Things felt strangely peaceful as they walked under the cover of the stars. Meanwhile, Chuuya did his best not to think about the fate that awaited him in the Port's murky depths.
He would just have to trust in Dazai like he always did. He wasn't going to drown this time. He wasn't and he just simply had to believe that.
The city streets were quiet, as most people had long since passed out in their beds. Next to him, Dazai's footsteps were practically soundless against the roughness of the ground below from a lifetime of hiding both metaphorically and literally.
"How'd you even find The Book in the first place?" Chuuya asked, breaking the silence. It had been a question on his mind for a while now, but he'd just never really found a moment to ask. However now with such a long walk ahead of them, it seemed like as good a time as any.
Dazai's eyes shifted off into the distance and the slight tension filling his frame betrayed his feeling of discomfort. All of these movements were small, minuscule even, and only someone who was truly paying attention would ever even get close to noticing. However, Chuuya had known Dazai for years. He knew who he was and was nearly able to see right through his every move. So he saw the show of emotion as clear as daylight because he was the one person who Dazai could never truly hide from no matter how hard he tried. Such a thing was simply impossible.
Upon noticing that it didn't seem like Dazai was going to answer him, Chuuya tried again.
"You can tell me, y'know? In a couple of hours, it's not like it'll matter anyways."
"It's not that," Dazai finally said, his tone tighter than usual. "I'm just not very proud of the way that I got it."
Under other contexts, Dazai probably wouldn't have been that honest. To anyone else he probably would've just made some stupid conveniently placed joke to divert his accomplice's attention away from the question asked. However, just like Chuuya knew he understood Dazai, Dazai understood him just as well if not even more so. Hence, Dazai knew that with Chuuya something like that would simply never work. He was much too persistent.
"We've all done things we're not proud of. You can tell me. I just… if I'm going to be doing what I have to do to get The Book, I at least want to know where it came from."
Dazai seemed to be lost in his mind for a long moment, as an internal debate seemed to wage war within him before he finally broke his silence.
"The old boss, before Mori, you remember hearing of him right?"
"Well yeah, I guess I know a bit," Chuuya replied, not entirely sure where Dazai was going with that scrap of information. He remembered Mori's confession of having killed the old boss and knew something of Dazai's association with what had happened. Everything else he'd heard of the man had all been echoed histories of the past. In short, from what Chuuya understood, he'd been a bloodthirsty man, whose bloodlust had led to his eventual downfall as he fell into the pits of insanity.
"He was my grandfather," Dazai said, his voice was so quiet that Chuuya almost had to strain his ears to hear what he said.
"What?" Was all Chuuya could manage to say at first, as the shocking nature of the confession hit him. Any semblance of serenity that the night had once seemed to carry faded into the background now replaced by the horrific implications of what Dazai had just said. "Dazai I-."
Dazai didn't let him finish. Instead, he just raised a placating hand and continued.
"It's fine or it is what it is at least, but either way it doesn't matter. The old boss, my… grandfather," he spat the word out as though it left a foul taste on his tongue, "was obsessed with The Book and the power that came with it, so after receiving a tip from St. Petersburg, Russia, he took me with him to retrieve it. It was where I met Fyo- Dostoevsky for the first time actually…" his voice trailed off again and he almost looked guilty for a moment, before continuing. "But that doesn't matter. We had to do some considerably unethical things but eventually, we did get The Book and its finding was a secret shared only between me and my grandfather. After that, it wasn't long until he was killed by Mori. I'm still not entirely sure that I can say why he never ended up putting The Book to use. He always said that it just wasn't the right time, but I think he was probably just scared of making some kind of mistake. He was a pretty paranoid guy while he was still alive. Anyways, after he died, I've just kept it hidden at the Port. I didn't want to risk someone taking it and I've had no reason to tamper with reality myself. Well… I suppose there was this one time where I considered, but that well- that doesn't matter. None of this does. Let's just… let's just get this over with, alright?" Dazai's eyes were flitting around the darkened alleyways surrounding them as if someone could jump out at any moment and erase them from reality and seeing Dazai so uneasy left a curling feeling in Chuuya's gut.
"Whatever happened, it wasn't your fault," Chuuya assured, giving Dazai's shoulder a calming squeeze.
Seemingly surprised by the gesture, Dazai eyed him for a moment in surprise as if to say 'but how do you know that?'
