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When his father’s sword pierced through his chest, Kwei was a little bit busy trying to reach the device that would send his little brother away. To a deadly place that would still be safer than right here with their father.
When the sword licked his throat, followed by hot, searing pain, and Death sang her song in his ears, the last thing he saw was his brother’s face, frozen in horror, and the ship soared into space. Kwei smiled. Relief flooded through him, as safe as the embrace of nothingness.
There you go…my little brother.
---
His brother was an odd one, Kwei thought sometimes, when they were growing up.
He was always too small, always tried too hard, always got picked on and humiliated, and never gave up. For something so tiny, he stood out like a sore thumb anywhere he went.
Father hated him. To be fair, Father hated everyone, Kwei included, but he reserved a special place for the tiny boy that he tried his hardest to pretend wasn’t his blood. Dek never saw it, but Kwei did. He just wasn’t sure Dek didn’t see it because of his blind adoration of their powerful sire, or he was too used to hatred to see it clearly.
Kwei didn’t really know why he cared for the boy in the first place. Blood meant little where they came from. Only power mattered, and as far as that went, Dek didn’t stand a chance. He would be lucky if he made it to adulthood. And Kwei…as far as being a Yautja, it was in his instinct not to care.
He vaguely remembered returning to find his brother, still not being able to walk very well, all bruised and bloodied, tried to crawl toward him. Some older kids beat him up. It didn’t really matter that he was barely out of the nursery. For their species, if you could stand, you could fight.
He remembered Dek reached out a tiny hand toward him and grabbed his shirt with surprising strength. He wasn’t crying, wasn’t really saying anything. Just grabbing his shirt like his life depended on it. Kwei felt a weird pull in his chest. Not fear, not exhilaration, just something weird that he didn’t know the name of.
“You hungry?” Kwei asked after a long while. He reached out to pick him up.
Dek babbled happily and wrapped his arms around him, and that was that.
Kwei gave those kids picking on Dek a slightly worse beating. When he scrubbed his bruised knuckles afterward, the weird pull in his chest still didn’t go away.
After that day, kids knew better than to fuck with Dek when Kwei was around. The boy took to him like an imprinted kitten. Kwei was half-convinced the boy was surprisingly fast on his feet because of all the time he had run after him since they were kids.
Also, because he was small.
“Short” Kwei patted his head when Dek tried to grab his hair and failed. He got a snarl for his trouble. So much temper for such a small frame.
A year later, Dek saved his life from a children's toy, of all things. One of the few times he had been stupid in his life, and Dek paid the price of permanent deformation for it. The boy was very upset about the tooth, but never with him. He protected Kwei, as small and weak as he was, and acted like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Their kind’s instinct had always been of violence, not protection. Yet…
---
Sometimes, he felt Father’s growing distaste for their closeness stabbing at his back. He pretended not to see it.
“Not all Yautja are meant to make it. Weaknesses are better eliminated before they can fester. Do you understand, Kwei?” Father told him one day, after he took his first kill. One of the youngest Blooded in Yautia history. He couldn't care less for the title, but it came with his own spaceship. That, he was more than pleased.
“Yes, Father” Kwei answered dutifully.
Dek moved into his spaceship with him. That afternoon, he started to teach Dek how to hunt.
---
Kwei was an odd one himself. Not in the obvious, runt-of-the-litter like Dek, but he was. He was just better at hiding it.
The way of their kind was that of violence. Become the hunter, or become the hunted. Glory of the hunt, blood of the prey, killer of killers.
Kwei understood it. He was reasonably good at it. He just never identified with the way of life he was born into.
“You got the strength, my boy. The mind. Just not the heart” Mother once told him, in that uncaring, always half-bored way of hers, and Kwei hated her for it.
“Too smart for your own good” She patted his shoulder and was gone. Like she always did.
Kwei cared too little.
The titles others dying to seek meant little to him. The trophies he hung on his wall were much for other eyes than his own.
As much as his kind loved to pretend, there was little meaning in death. Only silence.
Kwei, perhaps unlike any Yautja before him, sought meanings beyond the hunts. It was almost surreal how the foreign, almost treacherous thought came so naturally to him.
He sought for days, months. He found nothing.
“Kwei, look!”
Dek pulled the bow string masterfully, and the arrow came flying into the air before hitting the target dead in the bull’s eye. Just the way Kwei taught him to.
