Aquinas had to stand up just so he could sit down again after hearing something like that. He could not believe what he had just heard. His own brother was the unnamed Reaper of Iran, as the media called it. They played it off as an unrelated killer taking advantage of the war. So now, to hear that his own brother committed such atrocities was more than a huge shock. Aquinas was by no means a weak man. He had seen and heard more than a few things that a man of his age shouldn't while out on benders with Ignatius in the more objectionable parts of cities, but nothing like this.
"That's a lot of shit." Aquinas finally said after a good minute of silence.
"Now you see what plagued me for so long." Ignatius said. He did not face his brother, as his interest was focused on the blank, dark wall of stone that was before him. That seemed to hold more of his attention then the face of abject horror that his brother would more than likely have when he heard what he had done in Iran.
Aquinas sighed. "Yes." he said at length. Aquinas stroked his clean shave chin and thought for a while. It took a spell, but he mustered enough questions to ask his brother. "Why did you not just stay in the Air Force? Those men were gone. There would be no need to fear them, especially because they would be behind bars and away from your shop."
"The reason I didn't go back" Ignatius explained. "was because of my other shop mates. I didn't want to be looked at as if I was some double agent or something. Mistrust is easy to come by in those situations, and I wasn't going to face them knowing that they would just ultimately shun me."
"So, you left." Aquinas stated to clarify. "Why were they letting you out?"
"I requested it from my commander." said the Marine. "He was reluctant to oblige, but I warned him that it would just happen again if he tossed me back in."
"You could have gone to another shop." The officer reasoned.
"Not when words travels as fast as it does." Ignatius retorted.
Aquinas was silent for a moment. He tried to ask the right questions to get his answer, but there was nothing that came up.
Then it hit.
"Was the Colonel right?" Aquinas questioned. "Did the loneliness and the sadness creep back in?" That part was misconstrued by the horror scene at the end of the vision.
It took a while for Ignatius to answer, but in time, he spoke. "Yes."
He didn't know if he heard right, but Aquinas could have sworn he heard a soft choke in his brother's affirmation.
"Did the recounting of our favorite show do anything for you? I mean, spark something that was apparently lost?"
"Slightly."
"Then if you were feeling this way, why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you just come out and say what you did, instead of balling it up inside for this long?"
A stillness and enormous amount of gravity filled the room at that moment. Ignatius' head seemed to sink low into himself, and he was shaking slightly. It wasn't until a good moment passed, which felt like an entire afternoon to Aquinas, until his brother spoke. Though, he did not speak in his usual, calm, clear, and sometimes menacing, voice. No. This was a cracked and choking tone. One full of regret, sadness, and guilt. And though Ignatius himself felt these things, Aquinas was hit with half of it when the older brother said these words.
"Because I thought that if I told you this, you wouldn't love me anymore."
A train is too slow and too easily stopped for it to have a fraction of the force that that phase had when it hit Aquinas. He not only felt his own tears start to fall from his face, but he also heard his own brother's sobs. A sound he had not heard since who knows when.
Both brothers couldn't move for a second, but then the sound of foot falls was heard. Before Ignatius could even register what was happening, he felt the large, wool covered arms of his brother wrap around his. As Ignatius sat upon the bed facing the same direction as his brother, he could feel the embrace of his sibling. He turned around slow and returned it in full. The Marine slowly rose from the bed and on to his feet. Now showing his brother his tear stained face and his bloodshot, paling, blue eyes. Knowing he was not one for emotional instances such as this, Ignatius expected to see that his brother was stoic faced and void of any emotion. However, the opposite was true. Not only did Aquinas show emotion, but he showed one that one would not expect at a time like this. He showed happiness. Genuine, unprecedented, happiness.
"Matthew." he said softly as he hugged his brother again. "No matter what, I'll always love you. You're my brother. And no matter what you do, no matter what you say, I will never stop loving you."
I was now Ignatius' turn to embrace his brother. He not only returned the affection in full, but also smile. "The one person in the world that matters, is the one that still cares."
"In this world, and any other." Aquinas said. The Naval Officer outstretched his arms and held his brother's shoulders in his hands. He looked into his now shining blue eyes. The ones he knew at a different time. A better time. "After all this time, I got my brother back."
The sound of shuffling hooves sounded from across the room. Twisted Horns made his way towards the pair of brothers with a smile that shamed even himself. "I see that you two have patched things up."
"All thanks to you, Twisted Horns." Ignatius said. "Say. What was in that stuff in my eyes that made me see all my memories again, anyway?"
"Insight dust." Twisted Horns said. "It's a mix of different hallucinogens that makes you relive events in your life that you had blocked out. It seems the memories that you yourself had repressed were more traumatic than anyone would dare to ask about. I'm sorry I used it, but it seemed to me that you needed it." Of course, the forge master was there for the full story of the dream, though some part were cut out at times, he never knew why, but what he did hear made even the man beast flinch.
"Yeah." Ignatius conceded. "They were." His voice become heavier at the end of every syllable.
"I guess now we can say," Aquinas said as he looked to his brother and the mino-satyr. "that since those memories are behind us, we will have to make new ones."
The trio in the room all nodded in unison at the declaration. It was apparent to these three that this was the beginning to a new adventure for them. The start of something better.
"Hey," Ignatius said. "I'm kind of wondering. How was long was I out? A day or two? A week?"
"Three months, actually." the blacksmith said.
Ignatius was only able to blink until he could say. "Dafuq?!"