"You were a child," Chuuya continued in an attempt to reassure him, "now, let's pick up our pace, I want to get to the Port before Dostoevsky does."
"Yeah, yeah okay," Dazai said, his voice sounding a bit lighter now.
"Okay," Chuuya replied and with that, the two continued on toward the Port, as the stars shone down from above lighting their way.
13 Years Prior
Mikhail had been acting strange lately.
Usually, he was ever so jovial. He'd always brighten every room he entered with his kind presence. However, as of late he'd begun to seclude himself more and more, only ever seeming to leave his room for necessities.
Every time he did though, his eyes seemed to trace every cracked wall and broken floorboard as if there were hidden eyes inside watching his every move.
Fyodor wasn't an idiot. If he wanted to, he knew he could probably deduce the reason behind all of this. Except Mikhail was his family. He was his brother. Someone he trusted. Invading his privacy like that seemed like a terrible thing to do and Fyodor knew that he would hate for Mikhail to do the same to him were their roles reversed.
Still, that did not mean that he didn't want to know the reasoning behind Mikhail's new behavior.
The thing was that he wanted Mikhail to tell him.
So, Fyodor would make a point to go visit him daily, bringing him his favorite kind of tea and snacks. Every time he knocked upon that door, he would always hear the strangest noise of scurrying and slamming, as if Mikhail was covering up the traces of something he didn't want Fyodor to see.
And Fyodor did his best to look past it.
Because Mikhail was his brother. Because he cared. Because he didn't know what he'd do if he went through losing his family all over again. Because what if he confronted Mikhail and he got defensive and pushed him away entirely?
He couldn't lose anyone else.
If he did… he didn't know what would become of him.
It was a cold day in December when the façade finally shattered to pieces. It had only been a matter of time.
Fyodor approached Mikhail's door for the umpteenth time with a steaming mug of green tea in one hand and some chips in the other.
Situating the chips under his arm for a moment so that he could knock on the door, Fyodor waited.
Again, he heard the sound of scurrying.
Again, he heard the sound of slamming.
And then the door opened to reveal Mikhail's face. Deep bags were etched under his eyes, tinged purple from what had to have been many sleepless nights.
"Hey," Mikhail greeted him, a warm smile blossoming its way across his face. His body language changed too, to something much more welcoming upon realizing it was only Fyodor. The only thing that gave away that something was truly wrong was Mikhail's attentive gaze, which carefully surveyed the hallways beyond as if he were just waiting for someone to pounce.
"Hey," Fyodor replied, reaching his hand out to offer the mug of tea to Mikhail who quickly and gratefully accepted it. "I was wondering if you wanted to hang out for a bit. I don't know, just talk maybe?"
"Yeah always, of course," Mikhail said, a kind reverberation echoing throughout his voice. "C'mon, come in."
Mikhail settled a hand on Fyodor's shoulder, pulling him inside before quickly shutting the door behind them.
As the door slammed shut, Fyodor was finally able to take in the state of the room.
It looked as clean as ever, just like it always did whenever he visited. Whatever Mikhail was doing when he wasn't there, was always hidden away by the time he opened the door, which is why it took Fyodor a moment to notice something new and out of the ordinary was lying on the floor.
An enticing white book with a tantalizing golden design outlining the cover.
The moment he laid eyes on it he felt Mikhail stiffen next to him. It was almost as if he was realizing that he'd made some kind of grave mistake. Yet, Fyodor paid his brother no mind, because perhaps people might call him crazy for it, but it was almost as though the book was calling out to him. It was odd, but he felt like he could practically hear the pages whispering his name.
It wasn't in a metaphorical sense or an entirely literal one either. The place in which the phenomenon lay was somewhere in between. Indescribable. Intoxicating.
Before he knew it, the bag of chips had fallen from his hand and he was lifting up the book in his hands, examining the beautiful piece of history that was now before him. Somehow he knew it was something ever so delicate and yet powerful beyond even his own imagination.
He was just about to open it when Mikhail finally seemed to break free of whatever startled trance had previously held him. He ran over to Fyodor, tearing the book from his hands and tossing it aside with a look of fear radiating off of his face.
Fyodor stilled.
