FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Aftermath

---

Written by Arian Mabe (Amethyst Mare)

Commissioned by Mirath

_ _

_ _

There's nothing quite like finding a dead body, even if one expected it to be there. Donnie's feet pounded the grass, kicking up clods of mud, sliding down a bank as thunder rolled overhead, lightning lancing through the murderous sky in a distinct fork. It was the wrong time of year entirely for such a storm but the humidity of it still crackled through the air, clinging to his skin and striving to weigh him down even as he snarled and shoved his way through it, eyes wild and face haggard. But maybe that was just the rain, the thick, peaty scent of earth flooding up in a rise to his nostrils.

Yet he could not breathe, his chest too tight, too fearful. Drawing back and away from the horror playing out around him, he hunted and searched, ineffectively at best. Of course, he knew that things were inevitable – unless, of course, John planned to leap out from behind a tree with his classic smirk and blood on his hands, which would not be entirely unheard of. Not long after John himself had turned twenty, a good few years back, the oldest brother of the trio had decided that it was prime time, the perfect time, to play a trick on the younger two. And just how had that played out?

Well, it had been funny from one point of view and, in their family, the point of view that seemed to matter the most was John's. He'd laid it all out well and, truly, him and Charles had been too young to really know better. Back then, with the gruffness and coarseness of puberty and the annoyance of that all, there was too much to play with, emotions to toy with even while they tried to get a handle on things, their home situation as unstable as it had ever been. They were glad enough to have a roof over their heads but the strangled hacking gulp (a mean feat of noise indeed) that Charles made when they walked in on John with blood pouring from his chest on the living room floor was a memory that would stick with Donnie forever.

He'd flung himself at his brother, ripping open his shirt, heart pounding, blood roaring between his ears, panting, adrenaline-fuelled. It was all go-go-go and he couldn't stop, phone in a hand that shook too badly to dial even as he tried to shove Charles away, mouth dry and words not coming as he needed them to. However, it was probably just as well that John had lost his cool at that very moment and burst out laughing, howling and writhing on the floor like a long-legged spider that had suddenly lost control of its gangly limbs.

“I-I-I c-c-can't…"

But he couldn't get the words out for the sheer force of laughter coursing through him, the scene frozen but for his writhing and squirming, unable to stay still even as he hunched over, clutching his stomach. Tears streamed down his face but they were a far cry for the ones that would have, surely, have been shed in the absence of him if the unspoken had actually happened, hair clinging damply to his face even as he wiped them away, over and over again. Charles gaped, sitting back on his buttocks, leaning back on his hands, eyes wide and strained, mouth opening and closing like a fish landed out of water. And yet it was Donnie who had snapped that time, the one of them who had always seemed to be so calm and cool and collected, holding back his words until he truly felt that he had need of them, putting them to good use. His fist flew back before his mind had even caught up to the actions he was being put through, as if controlled by the strings of some hidden puppeteer, fist connecting solidly with his howling brother's jaw.

Dance, monkey, dance.

_ _

They'd be dancing all night long if the fates and powers that were had their way but John had learned then not to push Donnie too far. Sure, the insults and the banter continued as they grew up and became adults, the power play for control (which would only ever fall one way) developing in adulthood, but there was always a grudging respect for the middle brother who had, right then and there in that moment, called him out on his bullshit. There would always be that, regardless of how things changed between them, where their lives took them or even where their joined relationship went at the end, although neither of them would have ever have suspected that things were due to come to an end so soon.

Donnie swung his head back and forth, blinking rapidly even as he stubbornly refused to acknowledge just what was making it so hard to see, blurring his vision as he heaved for breath.

“You fool, you godforsaken fucking fool, bastard… Fuck…"

Ragged gasps of breath ripped words from his lips but that did not stop the stream of conscious thought from pouring on and on, trickling over the edge in a rush that came in a prelude to the breaking of the dam. Even then, it cracked and bowed, threatening to allow the floodwaters from behind it, the outpouring that was due to come at some point, inevitable at best and rapidly approaching at worst. And it very much looked like it was going to be the worst case scenario too.

That fucking arsehole… If he'd just talked to him, Donnie, he would have known that Donnie was already onto those pricks! Jaunt and his brother, the cronies, fucking cunts. Channelling his inner John, Donnie cursed fluently in his mind, stumbling to his knee as it sank into the grossness of damp leaf mulch, decomposing into what would become more fertile soil with which the forest could feed itself. What a place to end up. What a place to stop breathing. What a place to…

Don't say it.

_ _

The thought came as if it was not his own but he had long ago grown to some kind of uneasy peace with the voice inside his head, the little, conniving demon that flirted and taunted his every waking moment. They had their mission and he had his – his life to lead, that was. The demon could wait, hanging back with slavering jaws to see just how far Donnie was going to fall, inching closer and closer to decrepitly dark reality.

He dug through the leaves, mud soaking through his jeans, but even he could not have known what he was to find there, down in the ditch that stank of the very worst parts of nature. A badger set heralded a worse stench still and he grunted in the back of his throat; a wild animal like that really was the least of his worries, as vicious as they could be, hunkering down low to the ground with fangs that always seemed ready to take on a nasty job, a nasty piece of work in themselves. John had never been able to decide, when high, of course, what wild animal he thought himself the most like, going between a lion and a wolf and, on some occasions too, a badger. If his heart had not throbbed so violently, rain pelting the back of his head, soaked through to the skin, he would have smiled.

