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Valk jolted up from his bed. Sweat was running down his body, tears were covering his eyes. His body felt pain all over. His hands felt sticky and cold, as if the blood was still there.
He looked down at his trembling hands to see nothing but his hands. No blood, no knife, nothing. Not a single drop of that red liquid.
So why did that feel so realistic?
His throat felt like it was choked, strained. His t-shirt and shorts were glued with sweat onto his body. His wings felt limp, as if someone had ripped it off his back. He tried flapping it, but nothing came. His hand slithered up to his back, to find both wings still there. So why can’t he move it?
He grabbed his blanket and wrapped it around his body, crying into it. Everything was spinning, his vision dizzy with tears. He would never do that. He would never kill, especially his brother. He was too
weak
unfit for that. And if he wanted to die, he didn’t want to bring Dom into it.
Dom. Megaphone.
What happened to him? Valk had just thought about it. He knew it was a dream, but it felt too realistic to be one. What if he had a failed suicide attempt and they managed to recover him but not Dom, and then he fell into a coma so when he woke up, he was already well, or Ghostwalker decided to revive him for some forsaken reason and not his brother? If the latter was the case, Valk wanted to plead to Ghostwalker to trade his soul for Dom’s. God he did not deserve it.
With shaky legs, he pushed himself off the bed and headed towards the door, body still trembling with cold, fear and guilt. He sighed — which did not calm him at all — and opened the door. The hallway was dark and cold. No sign of life so far. His adrenaline was pumping, thinking that Dom might’ve actually been dead.
Oh, gods.
With a blanket around him, he stumbled and tripped over his legs, his legs running faster to the purple door at the end of the hallway. He didn’t stop once he reached the door. He didn’t have the patience to knock, or check if he could hear Dom’s breathing from the outside (it’ll be too soft anyway, Dom doesn’t snore). He just swung open the door the moment his hand pressed on the cold handle. The door collided against the wall, and he swore he heard one of Dom’s accessories drop from the hangers behind the door. Whoops.
Dom, the ever so light sleeper, woke up groggily to the noise. He rubbed his eyes, and before he could process anything, Valk immediately jumped to hug him, tears streaming down his face. With all the weird crying noise Valk was making, Dom shuddered thinking that a random night creature had decided to break into the house and maul him.
But he could see: the pastel yellow horns and small wings that only belonged to his brother, and his brother only. The demon’s body was overwhelmed with sweat, but beneath all the liquid was Valk’s soft skin. Dom knew he was safe, and that is all he had to know; well, except for Valk’s crying of course.
He slowly sat up, carrying Valk’s weight with him as he patted his brother on the back. Valk doesn’t usually have outbursts like these unless he had a very, very bad dream or had a mental breakdown.
“Bad… hic- dream…” Valk mumbled, as if he had read Dom’s thoughts. That was the thing about being brothers and living in the same environment for their entire lives. They could tell how each other felt, what each other thought. It was a mutual thing at this point.
“Thought so,” Dom whispered, his voice still rusty and harsh from the sudden alarm. “What dream did you have anyway…”
“So like-“ Valk sniffed again, trying to calm his composure down. “If- if I killed you, would you even still trust me in the afterlife?”
“…
“What kind of dream were you having to ask that question…” Dom sighed, stroking through Valk’s hair. “Obviously not, but would you even dare?”
“No…”
“Thought so.”
“Hypothetically though-“
“Shut up,” Dom hushed his brother. “I don’t care if you hate me or not, I know you would never do that.”
“And if I did, I’d kill myself too,” Valk muttered. Dom stopped his hand movements for a while, stunned that those words would come out of his very brother’s mouth.
“Can you… explain the dream?”
“I don’t know… I don’t know what I saw…” Valk cried, his grip tightening on his brother. “We were out in Crossroads, and then to an alley, and then suddenly I drove a knife right at your heart. I- I was so devastated, I don’t know why I did that, and then I suddenly aimed it at my throat. I couldn’t feel myself for a moment, it felt like I was drowning, and then suddenly I saw everyone, our whole family, weep over our death, and then I saw Ghostwalker, and then-
“I… woke up. I- I thought it was real, I thought Ghostwalker revived me, but you were dead, and-“
“It’s just a dream,” Dom cut him off, trying to comfort his brother as much as possible. He wasn’t the best at comforting though.
“I think- hic- I was just… worried about you,” Valk mumbled. “I don’t know. It’s a subconscious thing, I guess. Being brothers and being through all that.”
“I see,” Dom responded, silencing following after. “I’m… not sure how to reassure you.”
“You don’t have to. I just need to know that you’re alive, you’re okay, and you’ll stay. That already reassures me,” Valk said, now shifted to a lying down position, facing the ceiling, his hands holding one of Dom’s soft arms. “You… don’t have to say anything either. Just listen to me like you always do, and I’ll be okay.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Well… that’s a story for another time,” Valk giggled, his normal persona finally returning. The two brothers just stayed there, in each other’s comfort, the silence embracing them. Sleep can wait.
“You know I’d never ignore you right?”
“Wh- of course! I— am un-iiignorable after all!”
“Haha, gotcha.”
“Not fair!”
***
And maybe, in another universe, it wasn’t a dream.
And his soul will sit in exile at that very same spot where the two died.
Rumor has it that at night, past 2 a.m, you can hear the silent sobs of a spirit in that same alleyway where the two idols died. Hushed whispers between sobs that kept repeating the same words: “It’s my fault. And it’s my fault.”
And one thing everyone knew: his sin cannot be repented.