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Colt couldn’t breathe.
He wasn’t sure why he woke up. Intuition, maybe. Anxiety from the fight earlier between his twin brother and their grandparents. But he did, he sat up, glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table (just past midnight, it was officially their ninth birthday), and then past it to Ryland’s bed.
Empty.
He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and pushed the covers off himself, moving over to the bed across the room as if he might be making things up in the dark. Ryland wasn’t there. The room was dark and empty and cold. He patted the blankets just in case. Nothing. Checked under the bed, pushed the bedroom door open to check the bathroom across the hall, checked under his bed, in the closet…no sign of him. Colt’s stomach felt full of rocks. His heart started going faster in his chest, loud enough that he was worried his grandparents might hear it. He didn’t know why he woke up, maybe the cold, but now he was scared because his brother was gone.
Cold. It was cold.
The window was open.
He approached it carefully, making it a point to walk on his tiptoes as he peered over the windowsill to the section of slanted roof outside. Sure enough, there he was. His brother, hugging his knees up to his chest with his back turned to the window. “Ry…?”
Ryland jumped a little, before looking back. He looked like he’d been crying. Colt frowned.
“What’s the matter?”
Ryland’s head shook, and he faced forward again. “Mm,” he said. He didn’t want to talk about it. Colt sighed, before pulling himself over the windowsill until his bare feet met the roofing tiles. He stumbled a little on his way, but he managed to move down the slanted surface until he was standing in front of him. Ryland didn’t seem happy about that. “You’re gonna fall,” he mumbled, his hand reaching out and gripping Colt’s Spider-Man pajama pant leg. “Go back inside.”
“I’m not gonna fall,” Colt insisted.
“Go back inside, Colt, I wanna be alone.”
“Nuh-uh.” He shifted on his feet, arms out to try and maintain his balance. “You have to talk to me, I’m your big brother.”
Ryland made a face. “Only by like five minutes, that doesn’t count.”
“Six,” Colt corrected. “And I’m taller.”
“For now.”
“Ryyyy.”
His grip tightened on Colt’s pant leg, and he tilted his head further down, like he was trying to hide. “No.”
Colt’s frown deepened, and he started to shimmy around Ryland again. His brother’s grasp on his clothes didn’t leave until he was sitting next to him. “Is it about what grandpa said?” He tried to catch Ryland’s gaze with his own. “About the telescope?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Why?”
“Just–” He sniffed. “Just makes it worse.”
“Oh.” Colt looked down at his toes against the roof, tapping them anxiously a few times. “Well…I won’t be mad if you tell me.”
Ryland shrugged a bit. “You promise?”
“Pinky promise.” Pinky extended, Colt offered up his hand. Ryland’s pinky intertwined with his own. “If I’m lying you can take my pinky, remember?”
“I know, I’m not dumb.”
Colt shook his head. “No, you’re super smart.”
The slightest smile, and he grinned back.
“Suuuuper duper smart, you’re like the smartest kid in our grade.”
“Shush.”
He got an elbow to his side, and Colt nudged Ryland right back. Gently. They were both quiet for a little bit.
“...I really liked my telescope.”
Colt’s smile faded. “I know, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, I just…grandpa was talking about it like it was dumb,” Ryland continued. “But it’s cool, it’s not dumb. I told him I didn’t want anything else for my birthday, I just wanted him to fix the telescope.” His brow furrowed, lower lip trembling a little. “I didn’t mean to be mean back.”
Colt pursed his lips. “Hmm. I know.”
“I didn’t mean to be. I just wanted my telescope back.”
He nodded, thinking back on the argument that he’d witnessed. He thought Ryland was making a good point. He didn’t understand why their grandpa and grandma got so weird about it. “That’s okay! It’s a cool telescope, I’m sorry he didn’t wanna fix it.”
Ryland buried his face further into his knees, sniffing again. “It’s not just that.”
“What?”
“They…” He hugged his knees tighter. “They put it in the garbage. Because I was being ungrateful.”
Colt frowned. That made him mad. “Oh…”
“I didn’t mean to be ungrateful, I j-just like the telescope. It makes me really happy, and I was trying to explain but they wouldn’t listen.”
