The Defenders carried their dead and took them back to the town so that their families could hold a funeral.
Stanley walked a little further behind with his brother and looked at him worriedly. “Are you alright? You didn’t get hit right?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine,” Bradley said with a soft voice. He didn’t even have the strength in him to put any emotion into his voice. Today had been very draining.
“Are you tired? Do you need some help walking?” Stanley asked.
“Don’t worry about me. I’m your big brother; I should be the one worried about you,” Bradley said. “What are you even doing here? What if there was a Crawler out here still?”
“I checked before I came,” Stanley said. “I only came because it was over.”
Bradley sighed and shook his head. He looked around the darkening farmlands and his eyes fell onto a distant lamp post that was already glowing.
“Do you want to go there?” Bradley pointed toward the light in the distance.
Stanley looked toward where his brother had pointed and his heart skipped a beat when he saw it. It was the cemetery, the place where their mother was buried.
Stanley quickly shook his head. He couldn’t handle something so intense just yet.
“Because of the trauma?” Bradley asked.
Stanley could only nod in return.
“You need to deal with it,” his brother said. “Unlike you, I had 3 months to get to terms with my mother’s death, but you haven’t even started unraveling the knot in your heart.”
“Come, let’s go to her grave and maybe you can start to be able to deal with it too.”
Bradley turned around to walk toward the cemetery but Stanley quickly grabbed his brother’s arm. “Brother, please. Not now,” he said. “I can’t do it right now.”
“Dammit, how are you going to deal with your trauma, if you continue to—” 𝚍ｎ𝚘ｖ𝚕．𝚘𝚛𝚐
“Help me,” Stanley quickly said.
“…what?” Bradley asked.
“Help me get over it,” Stanley said. “I don’t want to be helpless at every moment either. I don’t want to be a burden to you either. I want to kill the Crawlers too.”
Bradley looked at his brother and Stanley stared back with a burning passion in his eyes.
“I want to be a son that mom can be proud of.”
Bradley froze for a few seconds before his face broke out into a smile while his eyes filled with tears. He suddenly hugged his brother while patting him on the back. “Finally, it’s a single step forward but an important one,” he said. “Of course, leave it all to your brother. I will do my best to help you.”
Stanley gave a small smile. “Can we start training tomorrow then? I want to see if I really have powers or not,” he said.
“Sure, tomorrow we can—” Bradley paused. “Right, tomorrow is the announcement. No matter, we can train around the time the sky gets bright. We will have to return by the time the sun is up though.”
“Sure, I can do that,” Stanley said.
The Defenders returned to their quarters, with a few separating to bring the dead to their loved ones.
Stanley and Bradley retreated to their rooms after having dinner and went to sleep.
* * * * * *
Bradley was just 11 years old and Stanley was only 10 at the time. Their mother was cooking dinner when the two kids ran into the house noisily.
“Go get cleaned up before you come for dinner,” their mother said without turning around.
“Mom, mom, look,” Stanley said loudly, making their mother turn around. She saw Stanley pointing at his brother who had a big smile on his face.
“What… should I look?” the woman asked.
Bradley locked his fingers and went cross-eyed. “Hit me,” he ordered. Without hesitation, Stanley punched his brother in the face as hard as he could.
“Stanley! Don—” their mother’s words stopped halfway when she saw her youngest son’s fist go right through his elder brother’s head.
“What?” she couldn’t understand what had happened for a moment.
“Mom, I got my powers!” Bradley said proudly and started laughing loudly.
The woman remained flabbergasted as she couldn’t understand how this could happen. “Bu-but your father was a Dull. I am a Dull, then… how?” she asked.
“Who cares mom,” Bradley said. “All that matters is I now have powers too.”
“I… I can’t believe it at all,” their mother said.
“Believe it, mom,” Bradley said with his arms on his hip. “Just wait a few more years mother. I will become a Defender and then I will take you away to the town where you can live in a house that is a lot better and a lot bigger than this.”
“Really?” their mother asked as she came up to her son and ruffled her hair. “I can’t wait for that day, Bradley.”
The scenery changed to one where the house was all destroyed, with two corpses below his feet. The day he promised had finally come, and yet…
“Mom?”
Bradley suddenly woke up from his nightmare. He wiped his face and realized that he had broken out in sweat again.
“That same dream again,” he thought.
The dream had started after his mother’s funeral once he had processed what he could process at the time.
That had been the day he had been called to the mayor’s mansion along with the other 3. Had that not been the case, he would have most likely died in his house too.
He remembered, after all the fight and carnage had ended, he had gone and found his destroyed house that no one had even checked yet.
There he had found the half-destroyed corpse of his mother that had been crushed by a Crawler, as well as what he had at the time thought was his brother’s corpse as well.
If he hadn’t heard the breathing back then, he would’ve assumed his brother had died as well.
He shook his head to get rid of the thought and looked around. “What time is it?” he wondered. He went to the window and saw that the sky had started lighting up already.
“Oh, it’s time,” Bradley thought. “I should wake Stanley up.”