Never in his life had Mikhail so much as pinched him. So to now have him tearing something away from him so violently was startling. Had he done something wrong that he just didn't realize? He was about to beg for forgiveness when he finally made eye contact with Mikhail who was looking at him with so much love and fear that the words themselves died in his throat.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You can't… I'm sorry, I thought I'd put it away. I thought-." Whatever words Mikhail was about to say died on his tongue, as instead he just pulled Fyodor into a tight embrace. It was one of those hugs where you're holding onto someone for dear life as if you're trying to pull them into you. The kind where you can feel each other's bones in a way that is somehow not uncomfortable but rather comforting. The kind one might wish for on a desolate day filled with sorrow. The kind a person never forgets.
And yet, Fyodor didn't understand what was happening. He didn't understand why Mikhail was acting like this.
Was this all about that book?
Again, he felt a deep urge to just logic his way into figuring out what was going on and get it all over with. Yet, at the end that deep respect that he held for his brother won out.
Mikhail would tell him. He just had to trust him.
Still, that didn't mean he couldn't try to meet him halfway.
So, as the embrace finally ended and Fyodor found himself now stuck in an unnerving silence where Mikhail refused to even meet his eyes, Fyodor resolved to ask him what was going on. A primal part of him was scared that if he did and crossed some sort of unknown boundary Mikhail would cast him out of his life and he would lose the only semblance of a family that he had left. However, the logical side of him told him that such a thought was beyond foolish.
Mikhail would never do that to him.
They were family. Family in that they had chosen to be. No one had forced it. So they wouldn't leave each other, lest death pulled them apart.
So Fyodor took a chance.
"Mikhail, what's so important about that book?"
Mikhail was silent for a long time, something raw seeming to flash through his eyes, as though he were suddenly finding himself thinking of something truly devastating.
So when he finally spoke, Fyodor prepared himself for the worst.
"Remember when I told you I had a little brother? It must've been years ago now. I know I don't really talk about him all that much, but as you know you both share a name. Mostly though, he went by Fedya." The way Mikhail spoke made him sound detached. Like he was trying to separate himself from the story he was about to tell and a part of Fyodor almost wanted to reassure him that it was alright if he couldn't tell him what was happening. Yet, he needed to know, and so he let Mikhail continue his tragic tale, as his eye bore empathetically into Mikhail's own.
"When I was ten and Fedya-" Mikhail's voice quivered and he had to take a moment before continuing, "when Fedya was five, our father got involved with a small group of revolutionists. He'd been a former KGB agent and from what I could gather had been forced to do many things he wasn't proud of. I guess it made him lose faith in the government because he saw it as a dictatorship rather than the communism it should have been, which I have to say that I… I think I agree. So, he and his group of revolutionaries decided that they would try their hand at taking down the Soviets. I don't know why they thought they'd be able to do it. I mean my father was always what you might call an eccentric man... but the other ones... I truly don't know. Maybe they were just desperate? Desperate for change? I suppose it doesn't really matter in the end though, they're all dead regardless. Anyways, on December 26 of 1987, hilariously enough exactly four years before the fall of the Soviet Union, my father came home with a book. That book."
Fyodor's eyes were again drawn to the pristine white book that spoke of both inexplainable and unbridled power. The kind that a person could kill for. The kind that could truly corrupt.
"He… he said that he'd found a solution to all the world's problems and being so young and naïve I believed him. I didn't ask why or what he meant by that. Instead, I just trusted that my father was right and that that book would save us because I was ten. I was… I was fucking ten." Mikhail's voice cracked and he choked back a sob.
Fyodor placed his hand on his brother's shoulder giving it a light squeeze. His heart felt like it was being twisted in knots. He didn't like seeing Mikhail like this. It seemed unnatural. Undue.
Mikhail glanced at the hand now resting on his shoulder with glassy eyes and a tight-lipped smile that briefly transpired over his face before going back to that haunted demeanor that seemed wrong on someone as good as him.
Mikhail didn't deserve whatever had happened to him. Of that Fyodor was sure.
Why couldn't they just be happy? Why was the world like this?
"Anyways," Mikhail continued on, before clearing his throat, "I never did get to see what the book did because that same night just as we were finishing up dinner there was a knock at the door. My father got up to answer it and…" a tear slipped down his cheek, one that Mikhail was quick to wipe away, "there was a loud noise. It... well it just seemed to tear through the air and everything just happened so fast and- well one moment my father was standing there and the next he was staggering backward and collapsing to the ground, as blood poured from the gunshot that had embedded itself into his fucking head. My mother… she screamed. She was always so composed, not really one to show much emotion. That day though, she screamed like I'd never heard someone scream before and I was terrified because my father was dead and I just… I didn't know what to do. Next to me, my brother was still and silent. I… I think he was in shock and I just-" Mikhail had to stop again to compose himself, his body trembling with shaky breaths.
