_lhstars
How do you tell someone you are leaving?
Not just someone.
These were his brothers. These were the people who had seen him at his worst - exhausted, frustrated, afraid, uncertain - and had never once turned away.
These were the people who had held him together during the moments when he couldn't hold himself, who had laughed with him and cried with him and fought with him and forgiven him and loved him with the kind of love that doesn't announce itself because it doesn't need to - it simply is, the way gravity simply is, the way the sun simply is, constant and quiet and so fundamental that you forget it's there until it's gone.
How do you tell brothers who treated you like their older brother - who looked up to you, who relied on you, who trusted you to be the steady ground beneath their feet - that the ground is about to disappear?
How do you tell them without making them carry the weight of it?
How do you say the words without letting them see that the words are killing you?
How do you leave a home without burning it down?
He didn't know.