The deafening CLAT! of the gunshot reverberates through the house, and Mikey feels his heart seize as he bolts upright.

It was in the house, he's sure of that.

He hopes their house is getting robbed. He really does.

Mikey silently rolls off his bed and onto his feet, nudging his door open with an ever-sinking feeling in his gut.

He hopes, yes, but he is near-certain it isn't a spooked burglar.

Mikey creeps down the hallway — just in case there is someone besides him and his brother in the now eerily silent house. He hopes. He hopes.

He peers into the empty kitchen, and turns with trepidation to the basement door.

Let it be a burglar. Please let it be a burglar. Let it be anything other than what he thinks it is.

He turns the doorknob.

Please. Please. Please.

His prayers — hopes, desperate pleas, whatever one would call them — are unanswered. 

Some say God forgives with a mercy like the sharp, cold, deadly kiss of a knife. Mikey thinks maybe they're right.

He descends the stairs as if in a trance, one slow step at a time, toward his brother's limp body.

Because that's all it is: a body, a corpse, a lifeless shell of what used to be a person. Just like he knew he would find as soon as he heard it. He knew, he fucking knew this day would come. It was his worst fear, and now it's coming to fruition just as he had always known it would someday.

But knowing it will happen someday isn't the same as actually having it happen now. No matter how much he tried to prepare, there was no preparing for this. None at all.

His brother's crumpled body blurs as he approaches, and Mikey realises he must be crying. Funny how he can't feel anything coming out of his eyes.

He wonders if Gerard felt it when he pulled the trigger. He wonders if it hurt. He hopes his brother's last moments weren't full of suffering, but when has Mikey wishing anything ever made it true?

He crouches and touches the limp wrist nearest him, the one without the gun lolling out of its grip. The skin is still warm.

His hand clenches around the wrist and his vision blurs further — the body is only a black blob now, and he blinks quickly.

He can feel the flesh cooling under his hand. The blood in his brother's veins is still, unmoving.

Mikey is on his knees, a parody of prayer. There is no hope here, nothing left to ask the uncaring powers for. His hand clenches. His brother's hand does not squeeze back.

His eyes clear slowly as he feels the drip, drip, drip of saltwater onto his jeans. He still does not feel the wetness of his face, as if his tears are springing into being in the air below his chin just to fall and splatter against the denim below.

There is a spray of blood and pieces of...pieces of something staining the wall behind Gerard's body, and up onto the low ceiling.

Mikey tilts his head back to stare up at the spatter on the ceiling. The drip this time is not from his eyes. He tastes rust.

His throat constricts and he fights swallowing. What is he supposed to do? He doesn't want to swallow the blood, but he cannot spit it out either, not next to his brother's rapidly cooling body. He sits with it in his mouth, spit welling on his tongue. The fingers against Mikey's wrist are no longer warm.

With shaking fingers, he grabs for the gun, pulling it from the light grasp of stiffening fingers. He breathes. He looks into his brother's empty eyes.

At least his face is still mostly intact.

The same can't be said for the rest of his head.

There's something almost calming about the slick, pulpy gore of the top and back of his head for a spare moment — like this is just another haunted house, another halloween decoration, another beloved horror flick. 

It's not, though. 

And Mikey can see exactly the differences between the special effects in the films he and Gerard used to love watching so much and real life. He wishes he didn't know.

His shaky hand brings the blood-stained gun up to rest against his temple.

He closes his eyes.

He breathes. Deep, deep, slow. 

He squeezes the cold wrist in his hand.

Then he squeezes his finger on the trigger.

It hurts. It hurts it hurts it hurts.

Fireworks explode behind his eyes, turning into a dizzying kaleidoscope. He can see nothing out of his eyes anymore, but the bright, sharp arrays behind them are nauseating.

It hurts.

It hurts so bad, and it's so bright and sharp and, and...

And then it's over.

When Mikey looks up, Gerard is there waiting, a sad twist to his mouth.

Gerard holds out his hand.

Mikey looks down at their bodies, and then back up at his brother.

He takes his hand.

He lets Gerard pull him to standing.

"Let's go home," Gerard says softly, tugging at his hand.

Mikey follows him. Just as he always has. As he always will.

He squeezes his hand.

Gerard squeezes back.

As the fragments of my skull begin to fall
Fall on your tongue like pixie dust
Just think happy thoughts
And we'll fly home