𝖈𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖆𝖎𝖓| Nikolai Lantsov

Gone |

(Sorry for the late update! And the time skip...)

"No!" I screamed, watching as Dominik dropped to his knees. I tried to reach my brother, hope still sparking through me as I grabbed his stiff body. "No... no, no!" I cried over and over again. He was gone. Dominik was dead.

I felt a something drop besides me and lifted my head from Dominik's blood soaked chest. Nikolai stared blankly at the body I held. His best friend... my brother.

Nikolai's eyes were red-rimmed and a startling, striking shade of blue, shining with barely restrained emotion. His face was the picture of so much pain.

I almost couldn't breathe.

An earthquake hit my heart then, cracked it right down the middle. And I thought here, in him, there was more feeling than any one person should ever have to contain. I grabbed him with my free arm and held him close to my body.

I tried to hold him closer but he wrapped his arms around my hip instead, his head falling onto my chest. I bent over him instinctively, shielding his body with my own.

I pressed my cheek to his forehead. Pressed a kiss to his temple.

And then he broke.

Shaking violently, shattering in my arms, a million gasping, choking pieces I was trying so hard to hold together. And I promised myself then, in that moment, that I will hold him forever, just like this, until all the pain and torture and suffering was gone. I felt myself break down even more as I watched Nikolai cry.

And we are quotation marks, inverted and upside down, clinging to one another at the end of this life sentence. Trapped by lives we did not choose.

In that moment I wished to turn back time. I wished that Nikolai and I never had left, and that the Saints had granted us more time with Dominik.

Yet we still had our whole lives right in-front of us... and we had Dominik to thank for that.