned away. His secret, what he'd been pushing away and denying for months, was thrumming underneath his ribs, longing to be himself for just one night.

'Ludwig-'

'You said I was my own person,' Ludwig shouted into the empty kitchen, and his voice echoed and sounded like Gilbert's. Ludwig couldn't move. He was terrified of letting himself want this, and some part of him was disgusted. He couldn't tell if it was at his cowardice or his longing, and that scared him. He told himself that was how it was supposed to be. It was easier if he wasn't like that, because Gilbert-

'This is because of him. I'm a fool not to have seen it earlier.'

Antonio stood there, teeth bared in a snarl. His eyes flashed, and he looked deranged like a fallen angel.

'You've changed,' he spat. 'God, what did Gilbert do to you? This is because of him, isn't this? All of this is because of him. You think that it was this that ruined him, instead of the fact that he was just a fucking bastard, and you're too blind to see it. You're still worshipping his memory a year after he left you. That's your problem, Ludwig. You live in fear of what he'll think of you.' He laughed and threw his arms up to gesture at the silent house. 'He's not coming back. Stop pretending he is.'

He stormed out and slammed the door behind him so hard the timbres rattled. Ludwig sat down at the table, feeling numb. The air was heavy and hot. Storm weather. Antonio's voice shuddered through his ribs. You're too blind to see it and he's not coming back.

That night was the first time Ludwig drank to feel less instead of more. A sip of the bitter liquid courage in the upper cupboard that made him cough and choke, but filled him with a fire that made all of Antonio's words not matter so much. There was no liquid, bubbling happiness here, just hurt and fear and betrayal and then less of all of it.

That night was also the first night Ludwig kissed a girl. The people were storming and the sky roared, and Ludwig wanted to join them, but he couldn't. He wouldn't. So he found a girl a few years older with a mouth like coral who knew him only as the engineering student from the other school and let her wind a hand in the spikes he couldn't flatten at the back of his hair and have her way with him up against the back of the church. He couldn't force himself to do more than hold on. She tasted of mint and chocolate and his own guilt, and Ludwig closed his eyes and thought of Feliciano, Feliciano, the artist's calluses on his hands as he slid a hand along his hummingbird ribcage, the liquid gold gleam of his eyes in the dark, storm weather pressing them close and tangling them in the sheets of his bed, breathless and devoted. She did not speak, as Ludwig couldn't if he had wanted. If he just closed his eyes and imagined it was Feliciano touching him, he could almost stand this.

He didn't remember her name when she left him with messy hair and messier thoughts. He was too busy with Feliciano's name stuck in his throat. He stood there for a long moment before he opened the old, cramped door to the stone passage and found the boxes of magazines. He flipped through them for no more than fifteen minutes, fitting gold eyes and auburn curls to the runners and swimmers, all lithe avian muscles under his hands, before he finally went home. Vati was watching the news.

Ludwig stood at the door, too aware of the hardness he'd seen in his eyes and the way he held himself. With the moonlight silvering the messy spikes of his hair, he looked like Gilbert must have the first time he came home late with his head spinning and more than two kinds of red on his lips. Antonio was right. He still lived for Gilbert, but it was easier to follow orders, no matter how difficult the orders themselves were.

'Where were you?' Vati asked.

'With-with a girl.'

'What was her name?'

'I don't know,' Ludwig admitted. He thought Vati would start talking about the parade, but he didn't. He just nodded slightly, and his careful expression flickered. He said something Ludwig couldn't catch entirely, something that started with just like his mother.

Just like my brother, Ludwig thought. He tended to break people too easily.

Ludwig felt wrong as he stumbled upstairs, wrong like he never had when he was with Feliciano. It didn't make sense. Feliciano had said to be happy, and this should have made him happy. The other boys at school talked about kissing girls and how it was always a head rush.

He collapsed into bed in his street clothes, too exhausted to think any longer.

He dreamed it was Feliciano and him against the back wall of the church instead, kissing in broad daylight like he wasn't a coward, like nobody would hurt them, their skin painted a thousand colours with the stained glass window. Feliciano was taller now, but Ludwig could still push him back against the stone and hear his name gasped with that voice he'd dreamed about so much, about his hands and his praise in every language Ludwig knew, his mouth on his pulse, going so fast Ludwig wondered if it would give out, and it was all too much, too much in the best way.

He woke up with Feliciano's name on his lips and his guilt hanging like a shroud. He lay there, every part of him hurting in a way he didn't know it could, for something more than a dream. Finally, he turned away from everything like coral girls and Antonio's words and, with a quiet gasp of the name he'd been keeping like a secret in the marrow of his bones for a year, whispered Feliciano and for the first time, felt right again.

0o0o0o

Antonio didn't come back the next day. He came back a month later, his curls long enough to pull into a short ponytail. He didn't say anything, simply sat down at the table.

'You didn't get caught,' Ludwig said. He was beyond relieved that Antonio hadn't gone how Gilbert had, but now the too-familiar guilt was back, making him feel weighted and wrong.