And then he found it: a single, white hand curled up as if placed in offering, asking for something to be given. The fingers crooked in just the right way and Donnie froze, blinking at it, heart in his mouth. It could have been anyone's hand: it was just a hand, a normal hand. And yet he knew that he would have recognised that hand anywhere regardless of what he had been hunting for when he had followed the phone signal out to the forest, the back tracks and animal passes that had led out to the cabin and the two bodies there.

As if in a dream, he stretched out his fingertips to those on the hand, followed by a dark sleeve – was that one of his jackets? He shook his head, lips pressed together. Fucking idiot, just what was he… Well, Donnie knew what he had been thinking even if that too was not something that he wanted to admit to. And it hardly seemed like it was ever something that he was going to have to admit to now.

It was a selfish thought but one could never be held accountable for what they felt in the moment when everything came crumbling down around them, breath hard to snatch, life swimming greyly before their eyes on the edge of consciousness. But there was no light in the eyes, no wicked glee, in the eyes that met his, only half-open as if John had slipped away mid-breath. On his side, just the one hand was outstretched while the other tucked in close to his side.

Donnie stared. There was no sense in denying it and yet…he could not understand. He knew, intrinsically, that John was gone, that what he saw there was nothing more than a corpse, but his mind sucked back and away from the situation, delving into the dark hole from which he had only just managed to escape from years before. That hole had nearly swallowed him up whole too, pushing him beyond what sense of sanity that he had even thought that a human mind was capable of bearing through, and yet he went to it willingly, the cool arms wrapping around him as if to welcome home an old lover. It was not as if his current lover, for John had to have been called that, was going to ever be able to welcome him home again.

Cold. Stone cold. Gone. Donnie swallowed without any moisture actually travelling down his throat, shivering in place as he knelt there, one hand touching John's. He'd always had cold hands and John had warmed them up for him – even if that warming had, most usually, involved something hotter, coarser, sexual need roughly coursing through them in the depths of a chilling, wet winter. But now it was no longer John's hands that were warmer and Donnie woodenly folded John's into his, pain seeping out from his chest as his heart pounded too hard for comfort.

Gone. He was gone. And it was all his fault.

But whose fault was that? Donnie shook his head, staring down at his brother, or at least the flesh that was no longer his brother but something else. Maybe there was a heaven or a hell and John was there now, there would be no way to tell. Neither of them had been religious for obvious reasons anyway. But it would have been nice, in a way, to think…

Ah, but what sense or shape of heaven would take on sinners anyway? They were lost, lost to the real world and whatever came afterwards. Maybe it would be better if there was only darkness and nothing more than that.

Selfish…

_ _

The notion clawed at him, icy fingers digging into his gut, and he shook his head, clutching John's hand tighter. It wasn't as if anyone was going to find him out there anyway. They'd thought he would not find them, clearly, but, well, the note was only something that had cemented Donnie's knowledge of what was happening. Maybe it was a credit to John himself that he had managed to divert the last messages, the last nuances of their enemies' plan, so that Donnie had not been able to take the steps that he had ready in place to ensure that nothing came of it. The lack of communication, in thinking that he needed to step up and save everyone in a blaze of glory was both horrifyingly and beautifully John, good and bad intertwined in perfectly equal measures. Maybe that was just what made him so charismatic. Never again would there be any way or time to work that out.

Hanging his head, Donnie closed his eyes. Nothing seemed real, as if he was going to blink at any moment and realise that he was in the cinema, staring at a big screen and wondering just how it was possible to get sucked into something like that? Watching movies had been a big part of their younger years, although, of course, they had never bought tickets. There was always a back entrance that they could sneak in by and, well, by doing it glean a few hours of entertainment or more in the city. Stories had power, if only to sweep lost souls away in escapism, yet when fiction crossed the line into reality it no longer held firm in the realm of good entertainment anymore.

John…

_ _

He brushed his brother's hair back from his face, moving as if he was not fully present in his body, but that was the only way he could keep it together, the only way he could keep his lungs moving, however shallowly, and heart working at pumping blood through his sluggish veins. The luxury of his own mind became the greatest drug, dulling him to sensation, mind shutting down to protect him from the horror of it all, everything that threatened to hurl him into the abyss. And, if he fell this time, there'd never again be a hand to pull him up out of it. Charles was good and all but…he wasn't John. He didn't know and he didn't know any better either in that regard.

John's eyes closed under his fingertips, slipped down over eyeballs that would never again see. His lips would never again bear the passage of food or liquor and his hands would never again close around Donnie's wrist or waist, holding him. Of course, the holding was not tender. That would have been outside the bounds and the natural tenor of their relationship. But the loss of what those hands could do meant more than anyone else other than Donnie could have ever possibly have imagined, let alone put into words. But he would have given anything to have it back again. Even his own life.

Breathing shortly and shallowly, he knew that there was little he could have done and yet the guilt, once again, reared its ugly head, hissing and clamouring for attention.

Your fault, it whispered. You could have saved him.

_ _

And yet it was John who had walked out to save Donnie and, fairly so, Donnie who could have very easily have ended up in the same situation as him. Sure, he had a plan but Jaunt and his kind were unpredictable and erratic, as inexperienced and clumsy as they were. Their desperation was what truly made them dangerous and, well…he would have stayed well out of the line of danger if he'd been given the choice in it. It had been John, originally, who had dragged him in.

