Chapter Title: Numb
Series Title: Unlikely Brothers
Ages in this chapter: Dashen (13)
POV: Dashen
Chapter Summary: Dashen's hopeless and helpless state only hours after the death of his brother Kossi.
There is nothing but numb.
The silence is numb. The surroundings are numb. My head, my heart...
Kossi is gone. Completely. Forever.
I want so badly to join him in that forever.
All I do is cry. For hours. All I want to do is cry.
I can still feel him in my arms. I can still hear him telling me that he loved me. I can still see his final breath that expelled the brightest of life from his sickened body.
The little brother that I lived for. He was my world. My entire galaxy. The only thing that kept me going and kept me sane.
Now there is nothing but a mind blurring numbness that has sucked my soul away.
I have nothing. I am nothing. And that's all there is. Numb and nothing and gone and forever and... and I am ready to die. I want to die. I will. It's only a matter of time.
Kossi is gone. Completely. Forever.
I am breaking. I am broken. Seeing that next sunrise tomorrow... a long shot. But I'd promised him. Kossi. That I'd fight and live and be okay. Hadn't I? Or was I only trying to ease his pain of dying?
No. I didn't lie to my brother. Not once. Not ever. Those were promises I'd made. Letting him down now, only hours from his passing, that's not what big brothers did.
So, I cry until there is nothing left. All night. Until morning. The sun rises into an expansive cloudless sky. A new day. A day as brutally empty as that clear sky. As empty as my broken heart and my shattered soul.
But I'd fight and live and be okay. For now. Through the numbness. Through the empty. Through the nothing.
Through the motions of the day. Then home. Cry myself to sleep. Do it all again.
Stars, how do I keep moving forward when I can barely move? It's been only a day now, but feels a lifetime.
Kossi is gone. Completely. Forever.
And I can't function. Or think. I am numb. And I fear it will never end.
I miss my little brother. I am broken without him.
I always will be.
END
