The Lucky One

[Cain Plunkett]

"That's because you're selfish," said Cain placidly, and matter-of-factly. It wasn't a slight and his tone was neutral. He wasn't passing judgment on the stranger, either. Humans were selfish. Cain was selfish. Isaiah was selfish, too. It was a fact of life, but they didn't have to be bound by it hand and foot.

He smiled again, however, and this time his gaze held a little longer on the man. The way his head was rubbed was familiar. Isaiah wasn't the best at expressing himself, either, and Cain had learned to read into the gestures and touches that spoke for themselves.

"...my brother would probably say the same thing about me."

But in the end, when the Earth became scorched and when God reclaimed his children, only those who loved the divine creator could pass into Heaven. The others, no matter how deeply they loved those around them, were doomed. Cain wanted salvation; he knew that his brother did too. That was why they did what they did.

"I think... sacrifice can be love," he mused, almost more to himself. If God could promise Isaiah a place in Heaven, Cain might deliver his brother into His hands. He might... knowing that they would meet again some day.

[Niall Gallagher]

Niall laughed at that.

"Can't argue with you there." Selfish was probably the first thing somebody might say when they described Niall. His father said it enough to drum it in there. Once upon a time, he felt intensely guilty for having any selfish thoughts. Then he started thinking for himself and stopped being afraid of deities and family and small town Catholic communities dedicated to fighting the supernatural. For once, he started thinking more about himself. And that made him selfish. And he stopped letting it define him or make him feel guilty.

For a while, anyway.

He sure felt guilty when he left home but the guilt was easily numbed when he realized vampires could suck the care right out of him. And incubi and succubi could bring intense ecstasy for what felt like a lifetime, all in exchange for some of his life. Did it even matter? His life didn't matter anymore; now all he lived for was that high. The moment when those so-called monsters used him. At least they needed him. And he liked that. He liked that need in their eyes.

"It's a brother thing," he said as he opened the creaking glass and wood door that led into the old diner. It's a brother thing. He hoped that it was. Even after all these years, he still hoped his brothers thought about him. Did they miss him? Did they care that he'd left? Or were they relieved?

"Maybe," Niall said vaguely as his gaze darted about the diner for a place to sit. At the moment, it wasn't too packed. Most of the people were out at the art fair, checking out the crafts and paintings. Ignoring the other patrons, Niall nabbed a booth towards the front and slid straight into it, patting the table.

"But I think sacrifice is for masochists and sadists. Not that I'm judging. But you--you're too young for that kind of thing." He peered at the kid. "Aren't you?" He reached his hand out to the kid. "Niall, by the way."

[Cain Plunkett]

It's a brother thing.

Cain mused on that as they entered the diner, and a rush of warmth hit him like a close embrace. He felt the prickles against his cold-numbed skin and gently rubbed his hands together to get the blood flowing again. It was nice to get out of the cold; doubly nice to have something to eat. These small Earthly pleasures, Cain still looked forward to them (albeit with a tinge of guilt in his conscience). Maybe his father's Spartan upbringing was the cause of that.

He slipped into the booth after the man and took the offered hand. But Cain didn't shake like a dog. He held the hand and he looked at it, studied it, observed it. "Cain." The feeling intensified. This man was not human. He was almost one, but not quite, which somehow made it that much worse. That a human soul had been bent and perverted into this ungodly form was... saddening in the worst way.

Slowly, he let go of Niall's hand and tucked his hands into his jacket pockets. "I don't think I'm too young. If... if my brother had to sacrifice me, I'd want him to."

[Niall Gallagher]

Niall watched the kid in interest as he studied his hand, wondering what he might be looking for. Did he forget to wash his hands? Were they dirty? Now he was looking at his own hands, trying to view them from another person's eyes. Long fingers, painted but chipped nails. A couple of knuckles scabbed over. Just small scabs, though. Mostly healed by now. Was that what he was taking in? Gay guy that got into fights? Niall liked to think of what his mother used to call them. An artist's hands.

Whatever the kid thought, he didn't say. That kind of person drove Niall crazy. He needed to know what was happening in his mind. What was he thinking right now? Niall leaned against the table and lightly tapped his knuckles against the table in time to the music playing over the speakers.

"Cain," he mused. "Now that's a proper Catholic name. I have a brother named Daniel. Like the one with the lion."

He looked down at his own hand after Cain let go of it, then pulled one of the menus closer even though he already knew what he was going to order. French toast! He couldn't talk about it and then not eat it.

"And that's some grim thinking, kid! Why would your brother have to sacrifice you? That's morbid, man. If he's a good older brother, he'll protect you. He'd rather sacrifice himself for you than do anything to you. That's how I see it. As a brother."

[Cain Plunkett]

"I know the Book of Daniel," Cain nodded, recalling the countless hours spent memorizing the bible in his childhood. He could recite the good book backwards and forwards at this point. "It's a good name." A hero's name, unlike Cain, the betrayer of his own brother. The sinner who killed his brother because God favored Abel more than he did Cain. He had no idea what his parents thought when they named him, but perhaps they too were guided by God's hand in doing so.

