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beerecordings · 5 years

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Those We Have Lost

Part 9 of My Brother’s Keeper. (Part 1 l Previous l Next)

My taglist is a separate post. This chapter and probably the next one or two will be really fast-paced and heavy, so I’m sorry about that. Hopefully they’re still enjoyable. There’s a lot of story I want to tell in just a couple chapters.

This is the first time I’ve really stressed about a chapter. I’m glad it’s done, I’m glad I’m happy with it, and I just hope you like it and that I’ve set up everything I need to set up so that I can tell this big dumb story.

Also... I’m sorry about this... lol

Here we are. We meet, we fight. My brothers know blood and battle and they always have. Jackie, I’ve missed you, Chase, do you know him?

They move up the stairs of the skeleton building together, with Chase behind Jackie.

“Chase,” says Jackie. “You've never actually met Anti, have you?”

Chase swallows. “No,” he says.

He's only ever been there in the aftermath, in blood and in grief.

“I know, though,” he says. “I know that he's dangerous. I get that.”

Jackie turns to him for a moment, with sorrowful eyes. “Okay,” he murmurs. “I really hope you do. I love you, okay?”

“I love you too, Jackie.”

“And we're going to be really careful because... is that him?”

They've stepped onto the third floor and there's a body at the end of the open room.

Chase grips at Jackie's shoulder.

Something giggles from the boards over the windows.

“There's Schneep,” Jackie whispers, staring at the body collapsed across the room. “You go get him. I've got your back.”

“Okay,” Chase whispers back, and curses his voice for shaking. He steps towards his fallen brother, and Anti strikes like a snake.

Jackie takes his first blow, a burst of electricity, right to the chest, and hisses through his teeth. He whips out his wood knuckles and strikes out at the glitching manifestation of his nemesis.

“It's been too long,” Anti hisses, and his image appears on Jackie's every side, crouching as though about to strike and holding a knife longer than his forearm. “I've missed you, Jackieboy!”

“Back off, Anti,” says Jackie, and slashes forward again, but Anti is already gone, standing on the stairs.

“Come on, Jackie, let's play tag!” he calls, laughing from all around him. “Or are the stairs too painful for you since I shattered your body into pieces and stab wounds?”

To be fair, yeah, the stairs will hurt like hell. But Chase hasn't wavered. He's sprinting towards Henrik, laid out on the other side of the room, and Jackie knows that the more time he can buy them and the farther away he can chase Anti, the more likely they are to escape. Nothing else matters.

He pushes his pain away, sucks in a deep breath, and takes off after Anti.

Howling with laughter, Anti glitches up the stairs, up the stairs, sitting on the railway, playing with his knife, reappearing, reappearing, reappearing. He's showing off and Jackie knows it. One of them is far more powerful than the other tonight, and Anti won't let him forget it.

“Come on!” he crows, spinning his knife about in one hand. “Come on, you false little hero! When was the last time the street-wise criminals and Londontown drug lords saw you? I'm so glad you've finally come out of hiding, big brother! I think you need a warm-up. Look out!”

His blade comes slamming through the air towards him and Jackie barely manages to throw himself out of the way instead of it shattering his collarbone. “Fucker,” he yells, and retaliates with a blast of his power – pure bright light.

Anti laughs manically as light burns painful at his eyes and tears into his impure and chaotic energy, falling back and reeling from the pain. He glitches again, retreating to the next floor, and summons a second knife as he waits for Jackie to join him.

“Now you're just being a dick,” Jackie snaps, panting at the top of the stairs.

“That really does hurt you, doesn't it?” purrs Anti, watching him try to straighten up. “The old wounds. I hope it's as humiliating as it is painful.”

“Yeah? I'd watch your mouth, cause I'm about to make you pay for it.”

Anti laughs and lets Jackie throw a pair of light beams, avoiding both with a quick glitch. “Oh, Jackie, I have missed you. I'm so tempted to dance with you the same way we did last time – to defeat you, destroy you, and then go after your darling baby brother.”

“But you hate going in circles, don't you?”

“Yes, precisely. And why settle? I've been planning something even better than my last triumph. Come on, Jackie, calm down for a moment. There's some things I think you should know.”

Jackie breathes hard, watching Anti with narrow eyes. They know each other well.

“Fine,” he says, his hands relaxing around his wood knuckles. “What?”

It's a cool night, and at this height, the crickets fade into a distant symphony. Cars pass occasionally and their light cuts through the boarded windows like water spraying up at the end of the ocean.

“I just want you to be here when Chase Brody dies,” says Anti.

Jackie grits his teeth hard. “Fuck you,” he says. “Fuck you. Forget my chest and my neck and my stupid fucking heart. If you try to go near Chase, I'll kill you one way or another, little brother.”

Anti laughs so hard his chest glitches into nothing but color. “Oh, darling, that is the fun part. I'm not going to kill Chase. I left my dog with him downstairs.”

“Your... what?”

“Sorry. I meant my brother.”

Jackie's heart misses a beat.

“You're lying. You haven't had enough time with Schneep to make him yours.”

Anti glitches, and for just a second, he is a black dog with barred teeth, and then he is Jack again. “Oh, Jackie, I'm not talking about Schneep.”

It can't be. It can't fucking be. His heart shivers.

“Marvin?” he whispers, though he can barely form the word.

For just a second, Anti shows his surprise.

