Aden

Fractal pieces of blue sky made their way through shifting green foliage above. Puffy white clouds blocked out the crisp color with wisps of white and gray as they rolled overhead. Down below, soft blades of grass bent beneath my fingers while dappled sunlight rested warmly on my chest, pulling me into a hypnagogic trance.

Weight shifting over my midsection broke me out of it before I could fall too far. Slightly curly black hair was the first thing I saw as I looked down, away from the mystical world within the leaves of a looming sycamore. Then, the birthmarks and those beautiful coal eyes.

"Logan." A breath, quiet like a prayer. This was a dream. An umbrageous memory that would send me reeling the moment reality jolted me awake to face a world where this was a mere illusion of my desires.

"Aden!" he replied, his eyes glinting as a smile brightened them. It looked like he was trying to pout and failing miserably when he said, "You were supposed to read to me, but then you tried falling asleep."

A sigh left me. It was lighter, the absence of puberty taking the depth from his current voice, but it was his all the same. "I'm sorry," I apologize, a grin set in concrete on my lips. I'd likely wake with it before remembering that this was all just a dream. "Where was I?"

Logan wriggled in my lap before sitting up. A yawn surprised him as he trembled at its behest. "It's too late now, dummy. Mary made lunch," he said with a huff. Then, another smile. "She said she made grilled cheese today!"

He'd been so easily excitable back then and a pressure built behind my eyes. Frivolity that I desperately wished to portray fell short. But I somehow managed to pull myself together enough to ask, "Did she make tomato soup?"

He looked back at me curiously while I met his gaze with a serious expression, one that was only partially feigned. Logan's brows furrowed as he thought about my question, his eyes glossing over as if they were becoming lost in some distant, unseen void.

"I don't think so," he said earnestly after several moments of contemplation.

I fall back onto the bed of grass below with a heavy sigh. "I suppose I can't join you for lunch, then."

Logan's eyes instantly meet mine once more, his lips turning downwards in a pout. "But you gotta," he whined, crawling up so that his face was only a few inches from my own. "I don't wanna eat with Mark and Emma by myself. Please, Aden?"

A brow quirks. "I really wish I could," I tease, "but you can't eat grilled cheese without tomato soup. Only heathens do that."

Logan gave me a questioning look. "Heathens?" he asked, visibly confused. I didn't get a chance to explain before he started pleading once more. "Look, I… I'll make you tomato soup myself then. Please, don't make me be alone with them…."

"You don't know how to make tomato soup, so how can you—" I was cut off as I heard him sniffling. "Hey, why are you crying?" I sat up abruptly and wiped away his tears.

"E-Emma and Mark are m-mean to me," he stuttered, burying his tear-stained face in my chest. "W-Why don't they like me? Am….Am I bad?"

"What? No!" I wrapped my arms around his little body and held him closer. His skin is cool against the heat of my own, just as it's always been. It's soothing in a way I can't properly comprehend, but more important matters are at hand. "Nothing about you is bad. And I don't think they're intentionally trying to be mean. They're just…older siblings. And older siblings do stuff like that."

He shuddered in my arms as he looked up at me. "Really? So, I'm not bad?"

I smiled, brushing his hair out of his face. "No. You're not bad. You don't have the capacity to be bad."

Logan smiled for a brief moment before his face darkened and an umbrageous countenance settled over him like a foreboding storm, bursting glimmers in his eyes, lightning strikes in those coal depths. "Then why did you let them take me away?"

The question rolls like thunder, echoing in my eardrums without giving me the chance to collect my thoughts. The rumbling grows and grows until it matches the fury in his voice and the chill of Logan's sudden absence. Light and warmth from the sun are replaced with the clouds' icy air consuming the sky. A loud crack sounded as a stray lightning bolt struck nearby, a spark consuming the sycamore we were just laying beneath. I'm forced to shield my eyes from the sudden glare.

Light dies once more beyond my closed lids, and I finally take a chance at opening my eyes. They immediately find Logan standing beneath the eager flames enveloping the leafy canopy. He's no longer the kid I rescued from the river but the shell of a man I'd seen yesterday. His coal eyes had lost the stars once sparkling within their dark depths, frigid as they narrowed down at me. But, anger wasn't the only monster writhing in the shadows. Anguish punched through me like a sword, the steel cold as it cut through flesh and tendons and bone.

"If I'm not bad, why is it that you let them take me away? Why was your search half-hearted? Did you even want to find me?" His questions are daggers, slipping between each rib around the embedded sword. "I thought you cared…." Those last whispered words were sorrowful drops of agony, rolling through me and stealing any warmth the blades had yet to take.

Words catch in my throat as guilt shreds me into fractals of who I once was. It shouldn't have been that hard to tell him how much I cared. How much I loved him and the tremendous pain that his absence caused.

He doesn't wait for my answer. Charred limbs of the tree above crash down, covering him in embers that eat away at his flesh. Logan only whimpers as skin recoils from the heat to expose the bone beneath, already turning black as the flames continue to caress their quarry. Glossy hair turns to ashes in mere seconds, the blaze finally overtaking him and sealing him behind a wall of angry reds and scorching oranges.

All the while, my body stays glued to its spot, fastened by some unseen force that tears at my limbs every time I try to move forward. With an eerie groan, the great sycamore falls over what would likely be nothing more than a corpse, the splitting of its trunk sending tremors through me as billowing smoke crowds my lungs and dries my throat.

That same terrifying smell follows me into the waking world as I bolt upright from my bed. Sweat coats my forehead and seeps through the fabric of my pajamas, sticking unpleasantly to the few areas that have already dried. Spasmodic sobs wrack my trembling body while my gaze flickers over my surroundings, searching for any hint of a fire. Only darkness greets my sight, a welcome relief from the searing clutches of the night terror.

I'm nearing calmness when its voice spikes my panic once more.

That was no dream, you fool! It screeches, the sound sharply reverberating in the confines of my skull. He's nestled within flames! I can feel him fading!

What clothes I'm wearing, the location of my wallet….not even the fact that my vision slightly wavers from the alcohol still making the rounds in my veins halts me from leaving my house in mere seconds. The bird was the only thing guiding me along sidewalks in my cursory sprint towards the faint smoke in the distance that was barely rising above silhouetted skyscrapers and dousing the stars beyond.

Fire trucks fill the night with their deafening potpourri of wailing sirens and roaring engines, flying past me and sending gusts of wind whipping my hair against my face. Their appearance gives me the push to drive myself further despite the rolling protests of my stomach.

Quick puffs of air come in heaves that make me ill by the time I manage to reach the scene of the fire. A gurney has him strapped in, his black hair reflecting the lights of the first response vehicles as paramedics load him into a waiting ambulance. Angry red burn marks splotch pale skin in intricate patterns that scream of the torment they'd undergone from vicious flames.

Nearby, an elderly man with similar burns decorating his wrinkled skin sits on the tail end of a fire engine, giving the police the statements they need. He seems weary and concerned, his eyes flicking from the officer before him to the ambulance currently securing Logan for transport.

"Aden?" A distantly familiar voice speaks up behind me. "What are you doing here?"