Growling, he dropped John's hand, slamming his fist into the palm of his opposite hand. The thrum of pain felt clean, although it hurt – a good kind of hurt. Again. Again and again, he pounded his own hand, redness seeping across the damp skin, rain drizzling off to a pitter-patter that could have, under the right set of circumstances, been melodic, even peaceful. Maybe they could have sat there with the rain pouring down and laughed and pressed together and moaned about having to wait for a drug drop or something like that – something that would have made the day and the memory more so than what it was. Without John, it would always be less than.

And only then did he howl, forcing visual, wet emotion down, refusing to cry. But he could beat his fists on the ground and hunch over as if he no longer even had the strength to lift his head anymore, pain reverberating down his spine as if it had simply become a transmitter for something more. A lead-in for hurt, it throbbed and thrummed, sending the shocks of the dissipating storm into his soul, raging and pulsing in the empty cavern of his chest. For it could not possibly still be full of lungs and a heart, veins and muscle and all else that made up a living human being. They were just the things that made up a corpse too, although a corpse could still, justly, exist without the majority of them.

Pain lanced through his chest and he pressed his forehead into the dirt, mud clinging to him, rank and stinking with the pittance of the forest. Disgusting. Decrepit. Vile. Unworthy. All words that he had been called in the past and that he had called himself in the past, the voice in his head not being of his own making. And, still, he lived in his head, leaning against the walls of a vacant skull, tapping his fingers against the pulsing membrane of a brain and marvelling at just how one managed to exist in such an empty space, useless and good for nothing.

But John had shoved him away, back then, protected him, said that he'd make something of himself – hell, if that was what Donnie even wanted for himself. For fuck the rest, there was never any sense in living up to someone's expectations or even working to meet them, he'd said, shaking his younger brother's shoulders, fighting to get him to see reason, to bring the life back to his eyes even then, although Donnie's heart had never stopped beating in his physical body. John couldn't say the same.

Donnie laughed hollowly, the sound bursting from his lungs without humour, only humiliation, dirt in his mouth. He didn't think about what else was in his mouth. John would have made a joke about that but John was gone. Gone, gone, gone.

Yet he could not stay there forever, wallowing in the misery of reality, his own mind colliding harshly with his own worst nightmare. Wasn't it funny when your own death was not your worst nightmare? Ah, there was some humour in there somewhere and John would have laughed but John wasn't there anymore to laugh. He was gone.

Gone all over again.

But grief could not be pushed away so easily and, once that dam had burst, moans slithered past his lips like worms, slimy and unwholesome in that form, unwanted on the skin and membrane of a human body. He shuddered away from the sounds that his own body produced, as horrified at himself as he was about just what had occurred, what he hadn't been quick enough to prevent. That stupid note, stupid… Fucking thing. If he had come back earlier for his jacket, maybe he wouldn't have been too late to stop them from taking John. But he wouldn't have been prepared in that situation and, well, it could have ended up in two dead bodies sinking into the mud, splattered and dripping with blood that had, long ago, stopped flowing. Heaving for breath, panting and curling up as if that would, somehow, help, Donnie tried not to look at the jagged red line across his brother's throat, kept such only by the trickling flow of rainwater. If it had not been allowed to flow for so long, it would have clotted and dried into a crusty brown, curling around his chin and the corner of his lips like a child's paint. Only, child's paint could be wiped off while that kind of blood… That blood left scars, yet not on the one who had slipped from the world.

Raked through from the inside out, he shakily clawed his phone from his pocket, the screen still blinking with John's coordinates, the phone that the foolish fucking bastards hadn't even bothered to take off him. Maybe they'd been that complacent. Maybe John had been totally right to think that he could take them on his own. After all, that had been what Donnie had planned to do, just more covertly, in a slyer fashion. It was his style to take someone down from behind the scenes when necessary, quietly ensuring that they were not discovered and their operation, although it really was masterminded by John, the one who had nagged and pushed for it every last step of the way. Maybe he would have died instead of John, the erratic plan of those who had no business really in fucking anyone else over changing at the last moment. Maybe it should really have been him dead in the mud.

No. No. He couldn't think like that, not if he wanted to keep dragging one harsh, searing breath into his lungs after the other, pain creeping through his body as if he had, quite literally, injected himself with something that he had instantly regretted after the fact. Heat chilled through him, conversely so, and he trembled to try to bring up the one number that he needed on the phone, everything before him shaking and blurring, too much to bear. And yet he had to go on, had to push through, for there would undoubtedly be people after the ones who had taken John's life. They would come, knowing that there were dead bodies to pick up on that side too. The rain would take the majority of the evidence but he needed help to deal with the rest of it. He needed help to deal with…

“Yeah?"

“Charles?"

Gnawing at the inside of his cheek until it bled, he winced at his younger brother's bored tone crackling down the line, the phone giving out as the storm raged overhead. Signal was terrible at the best of times and, well, Charles… Breaking the news. Breathing shortly and shallowly, he clutched at his own hair, one hand digging into it and tearing at the roots even as he cursed the phone to his face, a single, solid lifeline in a storm that lapped at the bow of the boat, eager to turn it over into the depths of a hungry, unforgiving ocean. And yet he had to do it, he had to say, had to force the words by lips that felt like rubber, head pounding dully without pain. No… He could not. It was too much. No. No.

