Nigel felt antsy. And irritated. Saxon couldn't seem to get here fast enough and someone was smoking in a part of the station despite the big red warning on a wall. Soon, he was spiraling, nails digging into his palms as he tried to regain some semblance of calm and just pass the rest of the wait in peace.

That trial was doomed to failure.

"Nigel."

"Nigel, I'm scared!"

"Nigel!"

His chest felt tight, his lungs thick with smoke that left him hardly able to take a breath. When Saxon finally arrived, helping him process the bail and leading him out of there, he'd felt like he'd just survived a mid-sized disaster once he escaped that cramped office. He got in, fastening his seatbelt and staring out the side of his window despite the long stare from his side.

Maybe he shouldn't have called his twin? But who could have rushed down so quickly? Aunt Winona? Riele? His Aunt Ava who he wasn't so close to and had just rediscovered her own existence? He didn't want to disturb anyone. They had their own lives.

But his twin was his own life.

"Fine," he sighed. "Ask away."

Saxon started the car and slowly pulled out of the station, smoothly merging into the road. "What exactly happened?" he asked curiously.

"I was blind," he said, blinking in melancholy as houses whizzed past him along the main road. He'd been treasuring an ingrate as a friend all along who didn't think his own well-being as important as some misplaced need for kinship.

"Should we go someplace else?" Saxon suddenly asked, brushing past the topic on sensing his unwillingness to divulge any more than that.

"Did something happen at home?" he asked, tired.

"Dad got back earlier."

Nigel stiffened and brought his gaze back into the car and locked on his twin's expression. "It's fine," he said after a while. "Let's just go back home." Anyway, it was just one person more than the usual who didn't care for him in that household. He could still stand that at least. After all, his father had been nothing more than indifferent towards him.

"There's also something else," Saxon continued, a tinge of awkwardness stealing into his face and voice.

"Can you spit everything out at once?" he asked shortly. Who was this idiot trying to give a heart attack?

"My hands were full when you called," he explained. "My phone was on speaker."

Nigel failed to immediately make the connection between that and why it was the cause of his sombre expression.

"I was with mom and dad," he said.

Nigel felt his face drain of all color and leaned his head against the side of the window, feeling his chest tightening again.

"I'm sorry, Nic."

He didn't respond.

He didn't really know what to say to that.

This was all Aries' fault.

—

"Mom," he greeted. 'Dad."

Silence.

"You can go on to bed, Saxon," his mother dismissed, slipping out of the hold her husband had securely around her to replace her glass of wine on the centerpiece. "We'd like to talk to your brother alone."

Saxon took a worried glance at him but upon meeting his blank expression, just bit his lip and turned to the stairs.

"Prison?" Nadine snorted. "I'd like to believe I raised you better than that."

It was too much for Nigel. Their fourteen years of hate and indifference. Supporting his friends when no one was able to support him. Having to put up with their whole disdainful attitudes of him.

And then there was his father not even bothering with a look at him as he continued watching the flick he'd been accompanying his wife with. The man put little else in his eyes. First was his wife, then his golden child and the company he'd built from scratch. Anything else was insignificant. Somehow, his bland indifference hurt even more than his mother's loathing.

"Raised me?" he mocked, eyes glittering as he stared at her. "Don't make me laugh. You never even lifted a finger where it concerned me."

"Right," she sneered back. "And who's fault is that? Mine? Blame yourself for being so disappointing."

Nigel didn't think it was possible to hurt anymore, hurt so bad he wished he was dead if that was the only way to get rid of it all. He didn't really see the point anymore.

"Dad?" he called, a bitter taste welling up in his mouth. "Do you also feel the same way? Am I just a disappointment to you both?"

He wasn't even spared a glance.

Nigel chuckled softly, a tear spilling free even as his heart burned harder. Right. Maybe this was better. If the man spared him a look, much less his cherished words, then maybe it'd be to convey how he felt he wasn't even worthy of his disappointment.

He was tired.

After all, what did he do that was so wrong?

Exist?

"Sorry I'm such a disappointment then," he said, eyes as dead as his weary heart. "But do you really have no responsibility? Maybe you shouldn't have brought me into this world."

"There was no helping it," Nadine's gaze was bitter too and he really didn't understand how she was able to overflow with so many negative emotions at once. Didn't she find it overwhelming? "Afterwards, I just wished you'd died in that orphanage fire."

Nigel's throat tightened with even more tears but he fought hard to keep it at bay. "I wish you both weren't my parents," he confessed. "Wished even harder that you both died. Wanted to do it myself when the universe unfairly decided not to comply with my wishes."

"You're crazy," Nadine spat.

"Maybe," he smiled. He was the sort who wished his own birth parents dead. So perhaps that was only fitting. "I don't care though. You're both inhumane. Vermin." Each one more disgusting than the last.

"Watch your attitude," she said, gaze glittering with barely contained rage.