“Marvin?” he repeats. “You still think...”

The wind chills Jackie's blood and bones.

“You still think Marvin's alive?”

He'd give the world to make Anti unsay those words.

“Oh, now, that is too funny.” He laughs like a hyena and it echoes and magnifies as he draws closer, flicking his knife from hand to hand. “You still think Marvin's alive! You still hope! You still wait for him!”

Jackie yells and darts forward, throwing punch after punch at Anti's face. Anti is quicker and more violent, but Jackie's always had the strength advantage, and he shoves Anti back until he glitches away and reappears on the other side of the room, his teeth bared.

“Poor Jackieboy,” he snarls, letting blood run out of his mouth and his eyes glaze black. “You've always been so fucking deluded. But don't worry, my darling. I'll tell you what happened that night, when Jack slept, and Henrik was mine, and Marvin died alone.”

Jackie's breathing is choking him up. He's just going to ignore him. He's just going to ignore him, put his hands up, and fucking swing.

Hit, miss, miss, Anti catches his wrists and drives him back, his knife catching on Jackie's knuckles. Jackie burns him blind with light, but Anti just closes his eyes and swings forward, unfearing and careless. Pain means little to him and violence is his world, and Jackie is forced back, only managing one more good blow before they catch each other's wrists. Together they stumble back, two great forces locked together, but the moon is high and the sun is missing, and Jackie trips up first.

“You've been wondering for so long,” says Anti, slamming Jackie's head against the wall again, and again, until he screams for the pain and slumps in the demon's arms. “Let me tell you, big brother, what happened that wonderful night. I defeated you, destroyed you, left you splayed on the ground like a rabbit dropped from the mouth of a vulture, your pathetic body shattered into different layers of agony and bone dust. You failed to protect him. He should have known then that the fight was lost, but he always did take after you when it comes to stupidity. I came for Jack. Marvin was there. He cried for you, but you didn't come.”

“You son of a bitch!” Jackie screams, shoving at Anti's glitching arms. He summons light to make Anti burn, but the demon just tightens his grip on his throat and continues, his eyes blazing blue and green and his wicked teeth curved in a smile full of hatred and euphoria.

“He tried so hard to put up a good fight! He threw all the magic he'd been granted at me and moved between dimensions like a mouse moves through the walls of your house. Tiny, skittering little pest! But I caught him by the hair and dragged him down, and he wept for you, and promised me that you would kill me, that Jack would never be mine, that I would never win. And then, Jackieboy, oh, then... you wouldn't believe, couldn't understand how wonderful...”

Anti leans in close and sighs. Jackie shivers and waits, held tight by his terror, by his desperation, by a long year of wondering, wondering, wondering.

“Oh!” says Anti. “To taste the thick flesh of his pulsing heart!”

Jackie screams so loud his throat tears.

He is a sun given humanity and he thrashes in Anti's arms, kicking, striking, struggling, though his back burns and his whole body wails its protest. He howls like an animal shot, like a dog trapped in a fighting ring. Marvin could be a ghost beside him – he can swear he feels the blue haze of his little brother's magic, sees the curve of his cool, loving smile, hears his dancing laughter become a cry of terror, of fear, a cry for Jackie to save him –

“No! Marvin! No!”

“Does that hurt? Is it bad? Come on, Jackie, get up. Where's your fight gone, big brother? Where's your fight gone? Fuck, you're so weak. I should have made you watch as I killed him and left his corpse splayed over you as you bled. And now my little Jameson is going to slaughter your Chaser and give me his heart. Will you grieve, Jackie? Or will you just die?”

Jameson?

The world stills. Tears weep down his cheeks.

And instead of blue magic, Jackie sees the uncolored flicker of an old movie screen, feels brass in his hands, hears the steady ticking of a clock, watches the little one's warm eyes smile up at him, smiles back at him, feels his heart beat calm beneath his hands –

That is when a gunshot sounds.

Anti howls his triumph, filling the whole room up with glitches and wild ferocious energy. Jackie screams fear. And Chase, staring in horror at Jameson Jackson stood before him, clutches at the bullet lodged deeply in his chest, and crumples, soundless, to the ground.

Terror, grief, and love all burning together make Jackie powerful. Beneath Anti's hands, he glows and struggles, his body filling up with heat and light.

“So you do have some power left,” Anti smiles, pressing down hard on his throat and letting his fingers burn. “Maybe even enough to send me away. But, mo deartháir, it won't be enough to save him. It's never been enough to save any of them.”

Jackie screams.

Lashes out.

For a moment, it is like his whole body has vanished from the earth, and he is only light, white and ethereal, floating painless above the earth. Jackie senses the beating hearts of his brothers, the raw hatred that makes Anti whole, and, downstairs, another little soul he does not know, one full of pain, fury, confusion, and a regret so deep his heart threatens to shatter.

The room fills up with light, and Anti shatters into pixels. Jackie watches as he heaves up a mouthful of blood, laughs for joy and for agony, and disappears as though he never existed.

“I didn't mean to,” says Jameson Jackson.

His hands are full of blood. Chase Brody does not move.

“I didn't mean to,” says Jameson, but the damage is done.

#okay im deleting some of my tags on this cause i think they might be the reason this isn't showing up in tag #antisepticeye #chase brody #jackieboyman #bee writes #my brother's keeper #jameson jackson

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