And yet he had to do it. He had to go through with it. Charles had to know. For there was no way he'd get John back to the car on his own.

*

All passed in a blur, bodies in bags, strapped stiff and tied up, sent to the bottom of a lake known for suicides. No one was going to be looking for them – at least, no one in the realm of the lawful world that mattered. Maybe there was another family member or whatnot that wanted to see justice for Jaunt and the like but, frankly, Donnie could not find it in himself to care. There was only one that he cared about right then and there and he wasn't there anymore.

He'd never thought about the lives that had been snuffed out, even if not directly at his hands. John, of course, had gotten tangled up in some things that even he was not proud of in his younger days but all of that was a means to an end. He just didn't really see brawling and fighting and knives to be much of a use of his time. Firearms entertained him for a while but the ease of which they could be controlled in those days ended up boring him in the end. Drugs were unpredictable, their concoctions and influences always changing so that no one individual could be sure of what they were getting at any one time. They'd given him the motivation to dredge that up for others too, assisting the world in a strange yet individual manner. Even after his death, Donnie would not have had the heart to say that that kind of escapism was not the best. It was especially hard to say with vodka down his throat, empty shot glasses lined up before him and something furious seething through his system.

Leaning back on his sofa, he stared at the ceiling, although the usual euphoria did not come, eyes sunken into hollows that should never have been called eyes. The pits of such, maybe, the remnants of a man that he'd once been. He'd not had anyone in to clean and, while there had been little dirt to carry through the house, it ran rank with a musty aroma, dust heavy in the air. Smoking hadn't really been on his agenda – who needed weed when he could get a far better hit from their own supply? – so there, at least, wasn't the stink of anything of that nature in the air, although showering had not been a high priority either. He'd, at least, managed to sit on the floor of the walk-in shower beneath the rapidly reconstructed round showerhead. The overhead 'rain shower', set into a big rectangle in the ceiling, just felt too much like…well…rain.

Slipping away, he floated, but it was for nowhere near long enough. He'd never been an exceptionally heavy user of drugs for the need to get away but…circumstances must. They helped him not think about where they'd had to bury John's body. At least that had been a safe one to bury, not as if they were going to be calling in a police report or anything, although it had been many, many kilometres away, well off the beaten track. The others went in the opposite direction, somewhere where Donnie would never again care to go. Yet there was little either he or Charles could do to get the stench and darkness of blood off their hands, his little brother struggling to appear calm and cool and everything John had been. Only, he was not John and the strain in his jaw became harder and harder to bear with every passing moment as they dealt with the nastiness of the situation.

John would have been able to do it. He would have been stronger than them, stronger than both of them. Look at what he had done for them, let alone Donnie. He didn't want anyone to know that he actually gave two shits but, well, they did know in the end. Exhaling, Donnie half-closed his eyes, the living room taking on an eerie air, the flat screen TV on the opposite wall with a big crack down the middle. That would have pissed John off. That would have really fucking pissed him off.

Bodies sinking in the lake. Putting the last spade of dirt down over John's corpse, chemicals poured down to speed up the process of decomposition more naturally. It never hurt to be safe even though no one, of course, would be looking for him. Just Donnie. And Donnie knew exactly where he was if he needed to go back, sometime. Maybe sometime.

“Hey."

Charles stood in the doorway, hair pulled back from his face and tied up, stretching down his back to the small of it. Donnie laughed brokenly, turning his head to the side, although he had really intended to shake his head. Was he that tired? Or had he shot himself up so high that he could barely move? Either was okay, as long as that numbness throbbed through his gut, setting him back and away from the pain. Just for a time, a little while longer. He didn't have to deal with it as long as he was high.

Donnie did not answer, turning his head away, shutting out the sight of his brother. His only brother. Was Charles really now his only brother or did a dead one still count? The jury was out on that one.

“Donnie."

Why couldn't he just go away? Donnie's lips tried to turn down into a frown but he did not quite possess the muscle control, floating dully, thickly, as he was, to form the expression. The most he got was a twitch but it felt as if everything was coming through, flowing smoothly, as it should have been.

And yet Charles saw through it all – how could he not? It as if they hadn't been living apart for years. They knew one another, after all, if not quite as well as John and Donnie knew each other. Donnie doubted very much that he would ever know anyone else as well as he knew – had known – John, but that was by the by. He didn't really want to know anyone anymore.

“You've got to get out. You can't just sit here."

Charles tried, bless him, but words weren't going to get him anywhere. The youngest of them all and the one who had never really been all that into making money or a name for himself, seeing it as John's game, Charles was the most innocent. He hadn't seen what they'd seen, flitting between boyfriends and the like as he did, doing what he needed to do to get by and amusing himself where he could. He was more a soul that wandered and explored rather than buckling down to make something of himself. Of course, most would have said anyway that there wasn't anything one could actually make of themselves in the criminal underworld, regardless of what John and Donnie had achieved in their short time there.

Ah, the business… Just the thought of it made him itch for another hit of their own goods. Before…leaving, John had brought in another strain that Donnie had grown particularly fond of. Even then, he could not have honestly said whether it was because that one had been orchestrated well and truly by John in sourcing suppliers and making good on the dough or if it really was that good of a high but it didn't matter to him, not even then, like so much else. He didn't have to think when he was on Hell, which, oddly enough, felt more like heaven if he allowed it to take him, pumping through his veins and intoxicating every last sweet, sweet inch of a body that no longer felt at all destined to remain within the bounds of earth anymore.

