Work Text:
Brother~ Goodbye Hurts the most when the story wasn't finished.
You gave no one a last farewell
Nor ever said goodbye
You were gone before I knew it
And only God knows why
A million times I will miss you
A million times I will cry
If love alone could have saved you
You never would have died
In life I loved you dearly
In death I love you still
In my heart you hold a place
No one else can fill
It broke my heart to lose you
But you didn't go alone
For part of me went with you
The day god took you home
We will meet again someday
I know in a better place
I thank God he made you my brother
While you were here on earth
Two bullets. That was all it took to kill somebody. Two bullets, and the body went still. Two bullets, and the suffering would be over. It was so simple . . . yet it was the hardest thing he'd ever done. Two bullets, and Rudy’s brother was gone forever.
The looks followed him everywhere he went. The glares from his fellow soldiers, even from Mother. Why didn't she understand what he had done - she loved Seth too. At least, that was what he’d thought. He wasn't sure anymore.
It wasn't like Seth was his only brother. Or the only brother he’d lost.
The first time he’d seen a brother die was when he was eleven. He’d watched, helpless, as the boy struggled against the sickness that came with their very existence. Mother told him to watch, told him that it was his fate too, unless he found a cure. When he cried, a soldier hit him, and told him to be a man.
That night he cried himself to sleep, where no one could see him. But someone did.
Seth softly traced the mark on Rudy’s back, his light fingertips on his brother's rough skin.
“I don't want to lose you.” Rudy murmured.
Seth didn't respond, other than to slip under the covers next to Rudy and put an arm around him.
That night Rudy promised himself something. He would find a cure. He would save his brothers.
“Mother says she loves us. Yet she uses our bodies for her own for purposes? Why?” Rudy looked up at his brother. The question felt stupid. He’s a grown man, and he knows how people work. How they can show you one face, while hiding another. Yes, he’s met Major Dierden. He knows that people are never what they seem. Yet, she’s the closest thing to a mother he has. All his life he’s trusted her.
Seth shrugs. “She does love us, Rudy. She’s doing what’s best for us.”
“I just don’t know whether to trust her anymore.”
Seth cupped Rudy’s face in his hands. “You don’t have to trust her. You just have to trust me, okay?”
Rudy nodded. He’d learned at an early age not to trust anyone.
Anyone but his brothers.
“How long has it been going on?” Rudy listened for his brother’s reassuring voice over the phone.
His answer wasn’t.
“For a few weeks. It’s getting worse, Rudy. I don’t have long left.” Did Seth sound scared?
“Does Mother know?” Silence.
“We’ll find the cure. You’ll get better.” Even as he said those words, Rudy knew he was lying. To himself, and to Seth. Ethan Duncan, the only man who could save them, was dead. Killed himself. If Seth was as sick as he claimed . . .
Sometimes death is the kindest option. That was one of the first things Rudy had learned. Sometimes, when someone was suffering, the kindest thing to do was to put them out of their misery.
That's why he did it. Out of love.
No, we were supposed to find the cure and live happily ever after. Together.
But life wasn't full of happy endings. Life tricked you, and messed with your head, throwing in twists when you least expected it.
He wouldn't have lasted much longer.
That's what Rudy tells himself. It’s what he has to believe. But deep down, he wonders.
What if we’d found the cure? What if he’d held on just a little while longer, and I’d found it?
I should have done better. Worked faster. Found Duncan sooner.
Then Seth would be alive.
Mother was all he had left now. He would be her loyal soldier. He would find the cure.
But he no longer wanted this for his brothers, or Mother.
He was doing this for himself.
~
It had started. Rudy knew it. He didn't have long left. He wondered if Seth had felt the same when he too realized the end was near. Yet unlike Seth, he wouldn't have anyone to put an end to it.
He would die alone.
Alison Hendrix. A bloody soccer mom living in the suburbs. Rudy watched her from afar as she herded kids into a bus. She even seemed . . . normal. As if she wasn't a clone. As if she wasn't slowly dying, like her sisters. He wondered how his sisters - yes, his sisters, had survived all these years, living in their little fantasy of being ordinary. What was life like when you weren't a clone born of science?
We are all dying, Rudy realized. Just some of us quicker than others.
He needed to find the cure. Alison Hendrix could lead him to it.
He would save his brothers.
And himself.
~
The Hendrix's garage was unlocked as Rudy slipped inside. He smiled imagining the look on the soccer mom’s face as he threatened all she held dear. This is just too easy. He chuckled to himself. It was only when he saw the other in the garage that he realized why.
“Hello Helena.”
The blonde looked up from what she was doing on the workbench. She smiled in that mad way of hers. He could feel a pounding in his head.
“Only one of us may leave here alive.” She said it as a challenge, but Rudy knew the result. He had seen Helena fight and knew how close he was to death.
Maybe this was the quick end he would get.
~
He was lying on the ground, blood seeping from his bicep. He can feel his life force slowly slipping away.
“Do you remember your childhood?” He asks the blonde lying on the floor next to him. He doesn't understand why she's here. She's won - she hates him. She should just leave him to die alone. But she doesn't.
His eyes are about to close for the last time.
The familiar voice whispers to him that he is a rapist, that he treats women like toys. He can't disagree. A finger traces his forehead as he takes his last breath. He was wrong about one thing.
He didn't die alone.