It's been a couple of years now that I've been separated from my brother. Ever since his disappearance, I kept searching for him to no avail. With the war going on with the neighboring kingdom, I remembered hearing brother tell me to watch out.

"Be aware that we won't be alone out there..."

"Oh come on Dum!" I smirked at him, "Lighten up! There's no way they'll catch us. Besides we're more or less in the middle of the Rose Kingdom. What makes you think they will infiltrate the border?"

Tweedle Dum closed his eyes and gave a sad smile, "Hopefully you're right."

That was the last conversation we had before his disappearance. We were without parents. My brother took care of me and I for him. Though we were born together, Dum was the eldest by a couple of minutes or seconds from what the midwives told us in our small village near the Rose Kingdom. It wasn't strange to see small outer villages in the Rose Kingdom because not everyone could live near the castle.

After Dum's disappearance, I desperately searched for him when he failed to return within two hours of our expected meeting time. He said to always meet back at home once the bell rings five times...It has already rung seven times and he's not back! I ran towards the forest, but was stopped by some of our village people.

"It's too dangerous to go out there Tweedle Dee!" One of them spoke quickly.

"Yes, brother Dee!" A young girl whom I had played with latched onto me with shaking hands, "Don't go! Brother Dum will return for sure!"

"HOW CAN YOU BE SO SURE OF THAT?!" It was the first time I had used a loud voice. 

The villagers were startled. They knew me as the playful, fun child, but the reality was that I was full of anxiety and depressed. Our parents whom we failed to meet, our mother passed shortly after giving birth to me and our father had apparently died from some illness before he got to witness our birth. I want to see brother! 

"I'm so sorry," I told the little girl, "I just want brother to return home..."

He never did come back. As the years passed by, I was living alone. The villagers had told me he must have died from wandering too close to the border and probably got captured by the Thorn Kingdom. Others speculated that he couldn't be around because he didn't trust anyone in the village.

That's not true...I thought to myself, Brother had been trying his best to take care of me. From hand-to-mouth, we've been helping each other and although I was the first to make contact with the villagers to help us survive, brother was just too shy and introverted to speak.

Remembering my brother made me want to visit his makeshift grave. The young girl who played with me when I was 13 years old, made it because she was quite close to us and missed him terribly. We were like siblings...her parents were friends of our parents and wanted to take us in their wing, but they struggled to find proper jobs and hardly could support two extra boys. Well, one now but even so...I don't want to give up on brother. I still lived alone, but tried my best to survive. I was making weapons for the Rose Kingdom and as news passed of a tragedy, most of my people ran with Princess Shiro, who became the White Queen, to the summer castle and settled there.

Not many people managed to escape and join Shiro's faction. It was also the first time I laid eyes on the White Queen. She was younger and beautiful, but the fire in her eyes were those of hatred. An innocent soul lost to the fires of hate, I heard myself whisper. When the princess locked eyes on me, her jaw dropped.

"Jack?" I heard her say, "What are you doing here?"

I looked at her with questioning, "My name is not Jack. I'm Tweedle Dee."

That's when I realized that she had seen someone with a similar face and ran towards her frantically with everyone watching, "YOU! HAVE YOU SEEN MY BROTHER?!"

End of Chapter 5..........................................................................................................................