It took about a minute for Mikhail's breathing to steady once more, despite his mind seeming like it was still trapped in a place from so long ago. It was painful to look at, like that claustrophobic feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when someone you care about tells you something tragic that happened to them and you know you're entirely powerless to do anything about it.
"The next thing I knew the house was on fire and the entrances were blocked. I don't know when that started, but it didn't matter. I watched the flames consume my father's corpse and terrified I tried to escape. I ran to the back of the house, desperately ramming my body into the backdoor over and over and over again, but nothing worked. I was trapped. Looking back, I suppose I could've tried a window, but I was so young and panicked and consumed with fear that I didn't even think about it. Eventually, I found myself trapped in the kitchen with Fedya. In all of the chaos, my mother was no longer with us, so I don't know the details of her death, but I can only hope that it was quick, because Fedya's… i-it wasn't. It really wasn't and it still haunts me to this day. I see his face in my nightmares, screaming and begging me to just- and I just... I- it was terrible. It was truly terrible."
Mikhail took a deep breath, as though trying to center himself, while silent tears made their way down his cheeks that he was now no longer bothering to wipe away.
"In the kitchen, we found ourselves backed up against the cupboard and I shoved Fedya behind me to try and protect him even though it was obviously fruitless, but it was just that he wasn't supposed to die! He was five! He was fucking five. If anyone should've died it should've been me… it should've been fucking me."
"Mikhail-" Fyodor tried, worry alight in his eyes, but Mikhail silenced him with a shake of his head.
"I watched him burn while I burned too. He screamed and screamed, but there was nothing I could do with all of the goddamn agony that I was in too. Y'know it's funny because at the time I thought that the screaming was the painful part, but that's not true. The truth is that the silence that followed was the worst shit I've ever known and ever will because when his screams died, I knew that he did too and I was alone. Truly alone and just fucking powerless. After that, I thought I would die too because I had been burning for so long and had given up. No one should be able to live through what happened to me and yet after finally falling into the sweetness of unconsciousness, I awoke to blackened rubble that had once been my home with charred corpses surrounding me. Everything was gone, except this book," Mikhail lifted it up and his eyes seemed to bear into the cover like it held all the secrets in the world, "this book was left untouched as if there'd never even been a fire in the first place."
"Mikhail, I'm so sorry. I didn't know."
"It's alright," Mikhail assured him, "it happened a long time ago and you had no part in it. There is nothing to be sorry about. Stuff like this just happens sometimes and that's okay… or well it's not, but you get my point. We all find other important things. We all find other reasons to live. We have to."
As the falling of his tears finally began to subside, Mikhail continued on, "I still didn't understand how I was alive and seemingly without any burn marks too despite knowing that I had been alight, but I didn't have time to question any of that at the time and would figure it all out much later, because the Soviets were there and I knew I had to run. Someone had told them about my father's band of revolutionaries and they needed to extinguish any hope that might arise from it, which meant making an example of us, even though my brother and I weren't even old enough to understand politics in their entirety yet. We were children! So, I took the book and ran. It was the only piece of my family that I had left and my father had placed so much faith in it that in taking it, it almost felt like I had a piece of him with me. Eventually, I discovered a small slip of paper in the back, but the message was encoded so it wasn't until very recently that I figured out what it meant and Fyodor, with this book we could change the world. The potential it has is beyond what anyone could possibly imagine. So with it, I want to create a utopia, where I can be with my brother again. A utopia where my parents are still alive and you're there too. A utopia where there aren't any fucked up dictatorships or capitalist bullshit to worry about. It'll be a world without abilities that control a piece of who we are. It'll be a world where people can truly be free."
"I think I'd like that," Fyodor said, his voice soft and quiet.
"Yeah, Mikhail said, "me too."
"But I still don't understand. You haven't been sleeping for months and you eye the corridors like someone is going to burst out of them and kill you despite your ability. You're scaring me and I'm getting worried about you. Is this related to the book? To any of it? I want to help you Mikhail and I need you to talk to me because I want to understand. I want to truly understand."