Since Niall pulled his menu close, Cain copied him. He looked over the selection with a mounting sensation of hollowness in his stomach. It growled softly; he put a hand to his abdomen to quiet it. "It's... a brother thing." Briefly he looked up at Niall. Smiled at his own little joke. He wasn't obligated to explain anything to Niall, anyway.

"My brother does protect me." His eyes were back on the menu, perusing the pictures of pancakes and fruit. Isaiah wouldn't like him sitting here talking to a stranger, though. But he would understand--it was for the greater good. "Is Daniel the name of your little brother?"

[Niall Gallagher]

Niall smirked at his own words being used back at him. Yeah, okay. It was a brother thing. He had to accept that as an answer if he was allowed to use it. He mused on Daniel's name, though. Daniel was the only one with an obviously biblical name like that. Most of them were named more typically Irish names. Daniel was most popular at school, though. People called him Danny and he was the cool guy who got a secret tattoo. He showed it to Niall before anybody else. But he got just about flogged for it when their dad found out.

Shoving the menu aside, Niall set both elbows on the table and regarded Cain with studious hazel eyes.

"Daniel's my older brother. I call him the cool brother, because he wasn't as bad as the rest of them. Lorcan was the little one. He was like my little duckling. Everywhere I went, he went. Oh wait, that's Mary and her little lamb, isn't it?" He ran a hand through his hair and sighed before slinking back against the shabby booth.

"Where's your brother now?"

[Cain Plunkett]

"You have so many brothers," Cain said with something close to awe in his voice, raising wide eyes to Niall again. That many brothers. It sounded like heaven. So many people to protect and love him. A big family; a proper family, like the ones Cain read about in books. (The books approved by his parents, and later on, any book he got his hands on.)

"So you're not the oldest." It was phrased as a musing rather than a question. Cain fiddled with the edge of his menu as he thought about it--a big family. Brothers. He wouldn't have traded Isaiah away for anything or anyone, but he had always wanted to be part of a big family ever since he was little. A real family. Not like the kind that they were forced into--not like the one at the commune.

"My brother Izzy--Isaiah--is waiting for me back home." He would be now, once he discovered that Cain had left. Cain sort of snuck out while Isaiah was still asleep, drawing the blankets up over him and then tip-toeing out. He had a dream, which manifested itself into a mission. Cain sighed this time and similarly leaned back against the seat. "Are you a good brother?"

[Niall Gallagher]

"I know, right?!" Niall started counting them off on his fingers. "There's Colm Jr, named after my dad. Then there's Padraig, you'd probably like him, he's totally into crosses and stuff. Daniel, he's the cool one I told you about. And then there was Lorcan."

He reached for a cup of coffee that wasn't there and sighed before raising his arm as high as it would go (and it went pretty high since he had long limbs) so that he could catch the attention of the diner staff.

"And nah, second to youngest, actually." Youngest now, but he didn't ever think of it that way. Lorcan's ghost was always there, resting on his shoulders. He couldn't forget about him, no matter how hard he tried.

"Can we get drinks over here?" Niall called out, batting his eyelashes. "Please?"

He glanced back at Cain as he lowered his arm. He hated that question. It poked him right in the tender heart parts. Fiddling with the menu, he shrugged but it was difficult to fully disguise the way the question made him feel.

"I wanted to be. But if I could go back in time, I'd be a better one."

[Cain Plunkett]

"Ah?" His uncomprehending noise was delicately colored with a question. Was. There was Lorcan? Niall didn't go on to explain, instead flagging down a tired-looking waitress who seemed wholly unaffected by his flickering eyelashes. She sent him the driest of dry looks and wrote something down onto a little notepad.

"What'll ya have?"

It was Niall she addressed first, so Cain remained silent until it was his turn to speak. He asked for a milk, pointed to the pancakes, received a slightly less dry look, and then the waitress wandered away. After she had left--to yell their orders to the cook out back--Cain cleared his throat. There was no mistaking that look of regret. Cain could recognize that anywhere.

"Did something happen to... Lorcan?"

[Niall Gallagher]

"French toast!" He clapped his hands in glee. French toast~! He could already almost taste that powdery sugar and too much syrup. Niall was one of those bastards who drowned his bread in it, so it was basically syrup with a side of toast. His stomach rumbled in irritation. He wasn't joking when he declared he was hungry earlier. "Coffee, too. Lots of cream and sugar. Thank you~"

Niall turned back toward Cain with a clueless smile, twining his fingers together on the table. But then he didn't like that Look on Cain's face. So serious. He was back to being a little robot, trying to read his mind. Niall lowered his head. Of course. He said WAS when referring to Lorcan. Of course Cain was going to CLENCH onto that. Niall slowly raised his head, raising his threaded fingers so they rested beneath his chin.

"Yes. He's... no longer with us. Probably around your age when he died." He looked away.

[Cain Plunkett]

The similarities were almost too much to ignore. Little brother. Big brother. Brothers who loved each other, brothers who protected one another. Brothers who had regrets, who tried their best to atone for the sins of the past.

Cain didn't speak for long moments, lost in his own thoughts. A part of him went out to Niall, seeing the way that the light in his eyes extinguished when he spoke of his brother's death. It was like a part of his light went out when he had to recount his tragic loss. Cain nodded silently to himself.

