The Forest

-27-

There came a rapping from the other side of the door, brisk as a heartbeat. He didn't reply. Darius let himself in anyway, as Lucius knew he would. He made sure to turn his face away.
"Oh Lucius. You didn't sleep in your clothes, did you?"
Lucius watched a cloud slog by. It looked full to bursting with rain. A smudgy shape in the reflection moved closer and he heard Darius padding over the rug.

"Here. I brought you breakfast."
A cutlery-sounding clatter suggested that Darius had laid a tray on the bed. Almost immediately Lucius smelt toasted bread, and his stomach knotted in response. He inched further away.
"Lucius?"
"Thanks."
There was an uncomfortable pause when he made no effort to even glance at what had been brought for him. Darius didn't get it— The best chocolate cereal in existence could have been piled on that tray, and he still wouldn't have been able to nibble at it. The smell of food was making him heave.

"Please eat." His brother tried. He sounded genuinely concerned, for once. Lucius wondered how long the sympathy would last before it turned into more lecturing. "You haven't eaten for days."
He tracked a raindrop as it slid down the glass. It soaked into a clod of brown moss when hit the sill. The moss was long dead. "Not hungry."
"It's not healthy to starve yourself-"
Five seconds. He was tempted to kick the tray of food to the floor, just to shut his brother up, but resisted.

At one point or another, Darius got the hint that Lucius wasn't listening to him, and the incessant buzz of his voice cut off.
"I brought you apple juice." He switched back to a more pacifist tone. Obviously he thought it was more effective than ranting.
Lucius didn't say anything.
He cleared his throat, "You still like apple juice, don't you?"
"Haven't had it since I was like, two years old."
"Oh." The catch in his voice almost made Lucius feel bad for being so unfriendly. But then he remembered that they all treated him as if he was two years old.
Silence hung heavy while Darius waited for something. Lucius didn't know what he was expecting. A thank you? Thank you for treating him like a child, thank you for keeping him locked in a room.

He felt a nudge on his arm, "Why don't you drink something? It might make you hungry."
Lucius mumbled a barely coherent no thanks. He could feel Darius staring at him, fretting very loudly without words, suddenly oh-so concerned for his wellbeing. Everything Lucius did was observed and judged. He felt sick, he wanted to smoke, he wanted to hide somewhere. Darius would snitch to their parents about this— 'Lucius isn't eating, Lucius must have something wrong with him, Lucius is this and Lucius is that.'

Lucius was tired. He didn't want food or juice, and he definitely didn't want Darius hovering around him. If he actually stopped to think about it, he wasn't sure what he wanted anymore. He missed Lyn.

Eventually there came a huffy sigh. It must have been the sound of Darius accepting there was no way to convince him to eat. Which left only one thing to do.
"Are they ready to go?"
Lucius was glad he hadn't touched food for a day, his stomach curdled like bad milk at those words— but he set his jaw firmly. They had all known this was coming. He forced himself to turn and reveal the two tiny people who had been huddled in his hand since his brother barged in. Any animosity between him and Bree had been temporarily set aside, knowing what had to happen next.

Bree and Vids looked up at him, blinking in the light that was forever too bright for their gentler eyes. Then over to Darius. Lucius forced himself to do the same.

Darius was knelt on the floor, elbows resting on the bed. He tried to smile when Lucius looked at him. Lucius thought he had better stick to frowning if that's what his smile looked like.
He used the last of his energy to search his brother's eyes. "I'm trusting you."
Darius blinked, "Pardon?"
"I'm trusting you, Darius. You gotta..." he could hardly bear to look at the two little lives in his hand, "You gotta promise to get them home. You ain't just doing this to trick me. You'll take them all the way back, you'll make sure they know where they when you get to Ernwood, that they'll be okay. Yeah?"
"Yes." Darius said shortly. He didn't like being lectured by his younger brother, "I know what I'm doing."
"No you don't." Lucius snapped, "You don't know shit about them."
"Do you want me to help you or not?"
"You ain't helping me!" He cried, "You're helping them! Don't you understand? I got them stuck here, that ain't their fault. None of this has anything to do with them." He would never forgive himself for dragging them out of Ernwood. Viridis could have died because of him, and without Darius, they would have been trapped here. Thinking about it made him feel sick again. Lucius wished more than anything that he could be the one to carry them home and mend his screwup, but he knew it was impossible. This was the next best thing.
"They just wanna go home, Darius. And they can't do that on their own, so you gotta help them." He bore into his brother. "Please."