I left him & Vayne

I see him every night in dreams. His eyes, so full of sorrow and pain, burn into me knowing I left him. Left him there to suffer. Tonight those eyes were bleeding. I ran to him as I always do, knowing I couldnât help him but desperate to try. He would fall away if I reached for him. Torn from my fingertips as they brushed his cheek by some terror in the darkness. He was gone. Nothing but his blood remained on my hands. His screams still plague me, my dreams, my thoughts. I never knew when his screams stopped. I should have waited. I could have at least done that. I should have waited for his pain to end. I deserved to listen to every second of it but I didnât stop. I didnât even glance back. Fear pushed me further and further away until I was too far away. His screams never stopped, only faded.


Vayne

He was 14 when his brother died. They shared the same mother but that was all they shared. He never knew much of his own father and his step father never knew much of him and never cared to.

His own father had only left behind one momento of himself for his son. Nothing at all like a family heirloom nor an inherited facial feature. No, this momento gave him no great pride and made him feel farther away from the normalcy of society rather than closer to his own sire.

Only his brother knew of his inheritance, for it had been his last vision, just before he carried his small body back to the village in his arms, lifeless and cold.

His brother's father raised him from a child but he knew as little of him as he did his own father. This father appeared occasionally as a vision or a voice across the way, giving orders or a good scolding.

His baby brother, however, knew his father well. He learned many things from him, although, the son seemed so much different from the father. The son was soft spoken, eager to help, and eager to encourage. The father was the first inform anyone of their faults and how it would be their untimely ruin. His son loved him anyway, of course.

The relationship between the two was ok with the teenaged boy. He had no love for his step father and often felt annoyed by his son despite constant efforts to become a loving little brother. Until, of course, when he was gone.

Many things ended that one fateful day. The most unfortunate, at the time, being his lack of communication with his step father. The man's words cut his soul like a knife as he blamed him for his son's death.

In a drunken rage, the night after laying the poor boy to rest, his step father beat him. It was like no usual beating. The beating that night was so savage and without restraint that the young man repented his sins before the last blow was placed upon his broken face.

To his young horror, his beating ended at knife point. Unhappy that the attempt on his young life was fruitless, he flipped the bloody, shaken, child upon his stomach in the hay. With the tip of his blade, he carved out the name of his dead son upon his step son's back.

Too weak to scream, his eyes too swollen for tears, a darkness filled the deep recesses of his mind. It took him away from his agony, not simply the physical pain of the blade upon his back, but the guilt of his brother's death that he would carry forever.

Within his darkness, he heard his step father's voice, "You will carry my son forever upon your back..."

Over the years, the physical wounds healed, leaving behind a hideous raised scar, one he believed he deserved and he carried it along with the wounds that would dwell forever.

Several years later, his step father took a drunken rage upon his mother. Peeking upon manhood and already standing a good height above the grown man, he made his final stand against his step father and left his body for the fish in the sea.

It was quiet possible that his mother knew the truth of the matter. When he returned she regarded him with a loving hug and spoke only of the terrible accident that away her husband from that day forward.