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Note: Apologies for not updating in weeks. I've been having trouble writing lately. Nevertheless, here's a chapter. :)

If you haven't heard it from me yet, happy new year, I hope this year is your best one yet, and I love you.

All my love and kisses,
Lex.

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ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ɴɪɴᴇ: ᴀᴘᴀᴛʜʏ ᴀɴᴅ ᴜʀɢᴇɴᴄʏ

❝ ʏᴏᴜ ʟᴏsᴛ ᴛʜᴇ ʀɪɢʜᴛ ᴛᴏ ᴄᴀʟʟ ᴍᴇ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙʀᴏᴛʜᴇʀ. ❞

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"HELLO, BIG BROTHER."

From the moment the door to the holding cell opened to reveal Brendon, the assassin's attention was set on him and him alone.

Now, it wasn't unusual for Brendon to capture every ounce of attentiveness whenever he entered a room; his aura was dripping with confidence and superiority. But The Phantom Warrior's reason for staring was not because he felt inferior or frightened – it was because the last person he had expected to release him from Corporation was his little brother.

His lips were parted slightly and his eyes were laser focused as he scoped the agent, taking time to note every single aspect of his person, everything from his ascetic demeanour right down to what he chose to clothe himself with. The two had been estranged for most of both of their lives, and the assassin wanted to make sure that he had as much information about his brother's character as possible.

When he decided that he'd inventoried enough educated assumptions about who Brendon had become, he met his gaze and gave a sliver of a smile.

"Well you've certainly come a long way since the days of Star Wars jammies and cereal for dinner."

Brendon raised one eyebrow and folded his arms. "Not that it's any of your business, but my underwear has Darth Vader on it and my dinner last night was a bowl of Fruit Loops."

The assassin wheezed in amusement. "It's good to see you, Bren."

Brendon's body stiffened and his face fell back to its hardened state. "Don't call me that. You lost that right a long time ago."

Shutting his mouth and taking another moment to observe Brendon, his older brother realised then that the reason he had been rescued from the hold of Corporation was for something other than a familial longing. Truth be told, he hadn't been expecting it to be a heartfelt family reunion – that had never been their family's way – but he had expected a certain level of sentimentality; they were blood, after all.

Had he been made familiar with the person Brendon had grown up to be, he would've known better than to expect even the slightest hint of emotion. But he hadn't been, and so he made the mistake of instigating a conversation that his brother was nowhere near interested in having.

"I'm your big brother, Brendon," he spoke in a soft tone, "Nicknaming you is not so much a right as it is a natural thing."

"You lost the right to be my brother, too," Brendon deadpanned, gazing coldly at the man in front of him and trying to control his temper. He knew that a talk surrounding their relationship was bound to arise at some point, but their relationship was not the reason he sought out his brother in the first place, and he was growing irritated.

The assassin, who – much like his sibling – had become accustomed to being emotionally incompetent, felt an unfamiliar, sickening tug in his chest. "That's not fair, B," he countered, "you know I-"

"Fair?" Brendon laughed mockingly before languidly pointing a finger at his brother. "You wanna talk about what's fair? You, who abandoned mom and I when we needed you most? You, who've spent the better part of the last two decades killing people? You?" The agent chuckled darkly and ran a hand over his jaw and through his hair. "You're in no fucking position to lecture me about fairness."

The older man ran his tongue over his teeth and nodded while he gestured around the room as best he could while in restraints. "So this is why you saved me from Corporation and tossed me in this shithole? So that you could yell at me for all the things I've done wrong? News flash – it's gonna take a long time to get through all of my transgressions, so I hope you've cleared your schedule."

If Brendon wanted to get into it, oh, they would get into it. He wasn't the only asshole in the family – being a douchebag was engraved in their DNA. The younger Urie was in for the argument of his life.

Brendon's jaw pulled taut as he inhaled slowly. When he spoke, his tone was a direct contrast to the harshness of his facial expression.

"Alright, let me make something very clear, Mason," he hissed, straightening his posture, "Pulling you out of Corporation was not a rescue mission; I didn't do it for your sake. In fact, I would've been perfectly fine leaving you in that building while it burned to ashes."

The assassin swallowed harshly. His brother continued.

"The only reason I didn't is because I need something from you. You're an asset to me. Nothing more."

