Line of Time

Happy Holidays To You

That night when Mathias walked through the front door he found his three brothers sitting all side by side on the couch. He looked at them all as they stared into space, this was strange and he knew his brothers and they did some strange things. But this was something far weirder than anything he had ever seen them doing before. He went up beside them and clapped his hands together as he did it gave off a loud slap and the three of them jolted. They turned and looked at him with surprise and shock.

"Oh, hey Mathias..." Lukas said as he looked at him. Erin breathed a sigh as he seemed shaken by something. 

"I guess work went well..." Erin said as he stood and ran into his room and slammed the door. 

Mathias looked at him go and then looked at the rest of his brothers for an explication and found their grim saddened faces. His face dropped as he realized that they had somehow known what him coming home meant that night. 

"I'm guessing that you know that Gunnar's dead then . . . " Mathias said as he sat down where Erin had been sitting. 

"Yeah, Lukas was playing around with his ghost stuff earlier and we all saw Tino in your guy's old room. Gunnar showed up and then they disappeared... " Berwald said as Mathias looked over at Lukas with shocked eyes. 

"Whatever happened tonight... I know that what happened made it so that Tino could rest. I'm just not sure if it's in peace. Gunnar was the reason that we all believed he died because of." Lukas said as his voice seemed derived of emotion at the moment. Mathias sat there and shock his head. 

"After we took the shot . . . I walked off to cool my head and I found what I thought was a little boy at first. But he aged before my eyes and he was Tino.  He looked just like he did when we saw him get brought into the hospital... He told me something that he thought we should all know." Mathias said as his two brothers looked at him with curious eyes on what their friend had wanted them all to know. It must have been important if he had had to build up the energy to make himself look alive for Mathias to walk up to him. 

"He said that Gunnar wasn't the one that killed him, he was gunned down like anyone else that died that night that dared to go out. He told me that he went into the city because he wanted to make sure that Gunnar and Chase were alright. That Gunnar was the one that made him feel safe and kept him calm. He told him that they would see each other in the morning, that Tino was just tired and he needed to go to bed. Gunnar made it so he wasn't scared of death because he wasn't seeing as death. He pretended that everything was fine with Tino because he said that they'd see each other in the morning... Gunnar didn't kill our friend, he sent him off and we blamed him because he was there with him making it so that he wasn't panicked. " Mathias told them as he turned to notice Erin with tearful eyes as he peeked from behind the corner of the hallway. He then looked to all of his brothers and found that they were all crying, it wasn't just Mathias who had found tears in his eyes as he remembered the soft words that a ghostly friend had told him. 

"That's why he wanted help finding Gunnar..." Lukas said as he struggled to keep his sobs away but after he spoke again he could no longer and burst into full blown sobs. 

"He needed to cross over with him because the last thing he remembered from life was Gunnar telling him that they'd see each other when he woke up." Lukas sobbed as Mathias put an arm around him. Berwald hugged them as Erin then ran over to them and joined they try do gain some comfort in the event at hand. 

As the days went on so did the intensification of Gunnar's crime history and the events around his death. Mathias's fellow officers had told their superior that he and Gunnar were related. This did not go over well with him for the simple reason that since they were brothers they thought that Mathias had contact with Gunnar leading up to his death. This wasn't helped by the fact of how Mathias had acted that night when the take down happened. He had been called into his superior's office for a talking to. It ended with Mathias being put under watch. But he knew he could get out of it if he could prove that he had had no contact with his late brother for more that ten years.