Trail of Angels, Illuminated, Tears of an Angel, Empty, Stronger than Ever.

The Gay Brother

The Father and the Wife

Their father had finished high school but taken nothing beyond that. Their mother had dropped out of her last year of school in order to host a wedding that tried to ignore how doomed the courtship had been.

Lots of smiles in those pictures; all the fond memories of cake and flowers and how gorgeous their mother had looked in her white dress. The neighbourhood had been kind enough to forget how long pregnancy could last because none of the brothers had ever heard a whisper about Lovino's birthday forever arriving only half a year after their parents' anniversary.

Feliciano had never asked, not even for school projects, what his father did for a living. He simply claimed not to have a father, and for a while had insisted that the man was dead. He still shuddered and knew his mouth twisted bitterly around the word. 'Father', 'father', who was that? He'd grown up with Lovino and Benedict and Mario and Nonno, he hadn't needed a father.

Whatever he'd done hadn't made very much money. Enough for his wife and one child. Almost enough for his wife and two children. But for a wife and three…

Feliciano had never asked, because he hated to remember, if things had grown worse for his mother while she'd carried Carlino. He'd never wondered, because he was terrified of the answer, if things wouldn't have turned out better for Lovino without any little brothers at all.

They spent a lot of nights at their grandparents' house, tucked into Mama's old bed or sharing Mario's old room for a day or two while Mama stayed at home with that man. They'd gone to the church with Benedict on Sundays and weeded gardens, or snuck around his office and played with the incense burners and candle-sticks. One time Lovino had put the communion cup on his head and danced around with it like that until they got caught.

Afternoons and Saturdays after school at the Pinwheel, even when they were too small to do more than carry dirty dishes from tables back to the kitchen, or pose for photos with tourists while dressed up in little folk costumes. Feliciano was in high school before he'd realized he couldn't actually remember which house had been theirs before the incident.

And maybe incident was a better word, not accident. That man hadn't accidentally gotten angry that night, he hadn't accidentally told Lovino and Feliciano to get out of the living room with their dinner and go play with old broken toys in their bedroom. And Lovino hadn't accidentally decided not to close their door all the way while Feliciano scrambled under the bed to get away from the first wave of shouting.

Whatever job that man worked at, it was physical. It made him strong enough to add to the fear of a loud voice. Being picked up by him, as much as he still hated to remember it, had not been a bad thing sometimes. Suddenly the ground would vanish and the sky would open up, large hands and wide shoulders, a head of thick dark hair towering high above the ground that made little feet in summer sandals feel like cherries swinging from the highest branches of the tree. Long legs that could take the dock at the riverside in three easy strides and carry two boys and a grown man into the gentle current.

The rare good memory: just a betrayal of what always came lurking after hours. The false sense of security and love watching a car engine come apart and get put back together on a sunny afternoon with lemonade and sandwiches. Patience for children which masked anger and violence with a rich laugh that haunted them for years after he was gone.

Because that night was the night that Lovino made a choice for himself and their family, it was the moment when he climbed up on the pedestal in Feliciano's life where he'd remained for years after the fact, because the accident hadn't been an accident after all.

When Lovino shoved their door open and ran yelling back into the living room, and he threw himself at one of those large arms before Feliciano was more than half-way back out from under the bed.

And Feliciano didn't see it happen, but he heard it. He understood how much power was behind each swing so when that arm rolled back for another hit Lovino was carried off the floor. Maybe instinct had made him try to shake off the weight that collided with his back, maybe he'd swung back with more power than he would have just to hit someone who'd made him so mad.

Maybe that was the accidental part: the moment where a father threw his son into a glass cabinet and the world stopped turning. When wooden rods pierced cotton folds and frosted panes collapsed over bowls and fluted stems, the buckle and scream of a dozen different kinds of glass exploding against skin and drowning in red curtains flowing down to close the tragic act of an unhappy family.

