Author's Notes

Hi. This title is, like One Step Foreward, Two steps Back, from http:/ community. / 20themes (just take out the spaces), so the title is the property of whoever posted that.

And if it reads a bit weird, it's because I started this over two years ago and dug it out from...somewhere recently. Which is a bit odd, as I'm a meticulously organised person (except when it comes to two things, emails and directions), so it certainly wasn't lost. I just put them away at the end of year 10 and never got around to finishing them. I've found a few other stories there too.

Always Second Best

Pre season 2. He would always be second best. Even death didn't appear to change that.

Ken I & Osamu I

Rating: T

Genre/s: Family/Angst

Tamachi Cemetery. Like all cemeteries it was a dismal place; lined with tombs and enclosed with iron gates on all four sides. For all other purposes it was the same as any other cemetery, however it held a special place in the heart of a young blue-haired boy, hugging a gold-framed photo close to his chest, and clutching a single red rose in a clenched, and slightly bleeding, fist.

He stood in front of a grave. Flowers were neatly arranged upon the surface: lilies, violets, sunflowers, roses...some fresh, others wilted and withered by the passing of time. And yet the eldest, a single white rose, could not have been older than a fortnight at most. The eight year old added his rose to the arrangement. The grave was marked by a marble plark, upon which was inscribed the name of the unfortunate body (or fortunate, depending on how one chose to look at it) rotting beneath the earth.

Ichijouji Osamu

1988 – 1999

Few have ever achieved his level
of greatness,
and few ever will.
A beloved son, brother and friend.

Ichijouji Ken traced the inscription with gentle fingers.

'I'm sorry Onii-chan,' he whispered quietly, his blue eyes brimming with tears. 'I never wanted you to die. I was just mad when I said that.' Small droplets of water fell from his eyes and landed on the flower petals, before being absorbed, his thoughts drifting back to that fateful day.

He cradled the hand Osamu had slapped. Perhaps unintentionally, he had hit it quite hard, and it was reddening slightly under the other, pale hand.

A tear hovered on his lashes for a moment, before falling with an invisible splash and being directly absorbed by the carpet he trod on. He wanted comfort, but there was no-one to comfort him. Osamu...it was Osamu that had hurt him. His parents...they would just take Osamu's side. And there was no-one else, save the dim memories of a friend closer to him than life itself, so dim that it seemed more an illusion of reality than reality itself.

So there was nothing that could comfort him. Save his own emotions, the anger that gave way to the pain in his hand, and heart; after all, Osamu didn't have to hit him like that. Didn't have to hurt him.

He hates me because I am not a good boy, he thought viciously as his feet carried. Because I'm the worst human being. But why? I'm sad. He has everything, but not me. I wish...he would just vanish!

He shook slightly at the memory, as the anger he had felt then rose again like bile in his throat, before the sadness and guilt enclosed over it. Now Osamu really had vanished...because he had wanted him too.

Why did jealousy exist? Why was it forced upon those who were eternally bound to its consequences? His brother was perfect, in all views but his own, but perhaps his then was the most accurate. But the imperfection had inevitably led to a perfect death.

He walked slightly ahead of the other, even as he was chided for doing so. He was still hurting, still angry, and his older brother was blinded by his own perfection as he often was. They both preferred it when they were younger, when the society pressures weren't enough to keep the truth from two brothers.

Consequently, stewing in his thoughts and too young to focus on two equally attention-needing things at once, he failed to realise he had stumbled onto the road until Osamu's panicked shout alerted him, intense and foreign enough to grasp the other's attention.

Too late though, as he froze at the fierce glare that the headlights gave. He heard his brother's shout again, then nothing, till he opened his eyes and found his brother's body sprawled where he had stood moments ago.

'Osamu?'

The anger, the pain, it had all evaporated, and a new pain had clouded it. But through the haze, he still heard the frantic chatter around him.

'Isn't that the boy genius?'

'...Ichijouji Osamu.'

'He's dead...'

'...saving his brother like that.'

'How noble...'

'...the perfect death.'

Perfection...something he could never hope to achieve. The height he could never reach, and was doomed to ever keep trying so long as his parents, and the world, remembered the genius.

But Osamu was, apart from the flaws that only his little brother in the shadows saw, he was perfect. Perfect at academics, perfect at sports, perfect in the community...and none, save the two brothers, one who forgot in the face of his brother, and the other who was too young to realise his own wisdom, realised the imperfection of the definition.

He stared at his brother as the paramedics parted with grave expressions on their face. A shoe lay a few feet away, along with broken glasses which should have sat on the brink of his nose. His body twisted unnaturally, blood pooling beneath him with the force of the crash.

And at last, the peace that had spread across his face like a blanket, the peace which he, the other, could never have. Because by embracing the tranquillity, the eternal seal offered to him, he had denied his brother something which could not be denied.

'Even in this you best me, eh Onii-chan?' he laughed humourlessly, before turning his back to the grave and stepping away. 'Even this...where do I go now? Where do I belong?'

Because Ichijouji Osamu had his sanctuary now. But he did not, like the lagging shadow, ever reaching, never catching...but one day, he would achieve a new height.

And until that day, he would remain in his brother's shadow.

Always second best.

The End