Chapter 53 - Between You And I : Part 2

"Here, use this contact." Kiaran offered a blue contact lens to Axel as they went farther away from the fighting scene.

"We have to go back to our world without causing a scene. Cover your face with a mask too." The mercenary continued and offered a clean white mask for Axel to wear.

Axel nodded silently and did what his brother told him to do. He blinked a couple of times to adjust his right eye with the contact lens. It stung a little, but he started to get used to it.

As they went to the same exact forest in this world where the scientist had her hideout, Axel kept trailing behind Kiaran. He followed each footstep cautiously, trying to focus forward.

He kept following Kiaran as he tried to ignore his surrounding. The leaves swirled and swept across the cryptic forest. A blanket of the moon befell them. Yet despite all of that, uncanny silence was the only thing Axel noticed.

The boy decided to break the silence and finally spoke, "I've been thinking." He began slowly.

Kiaran didn't pause, stepping on a few branches as he continued forward. "Oh?" The older responded with a soft hum.

"Yeah," Axel swallowed, feeling like his throat was filled with liquid. A flash of how blood gurgled from his throat two days ago where demon Cain stabbing his chest with his hand played in his mind.

The boy tried to tune it down and ignored it.

"On the day when the world burned, was the plan to make me bring Rune to you, to make me go against you from the beginning?"

That did make Kiaran pause, stopping on his track, but only momentarily before he continued on. "I don't see how that matters."

The young murderer silently clenched his fist. "It matters."

"No, I don't see how-"

"It matters to me." The boy cut him off, raising his voice a little at the mercenary.

Kiaran didn't falter in his walk, still stepping on the branches and kicking some rocks on the way as if the conversation was lighthearted. As if nothing they said truly had any significance. Like Axel.

"Yes, Axel," Kiaran sighed. "If it means that much to you, I was planning on making you turn against me regardless of the fact and bring Rune to make all the governments come out with the president."

"It was a reckoning, and nothing could stop that." He added as he ended his sentence coldly. The older pushed away some twigs on the way, still focusing on the road without giving a single glance at his little brother.

"You said-" Axel chocked, trying to push away all the bad things that happened lately that kept playing in his brain.

"Before the world burned, you said that I should go with the other you." He managed to let the words out with a lingering lump in his throat that could burst out at any time.

"I did, Axel," Kiaran replied, still walking forward with no intention to look back at the youngest. "Are you done?"

Kiaran still didn't seem bothered by Axel's words, like Axel was some statue to ignore and unacknowledge. Kiaran had a way of making him feel insignificant, powerless, and trim. But only when he wanted him to feel that way, only when it wasn't the time for Axel to fight for him.

"Was it your plan too?"

Kiaran finally stopped walking. He turned around, facing him without a hint of malice or surprise. But the older kept his silence as they both stared at each other.

"Was it?" Axel whispered heartbrokenly with a bit of shiver along with his tone.

"It was, wasn't it?" He continued as his mouth formed into an ironic smile, staring at his brother's blue ocean eyes.

"Not... exactly." His brother hesitated, still staring at him with a bunch of hidden emotions.

"Not exactly?" Axel chuckled brokenly, "-what's that supposed to mean?"

"It doesn't mean anything. You are safe now with me." Kiaran reassured, looking at him with two sad doe eyes. "I wouldn't make you go through whatever you've been through in here."

"Axel, you're my brother. You're all I've got. I thought you would leave me when I found out that you've been with my counterpart since Family Day." He said, wanly.

Axel searched him for any sign of lie, guilt, or doubt. He looked into the blue eyes of a brother he'd followed unwaveringly for so long and found nothing to suggest he was deceiving him. Nothing to suggest a guilty conscience.

He was always such a good manipulator from the start.

"You're lying," Axel started right off the bat. "This is- this is a lie." He brushed his hair with his hand desperately and looked to the ground mockingly.

Axel was mocking himself.

"It's just another manipulation that I would fall for." He mumbled aimlessly before looking back to the mercenary's eyes. "Am I falling into your trap right now?"

Kiaran frowned with a mixing worry, curling in on himself just a bit, just a fragment of fabricated vulnerability. It was strategic, skilled, and practiced. It was as if he had been doing this so many times.

It made Axel sick like he wanted to throw up from how the buzz of Kiaran's staged face covered his brain like a thick curtain.