And the silence… The first time screaming ended without tears because the sun had vanished before hands could find light switches, the television's muted face flashing white and grey and colours lost to trauma of a program no one remembered.

It was silence Feliciano broke, or someone once said it was him. He broke it when the glass slashed his knees because instead of walking he ran to the scarlet mess and skidded down to grab the stunned, paralyzed figure dusted with chips and fragments of blind pain. Feliciano screamed first, because no one else had been screaming at all, not yet…

"If you think either of us are going to stand by and watch it happen again, you're wrong!" Not yet… Not with the warm lights of the church coming back into focus, not with the table holding that trove of broken glass and shattered memories under the candles. "Adultry? Abuse? In this family- I will not stand for it a second time!"

"I'm not-!"

"Lovino you took your vows in ill faith from the start, and if you disrespect your wife as much as your God then you're no nephew of mine!"

"I did not!" And the yelling was growing into screaming, rising up with Lovino's voice and his black jacket shed to show the triangle of sweat making his shirt stick to his skin. The blue fabric hid the scars he'd borne since childhood, the piercing, diagonal stabs and slices left by ceramic and glass on that night, the white marks the sun made stand out every summer by the water's edge. "I meant every word I said on these steps and I-"

"Liar-"

"I love my wife!" The desperation riddling his words made them shake in the air, the candles flickering where Benedict, tall and mean, was unmoved behind them and watching the man they'd all gathered here to judge. "I've made mistakes and I know that! We were talking tonight! We were trying and then I lost my temper- and that's my fault!"

"And your affair?" But standing there in servile black, Benedict didn't have to search for words and it was Feliciano who was trying to keep himself quiet watching Lovino fight and lose ground he had no right to stand on. "You love your wife so much you shame her; you shame your entire family and you use your own brother as an excuse!"

"I-" Feliciano's head came up as Lovino's voice faltered again. He hadn't felt himself looking down but he shook off the cold grip of his memories and focused on exactly what he heard next:

"Feliciano has enough to deal with just trying to handle my father: how dare you use him to cover your own escapades!" Those words, the way they were said made it sound like- "Wounding the rest of us with stories we all know are lies! How many times have you told us there's nothing your brother in Germany has said that's worth repeating to anyone here? Your word is worth nothing! Before tonight I hadn't even known he was home!"

It felt like being wanted. It was selfish and wrong in that moment but he felt it and Feliciano knew something in him reached out with eager, grasping hands for that shred of acknowledgement and the possibility that someone else in his family had missed him as much as he'd missed them. He couldn't believe himself for breaking away from Lovino's torment and what had happened only an hour ago with Chiara, but he did it because for a moment Benedict and Mario both looked at him, and it felt like he was being seen for the first time in years.

But it was only for a moment and he had to let it pass. Desperately scraping at the church-stones for the dust of family life would have to wait. He couldn't do it now because there was so much more to worry about, something far more toxic to deal with. If his brother became like his father then what kind of family would Feliciano even have left to pine for?

"It… I can't explain." Hurtful words from a broken man, they smothered that temporary high and dragged Feliciano back down to the quiet shimmer of broken glass on white cloth. "It wasn't supposed to be like this, we were friends not-"

"If your friend means so much more than your family, Lovino, enough to turn you into a man like your father, then we're finished here." The air of finality that came with those words was unbreakable. They didn't crash or collide with what had been said before, didn't roar down the side of the discussion and blindside the rest of them with an avalanche's fury. They simply were. Like the dark of night or voice of the river running through their little town, Benedict made his statement and it was absolute.

Because he didn't mean finished as-in they could all go home and go to sleep now, that somehow things were forgiven and their family could collectively begin to forget and ignore what had happened. Tonight meant more than that, his words meant more than that. But in their own unyielding way they were impossible.

Feliciano didn't want to remember. Tonight was about not wanting to relive or remind himself of everything wrapped up in their past. He'd felt his father's spectre hovering in the blackness invading the corners of the room, but now there was the oppressive weight of their grandfather hovering above them in the rafters of the old church to match him.

