The search had proved pointless.

Refugee camps containing the slim numbers that had survived didn’t provide any hopeful words or guiding fingers for the battle-scarred individual. They were either too concerned with the stability of their well being or too perturbed about his appearance to provide proper direction. In the end, he left with no more knowledge than he arrived with.

Now his weary feet had brought him to suburb that rested barely a mile away from the crater that was now Central City. The surrounding area was merely rubble, a victim of the wave of sheer destruction sent out from the weapon that had ended the city. Winding roads, covered in debris but still recognizable, led him in a twisting path. There were no landmarks to go by anymore, so it was only memory that guided him.

Shell after shell of buildings passed by. Scavengers wandered about wordlessly. There wasn’t even a slight breeze to break the silence here.
Hours of wrong turns and dead ends eventually brought him to his intended destination.

The home was a pile of scattered wood and brick when he found it, only its foundation remaining intact in the aftermath of its demise. Somehow, though, a portion of a fence, its once clear white now fouled with dust, still stood, feebly guarding the territory beyond. This barrier, once a clear border between the sanctuary of a home and the outside, still remained surprisingly steadfast. It was saddening that it had ultimately failed to save the home it protected.

He stared for a long time, hesitant to approach. A few minutes passed before the gate opened with a creak that only briefly disturbed the silence, the onlooker now wandering into the front yard. Reluctantly, with slow steps, he moved towards the home.

Once again, he didn’t find what he was looking for.

He was still there an hour later, sitting in one of the few patches of grass, his back leaning against the sturdy fence. He appeared broken down, his ruined arm resting in a handmade sling, his face set in that of brief fatigue. Recovery was a tiring thing that had become a horrible ingredient in a concoction of persistent grief. He’d hoped to cure one part of this ailment here, but it’d only proved to intensify it.

A page of the photo album in his lap flipped with a meager flick of his wrist. It was one of the few things he’d recovered from the home, covered in dust yet still intact. A treasure trove of memory rested in its pages, heavy with the time it entailed.

Here was a picture of him watching curiously from his father’s side as the elder fiddled with a broken bicycle. Another of him amongst long forgotten friends, running around the front yard. A birthday party with a cake-spattered smile. A brief vacation with a content mother at a beach. Him staring silently at a new addition to the family, his father’s assuring hand resting on his head. Holidays, events, milestones. Everything was here.

He abruptly disappeared in the contents of the book after a few more years passed beneath his fingers, leaving only that of the other members of the family. There were brief glimpses of him here and there, but the smiles were gone, replaced only with a rising tension that seemed to leak from the photos. Father and son didn’t share glances, more unsettled by the other’s presence than grateful. The mother gained longer lines of worry, barely appearing at all. The time between the captured moments became longer and longer before outright halting. A good fourth of the album was blank.

Where the hell had he been? Chasing some convoluted dream into the city? Burning bridges out of sheer familial rebellion? Stupid, stupid actions of an easily tempered teenager, such traits still echoing into the present yet all the more blatant to his own eyes. There was a million and one things he could have done differently, things not so blunt and damaging, but it was all too late for that. It was all in the past now, unreachable, unchangeable. Just like everything else.

His eyes, wet with regret, closed as he shut the book. Any meager hope he’d arrived with was now utterly crushed. The album in his hands would never gain new material again. It was now a relic, telling a time where a family was properly connected. Even with its frayed ending, it was all that was left now, an imprint of something that once held life and love.

Time passed. How much, he didn’t know. There was a breeze for a while, then nothing again. An eternity later… there was a noise.

He heard his name shoot through the air, distant but excited. A few seconds passed before it came again, this time more intense.

His head raised feebly, unwilling to react, eyes focusing on something approaching. An indiscernible outline soon morphed from a something to a someone, a small figure darting around rubble and debris in its race towards him. Recognition soon overcame him, quickly overwhelmed by disbelief. It was a mistake, just someone who mistook him as a familiar face. Or maybe it was perhaps an illusion, a painful trick of the head to only torment him more.

Common sense mentally lashed at him. Was he really that convinced by his own assumptions to not jump to his feet for his own brother?

Wait. His brother. His brother.

He met him halfway across the road, the destruction around them not hindering the reunion, tears being shed for an entirely different matter than before. Their meeting was brief, filled with laughter and questions, the older brimming with joy while the younger held endless curiosity. It was as if a day hadn’t even passed between them without the other’s presence, the bond having not faltered.

The elation of the two reuniting dimmed as two others approached, a woman looking perplexed at the young man standing before her, like witnessing a ghost. Her steps were timid with fright, as if believing the phantom would step forth and strike out like it’d done so many times before, unsure on how to approach. Her hesitation finally broke after a reassuring greeting was given, hastily embracing her son like a lifeline. Cut connections, weakened from the years, still held some life, shown through that moment.

The father was another story, seemingly more resolute with his emotion. The stare shared between the young man and his elder was long and stressed, neither willing to break. Stubbornness was a trait easily passed between these two generations, just as prevalent years ago as it was now. However, a hand was offered from the son, a simple, silent offering, yet perhaps the most open of greetings given in recent time, forcing the father to accept it, albeit begrudgingly. A bridge destroyed in mere minutes would take much more time to rebuild.

Yet he was smiling, something not done since long before the Typhaon. There’d been rarely a reason to do so since then, only a hopeless wanderer in the aftermath of the final events there. But now, standing there with a family once thought gone, he had all the reason in the world. He smiled and was comforted by his capability to do so. A long, dangerous road was behind him now. He could finally rest.

So, after much doubt, despair, and hardship, a young man became reunited with his family. Even in the midst of a changing world, this was a resolution that would ease the burden, a brief moment of positivity that showed the universe could still be kind. The world would need to learn to depend on such short instances soon enough.