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The air within his own house was as suffocating as it was freeing.
Once upon a time, this had been Travis' home, the place he would return to every single day. The couch that he'd sit on, the shower he'd stand beneath with the water so hot it'd nearly sear his skin, the dining table he'd have to brace himself to sit at, hastily piling spoons of rice into his mouth if only so he could push his chair in and scamper to the haven of his room.
Now, those days, grating and miserable as they were, felt like nothing more than a distant mirage, a pathetic yet comforting image he must've conjured up from the desolate depths of his mind. The only home he knew now was of blood, of bleary prayers and blades and rot and a vile adoration for it all that seemed to pulse beneath all of their skins.
It was his second day back in Wiskayok, although the first hardly counted — he had eaten a hefty meal and then clambered into the bath and scrubbed himself vigorously until his flesh burned raw, spending hours in the solitude of his bathtub before stumbling to his bed and flopping onto his mattress without even bothering to dry himself of the water that cascaded off his every inch. He had woken up too early for his liking, but he didn't even want to try and lull back into sleep in fear of the thoughts that would claw at his mind. Instead, he hopped off his mattress, brushed his teeth, and for the first time in nineteen months, tried to be normal again.
Naturally, it didn't work.
His mother was still soundly asleep, the house eerily quiet. Each step he made seemed to reverberate in his lungs, as if he was something out of place, an intruder in his own home. He attempted to ignore the way the feeling gnawed at his core, and instead made decisive strides forward, focusing on getting breakfast, and oh.
This wasn't where he had meant to stop.
His footsteps drew to a halt as he leered at the looming door before him, a crooked piece of paper stuck to the front with a thumb tack. The words scrawled over it were deliberate and swoopy, obviously intended to be visually appealing, reading Javi's Room.
Travis' hand trembled as he reached for the knob.
He opened it with a creak, tentatively walking inside. The interior was just has he had seen it last; drawings plastered above the headboard of the lean bed frame, clothes strewn about the top of his dresser. Even his sheets were in disarray, despite their father giving strict instruction for both of them to clean before they left for the plane. Travis couldn't help the low scoff that blew through him, reminiscing on how he had spent the night before the flight vehemently tidying up in order to avoid a harsh scolding from his father. For Javi, that must've been the least of his worries — after all, he had been equal parts excited and anxious for the trip, considering it was his first time ever going on a plane. Well, it was technically his second, but he had barely been sentient during the first, only about three or four years old with the pudgiest face Travis had ever seen. He was eight at the time, and that was when his feelings for his baby brother still mainly consisted of affection, rather than the heavy disdain and irritation that multiplied as the years drifted past.
Now, all of that had fizzled into nothing.
Travis ventured deeper, tugging at the drawer of his nightstand. He had to do it a few times before it would budge, yanking it open with a ferocity that rattled the contents within. Just like the rest of the room, the contents were far from organized, pencils and crinkled notes lumped in with nail clippers and old wristbands with no sense of cohesiveness. Travis shoved the various trinkets aside, reaching for the ragged sketchbook that seemed to be intentionally buried beneath everything else.
He began to sift through the pages, lingering over each individual sketch. There was a page dedicated to foxes from different angles, another with various flowers, and one that even contained detailed sketches of characters from a comic book. He admired the deftness in which they were created, his brother's artwork easily surpassing people his own age, until he heard a voice cut through the silence.
"Are you— Are you looking through my stuff?"
Travis whipped around, clutching the sketchbook to his chest.
Before him stood Javi, his lips curled in disbelief. His features weren't as soft as they had once been, now visibly hardened and defined. He had grown taller, too, to the point where he leered above Travis, only by an inch or so. It felt weird, for his baby brother to appear so much older, but it was inevitable. After all, he was nearly fourteen by now.
"So what? Screw off," he replied, turning around and laying the sketchbook flat on the nightstand. He continued to study the artwork, stopping at the sketch of someone with an unrecognizable face, a boy with light hair that swept over his forehead and a grin broad enough to blind. "Who's this?"
He heard Javi stalk forward, sensing him leering over his shoulder. He could feel him tense up beside him, before he slapped a hand over the page.
"No one. Why do you even care?" he huffed in indignation, reaching forward to cover the page parallel as well.
"I'm just asking. Jeez, why are you so touchy over this? I've seen you draw a million times." Travis attempted to drag the sketchbook out from beneath Javi's hands, but his palms firmly kept it in place.
"It's mine! You can't just look through my things whenever you want, dickhead!" he spluttered, voice rising defensively.
"I'm not even doing anything! Is it so wrong that I wanna see what sort of shit my brother spends his whole day doing?!" Travis retorted, eventually managing to wrench it from Javi's grip.
"Why do you care now?!" Javi spat, unadulterated hurt threading his words. "It's not like you ever cared before!"
Travis' head jerked upward, snapping to face his brother.
Only now, there was nothing but an empty space.
"No," he mumbled, tears blurring his vision. He outstretched his arm, needlessly moving it through the air as if, by some sort of miracle, he'd feel something. That he would feel Javi's grounding presence before him, because he had been there, unabashedly breathing and speaking and altogether real.
But of course, his hand caught in nothing. The room inhabited him and him only.
"Fuck," he whispered, dropping the sketchbook against the nightstand and throwing himself atop Javi's bed. He thought about all the times Javi had visited his room in the middle of the night, confessing that he had a nightmare and was seeking solace, and how nine times out of ten, he would coldly dismiss him, opting to wallow in his own misery rather than spare more than an ounce of comfort to the younger.
It used to feel like Javi only existed to make his life worse than it already was. The bullying and the treatment from his father kept his anger thriving, and it seemed like everything his little brother did was meant to feed it.
But Travis knew that wasn't right. Javi never knew how bad it was for him. All he wanted was the big brother he deserved, and Travis had never been able to be what he needed.
No, he was able — but he had refused.
Travis reached for Javi's worn down fox plushie, clutching it tightly as he curled in on himself. If he was still there, with him, he would've done it all differently. He would've welcomed him into his bed. He would've listened, when he tried to goof around with him, he would've teased him with a fondness that only an older brother could offer. He would've asked him about school. About the boy in the sketchbook.
Now, there was no one to answer.