"Axel, I wouldn't-"

"I've been conditioned to love you- to follow you since the beginning." The younger interrupted the older. "On the grounds that we came out of the same womb, on the grounds that you're my brother."

Kiaran widened his eyes in a melancholy horror. His face was full of sadness and guilt that Axel realized there was no point in looking at his expression. It was all fake anyway.

He wondered if the manipulation had started from the beginning. He wondered if Kiaran had always been masterful at concealing the truth. Had it begun when he killed the first man or had he been trapped in his marionette since the beginning?

"That's just a chance, Axel. I thought the demons would just kidnap you and make you realize that they aren't as good as they seemed to be. I don't know what happened to you that made you like this. I would never-."

"No," Axel looked away from his face to the ground beneath. "You're too smart for that. You must've known that they would turn me into a demon and take advantage of it. You always had a plan for everything."

"Axel," Kiaran pleaded with no hint of nervousness to show the lies underneath. "I would never."

"Drop the act, Kiaran. Just stop." Axel spat, looking at him with eyes that slowly started to become bloodshot on the white part. He wished he was good at masking his emotions like him.

"Axel," Kiaran jabbered on. "Axel, please, I wouldn't plan something like that. You're my broth-"

"Don't."

Axel rubbed his cheek harshly, trying to wipe off the unstopping river of tears. A couple of sniffles could be heard through the silent forest that watched the two brothers fought.

If you called it a fight anyway. Because Axel always lost since the beginning.

Kiaran bent down a little to match their height. Two black-gloved hands tried to hold Axel's face. "You're crying-"

Axel slapped Kiaran's arm harshly. "Well, of course, I'm crying." He looked up at the mercenary with two glaring eyes. "What do you think I'm doing right now, Kiaran? Laughing?"

The older flinched, still reaching out with those big startled eyes from before. Two hands still trying to coo the boy, calming him down. It looked so genuine that Axel wished it was true.

"I can't even tell if you care right now," Axel admitted with a slight crack in his voice. A sob started to come out without any consciousness from him. "I can't tell if you're mocking me, laughing at me, or uncaring. It always looked so genuine. I hate it."

Kiaran wiped his tears away gently. "I'm- I wouldn't-"

"Have you actually loved me? Genuinely? Or ever?" Axel's question echoed in the tress under the lonely moon.

Silent stretched between them. The forest rustled faintly, watching and waiting.

Axel chuckled devastatingly when Kiaran seemed to can not answer his question. "I'm- I don't know what I am right now, I don't know you, I don't even know myself!"

"I feel like I'm always conditioned to be something for someone else." He ventured frustratingly, letting it all out as he cried another river. "-To be a murderer, to be an unwanted son, to be a vague brother, or a best friend, or a victim of bullying."

"I feel like I'm a different person." He continued in a fit of bursting emotions that he kept down all these times. "Not like different because sometimes I'm a murderer, or sometimes I'm just Axel," He paused tremblingly.

"I don't even know which one is real." He admitted with a wave of anguish flooding his brain. "Is Axel real? Am I real?"

"Because it feels like I have so many people inside me that I forgot who I am." Axel whimpered as he let out another sob that fought the lump in his throat. "Maybe I'm good at manipulation too just like you."

"I'm good at manipulating myself that I forgot who I really am."

Kiaran suddenly threw himself at Axel and wrapped his hand around him, hugging the boy tight. The older gripped the younger's back as he buried his face on the kid's shoulder.

And Axel knew the hug was another part of Kiaran's manipulation, but god, he needed a hug right now even though it was fake. So he melted on his hold as he cried even more. He just wanted to scream but it felt like the world would not let him at all.

"You came sooner than I thought you would." There was a dangerous tone that suddenly came out of Kiaran.

"What?" Axel mumbled in between the hug, confused.

"It's really not the right time to come." Kiaran continued with an obvious overly sweetened malice in his voice, causing Axel to shiver.

"I could say the same for you." A voice identical to Kiaran's returned the remark back with the same tone.

Axel pushed Kiaran away so he could see the person behind him. He diverted his gaze from Kiaran just to see another Kiaran standing right across them. Axel just stood there, in between the two same people facing each other.

The boy did not know what to do as he froze. He contemplated whether he should move or not. He was too scared to do anything from how intense the atmosphere was.

"Axel, stay away from here."

The two Kiarans said it at the same time.