Eulogies (Patreon)

The good ones always die young.

That's a line of bullshit Chen is intimately familiar with, something said again and again, though he knows it has nothing to do with being good. Or bad. People die, for various reasons, in various ways.

In various numbers.

Six hundred and eighty-five casualties so far, who knows how high it will go, how far the Mayor will let it before they stop reporting the numbers. Heartbreak was a horrible accident, as the media put it, a calamity like an earthquake or a brushfire.

It was no accident; that's a fact that Chen is comfortable with.

Six hundred and eighty-five dead, but only two matter. That's less comfortable.

He doesn't share that thought, doesn't share the fact that people die, they always die; he was in the war when it still was a war and not this simmering aftermath eating people but with none of the glory. People died there, enough that it made life cheap, his own most of all, and then there was a death, one that mattered.

Not one. None. A long time ago, nothing mattered then, it's the past, and this is the present, and he has a funeral to plan. Documents to sign. A team to hold together.

It won't be one for long; he can already see the signs, people cracking from the strain.

How long can you live with your heart cut out?

How long can a team?

Anathema's absence means an emptiness none of them can fill. Sentinel was already talking about retiring; it's only a matter of time, Chen knows that, but he'll last long enough to find some new blood.

Julia won't.

She'll snap; he can see it, doesn't know what to do about it. He doesn't know how to help his best friend; it wasn't supposed to be like this.

Sidestep wasn't supposed to matter.

Not this much.

Not to all of them.

Maybe to Julia. Maybe to Anathema, and Sentinel but...

Not to him.

Chen looks down at the piece of crumpled metal in his hand; the chair's armrest came off, reinforced metal twisting like flesh. Like a body.

His fault.

Julia had thrown it in his face while drunk, and he had let her because she wasn't wrong. He had failed, he had cracked, and he had been late. Had delayed Julia. 

Had told them that they didn't matter—too many times. Sidestep, because that is the safer name, the mask, the hood, not the face that hid behind it, too young, too goddamn soft, reminding Chen of other faces.

Now dead. Buried.

There's a name that he ignores, but it slips in all the same, slits his wrist, but his hands are steel, like his name, and he won't let himself crack. It doesn't matter; Sidestep is dead, and he has a funeral to arrange.

Morgues to contact. Bodies to identify.

Or he would if this had been a normal family, no... friends. Normal friends, but nothing here is normal, and the bodies were cremated before they could be picked up, and he still has a funeral to arrange, and he won't tell Julia because she needs to grieve.

He can do this.

He has to do this.

He can sit down and write some soft, nice words about Sidestep because that should not be left to the staff writers, should not be another line of bullshit, and he already did Anathema's.

They will rewrite them anyway. Chen is not stupid; he knows that. But maybe a line or two will stay and make it less than awful. He already did Anathema, and he's been trying with Sidestep, but there are three pens broken and ink smudged across his cheek where he wiped it.

He wasn't crying. He doesn't have the time.

He certainly doesn't have the time to think about all the things that don't add up because that means hope, and hope is a dangerous beast he tries to avoid. Maybe that's why Sidestep beat him so often, playing chess like war, black versus white, smiling every time Chen took the careful way out.

"You can't react when you play white," They would say, soft voice too cultured, and why did they become a hero? They should have been an artist. "You need to take the initiative."

Is that what this is? Another game, like war, but with two pieces of his team already down because he played too passively?

Who's on the other side?

Why was the ambulance there?

Where did Heartbreak originate?

Why did they want to die?

What was Sidestep hiding?

Why did they die?

Anathema?

Sighing to himself, Chen picks up another pen and try to find words he's not built for. He's not like Sidestep in that way, but maybe he needs to be.

But first, he has a funeral to plan.