"He must be with God now."

Cain's voice was firm and sure. He leaned forward until the edge of the table hit his midsection and the light that had gone out in Niall's eyes blazed in his. "He'll be waiting for you there."

[Niall Gallagher]

Okay, the silence was really, really starting to get to him. Niall hated the silence. It left too much time to the racing thoughts and the racing thoughts weren't always nice. He looked up and searched the diner for their server. Where did she go? Where was that drink? God, he could use that coffee. Or maybe not. Was he already jittery? He didn't think so, but he was sort of knocking on the table nervously to the tune of another old pop song playing over the speakers.

Noticing that, he stopped and slid out a sugar packet. Cain leaned forward and his words made Niall rip the top of the sugar open, spilling sugar across the table between them.

"He's with God now." Colm Gallagher Sr. said as he stood stoically before the coffin in front of them. Niall's brothers all lined up beside him, one by one, from eldest to youngest. Niall stood apart from them, with his mother's arms around his shoulders as if she could stop him from doing something stupid. She couldn't. She never could. Pushing away from her, Niall kicked a mound of dirt into the rectangular hole.

"No! No he's not! There is no GOD! If there was, he never would have taken Lor! He was like, like, like the very picture of innocence so why would he want to take him?! There's no god!"

SMACK!

Niall's father stood imposing before him, all of his six foot five frame towering over his son, his fist shaking while his expression remained nothing but stone. Except those eyes. Those eyes could have killed. They wanted to. Niall could feel it, the way his father stopped himself from punching him again, until his son's face was nothing left but pulp.

"Do. Not. Speak like that before me again. Understand?"

The scar through his father's lip gave him a perpetual sneer. But even without it, Niall felt it deep in the pit of his stomach. The hatred. The regret. The desire to extinguish the life he ultimately created. Niall could feel the heat prickling behind his eyes but he blinked the sensation back. Spitting out a gob of blood, Niall grabbed his stinging cheek and turned away, striding away even as his father bellowed at him not to walk away from him.

"He's not," Niall said finally, sweeping the sugar into his hand and not looking at Cain.

[Cain Plunkett]

In the interminable silence that followed, Cain's eyes didn't leave Niall's face. Even when those tiny grains of sugar spilled all over the table, cascading his way, he didn't stop staring. It was as if he thought that maybe he could hypnotize Niall into believing what he so fervently believed.

"He is." Cain's voice was no less certain than before. He reached out a hand, obeying some strange impulse—a little brother thing, perhaps—to comfort Niall. His hand closed over Niall's and gripped it tight.

"He's there. I know it. You know it too." It was just the selfishness and the pain and the grief that blinded Niall to the truth.

Ding!

A bell rang somewhere, dimly, and Cain ignored it but the door behind him had opened. The sound of many feet tramped inside, and mens' voices. Familiar voices, though. Cain started. Then he ducked his head and turned it so that he could avert his face, because he thought he heard Jem.

"I don't see Ken, Jem," someone said close by, and Cain shimmied further into the booth. He didn't want to be seen by them. He didn't want to be caught with this man, because that would put him into definite danger and... part of Cain thought that maybe Niall could be saved in a way that didn't involve putting him six feet under.

[Niall Gallagher]

Niall laughed bitterly. No, he wasn't. And even if he was, Niall wouldn't meet him there. He would go to the Other Place. If not for not believing, then for his other sins. Niall couldn't even count his sins on his hands at this point. What kind of person was he? Cain didn't know. He didn't know Niall let creatures of the night have their way with him until he couldn't think anymore. They were the only thing that stopped the racing thoughts anymore. That or that street drug, prystal. Cain was a pure little kid. He didn't know anything about addiction. He didn't know about drugs and depraved sex and death. He didn't know.

And he shouldn't. Niall wanted him to stay innocent, like Lor.

His hand formed into a sticky fist, the sugar sticking to his palm and his fingers. The kid just wanted him to believe in something. He probably thought he could save his soul and set him on the way to heaven. Niall wasn't just a black sheep, he was a lost sheep and Cain was trying to shepherd him to salvation. Too bad most of Niall didn't want it, even if a kernel of him did.

The sound of a bell and several noisy boots and men pulled him out of his reverie and Niall snapped his head up at the sound of the voices. He let out a soft, amused snort.

"I used to know a Ken." He cocked his head to the side. "Come to think of it, I knew a Jem once, too."

Then he noticed that Cain was pushing himself further inside the booth and Niall followed suit, trying to tuck his six foot tall frame smaller against the wall of the booth, eyes on Cain.

"What's wrong?" he asked. "Are they after you? Bullies!"

Abruptly he stood up, hands slapping the table.

[Cain Plunkett]

"No, they're—"

Pointless to explain now, as Niall stood up so suddenly and slapped the table so loudly that even Cain flinched. The voices ceased. Cain almost felt the eyes on them, the heads swerving, the brows raising. He ducked even further down but—

"Cain?"

Cain swallowed. "Go!" He half-whispered to Niall. "You have to get out of here! They'll hurt you!"