He had passed three years ago in the dead of winter and the height of war. It had been mournful for all of two months, the way it is when you die at seventeen.

Now, I stood impatiently at his overgrown grave. No one really tended to it, anymore. He was a martyr and a hero, but that faded quickly when war knocked on your door. Around me, snow languidly fell to the frozen ground. I reached out a trembling finger, brushing away the powdery snow that blanketed his gravestone. Here lay Acosta, it said, here lay a man who was better off forgotten.

“You came,” a familiar voice said from behind me. It was rougher than it used to be.

Slowly, I turned to face my brother. The past three years had done a number of him. Now, Acosta walked away from his life in hiding with a terrible limp on his right leg, cane steadily in hand. He looked like he had aged fifteen years — he had disastrous scars from electrical burns and injuries I couldn’t attribute to human means. We used to look related — same brown hair, same farmer’s tan, same empty blue eyes — but I reckoned those days died when he did.

“You look good,” I lied.

“You too,” he mumbled. “Listen, I’m sorry for everything that’s happened. You’ve got to understand, I had half a dozen men after me and I needed an out from army.”

I watched as he stabbed his cane repetitively into the solid soil beneath.

“You should’ve told us,” I bit back. I’d cried enough about him already, yet a familiar ache was forming behind my eyes. “We had the funeral. I visited your grave everyday. I knew you were too witty to die without a backup plan, and yet you didn’t even bother to give me half a sign. Saints, Mom’s been mentally absent since.”

He looked away. Now, I was sure that tears had made their way down my face. I always imagined him as so much more than this, a hero instead of a man. In the past three years, I had convinced myself that war had hardened away his anxiety, his fears, his nerves. I was a fool.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I’m coming home now.”

“And to do what?” I asked bitterly. “Join the war again? Fake your death a second time? Saints, Acosta, you don’t understand.”

At once, his body grew tense; I became acutely aware of the pistol tucked in his belt and the dagger on his thigh.

“No, I think it’s you who doesn’t understand,” he spat out, gripping his cane until his ugly hand began to tremble. “I may have left my family but Saints know that I have saved thousands of lives in the process. I’ve lead more uprisings than — “

He went silent as I shoved him to the ground, snow giving way to his body and surprise lining his grotesque features. He looked up at me, the dull sunlight lighting up his eyes in a way that I almost saw the person he used to be.

“Acosta, I bet you enjoyed escaping our little river town,” I cried, “You always told me how you hated it, how you felt like it was a jailcell. And now you’re the youngest leader in the army and you get to go anywhere in the world and do the unimaginable. You get to meet big fancy war heroes and powerful mages and corrupt world leaders and I bet you don’t spend half a moment between cocktails and swordfights to contemplate what you’ve left behind.”

Tears rolled down my pink cheeks, and the snow grew heavier around us.

For a second, his jaw clenched, but soon it was gone and replaced with guilt. Slowly, he lifted himself up, grabbing onto his right leg and leaving his cane resting in the snow.

At once, he pulled me in and hugged me tightly.

“No,” I sobbed heavily, crying into his coat. “No,” I repeated, tears soaking his shirt.

He hugged me tighter.