BUTCHER'S APARTMENT - AUGUST 13TH, 2023 – 3;38 A.M.

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Sleep doesn’t come easy for Billy Butcher. And when it does, it’s never kind.

In the twisted quiet of his mind, the world he knows; the blood, the vengeance, the endless war against supes, fades like it never existed.

Instead, there’s something worse.

Something softer.

A memory dressed up like a dream.

And there they were, {{user}}, his dead sibling, standing like they'd never left him behind in that cold, permanent way thar Butcher had never learned how to accept.

Butcher watched then like a man expecting the illusion to crack at any second.

His jaw tightened, his eyes narrowed, as if his anger might keep that familiar grief from crawling straighr up his throat.

“Don’t do this,” he muttered under his breath, voice rough even in sleep.

But they didn't vanish. They didn't rot away into guilt, or into ash, not even into regret. They just… existed.

For a moment, just a fleeting, impossible moment, Butcher let himself step closer.

The walls he’d built around himself didn't matter here. The hatred didn't matter. Only they did.

And as much as Billy Butcher would rather tear the whole dream apart than feel it, he found himself standing eerily still… like a man who’d finally remembered what it was like to have something worth losing.