His arm came around his brother’s shoulders. “That’s stupid.”
Ryland nodded once, leaning into him. He was quiet otherwise. Colt just held him for a moment, wracking his brain for some sort of solution. He was on his feet and climbing back in through the window a moment later.
“Colt?”
“One sec, I’ll be back!”
“Colt!”
He returned a moment later with the broken telescope in his arms and a toolbox in hand. Ryland looked at him and gasped.
“Oh my gosh…”
“We can fix it together!”
He shook his head. “No, no, grandpa’s gonna be so mad if you touch his tools!”
“I’ll be careful, he doesn’t have to know!” He set the toolbox and telescope down on the floor near the window and flicked on a lamp, before waving Ryland in. “C’mon, trust me.”
Ryland hesitated for a moment, before pushing slowly to his feet and crawling back through the open window. “How are you gonna fix it?”
Colt shrugged, plopping himself down on the floor and opening the box. “I dunno. You know how it works better so just tell me what’s broken, and I’ll try to figure it out.”
“But what if–”
“Ry, it’s okay,” he interrupted. “If he finds out, I’ll just tell him it was my idea. It’s okay.”
Ryland looked worried. “Pinky promise.” His pinky went out. Colt took it with his own.
“Pinky promise,” he echoed. He meant it.
They were up all night, and the telescope was functional by morning. His grandpa did find out. He was mad, and Colt didn’t get presents that year. But it was worth it, because they watched the stars the next night together. The lens was still a little unstable in the telescope, but it was better than before. Ryland was smiling, and Colt couldn’t really ask for more.
~
Nine missed calls.
Nine missed calls from Ryland, and a singular voicemail that Colt can’t bring himself to listen to again. He’ll throw up if he does, he knows it. He’s gonna cry and puke himself silly when they play it in court. The trial of Eva Stratt. The woman who (hopefully) saved the world. The woman who did what had to be done. The woman who murdered his baby brother.
(He can’t even blame her fully when he should’ve picked up the damn phone.)
“I can’t do this,” he says as the car parks, and he’s pretty sure he means it. He’d rather be set on fire over and over again, rather fall and fuck up his back again. He can’t fucking do this.
“Darling.” Jody’s in the driver’s seat. He asked her to drive, because he doesn’t know if he’d be able to focus on the road. It still doesn’t feel real. It’s been months, and it doesn’t feel real.
“I can’t– I can’t do it, I can’t–”
“Hey, hey…”
Her hand on his knee. It’s grounding. It’s not enough.
“Are you going to regret it if you don’t?”
He swallows. He knows he would. He’d regret it along with everything else. The arguments, the anger, the missed calls. He’d sounded so scared. He’d sounded so fucking scared. “I already do.”
“Colt.”
His eyes shut tight, if only to avoid letting tears escape.
“I’ll be there the whole time. Don’t shut me out again.”
“I’m not– I’m not trying to.”
“I know…” She squeezes his thigh. “Breathe.”
“Jody, I ca–” He cuts himself short. He tries to inhale deeply. It’s fractured. Jody’s thumb soothes over his knee, slowly moving back and forth. He tries to focus on that. He tries to ignore the crushing weight of his estranged twin brother’s death, even if the guilt eats him alive. He doesn’t know if picking up would have made a difference. He doesn’t know what he’d do if he’d answered and had more time. He wishes he did, anyway. Hates that he didn’t. And he’s just sorry.
“Good, that’s good. You’re doing wonderfully.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.” Her other hand on his shoulder. He leans into the touch, leans into her across the middle console. His breath catches, comes out as a sob. “I know, I know…it isn’t your fault.”
“You don’t know tha–”
“Colt, it isn’t your fault.”
“I should’ve…I didn’t know…”
“You didn’t, you didn’t know. It isn’t your fault. Remember? We’ve talked about this.”
He nods against her shoulder. “Yeah.”
“It’s alright.”
He glances up, tears falling freely now. Her own eyes are glossy. She never got to meet Ryland. They were together, and Ryland always joked about showing up on set to meet her as a surprise. Colt always told him off, because he knew he wouldn’t. Things were tense, but they were talking.
