"And Cain says, “When you split me and my brother in the womb, you did not divide us evenly. He got kindness, and I got longing. He got complacence, and I got ambition. I want to kill him sometimes. I think sometimes he wants to die.” - Nathaniel Orion, "Hevel"
It had become increasingly common in the last few years—the fighting. It had started off fairly casual. A snipe here and there. A deliberate brush off. The kind of disagreements you would expect siblings to have. It wasn’t until Kaitlynn started having panic attacks, and Adam was locking himself in his room for days on end that Dmitri began raising his voice. But even as the fights got more heated, they remained one sided. Maria saw herself as superior to Dmitri, and it showed. She refused to engage in screaming matches when he provoked her.
To hear their uncle explain it, it hadn’t always been like that. They’d been close, like Kaitlynn and Adam were. Best friends. Inseparable in almost every stereotypical way one would expect twins to be. Dmitri and Evan had been friends too. But they got older, and something had changed in Maria. Dmitri could never figure out what it had been. Somewhere in the pursuit of her ambitions, they’d lost sight of each other, and she hadn’t cared enough to make her way back.
To hear their mother explain it—well, their mother didn’t talk about him much.