breaking free

And so the party ends and you arrive home to find someone waiting for you.

It's not a good someone, because well...it looks like you don't have a someone anymore, but that's neither here nor there and really, that comes later anyway. When you're scared and you're trying to find a way to survive and you push everyone away.

You always push everyone away. But that's not how this starts.

It starts with you arriving home around midnight to your home. The door is unlocked (there's been a break in, but you know it's for dramatics and well, it's nothing you can't replace) and you head inside, not fearing who is still in the house. Because you know they're still in the house. The lights are off, because he wants the effect of it, and you let him, because your brother was always one for dramatics. He learned it from your mother. So he's lying in wait so to speak, and you finally head into the kitchen and roll your eyes as you flip on the switch. "Jonathan what do you--" You start to say, but he's lunged at you, and his knife is on your throat. You can't reach for any weapon near you, so you do the next best thing that you can think of.

You hit your teleporter button on your belt.

The teleportation brings you both to Miami, Florida, right in the middle of the dance floor in the nightclub that he owns, and he does his best to quickly hide the knife at your throat but it doesn't matter, and soon people are screaming and running in other directions from you - who just teleported in - and your brother, who finally has moved the knife from your throat. He throws a punch at you, because where you both are hasn't seemed to register on him yet, and you dodge. You've learned something from all those people beating you up through the years, though of course eventually he lands one or two.

You fight back, you dodge, you get hit, he cuts you with the knife a few times, and he starts to taunt you. Tells you that you won't amount to anything, tells you that you're going to be alone the rest of your life, tells him that you're nothing and he can't wait to finally put you in the ground so you can't destroy the plans the rest of the family has in place.

If you were Italian, this mafia talk would have made more sense, but you're not and now you're pissed.

After all the years and months of abuse, you can't take it anymore and you lunge. His knife goes into your side as you grab him and hit your teleporter, the exact time that you grab the gun in his back pocket.

You teleport to the roof of a secluded building in Las Vegas, where there are no cameras and the lights and sounds are too bright to notice anything is going on. You pull the knife out of your side and you cry out, because you don't have a regenerative healing factor like your best friend and you're not wearing a bulletproof vest because you didn't expect this. (It had been an okay night, which is great and fantastic by everyone else's standards, and of course this had to be ruined.)

As the knife falls to the ground, it's then that he realizes you have the gun, and you lift it up as he tries to protest. It was all a joke! He just wanted to see you react!

You decide enough is enough, and two bullets go into his chest, both hitting the heart. Because if there is one thing you know, it's how to shoot a weapon.

He falls to the ground, his eyes wide and that's it. He's dead. Your brother who has tormented you and tried to destroy you (and sometimes succeeded) is dead, and you're relieved. Relieved and...suddenly overcome with what has happened as you fall to your knees on the roof of the Las Vegas casino. You stare at him, his eyes still open wide staring at you, but there is no life there. It's finally over.

Or...well you need to do a few things first. The bullets, which have gone straight through the heart, are on the roof, so you collect those. You'll melt those down once you get home. Then there is the deal with his body, and the blood all over you -- it's a mix of his blood and your own, as the gash in your side is gushing blood. You stagger over to the body and do your best to lift it, as you hit the teleporter once more.

Now, you're in his Manhattan office. You know no one is here because his fiancee is off with her girlfriend that she thinks no one knows about (because affairs run in the family on all sides, apparently, you think with disgust) and you sit him at his office chair, his head resting on the desk as if he's sleeping.

He's still bleeding though and so are you. So...you do what you have to do.

You find a lighter, you put a pillow between your teeth, and you fight the urge to scream as you burn and cauterize the wound shut to the best of your ability. It's alright if his blood is everywhere. Yours cannot be. But there are people you can call, people who hate your brother as much as you do, who will clean up this crime scene like nothing happened. You found him this way, you'll say, you need help, you'll say and that's exactly what you do. They arrive around five in the morning, and while one of them stitches you up for real, the others clean up the crime scene. They leave, you're patched up, and you give your dead abusive shit of a brother one last look (and possibly flip him off) before you teleport home.

In a poof you arrive back in Boston. You collapse to the floor as you appear in your living room, thankful for not landing directly on your wound but you cry out in pain anyway. You pass out as everything goes black.

You wake up hours later, to see that your wound is bleeding through the bandages and you most likely really need to go to a hospital. You curse silently as you do what you can to bandage yourself, because there is something else you need to do. The hospital can wait. Getting help can wait. By now, the newspapers have reported your brother's death and your mother is already making this into a political play to help her win re-election.

There's one more thing to do. You do what you do best.

You hack.

Emails. Voice messages. Text messages. Tax records. Anything and everything people need to put your mother away for years, and you know that they won't care if it's not through legal means. There are some corrupt people in the police force that you know will do anything to take down your mother, and with your brother Matt helping, you both get enough information to put her away for life, but to also embarrass your brother Jonathan as well.

Affairs. Money laundering. Hiring trained killers to put hits out on people (Those ones are your favorite, because you were the target of more than one, and you're lucky you're still alive now). Election rigging. Tax evasion. Senator Powers is through. Your fucking asshole brother is dead. You're free.

And you're also in a shit ton of pain and maybe...you should really see a doctor now.

It's hours later now, and you are having an argument. It's the first of many, well wait it's not the first at all because you two always fight and you're not sure why she even wants to stick around you anymore. But you're a broken man now, the adrenaline of what has happened has worn off, even as you idly watch CNN in the background, the endless loop of your mother being taken away in handcuffs by Federal agents, her screaming that she is innocent.

She's not innocent. No one in the Powers family is innocent, you seemed to make sure of that.

But you're not arguing about your mother. You're arguing about lingerie and how your not-girlfriend wore it and why she left without saying goodbye. You're angry, because it's not as if your brother wasn't just killed (by you) or your mother hasn't just been carted off to jail (because of you), but sure, let's talk about her needs.

So you do, and you tell her that you know you're an asshole and maybe she'd be better off without you, and yeah she would be. Because you're a murderer now apparently, even if it was in self defence, but you can tell you're getting judged on it and it's then that you realize that you're starting to shut down.

That you're pushing her away because you're terrified, you're scared, and you really think that low of yourself that you don't want anyone else to be involved in this.

So she's pissed, and you're alone and you're better off this way. It's a lie that you're really good at telling, and you'll continue to tell yourself this for the rest of your days.

You still don't go to the hospital. You don't want to leave, and you think that maybe your wounds have healed enough that you'll be okay.

CNN in the background says that Senator Powers' only son was murdered on Thursday.

You sigh and realize that even though this is all your doing, you still just wanted to be acknowledged,maybe just once.

You soon pass out from the pain and when you wake up later, you'll finally call someone who can come to see you and take care of your wounds.

For now, everything goes black, and for the first time in years, you feel a slight peace.

Don't worry though. It won't last.