"Luka, you need to hurry, we'll need to be leaving within the next half hour if you don't want to miss your train." Josip Kovac's voice carried through the small house to the bedroom where his youngest son was finishing the last of his packing.
"It's not too late to change your mind." Niko Kovac's words stopped his brother before he could respond to their father and he glanced to the doorway, a half-folded shirt still in his hand.
"I don't want to get in another argument with you." Luka's expression immediately reflected the exasperation of a conversation that had been going on for far too long.
"Leaving isn't going to change anything, Danijela and your children are still going to be dead, Luka, no matter where you run away to." As much as he hated causing anymore pain to his younger sibling, he knew too that he couldn't stand by and say nothing as their father was doing.
"You did not just say that to me." Luka threw the shirt into the suitcase before whirling on his brother, his eyes blazing.
"How dare you, what gives you the right to tell me what I can or can't do to help me get through this?" It was taking everything he had not to cross the distance that separated them and he could feel his nails biting into his skin with the tightness of the fists his hands had settled into.
"You're angry, you have every right to be...so hit me, I don't care, but don't run away. Stay here and deal with it like the man you are." Niko knew he couldn't know everything Luka was feeling, but they all felt the loss, and he couldn't understand how leaving family and friends could make that any easier.
"I've made up my mind, Niko." Grabbing the rest of the clothes off the bed he shoved them roughly in the suitcase and slammed the lid down.
"It's too hard for me here, at least if I'm working on my degree I'll be too busy for anything else." He flipped the latches on the battered luggage closed then grabbed the handle.
"I never thought you were a coward." Niko's words were meant to hurt and they did, the expression on Luka's face grew cold and as his jaw tightened he stormed across the room, stopping eye to eye with his older brother.
"How dareyou even go there..." The urge to throw a punch became unbearable.
"You're done. Don't even talk to me anymore." He brushed past him roughly, deliberately knocking him against the wall as he passed on his way to the stairs.
"Luka...let's go." The sound of Josip Kovac's impatient voice sounded again. This wasn't how he would have liked to say good-bye to his brother, but there was no going back now, and it certainly wasn't his place to be the one apologizing. He headed for the stairs. Maybe one day they would find a way to make things right, but not today.
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