The Fall of the Stars

Words: 3207

Couple: None

Notes: One-shot written for the Toy Master Trilogy from Wattpad.

Ratings/Warnings: fluff, brotherly love, family bonds.

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My earliest memories were of the Little Dipper Observatory and Museum, where both of my parents worked from the moment they graduated college and got married. Whenever I try to think further back, I can’t remember anything, the very first thing I could see in my mind was standing in the lobby of the museum’s section, looking up at the life-sized paper mâché diagrams of space capsules, antennas, and spheres that represented the planets of the solar system.

I remember this feeling of euphoria and belonging as my mother held my hand carefully in her own, leading me across the room and waving to the woman at the desk. She was nice, I remembered, always wearing the most outrageous clothes with stars, sparkles, and planets on them. All her jewelry was shaped to look like planets like Earth and Saturn, and she would always sneak me a Milky Way bar when my mom wasn’t looking.

Both of my parents were passionate astronomers who usually worked in the labs looking through the huge telescope or researching online and with books that I could barely lift. I was practically raised there since my parents were always working, even though we did have a house in town, we were rarely there. I didn’t mind, though, not at all. My parents were never neglectful, they loved me and my brother immensely, but they also loved the stars in the sky. I couldn’t blame them, I did too.

I got used to sleeping in the domed observatory. When I first sat down in the cushioned seat and leaned back to watch the ceiling rotate in the darkness, stars glittering above, I was hooked, it was my favorite room. Whenever my parents were working late nights I would take my sleeping bag, start the presentation in the observatory, and just lie down to watch the stars moving across the ceiling. It was like I was camping without the bugs and the cold.

For several years, it was something personal, something just for me to enjoy, until my mother got pregnant again. Originally, I hated the very idea of a sibling, I figured they would steal my toys, take all my parent’s love, get in the way, and I wanted nothing to do with the squishy pink blob that my parents showed me exactly on November eighth at two forty-three in the early morning.

Just like the stubborn kid I was, I rebelled, refused to look at him, folded my arms and glared at my father like he was the devil, until the little blue bundle started wiggling and crying, ultimately freaking me out. I remember the sound of my father’s laugh as I rushed over to shut the thing up, stopping dead when I caught sight of the bright brown eyes. He was just so tiny, it was unreal.

The instant he saw me, he stopped crying, squealing up and waving his hands for me. I instinctively backed away, but losing sight of me just had him wailing again, so my father dragged me closer while rolling his eyes and laid the infant in my arms. He took a moment to adjust my hold until he was certain I wouldn’t drop the weird loaf of bread.

He wasn’t an hour old and he’d already imprinted on me like a duck or something. I didn’t like it, but whenever I tried to give him back, he would start crying, so my parents shrugged unhelpfully with smiles and just left me be. They even wanted me to name the damn thing, which is kind of why he didn’t have a name for the first four months of his life. Whenever someone asked his name, my parents would say, “We don’t know yet, our son hasn’t decided.”

For months, it was like that, this stupid thing would scream bloody murder if I wasn’t around, and everyone thought it was just adorable, but I was not a fan. Until one day I was sitting on the ground in the lab with a couple of books and toys, the stupid thing was lying on his back on a black blanket covered in stars, playing with a rattler with his eyes locked on me.

My mother and father were at the telescope watching some weird fluctuations on the surface of Mars, they swore it was normal but I was expecting the planet to blow up (they said I was watching too much SciFi). I was flipping through one of the big books when the infant beside me rolled over and squealed, flopping with his hands smacking the page. I groaned in irritation and tried to push him away, but he wouldn’t budge, and simply latched onto my sleeve.

“Stop it, stupid. You’re annoying. Mom!”

“He just wants to be closer to his big brother, sweetie,” my mother said from where she was sitting.

“He’s ruining my life!” I whined, and both my parents sighed.

“Have you named him, yet?” my father asked, and I threw a tiny astronaut at him.

“No! He’s stupid!”

“He’s nearly five months old. You don’t want him nameless when he’s your age, do you?”

“I don’t care!”

“If you name him we can clock out at lunch and get some ice cream,” my mother said, and I perked up.

“Really?” my eyes moved to the tiny thing to see he had wiggled closer to the book and was giggling furiously, my lips twisting into a heavy from as I stared at the page he was wrinkling in his tiny fist, “Carina,” I said, and the room got quiet besides the baby gurgles.

“Sweetie, that’s beautiful!” my mother exclaimed, and I looked up to see she had turned away from the telescope and had a hand on her chest.

“Can we get ice cream?”

“Of course, kiddo,” my father grinned and I scrambled to my feet, pausing before reaching down and dragging little Carina up into my arms.

“You can come too, but if you eat my ice cream I’ll be mad.”

He squealed and latched onto me, and I could hear my parents laughing in the background. After naming him, I guess I started getting used to him. Maybe that was why my mother and father insisted I be the one to do it. Naming him made me feel like he wasn’t just some tumor that the doctors pulled from my mother’s mouth (that’s how that worked, right?), he was part of my family, part of me.