'We're finished here', he'd said. 'Get out', and those were the last words Feliciano had ever heard the man at the head of their family say to him. Three years later all that could come to him was heresy: second-hand accounts that should have been trustworthy but still carried the undeniable tarnish of lies and stretched truths. Why else were they standing here tonight? How many lies had Lovino fed him along with the rest of their family?

How damaged had they all become as people that he could even ask that question?

But benedict was telling Lovino to leave. They all heard it. Even Carlino who had been silent and obedient this entire time with his arms knotted in front of him and shoulder touching Feliciano's arm trying to steal some meager comfort, even he still heard it too. It was impossible but at the same time it was real, so very, impossibly real. That authority, that power, that unwavering declaration that tonight had come to a close and with it…

As much as Lovino had lied and all the wrong he'd done, could Feliciano just stand there and let his brother go through the same thing he had? A gross punishment for an awful crime, yes, but… could he do it?

No.

"Uncle," Lovino was frozen, they could see it so it was Feliciano who spoke up this time. He felt the last of the anger he'd been clinging to leave him, acknowledged the sympathy he hadn't wanted to let take root spread and carry his words up past parched lips and a fear he hadn't felt creep up on him, but now fought. "That's too much. At least when Chiara feels better tomorrow we can-"

"Who said I needed to wait?"

Where Benedict's announcement fed the silence and darkened the depths of the church's hallowed air, but the sharp, female voice that cut through Feliciano's words was a flash of light that struck the rest of them blind and left a low scream in their ears.

"But thank you, Feliciano, for being the only ogre in this stupid circle to remember my name."

They all turned around, they had to. Feliciano looked and saw his sister-in-law standing in the open door of the church, car-keys clutched in one hand where her firsts were resting on her hips, short body squared up and filling the massive space with pure gumption and pride. There was light behind her- from the car she'd driven to get here maybe. The white beams showed off the same shorts she'd been wearing in her kitchen, a green shirt replacing the blouse stained by the attack. Her hair was half up, messy ropes of black tangled over each other and spilling down one shoulder where the tie had failed her.

His first thought was to look for the bruise, but he found her eyes instead and something in him cowered. The first word Feliciano always used to describe Chiara in person was "scary", because when she was more than just upset, and her instinct to protect was faced with a direct threat against what was hers, she could be terrifying. Something in her brown eyes had hardened honey to solid amber, a dark burn smouldering under narrow brows and painted lips ripped around a snarl. If there was a bruise, he couldn't see it in the light or look for it when she spoke.

"Lovino, come." Because Chiara raised one hand like a queen and didn't even point at her husband, just crooked two fingers in his direction and gave the order. It shocked them.

"Chiara…" And if Feliciano was shocked, Lovino was about to shut-down. His face was the picture of horror before he croaked his wife's name out in the dark, standing there rigid and collapsing after what had already been said to him and what the woman he'd harmed was demanding.

"Did I stutter?" But Chichi wasn't having any of it, and the look she harnessed him with dragged Lovino down the shallow steps of the sanctuary dais before he came to a halt and what was on the table caught her eye. Before anyone said anything, Chiara hissed and her lips peeled back with teeth locked.

"Animals, all of you! What is that trash?" She swept into the church like a wind, not a roaring typhoon or gentle spring breeze, but a firm, constant wall of moving air that scattered the dust and threatened to blow out Benedict's candles. The ritual of shame started coming apart as Chiara passed Feliciano before he could react and she snatched Lovino's wrist in her hand, twisting it around as the terror on his face broke and immediately erupted onto tears.