Mikhail sighed heavily, as though a thousand weights were pressing against him.
"I think someone is trying to get the book. It's just that I keep thinking I see people, who I know are definitely not from the Circle, roaming the hallways. I only ever get glimpses, but I know they're real. Fyodor, I swear to you I know they're real. I'm not… I'm not crazy, okay? They're here and it's for this fucking book and I can't let them have it. I won't let them have it. Promise me you won't either. Promise me!" Mikhail's voice had taken on a sharper edge now, making Fyodor subconsciously pull back before nodding.
"Okay. I… I promise, but Mikhail you're scaring me. If you're right about this, do you have any idea who it is? Who would want the book? I mean how would they even know you had it in the first place?"
"I don't fucking- I… I don't know. I don't know and that scares the shit out of me because it means it could be anyone. Maybe someone here saw I had it and recognized it somehow. Maybe they sold me out for money, I don't fucking know, but I swear that everything will be okay all right? I… I won't let them have it and you won't either. We're going to build a perfect world from this thing. A beautiful place where no one ever goes hungry. A place where there aren't any orphans. A place where people aren't assholes to one another. A place where classes don't exist and don't need to. It'll be great, alright? And in that world, we are going to be together. You'll get to meet my younger brother and my parents and we'll all be one big family. In that place, we'll be happy. Truly happy." Mikhail placed his hands upon Fyodor's shoulders, his glassy eyes bearing into Fyodor's own.
"Okay," Fyodor said, his voice soft but tension still filling his body at the emotional turn that the night had taken.
"I just…" Mikhail continued, "I just have to figure out all of the ramifications and implications of this new world. I need to get it perfectly right the first time, because if I don't, who knows, maybe I won't get another chance. So it has to be perfect. Wait... actually, why don't you help me? You're smart, I mean way smarter than me at least. God was I stupid to hide this from you, but I guess you know now. So yeah, we'll work on this together. We'll-"
There are moments in life when everything slows down. In reality, the events that take place happen in a matter of seconds, perhaps even milliseconds, but to the person in question, the events seem to take place in a time that feels like it spans an eternity. Except this subjective time is cruel, because despite feeling like time has stretched itself out, one's mind and body can only act with the physics of the real-time provided. So a person is often forced to just watch events play out while helpless all the while. A tragic fate. A cruel one.
So whatever Mikhail was about to say, he never finished as the sound of a grenade tore through the hallway, sending the door of Mikhail's room tearing off its hinges and slamming into the far wall. Fyodor's eyes shot open wide in shock and he barely processed what was happening, as Mikhail crashed into him shielding him from the blast with his own body like some demented version of a human shield.
The two were flung into the far wall and Fyodor felt his head slam back against it with a sickening crack, as scarlet began to mat the hair on the back of his head.
At first, nothing seemed to make sense. His vision was blurry and fragmented by black spots, as his eyes desperately searched the surrounding area, in a frantic attempt to make sense of it. There was a fire in the hallway that he could now see as a result of the newly missing door.
The screams of his companions echoed throughout the hallways.
His curse had finally caught up with him.
Smoke was beginning to fill the area as Mikhail rose to his feet, a cut dripping blood from just above his eyebrow. It looked like it hurt, but Fyodor did his best to reassure himself that Mikhail would be alright because of his ability that staved off death. Mikhail was one person in his life who was truly untouchable. Mikhail would not leave him.
"They're here," Mikhail said, eyes blown wide with fear and his voice holding a terrified sort of echo to it. "Fyodor, come on, we need to go. Now!"
Fyodor tried to stand. However, as soon as he put weight on his left leg a surge of pain ran through his body and he fell to the floor once more.
"Mikhail," he said, the edge of his voice taking on a slightly panicked tone, "I- I can't… I can't stand up. My leg… I-."
"It's okay. It's okay," Mikhail assured him, although the dread in his eyes said something completely different. Still, he carefully wrapped an arm around Fyodor, helping him to his feet, before grabbing the book with his free hand.
"Let's go."
In another world where he didn't exist, Fyodor was sure that Mikhail would've tried to help the rest of their companions in the facility and perhaps would've even been successful at doing it. However, with his injury, Mikhail wasn't taking any chances, so as they finally managed to sneak through the facility and get out of a back door that slammed with a thudding noise that hinted at finality, Fyodor knew that Mikhail's choice would most certainly lead to the deaths of the others as a result of saving his own. They had all been way too caught off guard to deal with an attack like that. Besides, they were all still quite young and while perhaps some of them could hold their own in a street fight, this was something entirely different. He and Mikhail had only managed to evade their attackers out of sheer luck.
