A/N: thank you to happilycookie for the awesome banner!
Right guys I know this is a short chapter. It was meant to be part of the last chapter but i knew if i posted this part with the last, then the whole thing about Archie and Alex would have just been looked straight over and that part is important to the story because i want people i realise just how close the two brothers actually are and how much they care for each other. If they weren't, what happened with Roger's death just wouldnt have been as big.
So yeah enjoy this one.
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The look Archie was giving his older brother right now was one I had not seen in a while, if ever.
He was looking at Alex like he owed him the world, and if you think about it he did.
Alex’s actions that night were what allowed Archie to be the boy he was today. It allowed him to live his life normally, not have to carry around the scar of what someone like Roger can give to you.
“The scumbag got everything he deserved.” The words came out of my mouth before I knew they were going to, but once they did I realised how much I meant them.
Bradley's jaw clenched as he stared at me.
“That scumbag was my father. He was anything but.” Bradley hissed in my direction, before pointing at Alex “You believe that little story? The truth is he sat there and watched my father die. After he got his kicks, he went straight back to sleep like nothing happened. If that doesn’t scream ‘psychopath’ then I don’t know what does.”
“You.” Archie said without a hesitation.
Bradley breathed one laugh at this, shaking his head at his former best friend’s hatred towards him.
Suddenly, the message on the board when we found Tally dead in the classroom flashed back to me.
Choose your friends closely.
At one point, Bradley and Archie were best friends. He knew because of the wire on Kevin that we would be the ones going back out to look for the laptop, so he knew Archie would be the one reading that message. Hell I was friends with the kid back when we were younger, neither myself nor Archie had chosen our friends carefully.
Kevin was included in that statement. I didn’t know if he was included because I had chosen to trust him, or because he had chosen to align himself with Bradley. That part still wasn’t clear.
Once that little mystery was solved in my head, another one began to wrap itself up. That song, the one from Pretty Little Liars he played down the speaker when he killed the Principal.
Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.
Those words made so much sense now, because I knew that those ‘two’ the song was referring to was in fact Roger and Alex. Look where Roger was now.
The secret had been kept, and it was for the exact reason that one of them was dead.
Archie glued his eyes to Alex “I don’t know what to say man.”
Alex smiled “There’s nothing to say. Don’t thank me; you would have done the same thing.”
Archie thought about his brother’s words “A hundred times over.”
“I know you would, and for once it wasn’t you who had to look out for me.” Alex said, and I knew he felt bad about that. The responsibility that was pushed on Archie as Alex got worse I think was something he will always feel guilty about.
“Oh isn’t this fucking touching.” Bradley let out a breath of annoyance.
“If it makes you feel any better, I thought the day he died everything would get better. I thought once he was gone everything would go back to normal. I thought about ending that slimy little prick’s life so many times over in my head, and each time I thought about it I felt happy.” Alex explained to Bradley, but as he said the next thing he looked far from happy “Actually doing it though wasn’t anywhere near as satisfying as I dreamed it would be.”
“Because you know you had no f*cking reason to.” Bradley spat, and Alex shook his head calmly.
“No, he deserved everything and more. The reason I felt bad was because I thought I had sunk to his level. Just like he had over the years, I sat there and watched someone else slowly die.”
My stomach sank as I heard his words. Alex’s wasn’t dead physically, but mentally I think we all knew he passed away a long time ago.
“Over the years it got worse and worse. He would be everywhere, at school, at home. Every time I heard someone wake up in the middle of the night for a piss I thought he had come back for me. We went on holiday once and they were playing songs by the bar in the hotel and that one came on. His song.” Alex remembered, and my mouth fell open as I did also.
That holiday we all went to when Archie and I were eleven years old. Alex was fifteen and by this point he would have already killed Roger. The day he went missing and our dad’s found him in the middle of a shop having a full on breakdown. As I remembered the one he had before he confessed what he had done to Roger, it suddenly fitted very well and I had a pretty good idea why my dad was so disturbed after finding him like that.
Alex stared into space; God knows what thoughts running through his head.
“You never know what people are capable of. You never know what you’re capable of until it comes down to it.” He uttered the words that he had already said tonight when he was talking about our parent’s affair.
It dawned on me that he was not only talking about them, or Roger. He was talking about himself.
“I found him.” Bradley hissed through gritted teeth “I found him the next morning.”
Alex tilted his head as he looked at Bradley “You saw didn’t you?”
Bradley looked on, running his tongue over his top teeth before nodding.
“Yeah, I saw what happened that night. I heard people shouting in the hallway and got up. I opened my bedroom door slightly and saw you and my dad arguing about something. I saw you push him, and then I saw you sit at the top of the stairs to admire your work.” Bradley admitted bitterly “As I said before though, with that brilliant back story of how you were pushed to the extreme it really puts you in a good light.”
Bradley had obviously missed the beginning of Alex and Roger’s encounter that night. Of course all he would see was Alex pushing his father down a flight of stairs. Maybe if he had opened his door a few minutes earlier, we would not have been sat there having this conversation.
“If you knew all this time, why didn’t you tell the police?” Archie finally spoke.
I noticed Miss Vines and Kevin turn their heads to look at Bradley; I think both of them curious as to the answer of this question.
“I was thirteen years old. I had just watched one of my friends push my father down a flight of stairs. I had no idea what to say to them, I didn’t know whether what I saw was just a fucking dream for the first few months.” Bradley admitted, before letting out a laugh “Either that or I knew on some level I wanted to make you pay for what you did in my own way.”
“Is this enough for you?” Alex asked Bradley, and I wondered the same thing. Was this enough of a punishment in his eyes.
Bradley’s mouth turned up into a grin, before he made a thinking face and placed his index finger and thumb onto his chin as he thought it over.
“Hmm, I don’t really know to be honest…” He turned his head to the right and looked up “What do you think is this enough for us?”
My eyes drifted to where he was looking, as did everyone else’s in the room.
Miss Vines looked down at him, a smirk rising at her lips.
All fear fell from her face. She was no longer crying, and I realised I was too wrapped up in Alex’s story to notice she hadn’t been crying for a while.
“Personally?” Miss Vines smiled at Bradley. She lifted the hem of her top up to reveal her stomach, before reaching behind her. She made a pained face as she pulled the Cellotape off of her back “I don’t think we’re even close to done here.”
Bradley raised his brows and held his hands up in defence “Whatever you say.”
Once she had peeled off the rest of the Cellotape, she grabbed the wire that was stuck to her stomach and held it up for us to see “These things are extremely itchy after a while.”
She tossed the wire onto the ground, and it landed almost next to the one that Bradley had ripped off of Kevin’s chest earlier. Miss Vines let out a breath of air, rubbing her hands together before she walked to Bradley and took the knife out of his hand. She turned to look at our dumfounded expressions with the faintest hint of a smirk at her lips.
“He killed our dad. We are far from fucking finished.”
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