"I'm sorry, Chiara, I'm so-"

"Shut up! You're still bleeding!" He saw it when Lovino tried to pull away and heard the change when Chiara's fingertips pulled the first piece of green glass out of his palm. The wounds had been shallow when Feliciano saw them, maybe they still hurt a lot but they certainly weren't bleeding. What mattered more was the change in the way they were both standing so rigidly, one for fear of falling and the other because she refused to buckle when trying to get her way. Feliciano saw the change, the way Chiara bowed her head and Lovino was staring wide-eyed through the tears that suddenly broke through and dripped down his chin. He saw them come close in more than one simple way because an apology couldn't make things better but it was so much better than painful silence.

But they didn't embrace and it was nothing like the movies with longing looks and the certainty that, whatever their love was, it was real and would overcome. The only thing Feliciano knew was that it wasn't tension. The stress was there, it had to be after tonight, but not the disgust.

"Chiara, this is a serious issue." Mario was the one who spoke up, walking towards them and setting off the same strict voice that had silenced the rest of them once already.

"Yes, Mario! What a clever observation." She could be so civil when she wanted to be, but cutting and down-right mean suited her better tonight. Chiara didn't even look up from where her fingers were busy over Lovino's cut palm, glass pieces striking the floor with light pings like pins and tin caps. "Were you going to strip off his shirt next and have him parade around in front of mirrors to show off the scars? Whatever serious issues you men were discussing, they had nothing to do with tonight."

In a way Feliciano understood why he hadn't been so surprised when Lovino had told him who he'd married. They had always both been close to the Valenti sisters, and even if he'd immediately thought of a Spanish woman with a camera lens wearing the ring to match his brother's gold band, Chiara's name hadn't confused him. His brother was an asshole with a temper, but he'd married a woman with only a handful more patience and a much sharper tongue.

"Go wait in the car." But her voice came down until it was almost soft for him. Feliciano barely heard her and almost felt like he was intruding by picking up the words.

"I can't…" And he almost didn't hear Lovino at all, but he saw his wife lift her head up and stand straight again, her face hardening like her eyes that watched his tears without flinching and took a half-step away from him, hands at her sides and the glass pried from his skin glittering on the floor.

"You can, but if you won't then it's because you want a divorce." On his brother's behalf, Feliciano stopped breathing when he heard those words and saw the break across Chiara's brow that made her eyes melt for a moment. "Or you think I do."

Lovino moved like a man dying, but Feliciano didn't know how he was still standing to begin with. He brought both hands up like he would touch her, reaching half-way to her face before his shoulders heaved and he shook his head without speaking, eyes pleading and mouth a sorry black tear gouged across his face. He couldn't speak, not anymore, and there was the raw scrape of his shoe grabbing one shard of bloody glass as he stepped on it and stumbled his defeated way down the centre aisle of the church to reach the door. Instead of following or, god forbid, helping him get there, Chiara Vargas remained behind.

And she did it to protect him.

"I'm not your sister." Lovino was barely out the door when she spoke, her voice lower than he'd thought she'd pitch it, but she was looking at their uncles before her hard gaze moved around to Feliciano and his younger brother, catching both of them and holding them with iron words. "Or your mother. I loved Marguerite; she was a mother and an aunt and a friend to me, but we are not the same person."

"It's not about being the same-" Benedict tried to explain as he stepped down from the table, but Chiara was ready and Feliciano felt a shiver watching her face a man who'd been a moral force in his upbringing.

"I am not an uneducated girl who's locked in a marriage to the man who got her pregnant!"

"Chichi!" Carlino broke his silence to call her name, speaking when Feliciano was still blinking around the sudden flare of heat that ran up his spine. For a moment his languages confused him, he couldn't have just heard-

"If you're old enough to be here, Carlino then you're old enough to accept the truth!" She wouldn't even spare the youngest one, and Feliciano didn't know where his words had gone but he was struck mute by what was passing in front of him. "So take your guilt elsewhere, Benedict: my husband is not his father."

He'd never seen Benedict turn quite that colour, all the blood draining out of his narrow face before flushing back in anger and bringing along the voice to match:

"If this happens again, I will annul the marriage myself!"