Kwei hummed agreeably.
Perhaps he already found it.
---
Kwei cared too much.
He hoped his little brother would grow to become the best of their kind. Because he was, even if others were too blind to see it.
There was fire in that boy. The kind Kwei didn’t see in himself, didn’t see in Father, didn’t see in any Yautja with thousands of kills to their names.
What Dek lacked in brute strength, he was more than making up for with his resilience, quick wit, and flexibility. There was also this brutality in him. Unique to their kind, even more unique to their bloodline. Kwei taught him how to harness it.
He pushed him, harder than even by their species’ standards, but Dek was never one to complain. If anything, Kwei felt like Dek would start cutting his hand to greet him soon enough, so he put a stop to it before any nonsense could start.
Dek sometimes came back from hangout with new injuries and a grumpy look on his face.
“Told you you’re not ready to take on them yet. At least, not at the same time” Kwei said, toying with his brother’s chipped dagger. He probably could get him a new one. Probably.
“Oh, shut up!” Dek trotted off, his footsteps heavy and unprofessional. Kwei would genuinely kick his ass around for that tone on any other day. Just not today.
Later, when he was about to sleep and truly wasn’t in the mood for more teenager nonsense, Dek was standing in his doorway with a plate of what looked like burned meat in his hands.
“Snack” He announced, and it was an apology and a “I can’t sleep, so neither can you” rolled into one. Kwei resisted the urge to sigh.
Much later, when Kwei truly thought their conversation had died down and was about to sleep for real, Dek asked him, almost silently.
“What if the clan never accepts me?”
Kwei tried to blink the sleep away.
“Then find one that does”
---
“Get rid of him” Father told him, disdainful, like he was talking about an insect. Kwei calculated the chance that he could chop Father’s head off and walk out of there alive. It wasn’t very high.
“He deserves to hunt. Father…” He pleaded his case, perhaps for the first time in his life.
“Get rid of him”
Father was never one to repeat himself. Something about his tone made Kwei grip his sword’s handle instinctively.
He looked at the creature that sired him, and it struck him. Father wanted Dek dead, not because he was a weakness. It was because he was Kwei’s.
Father wanted blood. Either way, he would get it.
Kwei took his time on the way home. Walked the barren land of his home planet. Breathed in the dusty air. Ate some treats he always liked.
Kwei thought of his life. The Leader title Father all but dangled in front of his face as a potential reward to “get rid of” Dek. The female who promised to bear him a child if he killed a Xenomorph in his next hunt. The prey he had chosen but had yet to finish. His next weapon upgrade.
His brother. Still too short, too young, too oblivious.
Kwei had lived his entire life, chasing goals that weren’t his, pleasing those he couldn’t care less about.
What was Glory? In the hunts. In the trophies. In the blood.
Except for Kwei, Glory was raising a terribly different kid, of whom he couldn’t be more proud.
Their kind’s instinct had always been of violence, not protection. Yet…
When he reached his ship, he had already made a decision.
---
“I want the Kalisk”
Dek announced, and Kwei wished he could be surprised. He objected, of course, even when he knew it was futile. The boy had a calling Kwei knew he couldn’t be in the way of.
He wished he could be around to see the hunt make his boy a man. A Yautja. A predator. Even something more. Something better.
“You saved my life. You protected me” Kwei reminded him, or himself. He didn’t really know. But it was important somehow, he knew he had to say it.
“Don’t blow yourself up” Kwei shoved Dek a bit too hard, like he always did, and his brother snarled at him, like Dek always did.
Maybe Dek could leave before Father arrived. Maybe…
The sound of the engine pulling up at his door pulled him out of his last-minute delusion. Kwei took a deep breath and felt the calmness wash over him, just like before a hunt.
Dek’s first hunt. And his last.
He followed his brother outside.
---
Dek looked up at him, his eyes wide and scared. The same eyes as…
…A tiny kid held onto his shirt, bloodied and bruised, but never cried. Kwei had chosen to pick him up. His little brother.
“Kwei?” Dek called him, like so many times in the past, like he trusted Kwei to know better. To guide, to help.
I’m right here, kid.
There were so many things he wanted to say, but there was no time. Not anymore. But Kwei wouldn’t be the big brother if he couldn’t get some last words in.
“Be brave, brother.”
END.