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"I'm so sorry, Will." Albert's voice is rough and raw and oh so very angry.
"It wasn't your fault," the endling says after a perfectly timed pause.
Perfect, perfect, perfect.
The endling doesn't feel perfect. He feels weighed down by the gold in his veins and the silver leaf of his skin. By his ruby jewel eyes and his ivory teeth. By the perfect heart that beats unerringly in his chest.
Take my heart, he would have begged the doctor if only he'd known. Take my heart. You'll get more for it.
It had been a crime of opportunity. The endling would have given the doctor the opportunity to take his parts instead, if only he'd known.
If only he'd known.
He always knew.
He hadn't known.
If he'd known, then Louis would have lived.
If Louis had been the one with the perfect heart, then Louis would have lived.
The endling hadn't been sure that was Louis, not until he'd hugged him tightly and returned ever so fleetingly to those brief days in the ragged school.
To when Louis had been alive and the endling had simply been the boy.
The endling had screamed and screamed. Tears had run from the endling's eyes like a fountain of platinum. Red had run from Albert's ears like wine.
Louis had glistened carmine in the fading light.
"It wasn't your fault," the endling says again a week later when he catches Albert staring dully up at the naively blue sky.
"Do you really believe that?"
The endling can't answer. Something in him has withered too much, too far, too fast, and now his exhaustion has become far too unwieldy a thing. He drops his head onto Albert's shoulder and hopes it's enough.
Blood flows from endling's arm to the vial. The endling doesn't scream because it isn't Louis' blood. Albert screams for him, yells and makes a scene like he's gone mad until the collection stops early.
Albert's mother calls for an appointment with a proper doctor for him. The endling sees rage spark life into Albert's eyes.
The endling cries out for Louis in his dreams. He's always been a deep sleeper, and tonight, too, he doesn't wake.
Louis' doctor's heart is also heavy. Its blood seeps into the endling's palm like mercury.
"It wasn't your fault," Albert says, watching the endling claw at his chest as though in imitation of Louis's pain, as though he could go back in time and exchange his little brother's heart for his own.
There's no light in the endling's eyes. He smiles anyway.
The fire glows like opals and burns like molten iron. There is no swearing of brotherhood. Albert is his brother all the same.
The endling walks with Albert out of the burning manor. They leave four children behind.