Not thoughts that he had not had before, he had to admit, but not pleasant ones either. If he was to go, he'd go quietly, but he pushed down the throb of guilt that threatened to, once again, rear its ugly head, a gruesome twist in the pit of his stomach. He coughed and tried not to think of the business he would leave behind; it was not as if Charles was capable or interested in that at all. If he sold it off, he would leave himself vulnerable – Charles, that was. He had his own methods… Would it, in fact, be an idea to sell the drug business John and he had built up before something worse happened to him? Whether from his own hand or someone else's?

Donnie swallowed, although only a very small amount of saliva slipped down his throat. Stitches could only do so much and there was no number of stitches to pull back together the gaping, ragged hole in his chest or heart. It throbbed with a deep bellyache of pain as the drugs wore off and he became more active, slowly turning his head from one side to the other, questing after his next hit, his next high, just to keep the feeling at bay for a little longer. It was too soon, much, much too soon, to be thinking about how to keep things going or whatever it was that John would or would not have wanted him to do, even if that was already clear in his own mind and something that he very, very much did not want to have to think over, not even for the sake of his brother. It was just…

…too painful. Far, far too painful.

Yet his drug-fuelled mind veered off on its own as he closed his eyes and sank back into the comfortable, familiar sofa, trying to claw his train of thought back even as it steamrolled off without him. He'd never very much felt in control of his own thoughts but that was hardly something that he could be blamed for, of course, unless one counted being under the influence of one thing or another something that any individual could be blamed for at the crux of the moment. The business would have to keep going, John would never, ever forgive him if he let it fall, if he didn't set things up so that all that they planned could continue on. There wasn't going to be anyone to leave it to after all three of the brothers were gone but Donnie had rather hoped that his stealthy ways would have at least pushed them all up into old age before their time to pass on had come. And he wouldn't have gone easily, with that in mind, into the darkness of the abyss, kicking and screaming and clawing where, before, he may have shoved himself over that ledge and thrown himself a party too at the same time, just for good measure.

Ah, how times changed. Did he die or did he not? Which was the better option? As alluring as one was, he saw John's scowl in his mind's eyes, perfect lips turned down in disgust. What are you doing? The words would come so easily to him, knowing just what he had to say in a perfect balance of derision, shock and, strangely so, comfort at the same time. There's nothing for you if you do that. Come here. And he'd taken John's comfort that time and many, many other times after – times that would only ever be shared between the two of them if Donnie too chose to take that particular secret of his life and his past to his grave.

Like choosing not to die, John would never allow him not to carry on, to breathe and pulse and live. The business would have to find its footing somewhere new with just the one of them, even if he had no idea where to begin in the middle of everything. John had taken over so much, a driving force and power in the vitality and virility of what they had built, it had surprised even Donnie. He hadn't thought, truly, that John was capable of showing such motivation but maybe it had not been himself that he had motivation for, in the end, but someone else entirely.

John… Exhaling deeply, down he sank, eyes half-open and yet resisting the view of the new world. It was no world without him. Something had changed and now he was gone and there was nothing more to it than that in the grand scheme of things. No one would see just how he had to grind through and pick up the pieces and neither would anyone care either. It would just be easier again still if he just stopped, stopped everything… Yes. Yes, that's what they would all want, want to see him do, falling and slipping, clawing at a slope from which he could never again crawl and hoist his way, resiliently back up. There was no resilience left without John.

“John."

Donnie blinked and looked up, yet there was only Charles there, lips set into a firm, definite line. Now that he was closer, it was a little more evident how his eyes were a little more sunken than they should have been, his skin paler as if he had not been eating. Donnie could not have said that he saw Charles' diet to be anything all that healthy, if the truth was told, but his clothes too hung a little more loosely on his body, shoulders jutting out and held more rigidly than before.

All small changes, imperceptible to someone who didn't know Charles. Yet things like that were just what stood out to Donnie, knowing him as he did, as much and as little as he did. And yet… Donnie took a deep breath, loathing how his skin seemed to tighten with lines of pain even as he drew it in, hating every last second of that life-giving essence of oxygen.

“What did you say?"

Charles frowned.

“What you were thinking. You didn't exactly react when I called your name and I've been calling it a while now." He paused, eyebrows pushing slightly closer together as if he was steadying himself for something more, something more that was very difficult indeed to come to. “Look, he was my brother too, although I know you two were…close…"

Swallowing, Charles deliberately averted his eyes, a little more heat in his cheeks and down his neck than he may have otherwise have cared to display. Against himself, Donnie chanced the tiniest of smiles, a twitch of his lips. Ah, so Charles had been astute. As much as John had scorned and scoffed the very idea of Charles suspecting that they were anything more than brothers, and bad ones at that, he had seen through everything in the end, although Donnie did not quite care to know for how long the knowledge had been there. Even he did not care to understand just how deep his love for his brother had gone outside the familial sense of caring, although none of them had had all that much of that growing up as it was. Maybe it was all pre-determined that they would slip into something seedier, something that no 'normal' family would have even considered. And yet that slip had saved him in the end too.

“Come on."