Mason gave the smallest of nods and his lips twitched upwards. "And what makes you think that I'll give you whatever it is that you're after? You're not exactly being a loving little brother."

"If you don't tell me what I need to know, then I'll beat it out of you," Brendon threatened, muscles clenching.

"Yeah?" Mason laughed before sobering his face and leaning forward to get as close to his brother as he could before speaking lowly. "Why don't you loosen these restraints and we'll find out who the superior sibling is, hm?"

Brendon matched his challenging stare and narrowed his eyes a minuscule amount. "I've always been superior to you. I've always been a hundred times the man that you are. Because you – you're a coward. What did you do when our lives went to shit? You ran away, like a fucking coward. And who was left to pick up the pieces? Who had to step up and take care of things, who had to look after mom? Me. Me," he growled, dangerously close to his brother.

"You said it yourself, Brendon – our lives went to shit," Mason snapped back, forehead creasing in anger, "And you hate me because I chose to walk away from it? From the suffering?"

"Yes!" Brendon boomed, recoiling from his brother and shoving him harshly as he did so. "Do you have any idea how badly that fucked me up? I was five years old, damn it! Five! I was a child, a child who looked up to and idolised his older brother, because he was the closest thing he had to a father. And then one day I woke up and my brother's gone, and suddenly I have to step up and be the man of the house? At fucking five?"

Brendon's breathing was dangerously ragged as he started pacing back and forth, the overwhelming slew of emotions becoming too much to handle. But he wasn't about to back away now; he wanted the guilt to be cemented in his brother's mind for the rest of his life.

"And mom..." Brendon's voice cracked slightly at the thought of his mother, but he shook his head and his anger returned soon enough and he glared hatefully at his brother, "You leaving – that... that was what finally broke her. She went off the rails after that. Started drinkin', started using... And I was there through everything. All of it. I dealt with that alone. And where were you? Selling yourself off as Hydra's bitch."

Brendon's words admittedly sent a pang straight through his brother's heart, and Mason had to force himself to push past the feeling so that he could try and respond.

"Brendon, I'm sorry, alright? I am. Believe me. I loved – love – you and mom more than I've ever loved anything-"

"Oh bullshit," Brendon cut him off with a loud renouncement, speaking through clenched teeth "If you loved us, you wouldn't have left. You don't do what you did to people you love. You don't do what you did to family."

"Bren, listen to me," Mason tried again, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, "I had to get out, alright? I had to. You're forgetting that I was around for seven years before you were born. I was around for everything that happened before mom had you. I saw things, went through things that fucked me up more than you know. Things that I never spoke about because-" he stopped and sighed, "because you were just a child. And I know that you hate me for walking out on you, I know you do – and I understand that. But just know, B, that my running away was a culmination of a whole lotta years of suffocation."

Brendon gave a short laugh of disbelief. "You're seriously pinning all of this on our father? Trying to shift the blame from you to him? Oh, give me a break." The agent threw his hands up, turned to the side and shook his head.

Meanwhile, Mason felt his own enragement blaze out of control. He wasn't entirely to blame for the downfall of their family. In fact, he was only a tiny fraction of the reason that their lives imploded. There was a sole source of that implosion, and Mason wasn't about to stop until he got his brother to understand that.

"No one runs away from their life without reason," he said quietly, "and dad was my reason. He was a virus, Brendon. One that infected us and made us go rotten from the inside out."

"Maybe," Brendon nodded, running his tongue over his teeth before looking at his brother and shrugging, "But honestly, Mase?" He took slow steps forward. "If it came down to it, and I had the choice to save either of your lives?" He crouched down to level himself with the assassin's eyes. "You can bet your ass that I wouldn't be saving yours."

If Mason had been pissed off before, there wasn't a word to describe what he was feeling after hearing that. At first, he was lost as to why his brother was being so impossible with understanding his attempts to explain himself, and he was growing more enraged by the second. But then he understood, and he looked at his brother in resentment.

"I get that you have some kind of psychological trauma over having never met him," Mason sneered, letting his rage blind him completely, "And you can blame me for a lot of things, Brendon – hell, I blame me for a lotta things – but the one thing that you cannot blame me for..." he leaned forward as much as he could and delivered one more poisonous line, "Is that your father decided you weren't worth enough for him to even show up to your birth."

