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“I apologize for the lateness of my arrival,” Obrin said, shakily making his way up the elaborate staircase to meet the healer he’d put in charge of his brother’s care nearly two months ago. “I much appreciated the written reports you sent while I was unable to visit in person. Are there any updates I should be aware of regarding Mithrun’s condition before I step into his room?”
“There haven’t been any significant changes, I’m afraid, though that’s to be expected as it’s still early days. I would warn you again against speaking to him of the dungeon, as he will make it immediately and violently clear that he finds this upsetting. He had another incident the other day, prompted by discussion of the dungeon within earshot of him. Those responsible have of course been dealt with, and the resulting injuries were minor enough to be best left to heal on their own.” She sighed, and reset her tired smile. “It’s best to remember that, although distressing, this is a sign that he could recover to some extent. I don’t want to waste your time telling you things you already know. Seeing him will explain more than I can. If you’re ready?”
“Of course. Please, lead the way.”
The healer did, and opened the door to what had been, until recently, one of many indistinguishable guest bedrooms in Obrin’s summer estate.
The room no longer resembled part of his home. The smell of herbs and mana went a long way to disguise the stale body-smell of sickness, but couldn’t cover it completely. The dim lighting was likely meant to be relaxing, but only succeeded at being gloomy. The bed was raised, the curtains drawn, the side table covered in bottles of tablets. Every hospital room looked the same.
Places like this had been a constant in Obrin’s own life, but to his memory, Mithrun had never been associated with any of them as more than a brief visitor. Obrin was well aware that their positions had been dramatically, and perhaps permanently, reversed. He had been warned, in letters, that Mithrun’s ordeal had left him as little more than a shell of himself. “Very changed,” the healer had called him, tactfully. Still, no correspondence with the medical team could have prepared him for the reality that now lay, propped up with pillows, in the bed before him.
Mithrun was pale, thin, and motionless, one lifeless black eye fixed somewhere in the middle distance, the other covered by a bandage stained rust-red. A nurse held a spoon to his mouth, gently nudging his jaw open wider to feed him. It didn’t work very well; thin pumpkin soup only spilled over his chin. Obrin was reminded of nothing so much as a small child trying to feed a doll. One which had been hacked apart, perhaps by a younger sibling.
As a tiny child, Mithrun had done things like that. Cut the hair off of both of their toys, scribbled out their eyes, snapped off their ears. Another strange reversal, to have been torn up in the same way.
The nurse wiped the soup away with a stained cloth. Mithrun’s stomach growled loudly enough to be heard from the doorway, but apparently could not inspire him to accept the subsequent spoonful, or the one after that. He only lay back against the pillows and drooled, unwilling or unable even to swallow.
His brother couldn’t find the will to eat, but he could attempt to scratch his already-gone eye out again and again. It made a terrible kind of sense which he didn’t wish to examine. His knees wobbled, and he leaned heavier on his crutch.
The head healer must have noticed, because she pulled a chair closer to the side of the bed and gestured at it. “Why don’t you sit with him for a while? He hasn’t had any visitors yet, he might appreciate it if you talked to him for a little while. I know you must have missed him.”
People around him twisted the truth out of kindness all the time, and this woman was no different. He and Mithrun had gone years without speaking more than once, and neither of them had particularly minded. Mithrun had hardly even seemed to notice, particularly after he joined the Canaries. Even if he might have missed his family then, it certainly didn’t seem like he was capable of such a thing now. He wasn’t even willing or able to hold his own head up; it listed to one side now that the nurse had given up on lunch.
Obrin took a seat while she laid his brother back down properly. He remembered, faintly, Mithrun as a baby, screaming to be picked back up every time a nanny tried to put him down for a nap. Obrin, himself just barely too old for cribs at the time, had wondered how someone so tiny could need so much attention.
He wasn’t asking for attention anymore, but Obrin had a feeling he needed it now as much as he had then.
“We’ll give you two some privacy,” said the head healer, motioning for the nurse to leave with her. “There will be someone just outside the door, should you need anything. If your brother moves at all, shout for them. With his gift for teleportation, once he starts moving, he can be out of sight far too quickly.”
Obrin nodded his assent, and was left, effectively, alone. His brother’s presence was more of an absence than anything else.
Mithrun hadn’t even looked at him yet, not interested enough even to flick his eye to the side for a moment. Obrin had no idea what to do or say to even begin to close the gulf between them. This had been, in a small way, a feature of their relationship for many years. There must have been a time when they were closer. Perhaps when they were children? Surely they must have acted as siblings, once. But he couldn’t remember a time where that had ever been true well enough to picture it clearly. Just before Mithrun’s disappearance, they had gotten to a point where they had hardly known each other at all. Strangers, sitting across the table from each other on the rare occasions they both visited their parents at the same time. The day where he might have been able to offer his brother anything familiar or reassuring to support him through this ordeal had passed a long, long time ago.
At the absence of anything more helpful to do, he took his brother's hand. It was cold and clammy, the nails filed nearly down to the nail beds for his own safety. There was no trace of blood underneath them, scrubbed clean by strangers paid by Obrin. Somehow it felt like there should still be a trace left there, if only to verify that this hand could still move at all.