And then he’d fallen.
Everything went to hell, in that hospital room. They said stupid shit to each other. Ryland got mean, and Colt didn’t hold back, and it was gone. He was gone. They both shut the hell up, and that was that. He didn’t talk to most people. Then everything with Gail and Tom happened, and he was busy, he was with Jody, even if the sun was dying, and he thought about reaching out so many times, but the anger got the better of him, and he let it happen because he thought he had time, he thought he had time to get over it and reach out later, thought they’d be fine eventually, or wouldn’t, but would both be on Earth, alive–
Three years wasn’t meant to become forever.
“We need to go inside,” Jody says quietly. Her voice shakes just towards the end of the statement. Colt swallows down bile.
“Okay.”
“I’m with you.”
“I know. Thank you.”
They get out of the car and go inside. It’s a government building, but all Colt can think of is that stupid fucking hospital room.
~
Jody had just left, because Colt told her to. It wasn’t that simple, he knew. She wanted to stay. He had to tell her to leave more times than he could remember, and then he had to say it louder, and then he shut up. The shutting up was what got her, and he felt shitty about it, but everything hurt and he didn’t want to talk. Not to Jody, not to anyone. He was really fucking tired of talking to anyone.
That didn’t stop the knock on the door. That didn’t stop his brother’s face peering in the door, before the rest of him presented itself.
“Hey…how are you feeling?”
There were several ways to answer that question. Angry, stupid, depressed, upset…he could have said anything. “Like I wanna be alone,” he said. Ryland laughed a little, pushing his glasses up his nose as he moved further into the room
“Yeah, sorry, I bet you’re tired.”
He was. He didn’t say as much.
“Doctor say you’ll be okay?”
Colt shrugged just slightly. It hurt. “Guess so.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. PT and shit. Should be fine.”
Ryland nodded. “And then you can get right back to reckless driving and jumping off buildings, huh?”
Colt didn’t know if he meant it like that. He didn’t know if Ryland was being mean, or trying to mess around, or if he was just genuinely asking. But it hurt, and he didn’t want to fucking deal with it. “Actually, probably not,” he said coldly. “Bet you’re happy to hear that.”
The smile on Ryland’s face dropped a little. “Uh…I mean, obviously I’ve said before it’s a dangerous job, but–”
“Obviously, you were right.”
He scoffed. “What’s wrong with you?”
Colt turned his head away. “I broke my back, try to keep up.”
“Excuse me?”
“I broke my fucking back, Ryland.”
“Okay?”
“You were right. Dangerous job. Can’t do it forever. You were fucking right, so go ahead and say it.”
“Say what?!”
“That you told me so!”
Ryland pursed his lips. “Geez. Well, I did.”
“Yeah. Mr. Smart Science Guy knows best.”
“Doctor Smart Science Guy.”
Colt couldn’t tell if that was meant to be a joke to lighten the mood. He didn’t care. “Not anymore.”
Ryland looked wounded. Colt wanted to dig deeper. The pain and exhaustion, the tension over the past couple years, the clashing, it told him to, and he listened.
“You got kicked out, remember? For being stupid.”
“That’s not how that–”
“No, you were being stupid. You were being dumb just like your idiot older brother, right? And then you called me to bitch about it.”
Silence fell between them for a moment. And then Ryland fought back. “At least I didn’t break my back over it.”
Colt glared at him. “Fuck you.”
Ryland looked like he might cry. Colt felt like it, too. “Right back at you.” He glanced at the door. “I knew I should’ve stayed away.”
Colt scoffed. “Yeah. It’s what you’re good at.”
“Don’t– I got on a plane as soon as I heard! You’re being a dick!”
“No shit.”
“Why?!”
“I told you I wanna be alone.”
Ryland made for the door, paused right before it, before meeting his eyes. “Then have fun being alone. Don’t bother apologizing later.”
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
“I mean it,” he insisted. “Don’t bother reaching out again, actually. I'll leave you alone, stay away like I’m so good at.”
Colt swallowed. “Good riddance.”
He was gone without another word.
