The reflections blurred together as he ran. Remi raced along the curve of the hallway; the outer circle encircled the maze’s core. He noticed that the center of the maze couldn’t be seen clearly. There was one wall deep at the heart of it that blocked his view, and he knew there was more to it, but whatever lay beyond it was veiled to him.

  As he rounded the curve, Remi saw there was a wall right in front of him, created where the path looped back on itself. He could hear it before he saw it. A low mechanical whirring punctuated by a rhythmic shuffle, like someone dragging a metal foot.

  He slowed his run to approaching the glass cautiously. They were waiting there for him behind the glass. Three figures stood side by side, still as statues. Watching for him. The Searer’s lens glowed white-hot as the Looper’s reels clicked in anticipation, and the Shredder’s carousel spun, slow and hungry. The Monstergears had found him. As one, they lurched forward and slammed into the glass. Thankfully, it held. They couldn't get through. But they didn’t stop; they spun, and Remi could see them barrel down the outer ring, receding in opposite direction. Remi’s heart skipped a beat. They were behind him now.

  He ran again, down one hallway, winding into the next, and the next, each one getting shorter and shorter as he moved deeper and deeper into the maze. There were no more memories now, just blurred glass, and fear, and running. Until up ahead, a large window lit up on his right as he went to make a tight turn. Remi stopped, and through it, caught sight of Bea and a raincoat.

  As he leaned in closer, he recognized the mall. The tiled floor, the food court chairs. A spilled cone in the middle. He didn’t step through. He didn’t need to. The scene pulled him. And as he disappeared into it, a soft message pulsed behind him:

  [PUZZLE RESET: MOBILITY ADAPTATION]

  [MOB GEARS: PATHING SHIFTED]

  [TIME REMAINING: 16:04]

  [MANA LASH STABILITY = 66%]

  The fight seemed to come out of nowhere. The worst ones always do. It’s funny that he could see it all play out now. It was almost archetypal in its patterning. But that is the benefit of time and distance, of analytical reflection. He wished he had had that reflective lense back then, because if he had, maybe he wouldn’t have been such an asshole.

  The truth about fights is that they aren’t really about what starts them. They’re always about something deeper, old hurts held too long, dripping to fill a glass. A snide remark. A missed call. A forgotten celebration. Apologies that go unsaid for too long. In their case, a flood of brotherhood misunderstandings. Feelings of protection and of inadequacy. Of the tension that pulls brothers to want to be together, but also drives them apart.

  Back then, Remi couldn’t see it, but he could now. How close to the edge his brother had been. How scared he was for Bea. How scared he was of his own failings. Maybe even how scared he was for Remi. But in that moment, he had been oblivious.

  He should have hugged him. He should have actually apologized. No, in the half-assed way he had. And he really should never have said what he did about Dodo’s wife. But right now, watching it play out again, but this time behind a glass wall, he was even more powerless to stop it than he had been back then. Time hadn’t dulled the sting. If anything, the clarity it brought made it worse.

  The fight had started about Bea and Remi’s negligence. He wished it had stayed there. If it had stayed about what he had done, instead of who they were. If Remi had kept it about himself, and not about his brother, maybe he might have actually seen his brother in the last 10 years. The relationship might have bent, but not broken. Maybe he wouldn’t have become a stranger in either of their timelines.

  Instead, all he had was a scarf, and a longing that he could go back and change it. But he couldn’t; he could just stand and watch it all unfold again.

  The thing with big fights is that they don’t rupture until they’re given permission by something smaller. Something stupid. Something that looks like the cause but is only the excuse. Not that losing Bea in a mall is stupid or that it was even her fault. It was Remi’s stupidity, his blindness that had catapulted this moment to the very top of his fuck-up list.

  The tension of a lifetime dribbles into the glass of a relationship, sometimes until it’s more than full. It’s the type of full where the water perched above the rim, suspended by nothing but memory, denial, habit and surface tension. Remi and Dodo had been living there for a long time, clinging to the shape of brotherhood long after it stopped resembling the thing they remembered. He couldn’t pinpoint the when exactly, but it was well before Bea was born. Before Dodo was even married. Back to the time when Dorian became a partner at Page, Page and Finch. It was still a stupid name. Who knows if he had made his page the last one on that list, if it would have been better. Page, Page, and Page is just as stupid a name. But maybe if he had chosen differently. If he had stayed in that dream, unsteady of pursuing his own, if he could have protected what they had. But that had been a different fight, at a different time.