"And I'll see you stripped of your office!" He'd never heard anyone dare threaten-

"Chiara, we've watched this before!" Mario stepped in and Feliciano just felt himself falling further and further back. He wanted to tell Carlino to leave and go check on their brother, but he was still frozen as Mario's hands cut the air and parcelled his words into harsh bricks. "Yes he's sorry, of course he is! Do you know how many times I listened to their father say the same thing? He was one of my best friends and he-"

"You are not responsible for us!" Her voice went shrill, it shocked him to hear it break because Feliciano hadn't even known her anger had a limit, but it did and it fell apart. "He's a bastard, yes, I married a bastard! But I married him! Not you!" It was terrifying to be attacked, it made the walls vanish and brought the cold world crashing down, black waters rising while it took every ounce of the person you once were to grasp and drag yourself to safety. "I will decide what happens tonight, and we will decide what to do if it happens again! Him and I and no one else!"

Feliciano had been under an attack like that before, multiple times in fact. Maybe none of them had been quite like this, but they hadn't been so different either.

"If either of you dare-" So as Chiara began to lose her grip on her anger, her hard mask cracking and letting the hysteria of nay-saying voices creep up closer, Feliciano didn't find his voice but he did step forward. "If you dare run my husband out of town as if you have a right to that decision then- then…!"

"Then you'll come to Berlin." Feliciano stepped up beside her and Chiara nearly flinched away, looking at him with wide, shaking eyes like she'd forgotten he was there and didn't know what to think of him. His words took a moment to settle before she finally seemed to hear him, and the tight fists by her sides looked like they tried to relax.

When he looked back at the two men who'd replaced his father for so much of his life, Feliciano found it a lot harder to speak, but forced it.

"My-" He just really had to push. "My spouse hates Lovino, and- of course Chiara hates me, but…" But the more he made himself speak, the easier it slowly felt. Like something on his insides was firming up, building up pride watching mystified expressions harden with understanding and a sternness tempered by the fear of thin filial ice. It was so much easier to look at Chiara again where his sister-in-law was standing with tight pink lips and the first shadows of the bruise spreading along her nose and down the swell of her cheek. "But my door will be open."

"Feliciano." It was not the first time tonight that Benedict had said his name, but it was his first time being addressed and it chilled the parts of him that felt like they'd been getting stronger. When his uncle didn't follow up the name with some kind of haunting declaration, and whatever message his silence was trying to convey failed to reach him, Feliciano spoke again and made himself even clearer:

"I will not throw away my brother the same way you got rid of me." He wouldn't do it because he couldn't. If no one else in his family ever understood the kind of pain they'd put him through then he would be thankful for it: he couldn't think of anyone who deserved it.

Liar, adulterer and abuser, yes, Lovino had done wrong and Feliciano was still furious with him inside, but he couldn't go this far. He couldn't help take Lovino by the arms and legs and throw him into the river, or watch the current carry him somewhere beyond their town and the sun and the taste of red wine under a young lemon tree. He couldn't do what they were threatening. And even if in the heat of anger at the kitchen door he'd pretended that maybe he could stomach it, his anger was different and it couldn't stand up to the horror of what those words really meant.

"But if you can go through with it a second time," If the uncles who'd been like fathers to three abandoned boys could really disown two of them for anger's sake and their dead mother's memory… "Then that just proves how none of us were ever anything more than just burdens you took care of for your sister."

His voice brought the silence. He hadn't thought that would be his role in this, but he played it as well as he could. The ceiling seemed to come down and there was a dead weight in the air that froze the moment completely. The candles didn't flicker, no one seemed to breathe, he felt his little brother and his sister-in-law staring at him, he knew Mario had lost his voice by the sight of his slack-jawed face, but then his eyes locked with the uncle he'd been closest to for all his years spent growing up.

