destination nowhere near {jonas!standalone}

We never breathed the same air anyway.

For when his lungs filled with fresh air mine burned with a flame unmatched by those we kindled in winter, for his definition of freedom was so farfetched in comparison to my own that the mere thought of letting him out of my sight set my heart ablaze, my fear the only kindle needed to strike a flame alight.

He was never one for trivial fear; never one to hide doubt in his heart like a lovesick child. No, he was never those, never caught in a world that stopped spinning for any reason, for not even the clutches of death could still that un-fearing heart of his, and at times, I envied him for it. For no matter the direction in which I took a step I did it with the anxiety that something could go awry, so at the times in which he pointed us towards a new mountain, I would swallow my fears, say my prayers to someone or something (I never really thought about the specifics of what ruled the stars), and follow him with only the desire to protect him from the hell that was bound to lick at his heels.

Maybe he never really wanted me.

Maybe he never really needed me.

But I wanted him (and needed him too).

But for now I was granted neither of these, and all I had left was to watch him swallow on the dried throat of a mind without water and realize that tying his shoes every morning and tucking him in every night had never been a help to him. Really, it had been a hindrance, for any sight of his blond head of hair caused urgency to rise in my throat like an alarm, terror turning to panic, and at the sight of first the boys and now the rats, fire had burned in my lungs like no other, and for a moment or two, I could hear only the beating of my own strained heart.

But he had marched on, as I always told him to do.

“We’re soldiers, and with that comes a responsibility like no other, for our job is to take care of others. Do you understand?”

“We’re soldiers, and we march to the beat of a drum that lays right within that chest of yours.”

“We’re soldiers, and that means not being afraid.”

“Can you do that, Fionnbharr?”

And oh how he soldiered on, with head held high and feet never once missing a beat.

But it was at this moment, sitting listlessly in front of the screen watching him swing blindly at the rat in front of him, that it struck me like a sword through the heart, that there would be no home for a soldier. For even if Fionnbharr came back, there would be a new rhythm to replace the one that I had so persistently embedded in his heart.

“We do what’s right and nothing less. Don’t compromise for ease or simplicity of situation.”

We marched to the beat of a drum that could be heard only in our mind, and with each passing hour he spent in the dark it faded just a bit more, and when my brother came back, it’d be gone either way.

When we went on adventures we never discussed them much afterward, partially because he knew I never really wanted to and because there wasn’t generally much to talk about. Even though righteousness flooded through our veins there was always an underlying tone of desperation, and no matter how we tried to cleanse it, a particle still remained, and that miniscule amount was all it took to taint our blood.

We made mountains out low-lying hills and pretended that the summits we reached were peaks that overlooked the world, as if the earth at our fingertips was all there was to see, from the valley to the stars and ‘til our kingdom come, this was what we had.

This was all there was to see.

And as the morning sky was the only thing that hung over our heads, so was darkness the only thing that hung heavy within my heart, even when I stepped out into the light of dusk to breathe air that never truly refreshed my tired lungs, but set them aflame instead.

This fire never burned out completely, not in rest nor exhortation, only sparked up when emotions ran in an intense manner through a mind that was becoming narrower with each passing second. But I suppose that that day will come eventually, for fires cannot burn forever and neither can the lungs that sit deep within my chest, and that day when the embers extinguish will be a day in which I rejoice, for then I’ll never have to listen to the sound of screaming ribs or a throbbing heart, for silence sometimes speaks loudest of all, and with its firm voice rest is sure to accompany, and that day in itself is reason to live.

“We’re going to be okay.”

Oh, but okay is not a state of living; for okay is a median no one ever truly finds.

Okay is somewhere in the middle and my dear brother’s heart is certainly not there, and it’s safe to say mine isn’t either.

For this heart of mine throbs deep within my chest, being licked by flames unwilling to give way to the waters of calm that my brother so desperately attempted to throw over the growing panic and dismay that arose and caught in my throat with only his moment’s notice of irrationality.

Okay is not a privilege either one of us have right to.

And I suppose I didn’t have much right to the hill I sat upon now, but from it I felt as if the world could be seen, as if the tender fields and bare trees were all that was left to cast my gaze upon, for if this was all there was, then the air that surrounded my being would be clear with the stability of being okay, and if this was true, then I could almost convince myself that if I turned to my left now, he would be there once again, and then maybe we would indeed, be okay.

One glance over my shoulder sends momentary hope spiraling away in a manner that is anything but collected, and I can feel an aching settling deep within my bones, giving notice that there was an imbalance in the torn heart of mine. We were never meant to sit upon the middle lines; we were meant to live a life that pushed and pulled in manners of comfort and distress, and we had both accepted this. However, this one time, I was hoping that we could stand upon the middle grounds and relinquish the fact that sometimes an average existed, but then again, Fionnbharr and I never breathed the same air anyway.