#and then the noah awakening sort of stole sheril from tyki

[tykimikknuggets]

Brother Mine

#dgraymanweek » day 02 || Lonely Boy

                        ↳ option a: favorite character (Tyki Mikk) (word count: 967)

Tyki sighed and shoved the book off of the table, letting his forehead replace it with a loud thunk.  That was the third tutor to resign this month - Father would be furious.  Reading was just so hard, with the way the letters seemed to never stay in the right places, and how every time he looked back at the words they would be spelled differently.  How did Sheril do it so easily?  

“Stupid Sheril,” he muttered, swinging his legs as they dangled off the edge of the chair.  “Stupid Sheril with his stupid advanced lessons and his stupid books…”

“What ever did I do to warrant such cruel words, brother?”

Tyki jerked upright and swiveled in his seat.  Sheril was smirking from the doorway, but as Tyki watched, he dramatically collapsed against a bookshelf, eyes fluttering closed as if he were suffering greatly.

“…You’re weird,” Tyki decided, swinging one leg up as he twisted around all the way to straddle the chair.  “What are you doing here, anyway?  Don’t you have lessons?”

“I finished my work early, so Ms. Matos permitted me to take a short break from my studies.”  Sheril straightened at that, frowning at him.  “Don’t you have work to do, brother?  Where in the world is your tutor?”

Tyki looked away with a grimace, and he heard a sigh before his brother sat down in an empty chair, somehow managing to look elegant even as he slumped into the cushions.  “Father will not be pleased, Tyki.  Can’t you at least try not to embarrass the family?”

“I do try!”  Tyki paused.  “And I’m not an embarrassment!”  

He knew that wasn’t really true, though.  He’d always been an embarrassment, ever since he was born, a living sign of their mother’s infidelity, forbidden to even take the Kamelot name.  That was probably better, though - at least this way, nobody expected anything from him.

Except for Father - Sheril’s father, really - who seemed determined that he make up for the shame of his birth somehow.  It was really too bad that Tyki always seemed to disappoint him.

Sheril leaned over and lightly rapped him on the head with a slim book.  “You know perfectly well that’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah, yeah…”

As he watched, Sheril leaned down to pick up the book Tyki had dropped.  “Oh, this one - I read this when I was five, Tyki, really?”  He didn’t wait for Tyki’s indignant reply before flipping it open and beginning to read aloud, his smooth voice filling the room.

Tyki decided he liked that much better than reading.

Sheril was sick.

He was sick, and no one but the healers were allowed in his chambers, and there were rumors that he was dying.  

Tyki was sure he was going to go mad.

If it weren’t enough that he had his brother to worry about, the servants were suddenly watching him at all times.  Even Father had stopped turning a blind eye to him sneaking out to the town to gamble with the miners on the poorer side of town.  He hadn’t even been able to go fishing in weeks!  

And on top of all that, Father had hired a tutor for him again, even after he’d admitted defeat so many years ago and declared Tyki simply unteachable.  

It was as if everyone was preparing for Sheril to die, and Tyki hated it.  Sure, his brother was a pompous ass at times, and they certainly irritated each other - but he was Tyki’s pampered, stuffy big brother, and him dying was absolutely out of the question.  

Sheril wasn’t going to die.

That might have been why Tyki felt absolutely no remorse about ignoring everything the tutor tried to teach him.  As he wrote down random answers to the problems that he had been set for the day, Tyki stared outside, to where he could see his brother’s window with the white lace curtains pulled tightly shut.

He got a sharp rap to the knuckles for not paying attention, and he scowled, glaring down at the paper as though it had personally offended him.  Honestly, he was rather offended at the idea of having to learn things - never mind the implication that he, rather than Sheril, would be responsible for following Father into politics and a “respectable” life - so that wasn’t too inaccurate.  

When his gaze drifted outside again, something seemed different, though.  It took him a few moments to figure it out, but when he did, the blood drained from his face and he bolted from the library, ignoring the shouts of the tutor behind him as he raced down the halls to his brother’s rooms.

Because there was no good reason for the curtains to have suddenly changed from white into such an ominous, bloody red.

He smelled the blood before he saw it - but when he did see it, he collapsed, his knees suddenly too weak to hold his weight.  The walls, the floor, Sheril - everything was dyed red.  The only consolation was that his brother was standing upright, no longer bedridden and apparently as healthy as could be.

The mangled corpse on the floor was the obvious source of the sickening red, but… could one body really hold that much blood?  And how had it gotten splattered so high up on the walls - even the ceiling, he realized, as some dripped down onto his nose.

“Sheril…?”  His voice sounded strange, as if it were echoing into his ears from a distance.

His brother turned to face him, and Tyki bit back a whimper at the twisted smile on the familiar face. 

Why were his brother’s eyes golden?

And why, why did his head hurt so badly?

He lifted one hand to press against his forehead, and when he felt the slowly forming incisions there, he screamed.