☆Wish Upon A Star☆

☆~Chapter 25~☆

Alfred's ragged breath echoed against Arthur's still, rotting chest. His eyes were filled with bubbly tears that poured out in soft sobs. The missing legs and hands we're barely able to be covered, but Matthew had done his best with the satin blankets and the deceased man's best suit.

'Ironic, I know,'

A simple wooden box served as a coffin, filled with freshly-picked flowers to hide the ripped flesh that the suit couldn't cover, the injuries that had shamed the last of his dignity.

'A psychologist, an expert of the mind, giving into life's illusion of pain. An illusion far too real, far too excruciating. An illusion that has slowly taken over my reality,'

Matthew's firm hand gripped Alfred's trembling shoulder, rock hard eyes piercing into the last sight he'd ever get from his older brother's mistreated corpse.

His free hand grasped the coffin's cover and closed it tightly with a thick chain and a lock. 20.12. The day Arthur had started dating Yao, the day he slowly started knitting his end.

'An illusion I can't handle anymore... What a king feels when you take his crown and throne away, that feeling of emptiness and sorrow, is only fit for the strongest minds,'

Matthew pulled the over-light coffin over his shoulder, and his feet started the march down the hill, to the shore. Alfred held the other end of the wooden cage over his shoulders, silent between crying fits.

'I'm saying goodbye. I'll see you two in hell, or heaven if there is a God watching over us,"

The boys' shoes sank into the sand under the extra weight of Arthur's remainings in their wood prison. The walk to the shore was painful and tiring. The realization of getting rid of their mauled big brother into the immensity of the ocean seemed to hit them harder the closer they stepped to the water.

Matthew's distant glance watered up with tears that forced him to hold a sob back, and made Alfred cry more.

A weak hiss threatened the tears, which didn't pay attention and continued their race down Matthew's face, as echoes of the fresh memories that we're haunting the young man in such an important moment.

He could remember Arthur in his life since his early childhood. The protective figure of a brother in the middle of a hostile home. He never got along with his half brothers. Only with Arthur.

His protector, his guardian angel.

The half man lying in a coffin.

'I love you, boys. Good luck on your way here,

Big brother

Arthur Kirkland.'

The bloodied letter that had been found under the last red stake Arthur had dug rested, wrinkly and stained, into Matthew's clutched fist when he took it out of his pocket.

He wondered how many times he had read the note already. How many times he had read it over and over through a sleepless night.

At least half an hour of crying and mourning passed before they lay the box on the shore. The last waves of the ocean washed against the wood, like a dog eagerly licking its favourite toy.

With a firm push of his booted foot, Matthew sent the last pieces of his big brother out into the infinity of the Pacific.

He wiped his tears and hugged Alfred for a moment, holding the sobbing boy close to his chest.

Only when they had regained part of his strength, they stopped watching the coffin floating away and walked back home.

☆☆☆~Almost a year after~☆☆☆