An AU around the time "The Brothers Grim" would have happened.
The End of Paralysis
Prologue
I never really dreamed of heaven much until we put him in the ground.
--Bright Eyes, "Easy/Lucky/Free"
Ryan couldn't believe how cold his brother's skin was. It was so cold and it looked blue, almost grey, but he supposed that was normal. It was a corpse, after all.
Ryan kicked his brother's hand, watched the lack of resistance.
Limp.
Cold.
Dead.
In a few days, it would be buried. It would be under the dirt with the worms and insects that would survive off of what was left until it was nothing more than a few bones in a wooden box. It it it. Like a pencil or a button or a bottle. A non-gender-specific object because his brother, Trey, wasn't a boy anymore and he was never a man and now he was nothing.
Ryan wondered if it smelled. He couldn't smell it. His nose was stuffy.
"Hey, kid, come on now. Move away."
A firm hand grasped his shoulder and pulled him away from it. Ryan didn't help, planting his feet firmly on the ground, looking down at it; at Trey's remains.
"It was my brother," he told the hand and even to his own ears, the words sounded too uncharacteristically conversational to have been emitted from Ryan Atwood's mouth.
"I'm sorry, son. Please…let's get you away from here. Where are your parents?"
"It…it doesn't have a head, anymore," Ryan replied thoughtfully, sniffling. His nose was itchy. "It used to have a head."
Ryan knew he was being silly. It still had a head, but the head didn't have a back. The back of the head decorated the wall and part of the floor like a recklessly-hung tapestry. The Cohens wouldn't like it in their house.
"He's in shock," the hand called to the rest of the room. It didn't move, because it didn't care that he was in shock. Not the hand, but the 'it'. The 'it' was shock personified. "Son, what's your name? Who are your parents?"
"I'm Ryan," Ryan answered, scratching his nose absently. "My mother will be up in a few hours, I think. What time is it?"
"It's three am, kid," the hand told him, gently pushing him away from it. But Ryan walked backwards, his eyes never leaving his brother's red afterthoughts.
"Yeah, a few hours, then," Ryan assured him. Mom was when the sun rose into the sky and killed the night.
"What are you doing here?"
Ryan didn't know how to answer that question. He wanted to tell the hand a lot of things. Like how his mother wasn't a certain time of day that came and left within an hour. No, his mother wasn't a fleeting moment and his father wasn't in jail and his real brother wasn't a mess on the floor, but a boy sleeping in his bed dreaming of the season of the living.
"He was free today," Ryan said. "He got out…but now he's this." The hand had a face and Ryan looked at it. "I called the ambulance as soon as I saw him."
The hand patted him hesitantly. "You did good, kid."
Ryan smiled. "I try. Will you call Sandy? He's probably worried."
"Who's Sandy, kid?"
"My guardian," Ryan explained patiently. "I was supposed to go to bed because I wanted to go to school tomorrow because I have a test and Kirsten said I could only go if I was better, but then Trey called and he sounded really scared…"
The hand felt his forehead.
"You're running a fever…"
"I know, I just told you," Ryan said, feeling slightly irritated. "I probably won't get to go to school tomorrow now. I'll be behind..." Ryan looked accusingly at the still body on the ground. "It was always messing things up for me…"
The hand paused. "It'll be okay, kid. We'll call Sandy. Can you give us his number?"
Sandy Cohen rushed into the police station, his wife at his heels, eyes darting around at an alarming rate until they landed on his young charge. Ryan looked so young and lost, sitting in a chair with his hair in his eyes, his nose red from the nasty cold he had been harboring for the past week.
"Ryan!" Sandy gasped, running to the teenager. "God, Ryan…"
"Sweetie, are you okay?" Kirsten asked immediately, searching the warmth of the boy's face with a small hand. "Baby, you're sick, why did you…?"
Kirsten trailed off, noticing their foster son's lack of response, and looked to Sandy who wished he had answers, but didn't. They hadn't told them anything and Ryan had begun to tremble.
TBC...