Mithrun didn’t seem to notice the touch. It was unsettling how quickly this had ceased to be surprising. It would take much longer before it could start to become any less heartbreaking.
There was nothing to say, but shouldn’t stay quiet, so he settled for bare statements. “I’m here.” It was a start. It was more than he had been. “I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I wanted to. I’ve been ill again.”
Perhaps he imagined it, but he thought he saw the ruined stumps of Mithrun’s ears twitch ever-so-slightly at the sound of his voice. Even so, Mithrun made no attempt to look at or acknowledge him any further. Still, he wanted to believe that talking had done something. That there was something he could do.
“We – the whole family — were all so relieved to hear you’d been found. We’d been so worried the whole time you were gone.” This was a kind bending of the truth, which he mildly regretted immediately after giving it breath. In reality, they had all quickly accepted that Mithrun was likely dead. Obrin had worried longer than his parents, who had essentially mourned Mithrun the moment they volunteered him for the Canaries and been done with it. Even so, he hadn’t held out hope for as long as he’d like to make others believe.
“I arranged for you to come here as soon as I heard the news. I want you to consider this place your home for as long as you need. You will always be welcome here. Anything that I can give that you need, or want, is yours for the asking.” He considered his words, and amended “Even if you don’t ask, or can’t. You’ll always be provided for. I promise you that.” He could give that much, he’d been sure from the moment he’d heard about the accident. Maybe it was too detached, maybe it provided no comfort. If his understanding was correct, Mithrun didn’t even want anything from him in the first place. But this was a kind of care he –or his money, as it were–- had the ability to give. Mithrun deserved at least that much. And he deserved to hear it himself, that he was cared for. He’d have deserved this from his brother even if accepting the assignment to the canaries in his place hadn’t saved Obrin’s life. Mithrun had had very little choice in the matter, to be sure, but Obrin liked to think his brother had given him some consideration as he moved forward with the plan their parents had made. Obrin couldn’t deny that this was a significant part of why he’d been the one to stand up and foot the healer’s bills, and to visit when no one else did. Maybe this would absolve him somewhat of the relief he felt, even in the face of his grief for his brother, that this fate had befallen Mithrun and not himself.
He lapsed into silence for a while, turning his guilt over in his head and looking for a way to fold it out of existence. Was this how his parents had felt at his own bedside, during the times when he’d been sick enough that their worry became stronger than their reticence? Did they, too, try to buy absolution with performances of care? Did they weigh the shame they felt at his weakness against the money they spent on ensuring his well being? Did the scales balance?
There it was, then; a bit of common ground. The pain of seeing each of them had now been weighed, by all members of their family, against the need to maintain face by caring for them. Each brother had now had their own suffering made into an issue of family politics, to be spread through the rumor mill until the whole continent had an opinion on exactly how badly they reflected on their house. This had been a constant for Obrin’s entire life. He wished he could say he’d never privately wished that Mithrun understood what it was like.
“I know you must feel absolutely wretched.” Words he himself had wanted to hear every time a healer had left him alone in his room with bad news. “I know these last few months have been unimaginably hard for you. And I’m sorry you’ve had to go through this at all, let alone to do it as alone as you’ve been.” No kind variations on the truth, no false promises or optimism. Just a little bit of empathy, and a little bit of honesty. The gods only knew these things came in short supply in House Kerensil.
Something unhealthy made itself known in the sound of Mithrun’s breath, and Obrin looked up from their hands to see that his brother’s bloodshot eye had welled up with tears. His next exhale shuddered out mournfully.
Obrin’s eyes widened, and he wondered for a moment if he should call for a nurse. This was more of a sign of life than he’d seen since he’d been here, and he was told to call if Mithrun moved at all… but he wasn’t moving. Obrin held his breath for a moment, waiting for. Something. A sudden move to teleport, fingernails raised to tear at bandages, the sound of his brother’s voice. Even a twitch. But the only change was that the tears started to spill down Mithrun’s face. He didn’t move to wipe them away. His expression didn’t even change. He looked like he was leaking more than crying, staring at nothing and quietly wheezing.
It was awful to look at; it was a cold hand squeezing Obrin’s heart. Any other day, he knew Mithrun would find this situation unbearably embarrassing. Perhaps he still did. This might be the most open piece of honesty his brother had ever shown him. Tragic, to think that it was only because he couldn’t bring himself to communicate any other way. That perhaps this wasn’t something he wished to share at all, and that he simply couldn’t help himself.
“I hear you,” he said, squeezing his brother’s hand. “I understand what you’re telling me.”
No response from Mithrun, but the tears kept falling. He didn’t even try to blink them away. Obrin considered drying his face with the cloth left on the bedside table, but decided against it. It would have felt too much like telling Mithrun to be quiet.
“I know it hurts. I know. I’m sorry. I’m here with you. I’m right here.” This was the best he had to give: a simple list of statements, delivered quietly and matter-of-factly. He hoped it might help. It didn’t seem to. He repeated it anyway.