But luck is never something that lasts forever.
They'd only taken a few steps away from the facility and into the freshly fallen December snow when Fyodor realized that this was the first time in six years that he'd ever left the comforts of the indoors. It was strange to again feel the sharp winds beating against his skin and the stabbing feeling of snow pelting down against his body, while his and Mikhail's blood dripped down into the otherwise pure white snow, tainting it scarlet.
It was odd how quickly life could change. How one moment you could feel so secure and the next you could feel like you had to fight for your life.
He wanted to go home. He wanted to go back to how things had been not even an hour ago, but that reality was gone and it would never be coming back.
As they began to stumble through the woods, the shouts of pursuers behind them spurring them on faster, Fyodor thought about the book and how much he longed for the world Mikhail had told him about.
A world where everyone could be free. A harmonious place.
The antithesis of the world in which he lived. A place that was highlighted especially by the situation that they were currently in. If they just kept running then maybe they would get to that world and this would never happen. They could rewrite their own history and that of the world itself.
The shouting was getting closer and he could feel Mikhail trying to get him to move faster. Except he couldn't. Everything hurt and he could barely breathe. Finally, the feeling culminated when his injured leg banged against a fallen tree trunk and Fyodor fell to the ground with a yelp, slipping out of Mikhail's arms.
A part of him wondered if Mikhail would leave him like so many others had, but instead, he just came rushing back.
"Come on! Get up! Please, Fedya! I won't let you die. I won't! So, please just get up! We need to go now!"
Fedya?
Oh.
Allowing Mikhail to once again pull him to his feet, the two continued to stumble through the woods until Fyodor felt Mikhail suddenly grind to a halt, leaving the two standing in the middle of nowhere while their pursuers were sure to only be getting closer.
It took Fyodor a moment to figure out why Mikhail had stopped, but when he did, his mouth almost dropped open in shock.
There in front of them was a small boy. He couldn't be any older than perhaps nine or ten. Except something was off about the kid. Bandages were wrapped all over his body, covering his right eye, arms, and neck. There was this dead look in his remaining eye too like someone had taken away the sun from his universe and snuffed it out for all of eternity. However, if one were to look close enough they'd notice the small exception of a small burst of minuscule iridescent light buried deep within the innermost center of his eye as though he were trying to hide it away from all of humanity. Perhaps seeing that small sign of hope might have reassured Fyodor, but the gun in the kid's hands pointed directly at him quickly snuffed it out.
"Don't move," the kid demanded in a voice that sounded much too old for someone so young. It was clear he was a foreigner from the way his accent had the slightest lilt to it that could only be recognized by someone as attuned to details as Fyodor.
"Hey, we're cool," Fyodor heard Mikhail try to reason next to him, "you're just a kid. You don't want to do this. This is my brother, alright? His name's Fyodor and I'm Mikhail. We're not a threat and we don't want to hurt you. So just put the gun down, okay? Please?" Mikhail had pushed Fyodor behind him and was beginning to take tentative steps in the kid's direction.
"You're lying," was all the kid said before putting into action the sequence of events that would haunt Fyodor for the rest of his life.
Pulling the trigger, the kid's bullet slammed into Mikhail's shoulder, sending him sprawling to the ground with a cry of pain. With a guttural scream, Fyodor ran towards his brother, the presence of the kid leaving his mind amid his panic.
His brother was hurt and that was all that mattered.
Upon reaching his brother, Fyodor's hands pushed down against the wound in a desperate attempt to stop the bleeding despite logically knowing that the bullet wouldn't kill him. It was just that seeing his brother so vulnerable like this made it feel like he had been shot too. Mikhail was supposed to be okay. Mikhail was supposed to be the strong one. Mikhail was supposed to be his jovial, extroverted, and happy older brother. Not this man crying out in pain on the ground with a bullet lodged in his shoulder.
Fyodor hated this. He just wanted his old life from earlier that day to come back. Why was the world so fucked up? Why was it so unforgiving?
"Get up," Fyodor pleaded, "please Mikhail, just get up! We have to go, please I'm scared!"