  When this fight had happened, most of the damage had already been done, and for many years their relationship was just physics, a thin glass, that tried to contain water drops barely sticking together. The fight didn’t fill the glass; it did, however, bump the table. And once that tension breaks—once the water spills—it doesn't stop. Which is ironic, given that it all started because of a raincoat. One small display in a shop window, one small moment of negligence, and one thing small enough to be the excuse. Not the reason, but the excuse.

  He watched as it all played out again. The frozen scene started, Bea crying. Dodo comforting her. She was calm now, and eating ice cream. Far enough to see, but not hear. A father’s rage radiated from Dorian, and Remi was horrified to see the nonchalance that oozed from himself. His brother kissed Bea, gentle and practiced, before he walked towards Remi, posture stiff. His voice had been flat. Dangerously restrained. It carried the cold anger only their mother had ever mastered. Remi recognized it instantly, though he hadn’t encountered it often. It was the anger of a parent, built out of love, and fear, and hope, and the quiet promise of destruction.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  His voice hissed from between unforgiving lips. “She was right there, Remi. You were right there. What the hell were you even doing?”

  He wasn't really sure. They had found a window display with a child’s raincoat on a small mannequin. He had thought it would look cute on Bea, and they looked at it. He had talked to her about how it looked like Max’s from Where the Wild Things Are. It had been one of her favourite books of late. And he had been desperate to connect. But the thread got lost, and he talked about symbols of personal myth. He didn't remember dropping her hand, but he could see himself doing it now. His eyes glazed over in thought.

  “Uncle! Can I go look at the toys next door?”

  He didn’t hear her. He was lost in the idea of having his students select their own symbols, personal metaphors to share with the class. She looked at him again, even said his name once more, but finally took his silence for consent and disappeared into the toy emporium.

  It wasn’t until his mind returned to Bea that he realized she was gone. He was thinking about what Bea would bring as her symbol if she were in class. He looked down to ask, and she was gone. There’s no way to describe the panic he felt. Not even anything that had happened to him in this place compared to the blind terror he felt in that moment. He had screamed her name. And paced up and down the causeway. She heard him yelling. It’s funny; she didn’t even know she was lost. She wasn't scared at all.

  So why was she crying? The returned Remi to the present. Bea had been crying when Dodo had found them. He too had heard the screams. But everything was getting mixed up in his head. That hadn’t happened yet.

  He caught the source of the tears. It wasn't getting lost; it was his reaction to her getting lost. He had grabbed her by the shoulders. Not roughly, but hastily. It was more than she was used to, and it scared her. He could see that now. He regarded himself, his panic morphing, twisting into anger and relief, which he then turned on her.

  “Where did you go?! Why did you leave?! I can’t believe you could be so stupid!”

  Remi winced at the end. He had called her stupid. Bea, I’m so sorry; it wasn’t your fault. It was his. He didn’t mean it!

  The powerful play moved on. He could hear his flippant response. “I don't know. She was there, and then she wasn’t. I saw the display—. But I found her, so no big deal. She’ll be fine.”

  “You found her?”

  “Yah, I found her. What’s the big deal? Where were you? I know it doesn't fix it, but come on. I shouldn't have even been watching her. We were here only waiting for you to get done with work. I should have been at home planning. Which is why I was thinking about—.”

  Dorian blinks, then laughs once—bitterly. A headshake, more disappointment than rage. “Ah, there he is. Wow. There’s the real Rex we’ve all grown to depend on.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I am always the real me. You...”

  “Me what, Remi? Go ahead. Say it!”

  “Okay, you. Have you ever considered that if you tried less to play the perfect little lawyer to please Mom and Dad, maybe you’d have more time for your kid? I mean, you want it all. A career. A family. But don’t worry—Uncle Remi’s got it. Unreliable Rex, right? Then why am I always picking up the slack? I know I’m not what they want me to be. A chronic disappointment to my whole family. But at least I’m here.” He had waited a beat; he wanted to create space for the blade to fully slip in. “Which lately can’t be said about you.”

