"They abandoned me."
The silence was deafening. Kenelm dared not even breath as his brother's figure began to shake. A lump welled up in his throat as every second felt like forever in that silence. Kenelm could only watch.
Burgess, still shaking, started up again, "After everything. Everything I did for them. They tossed me aside like nothing. Just like you did."
"Burg, I-"
"YOU ABANDONED ME. MY OWN BROTHER LEFT ME TO ROT WITH THIS SICKNESS!" Burgess' shrieks pierced through the air like a booming canon. "HOW COULD YOU, OF ALL OF YOU, DO SUCH A THING? I RAISED YOU- I RAISED THE CONGREGATION- I- I DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW AFTER ALL THOSE YEARS!"
Burgess fell to his knees and hammered the ground with his fist, yelling out as tears streamed down his face. "Was everything a lie?! Was I just some pawn for all of you?! Did devotion mean nothing?!"
Kenelm stood there still. He couldn't bring himself to comfort his brother's rage. The lump in his throat weld up to where he could barely breathe as small tears slowly began to form in his eyes.
Burgess' rage slowly turned into despair as his screaming shifted to weeping. This was the first time Kenelm saw his brother in such a broken state, yet he dared not do anything. The weeping shifted into sobbing, and then finally into sniffling after some time. Then silence fell again.
Kenelm finally realized tears were steaming down his face, so he quickly wiped them away. He turned his gaze back to his brother, still lying there on the floor, haunched over. Burgess was shivering, and silent. Kenelm's skin crawled in that silence. It was awful, so God awful. The guilt of his actions crawled up his back like tiny needles and extended through every cell of skin across his body to the tips of his nails. The lump only made his breathing worse as it continued to strangle the inside of his throat.
"Did you even care?" Burgess turned his head to face Kenelm, his eyes blood shot and puffy. He was still sniffling and a pain stretched throughout his chest. Burgess was alarmed to see just how distraught his brother was, but that only made him feel worse as the pain sunk deeper and deeper.