Mikhail was watching him with wide fearful eyes, but couldn't seem to move from his place on the ground and it wasn't like Fyodor could help him up with both of their injuries. They were stuck and Mikhail was about to be forced to watch him die.
"Run! Fedya run!" Mikhail pleaded, but Fyodor just shook his head as tears began to stain his cheeks.
"N-n-no. No, Mikhail! I'm not leaving you!"
"Fedya please I-."
Mikhail's voice cut out and his body lay still.
Lifeless. Emotionless. Dead.
"Mikhail?" Fyodor breathed out tentatively before his mind descended into panic. "Mikhail no, wake up! Please wake up! You said you wouldn't leave me! You weren't supposed to leave me! Come back! Please just come back! This wasn't supposed to happen! It's impossible! You said it was impossible! Why did you lie? Why?" Fyodor's hands grabbed Mikhail's shirt in fistfuls of fabric as if that could pull him back to the land of the living. However, just like was sure to be expected, it did not. Death had claimed Mikhail and that was that. He was dead and gone. Forever.
But how?
And then suddenly it all clicked into place. A chain of likelihoods known only to minds like Fyodor's.
There was a faint blue glow around the kid that was just beginning to fade. In all the chaos he had approached the two until he had brushed against the side of Mikhail's leg and suddenly Fyodor understood.
Not many would be able to slot all of the pieces together like him but he wasn't just anyone else. The kid had a nullification ability. He had made Fyodor kill his own brother. This kid… was a monster.
"You-" Fyodor didn't know what to say as his red-rimmed eyes bore into the blankness of the kid's own, "you did this. You made me kill him. You-you monster. I-."
And then before he knew what he was doing, Fyodor was tackling the kid to the ground, his hands wrapping around his throat in a kind of animalistic rage.
It was odd because the kid didn't even try to stop him. Instead, he just lay there, as if he were just waiting for death to claim him. Fyodor watched as closed his eyes as though waiting for a final peace. Instead of making Fyodor feel bad and lose his resolve, it just infuriated him all the more, as his grip around the kid's throat only tightened. What he was doing wasn't supposed to feel peaceful. It was supposed to hurt.
"He was my brother!" Fyodor sobbed. "And you took him from me. The only family I had left! He… I… why would you do that? How could you do that? I hate you! I fucking hate you!"
"I'm sorry," he thought he heard the kid quietly choke out beneath him, but whether that was his imagination or reality didn't matter because he didn't want to forgive him. He would never forgive him. He couldn't He simply couldn't.
"Fuck you! Just die already!" Fyodor yelled, the sound painfully scraping against his throat. His eyes tightened with anger. He was going to kill this kid and eviscerate him from the earth. He was going to pay for what he had done as the punishment begot by his crime.
Fyodor could kill the sensation of life bleeding out beneath his fingers as sharply as the harsh cold snow beneath them. He could feel the kid's body giving out until suddenly something hard hit him in the ribs and sent him flying into a nearby tree with an unsettling crack.
Adrenaline and shock poured through his system, as he tried to make sense of what had happened, but everything suddenly felt so far away and distant that he couldn't seem to make sense of much of anything besides his brother was dead and nothing would ever be the same again.
"Stop being so dramatic," Fyodor heard the sound of the gruff elderly voice in the distance. "Go see if he's dead."
Footsteps began to approach him and Fyodor wanted to fight. He wanted to scream and run. He wanted to kill the whole world and then himself, but he could do none of those things. So instead he just lay there still and in pain, his body and mind shattered in scarlet snow.
He barely registered the feeling of fingers against his pulse, before the kid's voice rang out after several moments of hesitation.
"Yeah…" the kid said. "He's dead."
He'd lied... but why?
Fyodor supposed it didn't matter. The kid had still taken everything from him and sparing his life wouldn't make up for all that he had taken. Nothing could.
Blinking his eyes open for the last time that night he could barely make out an older man lifting up the book that could've bestowed Mikhail's perfect world upon the universe, before passing it to the kid to carry.
And then they were gone.
Fyodor felt a hole open up in his soul that could never be repaired.
He was going to kill those who had taken everything from him.
And he was going to get that book back in Mikhail's honor even if it was the last thing that he ever did.
Mikhail would have his perfect world, even if it ended up killing him in the end, because Mikhail had been his brother. He had been there when no one else had.
No one would ever one-up him again.
He would finish this and no one would stand in his way.
And that kid?
From him, he would take everything.