The uncle who'd seen the world: gone to America, visited Africa. The uncle who shared Feliciano's role between a loud older brother and a timid younger sister. The uncle who'd read all the same thinkers and thought about them on summer vacations and Christmas breaks, the man who'd helped him feel comfortable in a church in another country with another language because it was still the same God; still supposed to be the same God that had saved Feliciano when the book of His words had condemned him.

Benedict called out the darkness, Chiara embodied the power, Feliciano brought the silence. They watched him but they didn't say anything, Feliciano was the one who had to break eye-contact with Benedict first because he was as overwhelmed as the rest of them when he placed a hand on Chiara's arm. His touch didn't startle her, she just watched him as her feet started moving and they both turned and walked away together.

He didn't turn to look when he heard Carlino hurrying after them, just felt his little brother touch his shoulder and turn it into a desperate grip on his sleeve that Feliciano didn't shake off.

They left.

The headlights were still streaming against the door, the car engine off while the glare hid Lovino where he was standing right at the top of the church steps. Feliciano's eyes were too confused by the change in light and his silent mind to take him in right away, but his brother's voice sounded beaten and quiet when he gasped through the hot night air at him:

"You didn't really say that to them…" So he'd heard it; he'd stood there and listened to the whole thing.

The sound of Carlino closing the church door was too loud; it stopped him from trying to find anything worth saying as Chiara just hovered there next to him. Husband and wife didn't seem to acknowledge each other but he didn't care about whatever they were waiting for: his little brother came up behind him and wrapped his arms around Feliciano's torso before he could sum up the energy to care. It was more important to set a hand over Carlino's tense fist, telling him it was okay to keep holding on as several soft, fast tremors shot through the boy pressing his head down between Feliciano's shoulder-blades.

"Feli, you-" What gave Lovino the right to hold a hand up to him after what had just happened behind them? Feliciano didn't know if his brother was trying to touch him or only gesture, but he slapped it down and watched Lovino flinch back for it.

"I'm not ready to talk to you." He tried to hiss the words but he knew they just came out soft and cold. Carlino's grip on him tightened so hard he thought the boy was trying to lift him, but there was a pull back as the little brother's shoes scraped over the step.

"Stop."

"No- don't fight, don't fight…" When the murmur broke down into more shaking and hot breaths down his back Feliciano turned around, twisting so Carlino let go enough that he was left facing his younger sibling instead. Chiara's voice almost missed him, and he didn't have the will to turn around when he had the chance to just return Carlino's hug and hold him with a hand behind his brother's head and the other wrapped around his shoulders, close and tight enough that the grip around his chest eased up a little.

"You did good in there." He whispered, letting Carlino hide in his shoulder before he shook his head roughly.

"No I didn't… I just stood there."

"That's why you did good."

More silence, because Carlino didn't argue with him and the couple behind them weren't saying anything. There was no sound from inside the church, so if Benedict and Mario had broken their own silence then they were doing so in soft voices. Seconds dragged by with church lights and distant stars, and Carlino waited until Feliciano left a kiss in his red hair before he tried stepping out of the embrace.

"Get in the car." Chiara didn't whisper, her voice came back up as her hand raked itself down through her tangled hair, eyes closed for a moment so she didn't have to see any of them. "All of you." When she turned and walked down the steps to the gravel and full light of her car- Alice's car, if Felicano recognized the blue-, she didn't even look back at her husband.

"Yes, Chichi." Feliciano didn't know which one of them said it, but they followed.

"Feliciano in front; we're going home."

"Yes, Chichi." And that was the end of it.

Lots of stuff worth mulling over in this chapter, so if something doesn't sit right with you then I've done my job!

I'm still not sure if it was clear enough, but yes: when Benedict gave that ultimatum about Lovino loving his "friend" more than his family, that was indeed him being told to go away and consider himself unwanted by the rest of the Vargas family.

And I love Chiara okay there is lots I could say about her both good and bad so… leave a review?

See you with chapter 21!