A/N - Everybody has their limits.

Anti was still there. Except he couldn't be. Because he was dead. Marvin had killed him. Yet there he was. After the initial shock, Marvin excused himself to the bathroom, threw up, and sat on the floor of his shower unit, arms wrapped around his legs.

This wasn't possible. It couldn't be. Anti was dead. Although thinking about it, Anti didn't exactly look...human. God Marvin felt awful even thinking that but Anti didn't look human. The magician held his head in his hands. He'd been awake less than twenty minutes and already his head felt ready to explode.

But, said a dangerous little voice at the back of his head, what if the universe was giving him a second chance? An opportunity to make things right. He wasn't entirely sure on the how but if Anti was here then there had to be a reason. Eventually Marvin ventured out the bathroom to find his brother sitting upside down on the bed, his legs going up against the wall and his head hanging off the side. When Anti saw him, he smirked.

Marvin could make this work.

Keeping Anti in check turned out to be easier said than done. There were two main rules to this. One, Anti had to stay out of sight. It was best that no one saw him. Two was no arson. I won't go into details as to why, just trust me that this was a very necessary rule. Keeping him under control would have been much easier if Anti didn't keep getting bored within seconds. Leaving him unsupervised usually resulted in property damage if you were lucky, so eventually, he had to go wherever Marvin did.

While not too thrilled about everything, Anti learned to live with it, taking personal delight in shocking those he felt were taking too much of Marvin's attention. Not that he gave a shit. Idiot magic man could do what the fuck he wanted. Just don't forget about your poor scrambled brother, forever cursed because of your actions.

Gradually Marvin stopped talking to other people unless it was absolutely necessary. More than one person wound up in the hospital with bad nerve damage from Anti's 'harmless' shocks. Either he was purposefully hurting them and he didn't care, or Anti had no idea just how strong he was. Marvin wasn't sure which he hoped was the truth.

So it came to be that the magician only really left for work, stacking shelves at a nearby grocery store, or for occasional walks around the block. No human interaction, no friends, no real anything, but he was protecting his brother and that was….that was what was important.

It was a Thursday, about three days since Marvin had last gone outside and Anti was restless, growling and glitching around the room, knocking things from the shelves, throwing clothes around, anything to counter act the mind-numbing boredom that constantly plagued him. Marvin did his best to ignore it with his nose buried in a book, but he couldn't read more than a few more lines for the constant background crashes.

Eventually Anti tired of being ignored, like the giant toddler he had seemingly grown to be, and he stood beside the bed, bright green eyes glinting in the low light as he leant in to Marvin's ear.

"What'̶s t̛he ma͞tt̡e͜r?̛" the twisted grin on his face was sickening as he spoke softly, "A͝sh̡a̸m̶e̢d ҉o͜f͜ me?"

There was a crackle-flash and Anti was gone. He did that sometimes, when he got bored of terrorising his brother. He would disappear somewhere else and do...well Marvin didn't like to think too much about that.

There was nothing all that different about this particular Thursday. Anti had been no more or less destructive than usual, but something about the glitch's cruel taunt dug deep. Marvin looked around the devastation of his small room and the tatters of his 'life'.

He couldn't do this. It was all his fault but he couldn't do it any more. Anti had always been the strong one, the one who had his back, bigged him up, helped him fight. Now he had nothing and no one, and was slowly draining himself dry trying to make up for something that he would never earn forgiveness for.

So Marvin packed his things, luckily there wasn't a lot, and was gone before Anti came back. He said a silent prayer as he left the building that Anti wouldn't kill whoever would end up in that room, but the thought only made his steps move faster.

He couldn't do it any more.