<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Oh, the big brother ideology, the method- to kiss and kiss and kiss the wound until it healed, perhaps not in flesh but in spirit. To nurture the injury they had caused, somehow by accident and somehow with intention. Oh, the big brother mentality, knowing long before that their actions would end in gashes but still so eager to continue. So it had been in childhood, his palms pinning her wrists to the woodland floor, her screams and whimpers just fuel to his adrenaline, her hurt actualizing in bruises that he knew would appear, oilstains on cream. And despite her wails, her pleads, he didn't stop- and after, at home, when strawberry scabs stung her elbows and deep indigos appeared where his weight had been, he was fast to apologize- and so was the big brother condition. Simultaneously mesmerized by and ashamed of the way baby sister suffered at their will. <br/>
<br/>
It was not so dissimilar, now. Reno melting into Volk's embrace, his tongue tied in confessions and guilt, somehow surprised, though he knew the state of things here years before he returned. Big brother faults, not thinking before acting. He was prodigal for this. And poor baby sister languished in the result. <br/>
<br/>
She writhed in his arms, having completely lost her mind. Unabashed emotion, spilling through her mouth, her eyes, entire scaffolding of her skeleton splintering and breaking at the joints. It was a surprise, really, that she didn't fall straight through, like sand, or ashes. Her heels had fallen off, discarded and forgotten at the door. Her dress, somber and glittering with sequin appliques, was the only artifact that held her disposition together. And how she was sick of wearing it- it stank of whiskey and death and perfume and everything she was more than ready to forget. <br/>
<br/>
There was no energy in her left to fight, so she fell limp. She weighed more than she had in youth, and yet, Volk supported her just as easily as he did when she mounted his shoulders to reach the highest apples in the tree or scrambled onto his back for a piggyback ride through the backyard. She wondered how many times he had done this since he left. How many girls he had consoled after breaking them. How many girls he had carefully comforted so that he could still split their legs after splitting their heart. How many times he had lured something smaller and more innocent than him into the trap only to gently guide them across the spikes, slowly killing them under the illusion they had done it to themselves. Did he lap up their blood afterward? Toss their carcass into the street to imitate road kill? <br/>
<br/>
Was that the fate for Reno, too?<br/>
<br/>
Perhaps. But in this moment, it didn't seem like it. She could feel his heartbeat against her own, and it startled her- she had assumed he had lost it. It didn't quite have the rapid pulse that hers did, but it was not calm- stoic Volk had lost his cool, the calm that collected him into this intimidating, emotionless creature incapable of feeling sorry. <br/>
<br/>
Reno didn't expect him to say it -<i>sorry</i>- and naturally he didn't. It was as if atonement was a concept he was unfamiliar with. Admittance, clever words curled into sympathetic acknowledgements, that he could manage. But begging for forgiveness was something he liked to leave to those under him. Perhaps that's what he wanted initially, throwing the blame at Reno. Baby sister on her knees, scraped and scabbed, pleading for him to absolve her of her mistakes, her negligence of <i>his </i>home. But if Reno were to collapse it would not be to beseech Volk- it would be out of exhaustion. It had taken more than she would like to let on for her to stay standing, to keep some shape to her stature. That strength was quickly fading, now.<br/>
<br/>
In a house that was null of anything familial, Volk's hands on her felt sickeningly familiar. His fingertips finding the notches in her spine, too-thin babygirl composed of misaligned bird bones. His face dangerously close to hers, canines thirsting to tear into her neck, but lips just as hungry to give her that big brother medication, kisses on open lacerations. She hadn't the mind to worry about which he was going to do. Her primal instincts just encouraged her to feel some depraved joy that she was being touched, and so it was. <br/>
<br/>
Suddenly Reno was not big kid actress anymore. She was baby sister. Soothed by cradling arms, enlivened by being picked up, held. Her whole life she had swooned for hands larger than hers, big enough to encompass her completely. Though she would never voice it, not here, not to him, it felt <i>so good </i>to not have to pick up all her shards herself. To be glued back together, however messily, by someone else. Little smashed porcelain doll, cracked from one too many falls off the tallest shelf, fragments stuck back together in a misshapen web, not quite completely but <i>close enough</i>. <br/>
<br/>
This was close enough to true assurance and baby sister beggar had to make the best of what she was given. So it had always been.<br/>
<br/>
If Volk was looking for forgiveness, something he seemed to have never cared about before, he wasn't going to get it from her. Not now, moments after he had come back and shattered every warped glass wall that composed her sorry life.<br/>
<br/>
But perhaps her giving in to his hold was <i>close enough </i>for now. <br/>
<br/>
"<i>Was it worth it?</i>" Reno's voice was a whisper on the wind, barely audible through her kitten-like mews, face buried in his leather-clad chest. "Are you happy?"<br/>
<br/>
What she meant was, <i>is your rat existence pleasurable? Are you having a fucking good time in the big world, in all the places you promised you'd take me? Are you going to leave again, back to a pretty girlfriend more obedient than me and a house more decorated, less morbid than this one? Were you happy before you stumbled back into the fray, into me? </i></span>