'I was...not allowed back home after the parade,' Antonio said. 'Francis is letting me stay with him until I find my own place. I thought you'd be interested to know that your brother is no longer in the city. He's back in Europe.' Antonio's voice was too stiff, too formal. He didn't meet his eyes. Was he thinking of what he'd shouted before?

'He made it,' Ludwig said. His own voice sounded too far away. Antonio laughed. It came out as a bark.

'In a way.'

They sat there in the heavy silence for a long moment. Antonio broke it.

'Ludwig, I'm sorry.'

'Don't.'

'You don't need to live by him-' Antonio winced at even mentioning Gilbert. 'I shouldn't have said what I did. Gilbert was-Gilbert is my friend. My best friend, but he's made his decisions and just because he is your blood does not mean you have to forgive him-'

'Don't, Antonio.' Ludwig stood up. He was tired of everything. School had ended for summer, and there was too much time to hurt over Feliciano and Gilbert and mint chocolate. 'You were right. But I'm not going to-to stop, okay?' He didn't realize his voice was filling with tears until they were prickling at his eyes, at all the humming emotions just under his too-thin skin, like he was a child again. Anyone could shatter him now. 'I can't. It's easier to just follow what he did.'

'I know.' Antonio gazed at him with an expression of such sadness Ludwig almost promised he would change. 'You're so much like him sometimes. Too much for your own good.'

He left Ludwig standing in the kitchen feeling as fragile and vulnerable as a bird with a broken wing.

0o0o0o

Two more years passed, and Ludwig did not forget Gilbert, but he wasn't as hurt by him anymore. Feliciano was still a raw knot of emotion in him, inside the chambers of his heart like a compass needle always pulling, so gently sometimes he could almost ignore it. Their language map was so worn that Ludwig folded it up and put it away.

Ludwig kissed girls occasionally, because otherwise people would whisper queer, and it was less his own fear and more the memory of Feliciano's blank wide eyes that made Ludwig find girls who's names he never remembered to hide with behind the walls. He learned how to touch girls, and how to stop watching every boy that walked by. Ludwig was good at following the rules, and he only broke them once.

Ludwig kissed a boy, too, only once. His touch had set off sudden sparks that ran up and down his spine, pooling in his stomach and in all the gaps in his chest. He was older, with a long blue-striped scarf and piercing eyes, but his hands were streaked with paint like Feliciano's had been and Ludwig decided not to think for the night. They'd met across the bar and Ludwig had asked him what his name was with his heart in his throat. He hadn't answered, just beckoned him out to the alley and kissed him barely protected by the shadows and his scarf. Ludwig had gone home dizzy and satisfied.

It was an August storm, full-bodied and hot, rain lashing the windows. The wind was howling. Ludwig was listening to the records Feliciano had chosen. Everything was warm and safe until their hurricane walked up the pathway, white hair tangled in the gales. Ludwig's heart stopped and started and heavy, heavy fear filled the silence.

Ludwig had learned about the anatomy of the heart in science class and the instructor said chest cavity like there was a gaping dark space inside his chest with his fragile heart suspended inside of it, like the yolk in an egg. The instructor never told him that sometimes there was a huge, dark space inside his chest from where his older brother had ran away, and when he came back, his chest would feel tight in the worst way because there was too much pressure inside and not enough outside. He was never shown on a diagram where someone could process all their pain and anger and horrible, horrible need. He was never told that sometimes hurricanes hatched from fragile eggshell hearts and broke everything and you would let them.

Gilbert Beilschmidt stood at the door, wind whipping his white hair into his face. His gaze swept over Ludwig, his height, the breadth of his shoulders, and lingered on his hair. He smiled and it was like ice cracking, all terror and pain.

'Baby brother, you've gotten so tall,' he said.

Ludwig stood there. He could only faintly hear. His fragile heart was pounding in his ears. Gilbert was here, his wildfire older brother, after three years of nothing. Three years after abandoning him, he showed up and Ludwig just wanted his big brother back.

He should not have forgiven him. Some small, childish part of him knew that he did not have to forgive Gilbert. There was no reason to forgive Gilbert.

But Ludwig had spent three years wanting his brother back and in the end, he was still scared of heights and failure and other things and he needed this, his big brother's red eyes on his. Ludwig was a fool for sacrifice, for devotion, and he would let Gilbert do this because nothing mattered except him being back. Everything would be better now.

He stepped forward jerkily, and Gilbert tilted his head and asked if Ludwig was going to hit him with a sad kind of smile, and then Ludwig grabbed him and buried his face in his shoulder. He wasn't crying tears, but there were horrible, horrible noises coming out of him, threats and pleads and a choking, rattling gasp. His chest was burning, but he did not care. Gilbert pulled him closer and whispered reassurances until all three years had wracked through him, leaving him empty, and quiet, and exhausted. An empty slate to be rewritten by Gilbert, who's hands were more callused than before.

God, three years, three years of hoping and wishing and praying and Gilbert was here, and Ludwig would give him everything, everything.

0o0o0o

Gilbert is complicated and personally, I would not forgive him.

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