Charles shook his head and rocked back on his heels, arms folded across his chest as he exhaled a puff of air, blowing it out through his cheeks. For a moment, Donnie wondered if his chest felt as tight at his did, the aroma of cigarettes lingering around his younger brother. They weren't the worst poison in comparison to other things, he had to concur.

“Come out."

And, against beggar's belief, Donnie sat up, put on a jacket that had belonged to John, and forced his legs to carry him out the door, forcing him in the footsteps of the younger brother who still had the same dark hair as the oldest.

*

The streets were not much better but the cool air pulling through his lungs eased a little of the burn. Only a little but it was enough to keep him going, taking one step after the other as the street lights glanced off the wet sidewalks of the city, glittering in artificial light even in the dead of the night. It must have been a weekend for everything still bustled more than he could have otherwise have expected it too, tourists flocking and moving through like herds of wild animals that migrated from one place to another, rarely returning to any one location until they got caught in a rut. That was something, in particular, that humanity was very good at.

What could there be to see in the city? He hunkered down into the coat, pulling the collar up around his neck and chin, inhaling deeply. It hurt how much it still smelled like him and yet he drank it in greedily, hot and heavy gulps of breath fuelling the scent into his system, better than any manufactured drug. John's aftershave, the natural scent of him lingering beneath, a softer undertone of cleanliness and freshness. It had been the spicier scents that he filched for himself in his younger years and his liking for them had, apparently, stuck as he grew up, although Donnie didn't quite know where he had actually bought or even stolen anything from once things had ramped up on the drug side of the business. It seemed strange to just walk into a supermarket with a wad full of money from ill-gotten gains, yet perhaps less strange to steal the items of desire themselves: a converse conundrum indeed.

Charles strode ahead, although he was not John. John never kept his hair like that and he never had a set to his shoulders liked that. He didn't walk with his hands thrust into his pockets and he was not as casually 'dark' as Charles was, even though not even Donnie would have dared say that Charles was a Goth in any way, shape or form. Not quite, just…with his own unique sense of style that didn't quite match up with anything else and, truly, nor did it have to. A touch of funded elegance had come into John as time went on, the tailored suits highlighting his broad shoulders and slender figure even as Donnie retreated, craving the comfort of casual trousers or even jeans, sneakers the most comfortable. He wasn't about making an impression and would have been quite happy mooching off the rest of the world through hacking and draining bank accounts, even if he would have surely had some side projects just to keep himself interested in things. He'd have never gone into the drug business like John had. No…he had been pulled.

Exhaling sharply, he drew himself up tall, avoiding the eyes of strangers on the street, their laughter cutting through like a knife. Coming out and down from a high was as bad as the need that drove him there in the first place, shaky and jittery and striving to keep himself on course at all costs. He sweated under the jacket but no force in heaven or hell would have made him take it off, particularly as the rain, once again, pattered down, cooling his face and moistening his hair in a light mist. Did it ever stop raining these days?

Charles stopped at a hot dog stand and Donnie watched, unblinking, striving to push down every last feeling that may have otherwise risen up from the pit of his aching, hollow gut, watching the transaction. Wasn't it funny how money changed hands like that? He couldn't remember the last time that he bought something off the street. No, all of his purchases were online, directed through alternate bank accounts and identities so that nothing could be traced back to him. Maybe John had had someone do his buying – non-drug, that was – through the one that Donnie had set up for him too, although Donnie had not delved into that since he'd died.

The word tightened in his throat as if he had actually tried to speak it aloud and he shook his head, lips pressed together. No. No, it didn't have to be said: it would be either way.

Charles returned and nodded to him, eyes serious and closed off as if he too was experiencing a distant memory. Donnie had to understand too, of course, that John had been his brother too, just as Charles had said so very pointedly to him. Charles' world had turned upside down too with the loss of a figure that, no doubt, he'd looked up to, if only in some grudging, roughed-up way that he would never enunciate aloud. There was that to consider… Especially so the fact that he was now the eldest brother in the family and, well, the head of the household. Their father had never had much of a lingering presence that really counted for anything much, in all honesty.

He didn't pass the food to Donnie but held it awkwardly before him like an offering, jerking his head away. Like the sheep that he most certainly was not, Donnie followed him, step by step as the rain came down harder, soaking the bread and napkins clutched in Charles' hands. His younger brother cursed and crushed them in closer to his body, half-destroying them in the process even as he tried, desperately, to shield them from the elements. It was funny how one could tear apart the very things that they held close, even though it was not, technically, entirely Charles' fault but just an unhappy coincidence, a happening of events that could not have been stopped once they had come to pass.

Charles led him into the park, an area that may have been less interesting to pass through if not for the rain, which served well enough to chase away those who lingered to the darker reaches. Hunching under trees, moisture dripping, groups of youths lit up cigarettes and watched them pass by, but John and Charles didn't mean anything to them, just a side influence and nuance in their lives that they did not understand or even care to understand. They didn't know their importance in the city, how much Donnie, at least, had done behind concrete walls and security systems of his own design. And, for once, that was just how Donnie wanted it to be, not needing anyone to break way or give way for him as John had needed, just to be as he was and not be noticed for more than a man on the path.

A little shelter but not much begged attention at the edge of a pool of street light that was poorly positioned. The bench itself looked like it had been dug up from the concrete at some point and moved but Donnie could not have said quite what the reasons behind that were. He'd never walked through the park before. Nature was not something that he partook in and a manufactured nature, such as the park, was even worse than the other options out there. He may have done something with John if that had been at all in his range of interests but, of course, John only wanted to get out if he had a fast car to play with on long, open roads and climbing, arcing mountain tracks. To him, there was nothing quite like going fast.

