[P] you wanna hold a gun but they made you a pinup

[Hagar]

HAGAR IESHAN

i am angry.
i have nothing to say about it.
i am not sorry for the cost.

H

e smiles and my heart ties in loose knots because I know he is mine, and I know that for every cruel thing I've done or every rotten little girl I've been on bad days, I am always a safe place for him. I often wonder if I am his only safe place.

My brother looks from me to the window, through which I can hear festival music and the din of the people. He is glowing in it, moonlight pooled on the ridges of his scales, the gold of his eyes turned white by its light-- and for a moment I wonder if I deserve him, this brother that loves me, this brother that I can never hope to compare to, as if I would want to.

I am his favorite, he says, and I smile wider. He is my favorite. There is no thing on this earth that could make that not so. There is nothing he could do that would make me love him any less than I do in this moment, where I am sat on his bed, watching him watch the people, and he looks so terribly whole for the first time in months, or maybe years.

My heart breaks for him. I want him like this always.
I do not know how to fix Adonai or our family but if it will make him happy like this I will do it.

(Sometimes I venture to imagine we are not our family's children, just two young, unknown siblings with only each other for company and no estate to think of-- but the more I consider it, the more I realize that we, or any of us, really, are only who we are because we are Ieshan. I know that goes doubly for me.)

Pilate says he has been writing, and I want to ask what, but he finishes, 'nothing of importance,' and I know I will not get the answer. I purse my lips quietly, and impatiently, only because I know he will not scold me for it. The sigh that follows, I am not quite as confident in. "That's not much of an answer." I say, but leave it at that.

He touches my shoulder and I forget my frustration, my impatience, my pride, and sink into the feeling. I feel small again, young, and complete. It almost hurts. "The only thing I ever do, brother, is cause trouble and wonder what you are doing. Sometimes both."

I smile at him, warm where his skin touches mine and cold where the snake winds its way down to my neck. I think, again, that I do not deserve him. I think, again, that he does not deserve any of these things that trouble him, though he would never say.

"You may guess, if you want, just what kind of trouble I've been causing, though."
 

@Pilate