Naming him made me more willing to bond, and I really ended up loving him. Where at one point I hated him near me, now I didn’t like it when other people were ogling over him or holding him. I absolutely hated it when strangers started praising my parents for making such a pretty baby, asking if they could hold him.

“He doesn’t like you,” I would say in a very snotty voice, dragging Carina’s carrier closer to myself and leaning over him.

A few I did that to just gaped at me before glaring and asking my parents what happened to me, why was I such a disobedient child, blah-blah, but others thought it was adorable that I loved my baby brother so much. I didn’t care much for their opinions as, I just didn’t want them to touch Carina, or look at him, or coo like freaking teenage girls in a zoo of baby animals.

When Carina took his first steps, they were towards me, because I was a little too far away and he didn’t like it. My mom lost her mind when it happened, crying in excitement as she watched him waddle a few steps before falling and wailing. A few months after that he said his first word, which I think made my parents a little jealous. They were trying to get him to say mommy or daddy, but instead he said “Orion”. It came out jumbled and sounded more like “oreein” but we could tell what he wanted to say.

He followed me everywhere, clung to my arm or my shirt whenever he could, I would carry him on my back through the museum and show him all the exhibits I loved, and we would sleep together in the observatory watching the stars moving across the ceiling. Carina was the most important person to me, and because our parents were often busy, I was the one stuck raising him, giving him baths, getting him dressed, making sure he ate, putting him to bed, killing the spiders and reading him stories.

When he skinned his knee on the road outside the observatory while he was learning to ride a bike, I was the one who cleaned him up and put band aids everywhere before kissing his owies and carrying him back into the building into the employee lounge, where we ate Rocky Road ice cream from the President’s special stash and watched Atlantis.

When kids in the neighborhood started to bully him, I was the one who ran after them with a large stick, chasing them over to the pond and throwing them all in before threatening them and ultimately getting into a lot of trouble for “harassing younger kids”.

When he had nightmares, I was the one he cuddled up to for comfort. Whenever he got sick, I was the one who waited on him until he got better. I taught him to read and write, as our parents were very against the public education system and believed we would learn more from them than teachers. Which was true. We were given top notch education without the threat of social anxiety or depression due to peers.

I didn’t want to leave when I got old enough for college, I wanted to stay with Carina or at least take him with me, but he pushed me out the door and told me to go and do something with myself, I couldn’t hold up in the observatory forever, so I did. I went to college, but I missed Carina and my parents so much.

I visited every holiday we had, just to be with them, and it satisfied me for a while. I was twenty-four when it happened. Carina and I were sitting in the observatory, leaning back in the chairs, and talking as the stars rotated above us. The museum was closed that day, so we had it all to ourselves, I was talking about how school was going while he listened silently.

“I really enjoy my nursing class,” I admitted, and he snorted.

“Why are you taking a nursing class?”

“It’s good to know how to take care of sick and injured people,” I said with a shrug, “Besides, calculus is boring, the astronomy teacher is a dolt. More than once I’ve ended up teaching that class myself, no joke.”

“The professors must love you,” Carina teased, and I grinned, stretching out more.

“I might become a doctor,” I said, “I like helping people. My counselor says I would be great in a leadership role,” I held my hands up, “Heart surgeon!”

“Wow, no,” Carina shook his head, “The hours are awful.”

“Well what do you want to do when you’re older?” I asked, “College?”

Carina was silent for a moment, his arms folded over his stomach as he stared up, shrugging after a long silence, “I don’t know,” he admitted, turning his head to look at me, “Maybe something with animals. Like a zookeeper or a marine biologist.”

“Oh, that’s neat,” I grinned, “Why animals?”

“They’re better than people,” Carina shrugged, “I don’t really like people.”

“What about me?” I pouted, and he smiled.

“You’re my brother so you don’t count.”

I chuckled and leaned back, folding my arms behind my head and closing my eyes. These silent moments were the best, where the two of us could just be together like we were still kids. It almost felt like nothing had changed, I wasn’t a college student who had to leave the next day, I was just a kid spending time with my baby brother.

That changed in the next instance.

There was an odd sound echoing through the room, like a whistle, Carina pushed himself to sit straighter while staring directly up, “Do you hear that?”

“Probably something with the sound system,” I said, “Nothing to worry about.”

“It sounds like it’s coming from outside though,” Carina said, standing up, and I sighed, stretching my arms out.

“Alright, worry wart, let’s go-.”

My words were cut off with an echoic boom that shook the entire building. The mechanism that moved the ceiling screeched to a grinding halt, so suddenly that sparks flew and Carina threw his arms to cover his head as I jumped to my feet and grabbed his arm.

“What the fuck?”

Another booming sound, before something even worse happened. The ceiling across the room collapsed, debris flying everywhere as dust a heavy wind shot out. I lunged forward and grabbed Carina, dragging him into my arms and shielding him as metal bars and whole pieces of the ceiling flew around us. Something snagged the back of my shirt, a gasp tearing from my throat when I heard it rip, but I felt no pain so choked it up to luck.

