There's a wolf in the woods

Chapter 1 - the leaving

October 21th, Wednesday 9.45 pm. That was the exact time and day Max took his life. 10 years ago. It's exactly ten years ago he killed himself. Stiles put down the old photographs of him and his smiling - and alive - brother. He tries to shake of the weird feeling of the past being present. Max is playing with the bike he got in present, Stiles think, as if it is the same day, ten years ago. And I... I am in his room. Our room. They had been sharing room from the day they were born until the very day Max died. Since that day, Stiles couldn't go in there without having panic attacks. So, he got his own. And his old bedroom he had shared with his, now dead, brother, it stayed closed. Locked in time.

"Stiles?!" His dad called. With a sigh, he closed the box and put it on another box, leaving his room all empty of things. This was for the best, he told himself. Leaving. He gave the room one last glance before shutting the door. Leaving to start over somewhere else. Where memories of his fault wouldn't haunt him. If I just hadn't locked the door.... But it's all too late now. Now, he can nothing do but to live with it. If I had let him in, he would have lived. But another part of Stiles reminded him that then maybe none of them had survived. It was just because of the locked door, that he had survived. His younger brother didn't have the same luck as he did, that day. His younger brother Max who had died, mere inches from him. And he didn't open the door. Maybe...he thought again. Maybe I could have dragged him inside, kept the dog away. Maybe...

"Are you-oh." His father walked up to him and hugged him. "It's going to be okay." Stiles gasped for air. He had stopped breathing. "Thanks, dad." He said, patted his father on the back and picked up the boxes as he walked out of the house.