They didn't need to talk, sinking into a kind of brotherly silence as Charles passed him his food, sodden and broken up in parts. And yet something drove him to eat it as if he was pushed on by an otherworldly force, just enough to get him going through the motions, chewing and swallowing, as dull and cardboard-like as the bread tasted, thick and heavy in his mouth. It stuck to the roof of his mouth and he worked his tongue to push it off and send it down the channel of his throat, eyes half-narrowed in concentration. Eating had never before taken so much focus.

There was something about sitting there in companionable silence even as the wetness of the bench seeped into their trousers, neither really caring all that much. Things like that didn't seem to have much meaning anymore as life moved on and the rain eased up just a little, their jackets keeping off the worst of it. What difference did a little bit of water make when things were already so fucked up?

But there was something lingering there, something untold, and Donnie sighed, shaking his head as a droplet of rainwater slipped languidly off the end of his nose.

“What now? You made me come out here."

He didn't mention at what cost, guts churning with the need to empty what little sustenance he'd forced into his stomach. Charles shrugged.

“Sit. Eat. Seems as good a plan as any."

Not usually so restrained or so forlorn, the severity of the situation sliced through Donnie, although it was something that, already, he considered himself well familiar with. The pain had begun with a lick of fear back when he'd realised that John was gone, that everything had rushed ahead, gone on without him, the watchful eye that he had kept on the family nowhere near watchful enough, apparently. What plan was worth it?

Yet the food beckoned and, in a strange way, the first bit of bread and meat had felt good sliding down. Keep eating. That's all he had to do. Methodically working his way through his while Charles pretty much devoured what he'd gotten for himself in one, Donnie breathed shortly and shallowly, stomach aching, although whether it was for more food, the presence of the food weighing down too heavily or for the life lost, he could not say. There didn't seem like there was very much that he was at all sure of anymore with life spinning around him, one man but a passing fancy to the wills of fate and all else.

But, once the food was gone, an unhealthy silence stretched between them, aching and yearning like all that they had lost. Hunching over – it was hardly as if anyone was going to pass comment out there – Donnie ground his teeth together, the ache growing and growing more and more with the course of every passing second. Was that because he'd eaten? Yet he knew what it was even if he didn't want to acknowledge it, forcing each and every strangled sob that threatened to grind its way up from the hollow emptiness in him, driving them away over and over again.

It was all he could do.

To his credit, Charles was the more mature of them at that time, if maturity was at all linked to how well one could hide and hold back their emotions. He kept his expression carefully blank but the tightness at the corners of his eyes was still there, how he pressed his lips a little closer together, flattening out into a thinner line. There were no jokes left to come from his lips as he was so like to do and there was neither any lightness in his soul. Maybe the two of them were prone to the darkness, the tug and the pull from the pool of no light that called so very sweetly for them to let go, to release all humanly possession and go…

…down.

Charles did not reach out to comfort him but neither would Donnie have expected or wanted it. It was something unspoken. He took his comfort in different ways, stolen, greedy snatches as if he thought that even that was something that could be taken away from him at any given moment. But that was okay, it was going to be alright. Something would come of it, Donnie could come up again, something grasping him and drawing him back and up as if a thread was rising up through the top of his skull, straightening his back and lengthening his spine.

The muscles worked out the stiffness, bones cracking, and Donnie groaned, although it was, for once, one of relief and not pain, despite the remaining ache in his gut. The rain pattered down lightly, alternating between light drops and teasing at the fact that it may just very well disappear altogether, but neither paid it all that much attention. Clothes could be washed. Or be bought anew.

Clearing his throat, Charles tipped his head back to the dark sky overhead, cloud sweeping across the scape of the city, what loomed above them. There wouldn't have been any stars even if there had been no cloud cover, what with all the lingering light and visual pollution. There was no doubt that their endeavours, at least in part, had contributed to that in some way, shape or form.

“What happens next?" Charles said quietly, almost as if he was afraid of the answer. “We've…taken care of things. For him. So, what happens now?"

The words hung hollow in the air between them, the man that they'd known lingering elsewhere, buried in an unmarked grave. They both knew that having one with the headstone and the ceremony would have, of course, only drawn attention to things, the scheme and the management that they now had to take over, take on themselves or lose everything that John had worked for. Perhaps the drug empire was one of the few things indeed that he'd worked for in his life or maybe still he'd solely come into a fair bit of luck during the course of it: there was no way anymore to ask John what he thought about that either way.

What now, indeed? Donnie pressed his lips together, tipping forward onto his thighs, elbows digging in, water streaming down the back of his neck as his collar shifted, releasing a tiny stored pool. The collar of his coat was angled just wrong, allowing the rain to pour into his shirt but the increasing sense of dampness was hardly something that mattered to him in the moment, expression hollow and dead, the only sounds around him seeming to come externally rather from anything internal.

His breath? Just what right did he even have to that anymore? He didn't need to keep breathing. It would be much easier just to stop, to not 'do' anymore. It had just been John keeping him going some of the time, keeping him from the darkness that was now, very much, overhead, him sinking and the surface crawling ever further away by the second. It wasn't as if either that anyone wanted him to break the surface ever again – why, in fact, he could actually list many off the top of his head who'd want him dead, who would have been quite happy to never see him or the likes of him ever again.