"Why?" he asked, amused. "It can't get any worse than this."

"You don't want to find out," she said, lips thinning in distaste. "Besides. You owe us."

A rustle as his dad moved to pick the wine bottle and refill his own glass, not minding them.

"For being your son?" he asked. "You both are fucking disgusting. I hope death would come quicker for you two faster than your next breath."

Nadine's expression pulled taut.

"Don't worry," he murmured. "You're still alive, aren't you?"

She said nothing, did nothing.

"I hope and hope," he muttered, sickened. "But you always remain safe. The world's too unfair."

Nadine maintained her silence as she watched him stalk off, quietly going to pick up her glass of wine and reclaiming her position curled up in her husband's arms. She wasn't wrong. Their lives would be so much easier if he'd just died in the fire.

Nigel didn't make it past his door before he was collapsing, his tears streaming free. He stumbled to his desk drawer, pulling out his journal with shaky hands and fumbling with the pages. He could hardly make out each scrawl from each page to the next through his blurry gaze but still ripped them out.

It was just venting. But it never seemed to be of any help.

The questions came back with even more arresting intensity. Why? Why? Why? Why did they loathe him and look upon Saxon with so much affection? Why could any effort he put into anything never compare to Saxon simply needing them? Why could they never make time for a single one of his games but have all the time in the world to attend every single one of Saxon's art productions, no matter how little?

He could hardly rip the pages clean past the tremors in his hands and found himself only able to jerkily get rid of the pages, one at a time.

He'd been doing a hopeless task all along. Full of expectations, wishing they could make time in their lives and family for him.

He was never enough.

After all, he'd only basked a week in their affection upon his return from the orphanage before they became what he now new as his normal. He collapsed to the ground, abandoning the journal as pages fluttered to the floor.

We kept your room the same way. You can still change anything you don't like though. The designers would be coming in later this week.

You can't not keep eating and hurting your stomach like this. You make my heart ache. Here, I made you some soup. Say ahh.

Full marks on your entrance assessment? You must really take after me. I'm the one with all the smarts after all.

Little league? I have no idea how that works but I think I should know my way into a hoop basket. What? Don't believe me? I'll show you. It's just making a projectile.

Nigel was just about to go mad from the recurring voices and sobbed harder, hands digging into his raised knees. What had changed? Him? Or was it them?

It wasn't him. He'd always been this way.

They weren't and maybe they were right.

He was a disappointment, the dark stain in their successful lives and unworthy of their love and affection.

"Nic," Saxon's voice came then, light, pained. He glanced through his tears at his shadow elongated on his floor and further up to where he stood at his door.

Nigel didn't even have the strength to tell him to get lost. He watched him approach and crouch in front of him but didn't try to move any closer, as though unsure of what to do with himself. He found himself laughing, having nearly thought himself crazed, as he stared at the twin's face.

They were fraternal and he wasn't sure who exactly he took after but his twin was the carbon image of their mother. Of course, he envied that too. From all the sharp features to the same pointed nose, glittering dark eyes and dark, raven hair. He'd longed for her to look at him with the same affection Saxon did, spoil him the same way his twin did. His brother overwhelmed him with love but he needed his mother's even more.

Perhaps they looked too alike and that was the reason he found himself sinking deeper into his brother's care, thinking how good it would be to have that sweet, loving mother from that week of his childhood for just a day more.

"I'm sorry, Nic. I—" his voice broke off and Nigel saw how he was also nearly on the verge of tears. "I'd fix it if I knew how."

"Perhaps it'd be better if you just didn't exist," he confessed.

Saxon would, Nigel knew. But that wouldn't solve anything, they also both knew.

"More than hoping they weren't my parents and just fell off the face of the earth," he continued since he'd seen him eavesdropping on the stairs, a ghost of a smile dancing on the edge of his lips as his words fell raspily. "I wished you death, a million— no, a billion times more."

"I'm sorry," Saxon could only repeat over and over again, choked.

"It's okay," Nigel scoffed. "It's not like anything would happen by wishing so hard either."

"I know you hate them," Saxon said and he knew that wasn't up for questioning. He grabbed his hand as he all but begged, "but don't hate me. Please."

"I don't," Nigel said and his eyes were squashed of all the light he'd accumulated so happily these past few days. "I just loathe and resent you. For existing. And for being my brother."

He loved him and hated him.

He cared for him, deeply, but couldn't find it in him to feel past the knot in his heart sometimes.

He pulled his hand free.

"Leave," he said.

"Nicolas," Saxon's lips were bitten raw by him but he didn't care for anything other than his twin right then, didn't dare. "Please."

"It's late," he said. It was nearing midnight but he didn't mean that. He meant their fragile, almost non-existent brotherhood. They looked fine on the outside. But the relationship had long since withered from within.

And there was no helping that.

—

I can't feel my hands QAQ