you echo words you've heard :: Daniel/Coen {blitz}

Yesterday, his son said his first words.

Today, Daniel Tate spoke his last. 

He closes his eyes and it's etched into his memories, hand in the air and stitched up heart on his sleeve, a brother he'd never bothered to meet throws his life away. He feels the gunshots in his chest, ribcage turned inside out, broken glass shards of bone scattering the ground before him.

Blink again and Daniel Tate falls into a memory, Sue Tate burns in the ashes of his own lies, brandishing a gun in one hand and his indecencies in the other, blood tumbling from his lips, staining the holes in his chest. 

His wife intertwines her fingers with his and the world goes dark.

"You have to go see him, Coen." 

His son is crying.

So is his father.

He has spent thirty years refusing to place the blame on anyone, always discarding the broken ashes of the chances he never takes to the wind, watching them fall from view. With one hand on the picture of Sue Tate that rests in his living room and the other steadying himself against the armrest of the couch, he realizes

He is to blame. 

His wife pushes the hair from his face, leaning in to rest her forehead on his.

"It is his choice, Coen. There's no changing it." 

His eyes waver, cracking along the edges, drying in the instant it takes him to rest on his son's face, before meeting his wife's eyes. Wordlessly, he pulls away, falling into the emptiness that he has avoided all his life. 

"No, you don't understand. They never had a choice to begin with." 

His heartbeat feels like the kick of a gun.

"I never gave them one." 

Everything goes numb when he enters the Justice Building, dragging every broken promise and half-pledged lie that rests on his shoulders with him. Dust hangs in the air, resting on the edges of the picture frames that line the walls, obscuring the faces of the dead and the damned. 

His eyes meet Sue's at the end of the hall. 

They burn holes in his back when he reaches for the door.

Blinding sunlight and dead dust curtains, he removes his hat and crosses it across his chest, staring his half-brother in the face. 

He is his father.

He is his father.

They are the same.

"Daniel Tate." 

There's no right way to speak to the dead.

"I'm your brother." 

His eyes falter.

"And I'm so sorry."