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Sometimes, we see ourselves become a worse version of us.
Tim walked into the dim room, and scrunched his face because of the pungent and rotting odor emitting from the room. As he walked in with careful steps to avoid the empty cans of beer and and broken alcohol glass. He finally reached the center of the living room, where a man was sleeping on a beat down couch. Or moreso, the man was black out from all the drinking he had. That man is his older brother.
Tim shook his head in disappointment as he sat, leveling their faces. Tim’s hand patted the drunkard; quiet hard, to wake him. The man groaned and turned away, giving his back to Tim. The younger boy just sighed.
“Dick, wake up.”
The man immediately jumped up, looking around his room for the reminiscent of a voice he heard. Dick eyes jumped immediately to a silhouette that looked like his younger brother. But he immediately pry his eye away because that’s not a real Tim. That thing is not his younger brother.
How is he so sure?
Because the ghost that’s sitting in front of him had his guts hanging out from his abdomen. Dick gagged at the foul smell and ran to the bathroom, to throw up.
As his stomach relieved itself, he felt cold hands rubbing his back, the rotten smell making him throw up even more. After a while, he felt the cold hand go away with the smell. Dick dry heaved a couple of times before standing up and washing his face.
Dick could smell Tim coming back before he heard him. The older man turned to the entrance of the bathroom to find his dead younger brother with a glass of water.
Dick smiled, “Thanks Tim.”
The younger boy smiled the same like he wasn't dead.
Dick took a sip of water, slowly trying not to look at the intestine hanging out of his younger brother’s gut.
Tim sheepishly looked down and played with his dead gray fingernails. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
Dick shut his eyes, leaning against the cool bathroom tiles and said nothing.
Tim picked up his hanging intestine and put it back inside his abdomen. “Maybe it’ time for me to go?”
“No.” This immediately woke Dick. “You don’t have to go anywhere, Tim.”
Tim looked like he didn't believe him. Dick’s face had a small smile when he saw his younger brother’s scrunched up eyebrows. The older brother approached the younger one and his hands tried to ease the furrow brows.
The cold face that he touched seemed to warm up a little bit and made Tim look less…dead.
Tim looked up from between the fingers, and shook his head, “Why do you love torturing yourself, Dick?”
“Because I deserve it.” The older brother answered in a heartbeat as if he told himself times and times over Tim's dying.
Tim cocked his head to the side, his baby blue no longer has pigment or life as it left grey and unfocus. “That’s not true."
Dick felt his eyes start to burn from the smell, but he bent down to hug his shorter brother.
“I deserve all the pain in the world.”
Tim tried to get out of the hug but Dick wouldn't budge so, the younger brother just gave up and patted his older brother’s back to comfort him.
“You always burden yourself with small things.”
Dick tightened his hug on the younger boy. He was foolish to let Tim go once, he won’t let Tim go again.“You are not a burden. You wer- are never a burden, Tim.”
Tim's hands fell to his side, and the dead younger brother looked up at the tiled bathroom ceiling. “I’m dead, Dick. I can no longer be a burden.” His younger brother sound so small. As if he has accepted he's dead.
“No,” the older man choked out a sob in denial. His finger curled into the skin of his younger brother, a living person would flinch at the pain but Tim is dead. He doesn't really feel much.
Tim waited for Dick’s sob to calm down. When his older brother stopped, Tim's words pierce through his heart and anchor itself deep in the wound
“Maybe you should learn to let go, Dick.”
That’s when the whole illusion broke.
Dick looked down, the dead brother was no longer in his arm. It’s empty and his heart cried in pain. Because…
Those were the exact words he said to Tim when Bruce died.
Dick regretted it.
He regretted saying those words to Tim.