~
The speaker in the courtroom talks in Ryland’s voice, and he nearly faints when he first hears it. It’s been so long since he heard it the first and only time. It’s been longer since he’s heard Ryland’s voice any other way. Jody’s hand on his knee was bruising up until the point he had to go up to the stand, and he’s as grateful as he can manage to be for it. Now he sits alone, staring at his hands. He tries to breathe. He tries to stay still. He wants to scream.
“H-Hey. Hey, Colt, it’s. It’s Ryland,” the recording starts, shaky and breathless. “I don’t know if you still have my– Ugh.”
The pause is no more than a few seconds. It feels like years, and Colt has to keep his eyes open for fear of seeing Ryland’s face if he closes them.
(He already sees his face every time he looks in the mirror.)
“I’m really sorry for calling you, I know we’re not okay, but I just– Can we talk? Can we talk, please?” Another awful pause, a quivering breath. “I miss you.”
The tears come far too fast. He can’t fight them off.
“There’s– There’s a lot going on, and I would just really like to talk. I miss you a lot. So please, just, if you can…call me back?”
I want to.
“I promise I’ll be nice, pinky promise.”
I’ll even give you my pinky. Both of them.
“I won’t fight, I won’t call you dumb, or question your– I just need–”
You can call me anything you want, just don’t let this be real.
“Please. Please call me back. I just need my big brother right now. By six minutes, yeah? Six–” This pause is deafening. There’s something inside Colt eating him alive, thriving under the shaky breathing and silence. “God. I’m so sorry.”
The courtroom goes fully quiet. Colt keeps staring at his hands, even as tears stream down his face.
“Anything to add, Mr. Seavers?” It’s the judge. He finally looks up. He tries to find Jody’s face in the crowd with blurry vision. He finds Stratt instead. Her eyes look tired. Sad. She’s full of a different kind of pain. There’s no remorse, there. Just the pain of doing what had to be done.
Colt’s heart refuses to believe it did. He would’ve taken a dying world over losing the biggest part of his own.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” he breathes out, and it’s broken and hardly audible. Stratt gives a small nod.
“It will be worth it,” she says. Everything else, the tears and sobbing and throwing up that follow, is a blur. He can’t put the events in the right order after. It feels like a dream, and he really hopes it is.
~
It isn’t.
~
“Be nice, you’re riling him up!”
His sixteen year old daughter turns and grins at him from where she’s playing with the dog in the backyard. Colt’s sitting on the porch with his laptop. “He’s fine!” she insists. She has his eyes. Both his and Ryland’s. The uncle she never got to meet. The one she’s named for. “You should know by now that big dogs like playing rough!”
Colt huffs. “Yeah, but then he barks, and it’s loud,” he says fondly, stretching to appease an ache in his back that lingers to this day. “I’m trying to check my email over here.”
“Then check it inside!”
It’s funny, in some morbid way, how similar she is to him sometimes. She’s Colt and Jody’s daughter, but she takes after him. The amount of science-fair projects Colt’s had to help with is proof of that. She’s everything to him, and he lets her know it every chance he gets. It makes him sad, sometimes, if he thinks about it the wrong way. Ryland would’ve loved Rylee. They would’ve loved each other, and it’s sad. That never goes away, but it doesn’t change the blessing she is, either.
He needs to do something else before he tears up and she worries. Or worse, tells Jody, and then she worries.
His gaze goes back to the computer. Scam mail. Scam mail. Random coupon mail. Mail from the director of his last project with the subject line ‘THANK YOU ALL’, that could be nice. But then there’s something else.
Eva Stratt’s name is on his screen. Nineteen years after her trial, her name is on his screen. It’s an email from her, more specifically. No subject line. No body. Just an attachment.
He holds his breath as he clicks it.
Ryland’s face smiles at him from the inside of what looks like a space ship. He waves awkwardly at the camera. It’s a recording, not live, but it’s him. It’s not him sounding scared for his life hours before being sedated and sent to space, it’s not an argument in a hospital room creating enough guilt to follow him forever, it’s just Ryland. Smiling and waving and wearing one of the silly shirts Colt loves and–
He speaks.
“Hey, Colt.”
Colt breathes.