~

The Hounds stood in the panelled room to the front right side of the holding cell, behind a one-way window, all three of their gazes transfixed on the two men on the other side of the glass. The audio system in the room was busted, which meant that the agents were all uncharacteristically quiet, silently clamouring to try and decipher the exchange occurring between the brothers.

"What do you think they're saying?" Dean questioned, his body making tiny twitching movements as he pressed his face closer to the glass.

"Wish I knew," Roman muttered, inching forward to try and get a better look, too.

"Seems like they're really getting into it, though," Seth observed, joining his friends in their efforts to find the best view, "Looks like Brendon's finally met his match."

Almost at the precise moment that Seth spoke his last syllable, a resounding bash echoed throughout the rooms; it had originated from the cell, but was loud enough for even The Hounds to hear.

"Oo!" all three of them winced and recoiled from the window in unison at the scene that had just unfolded in front of them.

"Damn," Roman said under his breath.

"That's..." Dean started.

"Gonna leave a mark," Seth finished with a nod.

~

The force behind Brendon's punch was sheer anger, and it was so intense that it left Mason wholly disorientated and borderline unconscious for more than a few moments.

As soon as the fuzziness in his brain subsided was when the pain hit, and it truly was pain unlike he'd ever experienced before. His hazy mind was running amuck as he tried to fully grasp that the man in front of him was his baby brother. He was unrecognisable.

Yes, a minute ago he had thought that he had his brother understood, but now he learned that he had been horribly mistaken.

"Listen to me," Brendon demanded, chest rising and falling rapidly, "As far as that fuck-up of a man that we refer to as our father is concerned – I don't give a shit. I never have and I never will. He means nothing to me. The moment he chose to leave you and mom – while she was pregnant, no less – he became dead to me, and a relationship with him has never been an interest of mine. So don't give me that bullshit that you did a minute ago," he ran a hand through his hair, "because you have no fucking idea just how off base you are."

All Mason could do was watch his brother as he resumed pacing back and forth; he flexed every part of his face that he was able to, to try and alleviate the remnant pain from the strike he'd endured. He could quite clearly see that Brendon was still fuming, and he recognized that he was exceedingly fortunate that the younger man had chosen to stop after the first punch; if one could bring him such intense pain, he didn't want to imagine what a succession of punches would do.

Brendon continued, "I hate him more than I can put into words, but at least he had the decency to abandon me before I was born – not walk out on me when I was most vulnerable."

"I thought you weren't interested in talking family dynamics," Mason interjected, referring to Brendon's earlier comments about why he'd only dragged him out of Corporation because he needed something, "You sure as hell sound like you're pretty intent on dissecting our relationship."

"I wasn't!" Brendon yelled, angrily snapping his head to toss a filthy look at Mason, "But then you had to go and-"

The agent cut himself off, closing his eyes and sighing as he lifted his hands and clenched them shut. For the first time in however many years, he had allowed his emotions to take over, and quite frankly, he was utterly disgusted at himself for showing such weakness. And to Mason, of all people.

"Clearly you needed to get it out, little brother," the assassin spoke softly, but his comment garnered a harsh reaction from Brendon.

"I told you," Brendon growled, "you lost the right to call me your brother." He started backtracking, heading for the door; if he didn't leave now, he'd snap completely, "Our father might've been a virus, Mason. But just know that in my eyes, you're worse than he could've ever been."

~

As soon as they watched Brendon stride through the cell's exit, The Hounds scampered towards the door of the room they were in, rushing to join the brooding agent in his stampede down the bright hallway.

"So what now?" Dean jogged forward so that he could match Brendon's strides.

Brendon, who was breathing harshly and walking with a purpose that could've parted oceans.

"Stay here and watch him, make sure he doesn't find a way to get out. And kick his ass if you feel like it," he replied monotonously.

Dean perked up at Brendon's words and turned to his friends with a huge smile; Roman shut him down with a frown and a firm shake of his head. The Lunatic's smile faltered and was replaced with a small pout.

"Where are you going?" Seth inquired with a furrow of his brows.

Now that they were at the end of the hallway, Brendon called for the elevator, then turned to glance at Seth.

"If I don't blow off some steam, I'm gonna commit a murder," he answered, "I'll be back before morning. Don't let Ambrose do anything I wouldn't do."

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Thank you for reading x