He stood there on the withering porch that a younger boy had sprawled over, fatigued by his adventures with borrowed parents and a sister he was too young to take care of, yet. It seemed the wood could last forever then, with its elasticity left and the nails still shining from when father's strong beats had secured them. He imagined jumping on the boards to the same effects of a trampoline, as stupid children do, but would find stale disappointment in lieu of hopes built by VCR blared cartoons. He needed misplaced hope now, standing where his little head had been, looking over the battlefield where nature was winning over all the things that had raised him.<br/><br/>In this season too, when the green itself was giving way to a palette of mottled browns and particularly happy greys. Deceased yellows that couldn't lift the fog-hue. She wandered through the terrain where malicious grass had swelled and all the winter heavy and summer burn had struck their once sanctuary and turned it into history that couldn't even draw archaeological tenderness. His sister, grown alone. Her legs were used to it, and navigated perfectly among the uninhibited neglect. That was a greater insult than the Gothic state of all this good-times tragedy. It was he who wanted to tell her not to come, that he'd make it better for her.<br/><br/>Her hesitation undid whatever walls had kept his nervous energy, and drew at lightnings waiting to rip up his nerves. How dare she protect him? She wasn't offering apologies like modest people do about overseen cleaning schedules or missed polishing cycles for their trinkets on display. It was a fact, not a warning, her insistence that this was inhospitable. Like Here was holding her hostage, and that he'd not gone through the proper trials for prison, yet. It made him think of a dear relative waiting in a sickroom while he was held back by the staff in scrubs.<br/><br/>The outside had fallen apart because there was no use for it. The lawn of golden heads and the rusting carcasses with long straws in their ribs, it belonged to the world or Jonas. Sensible and sad Reno didn't care about that. Grass was just for running her tennis shoes over and now she didn't play anymore. But she still cared about where she lived. Where they'd lived. Shelter. "Ren." he said, and it was his warning in retort. Don't drag your feet. Show me. He needed to visit their childhood. She was not entitled to it alone.<br/><br/>He would shake the nob, bag forgotten with its huff where it was dropped by the frame. Sentimental boy returning for a tug-o-war with the hinges. "I'll break it down, Reno." he promised. This wasn't a person, too important to warrant all the reactions they were due, but a house, a casket of reminders, he could care about that, somehow. It was close to him, and it was his. It shouldn't have grown up into beautiful dismay, or died in a puddle of whiskey, or become the only beautiful woman he couldn't stomach to be with, again. It mattered so much because in the end, it didn't matter at all. He'd relied on its triviality for comfort.<br/><br/>When he came inside, because he would, by wooden splinters or her keys, he skidded just beyond the threshold. Dapper Volk, come after eight o'clock, to see about the family home and find it like this. His head turned with disbelieving brows and his hollowed heart plastered in his irises. A quick glare at her. This wasn't some lit-up, red-tinted corridor which might scold him a bit for not enjoying it sooner, still with its cheap frames and quaint decor, decided by mother's vision and put in place by father's back. "It's all gray." he breathed at her and ran inside.<br/><br/>He shouldered open father's entertainment room that was more for storage of projects before he left. The boxes were gone, and the tools that shouldn't be there weren't. Where would she hide now? She'd always use their games as an excuse to be where she shouldn't. There were squares on the wallpaper that looked naked without the idol autos that Jonas had educated him on. How could this possibly be sadder than the man himself in the ground? Volk didn't wax on the workings of escapist hearts, not when his was being manhandled in the dust where his life had been.<br/><br/>The kitchen had enough vigor in it to make it a dying place instead of a dissolved one. What a crass, unloved spot of menial convenience. He'd learned about pain on that stove, and about relief under the faucet next to it. The living room at the end of the throat of this fucking macabre spectacle still had the seating arrangement he said goodbye to, but nothing in the obscured window frames or the gaping shelves. His denying intakes and frustrated puffs were upsetting the only rightful inhabitants left, throwing them into the air to fly around like noise in what little light that could come from yet to be broken bulbs.<br/><br/>When he hurried to Miranda's room, where she'd make her quilts and share them with him after Reno had fought them on her bedtime, he halted at the handle and pulled his hand back. If Reno was anywhere close she'd know why he couldn't go in there while he was being watched. He couldn't say why this was wrecking him so efficiently. Perhaps it was just overdue. Conduits for guilt are always better harbingers than the acts themselves. He slapped an empty wall and found his sister while his blood was moving.<br/><br/>"H-how?" he asked, but she had already told him with her life, father had told him with his death. Volk didn't want to hear it, so he displaced it immediately. Towering black-dressed prodigal, with nothing to return to. His arm was deft as ever snapping to undo what little space he'd left between them, to put the sound of her cheek and his palm into the air. It was cowardly, but he'd had practice. It was wrong, but he'd come here owning apologies, anyway. For now, it was simpler if his childhood's loss of luster was the fault of the girl he'd thought he'd locked up with it. I left you in the past to tend to it.<br/><br/>"You were supposed to take care of it. You killed it."