He had seen parts of this before. It wasn't like girls who pried his fingers open and stuffed their hearts there were all good with roses and white wine. The faded things he wore, and the darker things he let them believe in, they expected a modicum of turmoil, and to enjoy their own role in it. Stickfigures in their lacy best, asking him about their contemporary twins on the little screens of his devices. Nails on his arms, because they loved the same face as Miranda, pink tongues in giant complaints how he was everything that was wrong with men. Or his other nightly tethers. Tried to paint him the worst kind of sick so they could start saving him. Volatile boy, who dared take their love from them and keep it so they couldn't run.<br/><br/>It was easy then to dance. His feet were light with girls that had generic names and generic tastes. It was up to Volk, whether he'd appeal to the mother in them, and crumble, or if he'd like to bite them back when their teeth were bleached and shiny. He was profoundly successful, like someone playing with someone else's money. He could make every right move, because he had already stepped back. If they were yelling at him in the late morning, they'd be enamored again before the sky got dark and the neon stars came out on the ground. Or they would be gone, obliterated. Their decent was his catharsis, because everything that should hurt him, he'd already explored. They didn't know about Burning Bear, so they couldn't remind him.<br/><br/>Somehow, he'd brought the wrathful ghosts here too, and strewn them around the rebelling dust. He was poisoning his sister. He knew that. There couldn't be sense in displacement of guilt, because then it would have happened sooner, as real healing. He didn't bring any expectation of being right when he said preposterous things. He was just angry, and he was prolific in being angry. He thought that skill would carry him through this, when he threw it all on Reno. Had he even hoped she'd keep it, like a sineater - spit your bile right here, and I'll hold on so you won't have to?<br/><br/>The venom that welled from her made the mad boy stagger. He should be better at this. She was just a girl he'd tilted, angry by his great windows, stomping naked feet into his hard floor. She could just scream and cuss and all the other things that really didn't matter. But he'd forgotten that this was Burning Bear. She was reminding him. She was the very someone he'd been hiding, the dense nucleus of his wrongs. She had only carried what he'd left her with, and now he'd tried to rest the echo of it on her, too.<br/><br/>He listened to her, waiting for the bravado of his other selves to come, but they didn't have power here. It made him sick when he heard her say those things. Not his little sister's tongue. Volk swallowed at the implications she was pelting him with. If he had wished to silence what the house had started to tell him, he'd made Reno belch it now. All the things he thought he knew, all the faults in his soul that he thought were his saving grace because he knew them, she was putting them to real gravity, and letting him know exactly what it might have been like in his wake.<br/><br/>Maybe he'd hoped she was stronger than he had a right to expect. Some dear time together, a silent agreement that he was a bad brother, but that things weren't as horrible as they could have been. That whatever graced had taken care of him in the city would follow him here, and make Burning Bear his too, when father was gone. All the hatred he thought he felt, she revealed it to be many times insufficient. Everything she said he knew, but it tore him all the same.<br/><br/>It was worse when she let go of the inferno that was finding its way up her throat. He'd been existing in some kind of whirlwind of her words, like a fighter kept on his feet by the strikes of the adversary, but when she went back to her wilt he shook his head no. There was what he owed, in how many ways he was wrong and undeserving of his little fit, but there was her, too. It made him cold to see her fold. Volk came quickly to his sister.<br/><br/>His arms were sincere, because he was afraid that he'd killed her in this house too. Dying, she said, but it looked faster now. His teeth divided his inhales, uneven whistles as he kept her to him. He needed to silence her, and needed to do something so that she didn't shatter. Little sister had stood until now, and he had mistaken that for a strength he could continue to abuse. "And I left." so that she didn't have to try and say it anymore.<br/><br/>His hands went up and down her back in waves, squeezing her shoulders and measuring her spine's length and the width of her waist. Soothe her desperately. His cheek was warm on hers, despite prejudice against smokers, and his words were boiling, billowing out against the shell of her ear to stick to details there. He rocked them. "It was my fault, Ren. This house and you." Like that was even the beginning of his bag of missteps. It was what was on trial now.<br/><br/>Kisses down her temple, little offerings from the boy who didn't have enough to touch his debt. He was breathing like he was still being lashed by all the true things she had to hurt him with. So compliant the accused become, when they agree. Petition for kinder punishment. A quaking in his frame that enveloped her. It was his turn to fall apart. He kept himself together by sewing her tighter with his hold, and lifted her against him. His jaws were pulsing with pressure, and he lifted her so high against him that he could put his face against her neck, and sniff her throat. Not that the Wicker Boy deserved to hide from her misery.<br/><br/>"I broke everything, Ren. I killed us. I killed..." but he put her down instead. He gathered her hair with wide fingers, so his lips could simply rest, parted on her cheek, like she was seeping forgiveness, and he was parched.