The World Is Ugly

For All The Smiles That Are Ever Gonna Haunt Me

Gerard hadn't said a word in about two days.

Frank was getting extremely worried.

"Gerard, please, when are you going to talk again?"

Gerard just stared blankly at the fire, without a word, or any suggestion that he'd heard Frank at all.

"Okay, Gerard, I know how hard this is for you, and we have to go through this together, and we can't if you won't even talk to me."

Gerard looked up at Frank, deciding to open his mouth for the first time in two days.

"You don't understand, Frank." He spoke quietly.

Frank, relieved that Gerard still had the fucking ability to speak, was not particularly in the mood to argue, but sometimes things just worked out like that.

"What are you talking about? Mikey was my best friend! This was fucking devastating for both of us, so don't tell me I don't understand-"

"You met him in first grade, Frank. I understand you're sad, but- I've known him since the second he was born. I was the one who carried him inside and got him a bandaid when he scraped his knees when we were little. I was the one who drove him to the hospital when my BL/ind bombed my house with us all in it, and killed the rest of our family. And now he's dead. You can't compare to that, and you will never understand."

Gerard was crying now, but Frank was offended, and he felt bad, but he was stubborn, and couldn't let the boy who's brother just died be moody.

"Gerard, I was at your house when it collapsed. I remember it. And I remember going home the next day and finding no one at my house. The world was ending, my family had abandoned me, so you and Mikey were the only family I had left. You think it hasn't impacted me that he's dead?"

Gerard was sobbing at this point. "I'm sorry, Frank- can we stop it, please-"

Frank just walked out, then, of the abandoned house they'd been staying at.

He went to the front porch, what he really needed was to catch his breath.

And he was sorry, too.

But he was stubborn, and not good at being nice.

He didn't deserve Gerard.

He didn't deserve Mikey.

And Mikey didn't deserve to die.

-

Gerard, even if he thought he'd accepted that Mikey was gone, he didn't really think about the fact that Mikey was never coming home.

He would never see that boy again.

And the one thing that would forever haunt him would be his little brother's smile.

He just wanted to see it again, he wanted to hold onto Mikey and never let him go.

But he was never coming home.

He'd spent so long training, getting better at fighting.

But he ran into an exterminator?

You can't kill those. Mikey didn't have a chance.

Goddamn, why did he let them go?

Why would he ever have let them go?