Lucky.

This chapter features content not suitable for many viewers. Trigger warning(s) include: death, suicide.

"Danny! Dinner's ready!" 

Clover shook her head as she walked back into the kitchen and helped her mom get the food on the table. Her brother had been distant lately, sure, but sometimes he could be outright obtuse. Tonight was supposed to be all about bringing them back together. Dad had just gotten back from his business trip to Japan, and Mom was finally out of her shell again now that she didn't miss him as much. This was the time they usually gathered around the table and laughed harder than they had in weeks.

When the table was set, their father's car honked loudly outside. "Just in time!" Their mother squealed, and Clover grinned. "I'll get Dan, you get your man." She threw her mom a wink as she rushed out the door.

"Danny!" Clover called again as she ascended the stairs. "Daniel, I swear to God..." The halls of their house were so narrow that she almost felt claustrophobic going up there. The air didn't sit well; it was too static, almost stale. Instinctive caution overtook her as she continued, shakingly, to the end of the hall, where Danny's bedroom was. She was struck with the memory of first arriving in that house, and the way she and her brother had faught mercilessly over who got to have that room. He won, in the end.

He always did.

"Danny?" She called again, though Clover doubted he would hear it over the pounding bass of his music. He always did blast it too loud.

Her fingers touched the doorknob. A shiver of dread rolled over her, as if the fingers of ghosts were crawling across her skin.

Before she could chicken out she turned it, swiftly, and pushed open the door to what lay beyond.

For a moment, the floor fell out from beneath her.

"Danny? Danny?" 

It was useless to say it, she knew, somewhere in her tangled mind, but the only coherent word able to push itself from her lips was his name. Clover said it louder, cried it, screamed it, but he wouldn't hear, wouldn't listen, wouldn't look up. Why wasn't he looking up?

She begged him, stumbling forward a step before freezing again as she caught sight of his fingers, slightly blue. His fingernails were all purple underneath. Try as she might to grasp at the bigger picture, all Clover could see were the details. The utterly straight way his fingers were relaxed at his sides. The dark stains against his jeans. The way the hem of his t-shirt hung just a little awkwardly away from his skin.

There seemed to be a disconnect in her brain. She heard an odd thump and tried to distinguish the sound before recognizing it as her knees slamming against the carpet. Clover screamed, louder, clawing at her face yet unable to close her eyes. At this level all she could see were his legs and feet, socked appendages dangling over the floor in a way that was so unnatural, so wrong, that she screamed again, this time wordlessly.

Clover's heart felt like it was beating out of her chest. She heard the door slam downstairs and, in a moment of lucidity, wondered if they could even hear her scream. She looked up again at her brother's glassy eyes and screamed louder than she could ever remember doing before. Was this what it felt like to burst your own eardrums? 

Her hands scrambled over her chest, trying to figure out a way to just pull it out, pull out this pain, this aching knowledge that he was gone, and that nothing she could've done would have brought him back. As soon as she'd walked in the door she knew he wasn't there anymore. His body didn't move, barely swayed anymore. A puddle of urine had already started drying beneath his feet.

Clover started hitting herself, her hands ruthlessly attacking her chest, her head, anything, anywhere to distract her from the silhouette of his body. It wasn't him anymore, it wasn't her, no one was anything, nothing mattered. Danny wasn't just her brother, he was her twin, her other half, the missing piece to her soul, the yang to her yin. 

She screamed for days, and no matter what the doctors did, they couldn't get her to stop.