Down and down and down. Rain ran off the end of his nose and the cigarette hung soggily from the corner of his mouth. The tobacco was still comforting, however, the taste of it thick and heavy on his tongue, reminding him of that first cigarette that he'd shared with John so many years ago. It seemed like an age ago, a time when they were underage, even, and doing all sorts of things that kids really shouldn't have been getting up to when they had no time for a real childhood, and yet he still remembered every last moment as clear as day. Sitting on that stone wall in the park, a park not entirely dissimilar to the one they were in right then and there, musing over the facts and events of the day, coming up with grand schemes that would, ultimately, go to pot in the face of a distinct lack of motivation. There was only so much that kids could do, after all, when they didn't have much of a home to go back to and there were the daily concerns of just getting by to attend to first and foremost. Only later did Donnie delve more deeply into technology, a secure lock providing sanctuary, and uncover his true calling, the respite in lines of code.

“We keep going," Donnie said, although his words did not even convince himself. “It's all we can do. You know that."

“Jeez, some pep talk this is, Donnie," Charles said with a roll of his eyes that was, at least, a shade more typical of his brother. “You really know how to light a fire under a guy, you know that?"

“Oh, shut it."

Short and sharp for him – no one was hardly acting like themselves anymore – Donnie mocked Charles too with a roll of his eyes directed straight back at him, grunting under his breath. That could have been a chuckle, if he'd allowed it out, but that was a little something that he was not quite ready for at that moment. Maybe later. Maybe never. It would come if it was going to and that was all that it had to do.

And yet there was nothing that 'had' to come, nothing that 'had' to be. There was no one there anymore to tell them how they were well enough supposed to live their lives – not that either had really listened to him all that much anyway. Sure, Donnie had been roped in and drawn in to a plan that he was now stuck with but it was more a parting gift in the hindsight of the fact, if he tried to look at it at least a little pragmatically. The rest of the world could go get stuffed – who cared about what they thought? It had rarely ever been a concern of Donnie's regardless but the knowledge that he no longer had to even think about that, concern himself one little bit with the world he'd willingly forsaken, lightened his soul.

Not much: just a bit. But it was enough.

The ache was still there and yet he could hold it lightly for the moment, turning his head back and up to the cooling kiss of rain, a ghost's whisper against his lips. The moments that would never again be flooded in close, clustering and hassling, begging for the painful tug of attention, but it could not be all the time and he had to push them away, gently redirecting them to a purpose and form that could be put to something of a better use.

Chin up now, dear.

_ _

Against himself, Donnie smiled, lips pressed so tightly together that anyone looking at him could have been forgiven for mistaking it for a grimace. Something of him was still there then. Maybe what people said about people living on in memories meant something after all. Of course, memories could never be a replacement for the real thing, the man who had given up his very life to protect the one that he actually loved, but it was a little comfort at least, the first bandage wrapped around a heart that would come to need many, many more to fully heal in the end.

Charles looked at him strangely, eyebrow crooked at an odd angle that didn't quite seem natural.

“What are you thinking?"

“I know what we have to do."

Taking a deep breath, Donnie shot him a look that promised more out of the corner of his eye, trying not to think of or even consider just how unsure he must have looked in the moment. He felt unsure. He felt very unsure indeed, in fact.

“We have to keep going. No, not just like that," he added quickly, holding up his hand to stave off Charles' interjection. “Just… It's what John would have wanted. Everything he's done, he wouldn't want to see that laid to waste."

“No, just thinking that is too fucking poetic for him."

And Donnie laughed at that, the sound releasing from him in the absence of tension, breath rushing out as he wheezed and scraped for breath, moisture prickling at the corners of his eyes all over again. But this was a traitor of his own body that could be allowed in, tears in laughter, and he leaned against his brother, shoulders bumping as it infected Charles too, their hollow mirth echoing softly out into the cold and damp of the night.

That night, a plan was hatched. It was, perhaps, missing something without John there to steer and direct the wild craziness of it but it was still a plan and it gave them hope, life, something to cling onto. Maybe that was all a person needed in a time of true need but they would find the 'something more' if needs came to it. All they could do in the interim as they shakily returned to Donnie's home and cleared a space in which to work was consider how to keep things going, what could be delegated and what could be left to those in now Donnie's employ alone, the head of an empire that he had never once considered that he solely wanted for himself.

No… Other brothers may have schemed to topple their partners, stealing all for themselves and their glory, but it would never have been like that if John had lived. They had a different kind of relationship altogether and that in itself was perhaps what had made them work so well together.

Leaning over paperwork, the hidden door to his computing quarters (thus dubbed as that was what John had teased him with) open and all within ready for action, Donnie looked out over plans and plots, John's scrawled handwriting, things that they should really have encrypted. Now, it was a remnant of who he had been and even Donnie could not help but allow his lips to perk up just a little in memory, the good times warming his extremities if not his heart, the cavern of his yawning chest.

There were things to be done and there was only one way to go and that was forward. Always…forward. Charles nodded, in for the long haul, regardless of his feelings on the matter. Their family, their kind of family, after all, had to try to stick together where they could. Donnie took a deep breath with just a little vodka to wet his tongue, tension strained across his cheekbones.

This one's for you, John.

He had work to do.