  The line landed as expected. Dorian’s jaw tenses. His voice drops—calm, but now wielding daggers of his own. “Don’t you dare make this about you doing me a favour. You think showing up once in a while counts as being here?” He stepped forward slightly, eye contact locked. “You get to wander through your whatever this is, your stories, your digressions, and then drop in every once in a while and act like you’re some kind of saviour?” His breathing was ragged. As Remi watched, the water spilled from the top of the glass. “You’re not here, Remi. You’re nearby. That’s not the same thing!”

  “Don’t be a pretentious dickhead, Dodo. You know what I mean. She’s growing up too fast. Trust me—I know how quickly they grow up and move on. You’re missing it. And you’re doing it for someone else’s dream. You don’t have to be what they want you to be.”

  “Now, who’s being a pretentious dickhead?”

  “Dodo. I’m—.”

  Dorian raised his hand, stopping the apology. Something old and painful flickers across his face. It steels. “Don’t call me that. You don’t get to use that name while lecturing me about missing things. You think I don’t know she’s growing up? That I don’t feel it every goddamn morning when I leave before she’s awake? Of course I know. I hate it! But at least I’m trying to give her something stable. Something better than we had. I’m not chasing ghosts. I’m building something. For her.”

  “That’s what I mean. You’re not giving her what is really stable. You’re giving her exactly what we had. Mom on book tours. Dad doing whatever the hell hid did. But you're no better. At least we had had Grandma. But all Bea has is me, and I am not her. It is not enough. She needs more than me. What she needs is you. Or even your wife.” Remi watched the crisis point of the argument pass. All that was left was for the catastrophe to occur. “I’m sure she can carve out some time from her busy schedule of lunch with her vapid friends, and getting spa treatments, or shoe shopping. She has enough fucking shoes!”

  Dorian’s face goes blank. The silence turns solid. One word escapes, full of warning.

  “No.”

  “No, what? No mother around to take care of her kid.”

  “Don’t talk about her. You know nothing about it. And yeah—maybe you’re right. Maybe Bea needs more. But she doesn’t need this.” Dorian looks at his daughter, and Remi can see what he had noticed. Her ice cream lies on the floor, a pool of milky liquid starting to spread. Her mouth is open in shock as she watches what is happening between her father and uncle unfold.

  Dorian’s voice cuts with precision now. “She doesn’t need her uncle turning every drop-off into a guilt trip. Or taking cheap shots at her mom like that’s going to make things better.”

  Sometimes the distance between Remi’s brain and his mouth was too short. And too often words that should have stayed in his head tumbled out, having a short and easy slide to existence. “No, she is cheap enough on her own. I’m sure her yoga instructor knows all about how limber she is.”

  Dorian steps forward, hard. His voice a growl. “Say that again. I fucking dare you.”

  “I’m pretty sure she has mastered her downward dog! Or if that is too oblique—she’s fucking her yoga instructor!”

  The response is unexpected, as Dorian doesn’t yell. He whispers it like a threat, too quiet to be safe. “Don’t. You don’t get to drag her through the mud just because you’re miserable.” He wasn’t angry anymore. Not really. Just tired. Tired in a way Remi had never seen, not even when their father left. “You don’t get to say that. Not in front of me. Not in front of her.” Dorian looks sadly at his daughter. His voice is suddenly empty. “You think you’re the only one who sees things falling apart? You think you're the only one hurting? Then you don’t know a goddamn thing.”

  “Then tell me! I can’t help if you don’t let me in. Dodo!”

  Dorian froze. Not with anger, but with finality. “No. You don’t get to call me that. Ever again. That name died the day you stopped seeing me for who I actually am. I’m not your sidekick. I’m not your shadow. And I’m not some fucking character in your sad rewrite of our childhood. So stop reaching backwards. Because I’m not there anymore.” His eyes locked on Remi’s for the last time in over a decade. “And I’m not going to be here with you anymore either.”

  She still hadn’t moved. Not even to pick up the cone. She said goodbye as her dad guided her away. She said it in a way that showed how she too understood the finality of it all. Soon all that was left was emptiness. And spilt ice cream. An escalator hums nearby. Soon, no one is on it. Remi bent down and took off his scarf. He had been wearing because Bea liked it when he did. He scooped the whole mess up and dropped it all in the trash. Scarf included.

  He wasn't sure why he had done it. Maybe it was just too much for him to see the mess he had created. And then, the memory faltered. Glass was between them again. Remi watched himself walk away. Away from the fight. Away from Bea’s scarf. And away from himself.