Two

[November]

It has been two years. Two years dulls the pain but it doesn't relieve you entirely of the memories, of the ache in the bottom, back corner of your heart.

Two years and Kione still carries their last photograph taken together in his wallet, as faded and crinkled as it has become. Two years and he still mourns his losses with quiet, shoulder rattling sobs of grief.

Dressed in a pair of worn out, tan cargo pants and a plain white tee shirt, he doesn't look the part of a grave side mourner. His flip flops made a snap snap snap sound against the bare bottom of his foot that sounded sorely out of place in the quiet, lonely cemetery. A braided belt held his pants onto his thin frame, a chain at his hip made a low, sweet tinkling sound against his hip when he moved. He was careful to tread lightly on the hollowed ground. He would kill someone for walking across Molly's grave as if it didn't matter so with courtesy he was cautious to avoid anyone else's resting body.

He stopped at the foot of her bed. Two years and the grass had grown green over the patch of dirt, thick and trimmed. He had collapsed to the ground in tears the first time he had realized that for the grass to be so neatly trimmed someone had pushed a mower over the top of her grave. Now, he grudgingly appreciated the person who kept her grave so beautiful.

He stood over her and missed her with his whole heart. She would be so disappointed in him. In them. They smoked, and would probably smoke until their lungs went black, they drank, and would continue to do so until one night they might not wake from their unconsciousness, and they didn't speak to each other. They hadn't since the evening of her funeral. She would be so sorely, sorely angry with them.

Kione went to his knees where he stood and crawled to the headstone, removing the wilted and dieing flowers from the marble vase that was set into the granite face. He bent to replace them with her favorite lilies: a bundle of blue and yellow tiger lilies tied with a pale blue ribbon. When he bent, a chain spilled from his shirt collar to hang, hovering, over the grave. At the end of the chain were three rings. Each was twisted gold and silver, one with a small diamond set into the band. He had been doing so well until the rings fell out.

He sobbed.

Two years and he still sobbed.

Two years and he still carried the photo of them at the amusement park, Kione to one side, Vega to the other, and Molly in between them. Three young, smiling, shining teenagers in front of a farris wheel three weeks before Kione purposed, three weeks before the last time he and Vega had truly, deeply cared about the other. Three weeks before everything changed forever.

[Kittyhawk]

Jenkins knew the look of profound grief when he saw it. He'd buried three wives, and his one and only daughter, both his parents, all five of his sibblings. Yes, he knew grief worn like a mantel for all plain as day. He didn't dare intrude, though this other's feelings still looked new, though the grave he visited clearly wasn't.

The graves Jenkins visited were old too, very old in fact. They were in the old section of the cemetary, with some dates predating the twentieth century.

He found the quiet sobbing particularly heart wrenching. He wasn't ordinarily an emotional man himself, but that some one could grieve so deeply and openly was more brave than unmanly to him. Such frank honesty was rare in this day and age.

[November]

Two years ago Kione could have lay there on the dirt of her grave for hours and sobbed silently. His grief was still as fresh as her memory but the heat beat down on his bowed back and time had worn away his numbness.

His sobs had stilled in his shoulders and he unfolded himself from the ground. He brushed his fingers across the top of her tombstone and let his long legs carry him away from her. It was like threads being pulled. He could feel something pulling from his essence with every stride, every step taken furthering him from her side pulled at something with in him, as if he were slowing unraveling his life and it was laying behind in a pile at the foot of her grave.

He felt the weight of a gaze on him and brought up his eyes to meet the other. There were dark circles under his eyes and they had darkened and reddened from his grief. A trail of tears ran a glistening path down his cheek. He wiped them away with the back of a tanned wrist. Kione stood, staring up, like a child lost.

[Kittyhawk]

Jenkins nodded. There were times for words, and times for silence, and age had taught him, more often the times called for silence, or at least serious introspection on what best to speak to break the silence. So he had no words yet, it would be unbecoming to presume upon another's grief unbidden. The nod was all he gave for now to acknowledge the other, for though he didn't want to intrude, some small courtesy was still due.

[November]

There is always that moment when one must consider if an encounter was coincidence or if they're being watched, being followed. Kione isn't typically the suspicious type, and the circumstance were less then curious, people most often visited their loved ones in day time. Cemeteries at night frighten people. Even he himself had never come out here unless stumbling drunk.

Kione couldn't shake the feeling of being watched, that tingling in the back of his neck. And the nod of acknowledgement.

Instead of returning the action, Kione wiped away the last of his tears and started towards the man. "Do I know you?" he asked. His voice was weak.

[Kittyhawk]

"No, I'd remember you." The old mage says calmly. His eyes hold nothing but empathy.

[November]

But I probably wouldn't remember you. Not if he had met him in the past two years.

He made a sort of pitiful gesture behind himself. "Did you know Molly?" he asked.

[Kittyhawk]

The old man shook his head. "No I'm sorry." Sorry because he didn't and she must have been something really special, sorry because he'd never get to, and sorry because he couldn't help this stranger......

[November]

"Have you lost someone?" He asked, grasping desperately for any reason this man might be here, any reason he might have watched him in his most raw moment.

[Kittyhawk]

"My daughter's here, plucked from the world too young." He offered solemnly.

[November]

"Oh," he replied lamely. "I'm so sorry," because it was so hard to loose Molly. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to loose your own flesh and blood. "My wife," he told him, his eyes sliding sideways towards Molly.

[Kittyhawk]

Jenkins shook his head. The man before him looked awefully young to have lost a wife already. "My deepest empathy." He offered, because he meant it, and it didn't seem insincere when spoken aloud.

[November]

They hadn't had a wedding yet before she had been taken....it might make a difference to someone else but not to Kione. He'd loved her, they'd lived together, they'd been engaged. They were weeks away from marriage when she was taken. It wasn't fair.

"Why?" he started to ask, then stopped, rubbed the back of his head anxiously. "Why are you watching me?" he asked finally.

[Kittyhawk]

"At my age I've come to be inclined to watch the world quietly. Your grief is rather poignant, most people would be ashamed of their emotions. You aren't. I'm sorry, you must love her a great deal. It's hard not to notice you." He did not say 'must have loved', Jenkins knew this man loved his wife still, he probably always would.

[November]

Kione looked at his feet and waited for the shame and embarrassment to come. It didn't. He looked up.

"I do love her." He frowned. "It was my fault," he admitted, the ease of someone who has been telling himself for years that it was his fault.