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Rain drizzled outside.
The Boy turned to look at The Girl. His older sister sat over to the side, her knees pulled up to her chest, sitting completely still as she stared out at the rain. The brother couldn't help but think that she looked just like how she used to before. . .everything. She would do the same at the orphanage, just sitting at the window in their room and stare out the dreary outside world. Even like right now, the sound of bombs and explosions could be heard even back then, though they had been further away. No matter how far back he tried to think, he could never remember if there had ever been a time when there wasn't a time that the sound of bombs would be in the background. Back when their parents were alive, when the town didn't look like something straight out of a nightmare, when the Mother didn't look like she currently does, before the Sniffer and its obsession with Hood, before the animals mutated and could talk, before the entire world had gone to hell, before the cult. Or, maybe, the world had always been hell. Even before the sound of bombs became a normal every day background sound.
Before this horrible itch at the back of his throat.
The strange itch had started when he had opened his eyes on that boat. He couldn't remember how he had gotten on the boat since the last thing he remembered was being hung along with several other prisoners of war. He was almost pretty sure that almost everyone from the cult had been caught. He couldn't say for sure how many were actually caught or how many may have escaped. Part of him, the part they brainwashed, hoped they escaped. The other part - the little brother in him - hoped that they all got caught and were burning in the deepest pit of hell. He knew he wasn't innocent, that brainwashed, groomed, or whatever, he had still gone through with the plan. He had sacrificed his big sister and he couldn't even remember what they had said to convince him and the others to do it. Was it to end the war? To bring back the water? Immortality through reanimation should they die? Well. . .
. . .the war was still going on.
The whole city was flooded and filled with monsters.
They certainly didn't seem to stay dead.
Until that sheep.
The sheep his sister had coughed up, trying to desperately get it out of her as she convulsed. The Boy had been torn between his protective instinct to rush forward and protect his sister and the terrorizing fear of wanting to stay as far away from the sheep as possible. When the sheep had finally left the hallway and into the next room, he had rushed to his sister's side. She had been trembling, breathing harshly, and clearly couldn't walk on her own. In that moment, even after the horrific sight he had just seen, he still hauled her onto his back and helped push her forward until they got here. Now, it was just the two of them all over again; their friends all eaten, the adults were all hostile, and there was no way to receive any kind of help. They were truly and utterly alone.
And the brother knew that - soon - his sister would be left alone to face the sheep monster.
The itch at the back of his throat had been getting progressively worse the longer they had journeyed forward. At first, it had been subtle, genuinely just an itch that would have him clearing his throat occasionally. Then he had pulled his sister out of the water. When she had wrapped her hands around his neck, it had been more than her fingers digging into his throat that was cutting off his airway. When he had kicked her off, he had turned away and it had felt like his lungs had been trying to evict his body. When his coughing finally stopped, he had painfully cracked open his eyes and found a bewildering sight. A small bundle of flower petals and some bulbs, dyed red with blood. He couldn't even tell what the original color of the plant was but he knew the species by sight alone. It was just a common English rose, normally pink in color from what he had seen. They were his sister's favorite flower, despite how common was.
He could even remember the day he got a bouquet for her after scraping together some money he got from any odd jobs he could sneak to. The look on her face when he had taken one of the roses and put it in her hair had been worth it. As orphans, moments like that had been a luxury, precious.
Remembering moments like that made the pain in his throat and chest worse.
Slowly, he began to piece together what hurt him and what didn't. At the beginning, everything was fine, even with the dull itch at the back of his throat. When they found Hood, the itch had worsened until he was hiding coughs. He didn't want to make his sister worry about him, especially since her condition was obviously worse than his own. When they had found Bandage, he felt something poking his lungs; something sharp and uncomfortable. The Boy found himself having to step away quietly, unsure if he could have kept the coughs at bay. That was the first time - besides on the boat - that he had seen blood follow the petals that landed in his hand. They had speckled the petals like an ugly red paint, tainting the pink coloring.
It was disgusting.
But it was also at that moment that his memories returned. The Boy could finally remember what had happened to land them in this hellscape. The orphanage, the cult, the ritual. . .the betrayal. It was also at that moment that he realized that he and his friends had been lied to, fooled into doing the unthinkable. The adults had told them that the ritual would end the war, that the water would come back, that they would save everyone with just a small, simple sacrifice. A sacrifice that had come at the price of his precious older sister's life, the girl he had told himself he needed to man up to take care of because that was what was expected of a man. In the end, after cajoling from the adults and - eventually - his friends, he was pressured into going through with the ritual. He should have told her what they had wanted him to do, should have convinced her that they should run away from the orphanage and try and make it on their own. Instead, he had laid in the bed next to her's and hadn't said anything. He had kept that secret close to his chest and never told her anything.
And now, he was gonna pay for it.
In the end, it wasn't even the thorns in his lungs that hurt him the most. It was the realization of what they stood for, that his beloved sister didn't love him anymore. Whether that love had turned into hatred or had become indifference, he couldn't tell. The very thought - that his most precious person in the whole world (if he deserved to still call her that) - didn't love him anymore was too much to bare. He could feel the thorns puncturing his lungs, the blood beginning to flood into them, the vines writhing in his chest. He let out a sputtered cough, before he began to hack, feeling the blood beginning to come up his throat as it poured from his mouth to dribble down his chin in a steady stream.
He missed how his sister's head had snapped around to watch him collapse to the ground, missed the complicated feelings that fleeted across her face.
The Boy could feel his throat constrict as the flowers once again tried to force their way up his throat. He could tell just from the feel of it that this wasn't just a bulb, it wasn't just petals, there were several full grown flowers attempting to force their way out of his mouth.
How ironic, he thought sardonically, that this will be the final bouquet that I will ever be able to give her. At least it's her favorite flower.
His body instinctively writhed on the ground from the lack of air even as The Boy accepted his fate. He could see his sister standing off to the side staring at him, her face concealed by her rabbit mask. He couldn't tell what she was thinking - if she was even thinking anything at all. Her lips weren't showing any emotion (not pursed, not gaping, just a slight downward turn that could mean anything) and the upper half of her face was hidden behind her bunny mask - effectively hiding any emotion her eyes could betray.
Even as he laid there, choking on his own blood and flowers born from one-sided love, he couldn't help but love her. She would always be his big sister, even if she saw him as nothing more than a traitor, no longer her younger brother. If he could go back, there was so much he would have changed. Maybe taken his sister's hand and fled the orphanage with her and their friends, stopped Hood from being shot, stopped Bandage from being blown up, stopped Bucket from falling, stopped everything. But the reality was simply that. . .
. . .it was far too late for regrets now.
A bloody smile spread across his lips, though he didn't quite know what it was for. A last show of affection? A reassurance that he didn't blame her for no longer loving him? A false and ridiculous effort to make it seem like he was fine as his lungs and throat were torn apart?
None of it mattered.
As his eyes slipped shut, he could feel the stained flowers filling his mouth, forcing their way through his lips.
Ah, he thought as darkness took him, not too bad of a way to go out.
The End. . .