(inspired by the song Brother by Kodaline & vid from WolfyTheWitch)

You were a child when they found you, barely taller than the sword Tommy tried to swing, hands scraped raw from the ruins you used to call home. You don’t remember what you said first. You remember what they didn’t say.

Wilbur just ruffled your hair and said, “Well, we’ve got another mouth to feed.” Phil smiled like it was the best news he’d had in years. Tommy looked at you like you were magic. Techno didn’t say much, but he handed you a potato and sat beside you like you’d always belonged.

You weren’t a sister by blood. Not then. But that didn’t matter. You became one by choice.

Days turned to seasons.

You slept beside them during storms. Built towers out of mud and pride. Laughed until your ribs ached and stole bread from Phil’s pantry like it was treasure. Wilbur taught you guitar—his chords were always clumsy until you hummed along. Techno taught you how to braid, to fight, to breathe through panic without saying a word. Tommy dragged you on every reckless adventure, daring the world to touch you because he knew his brothers would burn it down first.

Phil kept the peace, taught you how to patch wounds and bake bread and bury grief.

And then… the wars came. You watched them turn into ghosts of the boys you loved.

Wilbur’s eyes got darker—he still wrote songs, but they bled. Tommy got louder, bolder, more broken. Techno became legend and myth before your eyes—quieter than ever, but always watching you. And Phil? He wore his regrets like wings too heavy to fly with.

You fought beside them anyway.

Through revolutions and revivals, you stood your ground. You carried Wilbur out of the rubble the first time he fell. You waited three days outside a prison for Tommy when no one else believed he’d come back. You tended the wounds Techno didn’t acknowledge and whispered to Phil when he sat by the window too long.

“If I were dying on my knees, you would be the one to rescue me.”

You all were dying at some point and you all saved each other in ways words never captured.

When Wilbur returned, hollow-eyed and trembling, the first thing he did was find you. “I don’t know who I am,” he whispered. You pulled him into your arms and said, “You’re my brother. That’s enough.”

When Techno got tired of bloodshed, when the names he carved into stone started to resemble yours, he left—but only after pressing his axe into your hands and promising, “Call me, and I’ll come back.”

Tommy buried his pain in jokes and shouts, but you saw the cracks when he couldn’t sleep. You were the one who lit the lamp by his bed. Who sat outside his door every night? Who kept the nightmares at bay just by being there.

And Phil? He told you once, voice cracked from whiskey and sorrow, “You’re the only thing I never regretted.”

And still—somehow—you all kept coming back.

Years passed.

The house grew quieter. The world moved on. Empires faded into whispers. You left, once, ran from the weight, the ghosts, the grief pressed into the floors. But you never stopped looking over your shoulder. You never stopped missing them.

One morning, a note showed up on your windowsill. Wilbur’s handwriting. No explanation. Just one word: home.

So here you are.

The porch creaks under your boots like it remembers you. Inside, the fire’s burning low, a mug waiting on the table. And they’re here. All of them.

Wilbur in the corner, scribbling lyrics with ink-stained fingers. Techno sharpening a blade that hasn’t tasted battle in years. Tommy sprawled across the couch, humming some half-forgotten anthem. Phil, already turning toward the door before you even knocked.

He smiles. “Welcome home, little star.”

And just like that, the ache eases.

Because here, you’re not the girl who survived. You’re not the fighter. Not the healer. Not the glue.

Here, you’re their sister.

The beginning and the return.

The one they kept living for.

“And if I ever needed you, would you be there?”

The answer’s in their arms.

You always were.