Name: shadowsong26
Story: Once I Called You Brother
'Verse: Feredar
Colors: Aqua #23. Winter, Patriarch Purple #5. omertà, Cinnabar #4. Salt
Supplies and Materials: eraser (Gay Isshiri AU), feathers, chalk, novelty beads ("Are you happy, are you satisfied/How long can you stand the heat?" -Another One Bites the Dust, Queen), glitter ("Sometimes you just have to try, even though you know it won't work." – Junot Diaz), glue ("Although you might think you can cleverly step around an emotional swamp today, you may still become enmeshed in someone else's drama.")
Word Count: 574
Rating: R
Characters: Andrell, Kellom
Warnings: Discussion of war and genocide, imprisonment, and treason/defection.
Notes: Constructive criticism welcome, as always.


They have him in a tent at the center of the camp, with what looks like a dozen guards on it, though I don’t bother counting them. They eye me for a minute, and then quietly let me in.

The tent is bare, and empty, save for him. He sits on the ground in a corner, bound hand and foot. He’s wounded, slightly--minor burns on his chest and one more serious one on his left arm. They’ve all been treated. He’s awake and, if he’s in pain, he’s not letting on at all. Not that I really expect him to. He has been stripped of his armor and of course he’s disarmed, and still he holds himself like a king.

He doesn’t look at me.

“I, uh,” I clear my throat awkwardly. “They…they brought you in alive.”

Still, he is silent. Still, he looks away.

“…I missed you,” I say, then hesitantly add, “brother.”

Now he looks up. His eyes meet mine and bore into them, cold and unreadable. I swallow, and, more than anything, I want to flinch and look away.

But I don’t. I’ve come too far for that. We both have.

“I had reasons, brother,” I say softly instead. “I had…to me, they seemed to be good ones. And I think I…maybe I can make you understand, if you’ll let me try.”

He stays silent, holding my gaze, not a flicker of expression in his eyes.

I feel a bead of sweat start to trickle down my back, and force my own eyes to stay open, locked on his. “Please, brother, let me explain.”

He looks away, cold and calm, and it isn’t that he’s broken first.

Freed of him, I finally close my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, but the words fall flat between us. We both know I don’t mean them--or, I do, to a point, but not…his wrong was the greater one, by far. I made the right choice. My defection was the right choice. I believe that. I do. I have to.

I think of Prince Isshiri, carried back with his jaw broken and his lower half drowning in blood, his Islander lover clinging to him like all hope will be lost without him. I think of my other brother, dead at this one’s hand, with or without cause. I think of the too-common anonymous graves within the city walls, filled on his orders.

They cleaned my brother up, but he still has so much blood on his hands. And I’m not…I’m not sorry I helped to bring him down. I’m not. And a part of me even wishes--and I hate this part of me that wishes--that we weren’t having this conversation. Which means that I wish…

I don’t. I don’t. I could never.

But if the Islander hadn’t brought him in alive…

“What do you want me to say?” I ask, and my voice cracks just a little.

Silence answers me.

“I’m sorry,” I say again, and this time it almost rings true, for the parts where I do mean it, the ‘sorry I hurt you,’ ‘sorry I failed you,’ ‘sorry I couldn’t be who you wanted me to be,’ ‘sorry I couldn’t find a better way.’

‘Sorry we ended like this.’

I turn and leave his presence, moving just slow enough that it couldn’t be called fleeing.

His unforgiving silence burns through me long after I leave the prison tent behind.