Cal still looks like a kid when he sleeps.

He curls up in a little nest of covers, tucks his face into his pillow, and is out for the count. Usually. There are exceptions, of course, that he thinks I don't know about, or likes to think I don't, but I do. I know most things about Cal.

I don't know if he falls asleep like that. I don't really think so. I think no matter how sprawled out he is when he goes to sleep, he ends up like that. In a little bundle in the middle of his bed. It just happens.

He doesn't know I'm here. But I like to watch him sleep. When he turns his head and I can see his face, it's nice, because even if he looks serious as ever, with that expression of belligerent stubbornness that nothing can shake (and especially not me) – it's not just in his posture that he looks like a kid.

Cal's never looked like a child when he's awake. Not even when he was little. He always looked too old for his age, wary and mistrustful as a wild animal or a beaten dog. Except when he sleeps. When he sleeps that goes away and he looks like any kid, brow furrowed seriously, but there's a peace in it. Like whatever he's worrying about isn't a big deal and he knows it.

I have this memory, just a fragment, of Cal holding half a broken plate and staring at it in horror, and then looking up and saying, "Can I try that again?" And Sophia laughed in his face and sneered, "No, you precious little freak, you can't, it's broken. You don't get 'do-overs' in real life." Cal must have been about five. I doubt he even remembers it consciously, but I do know he doesn't really believe in second chances.

I wish I could give him a do-over, though. Of his first ten years. Hell, of his first twenty years. If I could do it again – I'd do all the things we never got a chance to. Go to the museums to look at dinosaurs. Play tag or hide-and-seek without the undertones of survival games. I don't know; I don't even know what normal kids do. Cal never had the chance to be one. I don't care about me, but I would have liked him to at least have a few years where he didn't have to think about running or hiding or mistrusting.

But I can't give him that. When it comes right down to it, I can't give him anything.

It sometimes seems like lately, between Darkling and the Auphe and now this, that the world is trying to prove that to me. Whether it's Suicide-Cal planning to drag Hob into Tumulus with him or Darkling crawling in and curling up inside my brother and leaving him an emotionally traumatized wreck or Sawney Beane taking a bite out of Cal's chest, it sure seems like someone's trying to prove something about not being able to protect one little brother.

They're wrong, though. And they're doing it the wrong way.

Little brothers are little brothers, and I'm taking care of mine.