“Door, now!” I yelled, shoving Carina forward and hurrying after him.

We slammed through the doors and into the hallway, alarms were going off everywhere, people were rushing around looking petrified, but I couldn’t see our parents anywhere so I grabbed Carina’s arm and yanked him along beside me until we reached the lab. When I shouldered my way through the doors my eyes widened in horror and I turned to block Carina’s view before he could see, yanking him closer and hiding his face against my chest.

“Orion, stop!” he smacked at me to get me away, but I didn’t move, “Stop! What happened?!”

“I-it’s okay,” I assured, looking over at the collapsed room, tears burning my eyes when I saw the blood pooling out from under the rubble, “They… come on.”

I forced Carina out of the room so he wouldn’t see, keeping him in front of me as we ran down the halls and miraculously made it out of the building, stumbling into the street before turning to look at the museum, completely horrified as it collapsed in on itself. Carina had a hand over his mouth, his face was white in shock, and I wasn’t sure what had even happened. All I comprehended was our parents had been crushed.

“Orion,” Carina choked and turned to me, and I forced a shaky smile onto my face, reaching out to him.

“It’s okay,” I reassured, forcing the tears back so the smile could come out more genuine; I couldn’t cry in front of him, “We’ll be fine.”

“But what happened?!” he demanded, and I looked up, shaking my head as jets shot past.

“I don’t know.”

The world had ended, that’s what had happened, and our little city was in complete chaos. Evidently that tearing sound I’d heard did a lot more than just rip my shirt. There was a deep, heavily bleeding gash on my back, and when Carina saw it he freaked out and panicked. Somehow, we managed to find a clinic still open and rushing around helping patients, and they stitched me up before slapping bandages into my arms and telling me to leave because there were others who needed help.

With all the shock, I couldn’t feel the pain, all I cared about was leaving the clinic, grabbing Carina from the store he insisted on grabbing supplies from, and getting the hell out of there. When we were safe we could talk about what to do next, I’d let Carina mourn our parents while looking for a safe place to hold up while this sorted itself out.

I didn’t know at the time nothing would be the same. I still had hope, stuffing the bandages into the bag the doctor had given me and throwing the ruined shirt aside, grabbing one from a mannequin in the store window and yanking it on as I walked down the aisles looking for my brother. I assumed he was either in the canned food aisle or with the medicine, people were rushing around and slamming into me, but I couldn’t find him.

I went through the store twice and he wasn’t anywhere, so my panic spiked and I practically knocked people over in my haste to get out of the building, screaming Carina’s name. Every bad possibility flashed through my mind, and I clawed my fingers through my hair wondering what I was supposed to do, how I would live without him. Then I heard his voice, cursing, strained, desperate, and turned on my heel to run in the general direction he was in.

People had made me angry before, when they bullied Carina or tried to take advantage of others, but I had never been as angry as I was when I found Carina in the alley just outside the store, pinned to the ground by a group of older men who were tearing at his clothes. Already his shirt was ripped down the front, his lip and nose were both bleeding, and he had his eyes pinched closed as he fought against the people grabbing at his hips.

There was a metal bar in my hand before I even realized it, I’m not even sure where it came from, but a snarl was on my lips as I reached the bastards hurting Carina, swinging the object as hard as I could. It cracked against one man’s skull, and I grabbed him as he slumped over Carina, dragging him aside and dropping him further from my brother before going back to the fuckers.

Angry was one thing, but I’d never been violent. I don’t know what came over me as I swung the bar over and over with all my strength, breaking teeth, jaws, skulls, until all four of them were bloody messes. They probably died somewhere during my fit, but I wouldn’t have stopped if Carina hadn’t grabbed my arm.

My little brother looked so calm, there was death in his eyes, and I choked on my rapid breaths as I yanked him into my arms and hugged him tightly. These fuckers…. Almost hurt him. Damn it.

“I’m sorry,” I whimpered, and Carina relaxed against me, lifting his arms around me and carefully touching my back.

“I’m okay, Orion,” he reassured, “Thank you…. Thank you for stopping them.”

His voice cracked at the end, and I gave him a smile when I pulled back to hold his face, wiping at the tears that dripped down his cheeks, “I’ll protect you, okay? It’s my job as your brother. Stay close to me, okay? We’ll get through this. Just stay close to me.”

I didn’t know it at the time, but our life would never be the same. Carina changed after that day, he didn’t cry as much as he used to, I didn’t cry at all. I tried so hard to be happy, I smiled and made jokes, and he would laugh occasionally, I could still make him smile. The scar on my back aches sometimes, especially when it’s raining, but it’s a good pain. It was a memory of the day this happened, the day I protected my brother though my parents died.

If I had my little brother, I didn’t care about what happened to the world. He was all I needed, that’s what I told myself. Someone to protect, my family, I didn’t need anything else. That’s what I thought, until I met him….