Burial

by Lise

They're secretly taking bets on when he's coming back. I know it. I can feel them, wanting a miracle, wanting that ruby red visor to be put back on and have everything feel a-ok again...

That's crap. That's nothing that's going to happen. I have to block them out day in and day out, praying that he'll come back alive, because if I don't, then maybe I'll feel it too and maybe I'll get some hope that he'll come back to me....

But that's not honoring his memory.

The bastards don't understand what a joke our deaths are. What it means to me to die. I can't even be sure that if I die, they'll honor my name.

Phoenix. Rise from the ashes.

I don't fucking care how long it takes. I don't want to believe he'll come back. I don't care if in ten years we'll find his clone sitting in a Columbian coffee shop, drug running for Apocalype whilst fucking Magneto--

He died for the Dream. What does that mean anymore? Nothing. Nada. I could die for the Dream. I could perish, saving the world...

Shit, I already did.

It had no meaning. Me, dying, all of it-- NO MEANING. I was resurrected so easily....I want Scott's death to have meaning. I need it to.

How can I live if I know Scott's life had no meaning?

It would be easier if I didn't want him back so desperately, if thoughts of how to bring him back didn't consume my every thought. I think I'm becoming obsessive. So be it. I want my husband. I miss him. I need him.

But he died, and if I can't accept that-- if the world can't accept it-- then his sacrifice and all our feelings for his death were for nothing.

And I can't go through this again.

Could you? Would you?

I'd do anything to bring Scott back to me. In the middle of the night, bizarre plans like getting Remy to bring his body to Sinister and ask if he could do anything... what it would take to bring him back to me... It's crazy, I know, and come morning, all those thoughts have fled.

But what am I going to do without him?

What would I do if he came back?

I have more admiration for the man now than I ever have before in my life. He saw me come back from the ashes. He lives the Dream-- lived the Dream-- no matter what the circumstances. I have to say I can't see how he could ever have dealt with that. With-- with me.

How? How?

I know the adage of "Survive. Do not go gently into the good night." I know it. I repeat it. It is my mantra. Do not surrender. Do not give up hope. I think they mistake me avoiding the funeral for giving up. They spoke very pretty words about not giving up hope.

I've never given up, not once in my entire life. I've been fighting, one way or another, for what feels like forever.

I will always love him. I'm not being consumed by grief.

They think I want to give up. They're wrong.

I want to move ON. He did. I want to try and be healthy again. I want to go forward, not stay in the past. We can't do that if we're holding onto threads of the past, of the dead, and of our fallen. They should stay buried.

I'm looking at the tombstone. "In Memory of Scott." I wish I could believe them. I wish I could believe that we can go on without him. I wish--

If we ever find him alive again, it will tear me apart. I'll be filled with joy, because the other half of my heart will have returned, and I'll be able to be whole again. This will be in direct opposition to the sickening sensation, the retching inside. It will sicken me and delight me and kill me and bring me back to life. I don't know how... But it will sicken me because then I'll know that we are unimportant. The Dream survives-- it always has. The thing is, we can't continue living unless we bury our dead.

But we never bury our dead around here, do we? We just push them to the forgotten corners, and leave them until they find a way to come alive again on their own.

To reanimate.

To move back the clock, and mock all the heartache and all the honor they deserved. MOCK. Trivialize.

Scott should stay buried. He deserves to, to keep honor, to be able to claim those accolades, to keep those--

To live? Do I want to ever suggest he doesn't deserve to live? Oh God.

Maybe I should have stayed buried too.

I love my husband. I always will. That's all I'm sure about.

You see the patterns here? Swirls in their minds, in the funeral cloth, and in the white-blue clouds in the sky. Nothing's simple anymore, if, of course, it ever was.

Which, I'm afraid, I sincerely doubt. We just couldn't see it before.

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