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Clutching his sibling's still, warm body to his chest, nothing felt real. His fingers felt stiff and cold, more like a corpse than they did. He didn't think he could have uncurled them enough to let go even if he had wanted to.
Kobra rocked back and forth on his heels, Party pulled into his lap. His legs were going numb beneath him and the world around swam and blurred in a mess of confusing lights and sounds.
The colour was fading slowly from their face, leaving only a shell of the loud and bright person he had known. Their hair, still the blazing red it had been in life, washed out their ghostly completion further. It was matted with dried blood and clung to their pale cheeks and forehead. It taunted him, made him want to scream and throw himself against the floor until he was battered and broken, made him want to tear at himself and leave deep gouges that bled the same colour as their damned hair dye.
But he couldn't move. He couldn’t let go. It wasn’t real anyway. They were going to shove him away, he could hear the ghost of the laughter he was sure was about to come. They were going to get up and pull him to his feet and march him out of there, making him feel like an idiot. And it would be the best thing in the world.
His ears were ringing. He felt someone grab his shoulder, try to pull him up. He didn’t move. He couldn’t leave Party. The hand persisted, it was joined by another one on the other side. Kobra didn’t know if he wanted to lean into the feeling of something real or shake them off because he knew they wanted to take him away. He felt like a statue. He didn’t know if he was even breathing.
There was broken glass on Party’s chest and Kobra’s arms. He was sure it hurt, but he didn’t feel it. He didn’t feel anything, not really, not anymore. His body felt empty and dead, his thoughts dull and far away, like they belonged to someone else. They probably did. It didn’t matter.
Someone had turned his head to look at them, or maybe he had done it himself, he had no memory of moving. The face was familiar but he didn’t know who it was, he probably should have. It didn’t matter.
Party was dead. Nothing mattered.
He found that he was shaking, shoulders and hands trembling badly. Another familiar stranger was tugging on his arm, insistent, pulling him away. The world sounded watery and strange, the first person, the one leaning over him was saying something. Everything was blurred, the world tilted. He finally let go.
The familiar faces had been his crew. He no longer saw them as such; they felt like strangers wearing faces he knew. He did not acknowledge them. The ride back was almost silent. He couldn’t turn himself round to find out who. He supposed he didn’t care anyway. He still felt cold and dull.
Kobra floated in a haze around the diner. He performed all the familiar motions, lifting the food slowly from the plate and to his mouth, sitting in a booth with the radio on the table- though it stayed turned off, the red line that showed the channel sat still in the same spot Party had left it. He was a shell of himself. He didn’t talk, didn’t touch; his footsteps barely even made a sound. It was like he wasn’t even there. He did not cry.
The others slowly began to realize that he was not all there, and maybe he never would be again. A part of him had died with his sibling. Party had always said he was their better half, but one could not exist without the other, not all together.
There would be no more Kobra Kid. Not as they had known him.
No one tried to fill the silence he left behind.
He disappeared sometimes, him and his bike vanishing in the nights, sometimes back by morning, sometimes gone for days. Whenever he returned he shrugged off the other’s concerns and went quietly back into the motions. He never told them where he went.
Everyone around him was grieving too, in their own ways. He didn’t care to notice.
Party was gone.
After a time he was trying again. He forced words from behind his teeth, a smile that barely touched the corners of his lips, a laugh so hollow and fake it made him wince.
He wanted to scream, wanted to tear at his skin, wanted the sound of his voice to be loud enough to drown them out, wanted them gone from his head.
He sat quiet instead and pretended to laugh at the others' jokes.
No one needed to see. Party had never let any of them see.
He shifted between avoiding everything that made him think of Party as hard as he could- staying away from their room, their clothes, discarding the bracelets they had made him; leaving his wrists cold and bare. And trying to hold their memory as close to him as possible- sleeping in their bed with jacket clutched tight to his chest, their familiar smell all around him, reading over and over the things they had written and the things they had loved. Regardless, he avoided talking about them in conversation.
Both hurt.
Both tore him to shreds and ripped apart any shred of feeling or thought that surfaced from the turmoil of agony that was his mind.
But he was trying again.
Party was gone and he was trying again.
What kind of horrible brother did that make him?
Every time the thought came back. He would be in the middle of a conversation, right at the brink of finally feeling something good again, then he would remember. The hint of a genuine smile would slide off his face and he would feel dull and dirty and cold.
Nothing helped. He tried anyway.