Chapter Six

Luke was starting to worry me. I mean, it wasn't like he was normally super loud and bursting with energy or anything, but as the days wore on he just got quieter and quieter.

Today was the day that marked an entire week since our arrival here. Well, a week and a day for me.

I'm a bit ashamed to say that I'd fallen into a bad habit. Luke seemed to fall deepest into his own thoughts shortly after we woke up and just before we went to bed each night, so I'd begun to make sure I was out the door for work before he was fully awake.

Today, however, I learned the downside to this plan. Teuchi and Ayame get to the ramen stand much earlier than I ever would have expected, and since I was starting to get there earlier myself, Teuchi had decided that it would be a lot more convenient to everyone if I just started my shift earlier. So many of their customers paid for their delivery orders at the stand directly, it was hardly an inconvenience for me to just leave their ramen by their door before anyone woke up.

Our main customers were Naruto and Choji. (Go figure) Unfortunately, I rarely saw them now, because their seemingly endless supply of ramen was being dropped off before they had to be awake for the day. In fact, I still had yet to meet Choji, though his parents were usually awake. On the other hand, I'd begun leaving Naruto's massive order outside his apartment door. How that boy managed to eat so much ramen in the course of a week I'll never know...

Anyway, my job didn't have set hours. I got to go home whenever I was finished with the deliveries for the day.

Today, I got done a little before 1:30 PM. For a moment I seriously considered just walking around the village, wasting away the rest of the afternoon. Then I inwardly kicked myself. What the hell is wrong with you? For God's sake, he's your brother!

So I steeled my courage and headed towards what was now home.

...

I opened the door to the apartment slowly, just listening to the silence. After a moment, I walked in and closed the door behind me. Still no sound from inside. This silence was anything but peaceful. I'm ashamed to say that for the briefest of seconds... I secretly hoped that he'd gone out somewhere.

I walked around the little corner between the door and the main room. Luke was up and dressed, but he didn't turn to look at me as I walked in, closing the door behind me with an audible click. He was sitting on the bed, looking down at something in his lap. I recognized it as his sketchbook.

The sketchbook didn't mean too much to me. He'd had one just like it at home, and this new book had been one of the few things he'd gotten for himself apart from the necessities. I knew Luke was pretty good, even though he didn't like to show anybody his drawings. I was the only one who ever saw them. And I only got to see the meaningless ones. I knew he could do much better; what I had seen proved how talented he was, but the drawings containing all his feelings were kept hidden from the world.

"Hey," I said quietly. Although this silence was disturbing, I was struck with a sudden grip of panic when I broke it.

He just barely nodded at me. After a minute or so, Luke tossed the sketchbook down on the bed beside him. He took a deep, calming breath. His eyes were closed and his features were twisted in deep concentration.

I just stood there, awkwardly, watching my brother. My twin was always so calm. He was the rock to my wildness. The common sense to all my hasty decisions. That's how we'd always functioned before. But even as different as we were, Luke and I had always been on the same page. ...Or in the same chapter, at least. I'd never been so uncertain of what my brother was about to do.

Then he looked up and said sharply, "Carly, how are we getting home?"

The question caught me off guard. I wasn't sure if it was because he was being so forward or if it was because, until that moment, I'd thought Luke had known that I had no plans of returning. I stammered something, but I knew my fragments formed no sentence. This seemed to frustrate my brother even more.

"Did you even think this through?" he asked harshly "Do you ever think anything through?"

I could only stand there frozen. As far as I knew, Luke had never spoken to anyone that way, least of all me. He rose to his feet. He closed his eyes again and looked down. His hands were clenched into fists at his side. In a somewhat clipped tone he snapped, "This isn't fantasyland, Carly! You ought to know that better than me!"

Finally, I could form a sentence. "What... what do you mean?" My voice wavered pathetically, but Luke appeared to take no notice. If my tone of voice bothered him as much as it bothered me, he didn't show it. The worst part was that I had a pretty good idea what he was getting at.

"What did you expect to get out of this? A place where everyone agrees with everything you say? Or think? Or do?"

I flinched, knowing full well that 'everybody' didn't matter. Luke was hinting at himself. He opened his eyes. I was surprised to find that they were burning with pain, not anger, though his voice still sounded ready to rip something apart.

"Have you even thought about what us disappearing could be doing to our already emotionally unstable mother? Have you? And she's not the only one! I'm your brother, not some character you can manipulate with the stroke of a pen. I'm not some dog you can just get rid of when things aren't going well!"

"I know that..." I said quietly.

"Do you? Because I'm not so sure!" He stormed past me out the door then. I'm ashamed to say that I was relieved to see him go. Not because I wanted to be rid of my twin, but because he seriously looked ready to start crying at any second, something I couldn't remember ever seeing him do.

I stayed frozen in my spot like that for some time afterward. Then I slowly dragged myself over to flop down on the bed he had just vacated. I felt ready to start crying myself. I'd never fought with him before. Our personalities may not have been very similar, but we'd always gotten along just fine.

I sat up and my eyes were drawn to his sketchbook, which had been flipped upside down but had remained open to the page he'd been staring at. It felt awful to invade his privacy after that, but I felt I needed to know what had caused such a disturbance.

The picture took my breath away. It was amazing, but it was more than that. It held meaning. Not just to Luke. To me, too.

It was a redrawn picture of a photo that sat on our dining room table. It was a shot of myself, Luke, and Tyler when we were younger. It was one of those photos that I saw so often I'd stopped really seeing it. It was kind of just there. Yet it was so significant to our lives. It represented my mother's hopes for the future, memories of a happier time. Tyler had been out of the hospital for some time, and he actually looked like a normal, healthy ten-year-old in the picture. Luke had redrawn it to perfection, every last detail.

It was enough to move me to tears, but it still felt like it couldn't be just this. So I flipped the page, and a piece of paper fell out.

I picked it up, carefully setting the sketchbook back down on the bed. It was a chart of a recorded phone conversation. Given the level of technology available to this world, it most certainly had come from the one we'd left behind. Best I could figure, Luke must have been carrying it with him when he'd arrived, the same way I'd had the forged letter in my pocket. At the top of the paper was a date. With a start I realized that it was the night I'd left. The phone call had come from Tyler's oncologist. And then the tears did fall.

Oh my god... Even in my thoughts my voice was broken.

Apparently, some brothers could be written off that easily.

Review please!

Sorry, if this chapter was a little dark. It was meant to be sad... but sorry if it was dark too.

I don't own Naruto!

Revised April 9, 2016.