Cody Bowers-Fox {D8/FIN}

cody {♔} bowers-fox

On the day we turned eight years old, my brother made me a promise that until this day had not been broken. He told me with the confidence of an adult that he would never leave me, no matter what troubles came to pass. As a child who equated being eight with having all the wisdom of he who is eighty, I looked him square in the eye and promised the same, and we shook hands on the matter before going off to play games with our younger brother, Duncan, who even at seven years old was still as stubborn and willing to separate himself from us as he is now.

And we had kept our promise for a decade, standing by each other’s side through thick and thin, highs and lows, the experiences we wanted to brand to our memory and those we tried desperately to forget. But one single slip of paper had erased it all, like none of it ever mattered, because apparently the selfish wants of our younger brother were more important than the covenant we had made ten years ago, when we agreed that we’d be with each other until the end of time.

(I always kept my promises, and this was no exception. Why couldn’t he keep his?).

At first I just believed it was a desperate attempt to play the hero instead of the victim, but upon further inspections the mannerisms that defined fear in terms of Owen Bowers-Fox became evident, from the constant hand running through his hair to fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. His eyes screamed terror but his heart spoke martyr and that’s when it became important to him to carry through with the decision that would send a rift straight through our family.

And I suppose it was because I was selfish or angry or some deadly mix of the two but every single ounce of my being wanted Duncan to hold his place on the stage. I had logic to my anger, I suppose, like finding reasons for war in the midst of peace, for shooting off a gun in times of cease fire, and Owen was caught in the middle.

(He’d take a bullet to the chest before a truce could be negotiated, and I'd be the one behind the trigger).

I never understood why he was so willing to throw himself into the jaws of death, for I knew that there were very few people I’d give my life for, really only one, and he was about to lose his life for someone who wasn’t worth it. It was illogical, and no matter how deep I dug in an attempt to reason with his thoughts and motives behind his actions, I couldn’t come to a conclusion, and it caused nights of comfort to turn to those where sleep was not an option, for I was constantly awake, checking for any updates or information on the whereabouts and well-being of my brother.

I stopped sleeping in our shared room, for Duncan was home on a consistent basis now, and even three weeks after the departure of Owen from the household was not enough time to heal the hurt that panged my heart when I looked him in the eyes. Instead I moved my rough pillow and few blankets to the one couch in front of the fireplace that still had cushions, and though my six foot frame didn’t quite fit nicely upon it at all, it was more comfortable than the awkward silence and unspoken anger that mixed dangerously when the two of us were together.

In fact, I avoided our room all together if I could manage it, only slinking in to rummage through my own books and Owen’s art when Duncan and Tweed had left for wherever they went during the early hours of morning (hell, I couldn’t care less where they were… or even if they came back).

It didn’t feel right to sit at the desk and run frustrated fingers through dirty blond hair as I scourged over the information that laid upon pages after pages of unending knowledge without my brother behind to watch in silence. The matters of the world and the things that inhabited it just didn’t seem as appealing to learn about when he wasn’t around to watch. He never said much when I studied, only an occasional “Cody, I think you should take a break” when he could tell that the trembling of my fingers had signaled the beginning of unending frustration. I’d wave him off, insisting that I was fine, only having trouble wrapping my head around a certain problem. But now the only sounds that accompanied the flipping pages and scratching of graphite upon clean paper was silence, and it was simply deafening.

I had put all of his drawings away on the day he left, and I couldn’t bring myself to sort through them now. None of his things had really been touched yet, though one early morning I had stomped in and yelled at Duncan to help me box his belongings, considering I only got to folding two shirts before breaking down into a sobbing mess, and somewhere among the clenched fists and broken heart the line between depression and anger blurred.

There was no reason for his absence, and no amount of analyzing the situation could convince me otherwise, for Duncan had never done anything to help or prove his worth, yet Owen had time and time again, and the anger that had seeded itself within me long ago only became more prominent with passing time, for reasoning piled against him like a one sided equation and I was about to solve it.

As I walked down the hall to our shared room, the boards beneath my heavy feet creak with a sadness I don’t care to describe, and trembling fingers brush blond, disheveled hair from in front of my eyes as I pause in front of the door, letting momentary silence hang in the air before flinging the door open and shoving my younger brother back against the wall.

“You’re a murderer, Duncan Bowers-Fox.”

{o t h e r}
Cody Bowers-Fox
Age: 18
District 8
Gender: Male
Face Claim: Luke Volker
Codeword: oDair