There he was.Warm.Breathing.Alive.
My brother.The boy I had failed.The man who had survived me.
His hand gripped my coat, fist twisting in the fabric like he hated that he needed something to hold on to.
I did not speak.Neither did he.
There were no words left that would not ruin it.
His breath shook once.That was all he allowed himself.
I tightened my hand at the back of his neck and bowed my head over him, shielding him from a room that had taken too much from us.
“I came back,” I said quietly.
His voice was muffled against my coat.
“You came back.”His grip tightened.“You bastard.”
There was another silence.Then, so quietly I almost missed it, he said, “I missed you.”
The words moved through me like something breaking open after years of being frozen shut.
I held him harder.
“Me more.”
He pulled back then, eyes red but dry, anger still alive in him.I wanted it to live.He would need it.So would I.
“This doesn’t fix things,” he said.
“No.”
“I’m still furious.”
“You should be.”
“I may hit you later.”
“You can try.”
His mouth twitched despite himself, and grief made the almost-smile unbearable.
Then it vanished.
“What happens now?”
I looked around the office.At the desk.The polished floor.The window.The room where Viktor had tried to end one son and destroyed the other by doing so.
Now both of us stood in it.Breathing.Changed.Damaged.But still here.
“Now,” I said, “we clean up what he left behind.”
Archie’s gaze held mine.
“And after that?”
I looked at my brother, and for the first time in years, the future did not look like a battlefield I had to crawl across alone.
