Chapter Text
The only reason Virgil had come was for closure. He didn’t care that Remus was dead and he wouldn’t have to see him ever again. He just wanted to know that it was true. He could let down his guard.
He stood alone by the dark patch of dirt for a long time, not moving. Remus didn’t deserve all this pageantry. He should be in a hand-dug mass grave in Janus’s back yard.
“He was a good man.”
“No, he wasn’t.” Virgil didn’t look up. He didn’t know who was standing next to him and he didn’t care. The world shouldn’t mourn the death of a monster. “He would have become a serial killer or a sex trafficker. I’m not saying goodbye. I’m saying good riddance.”
The woman sighed and shifted her feet. “I’m sorry to hear that. How did it happen?”
Virgil almost laughed, but it was too accurate to be funny. “He became a serial killer and a sex trafficker.”
She didn’t say anything else. She left a few moments later.
Virgil walked through the cemetery by himself, skimming the names on the headstones. He had done this a hundred times in the old graveyard where the birth years were around the revolutionary war, but he hadn’t been through here before. He didn’t recognize any of these names until he did.
Rachel Williams
1976 - 2012
“A little love goes a long way.”
At least she got a proper burial.
Patton sat in the living room with a box of things he hadn’t seen in years. Paintings and sketches from when Remus was in high school lay on the floor around him. He held the last one in his hands and tried not to wonder what Remus’s works would have looked like in another year or two. He didn’t even know what they looked like a week ago. Patton had always said he was an incredible artist. He supposed it made sense that he would have died young.
A pale green figure sat alone in a landscape of greys and browns. Birds. The dark shapes were birds. Circling. Hunting? Protecting? Surrounding the figure for reasons beyond Patton’s understanding. He had never really understood art the way Logan did and Remus’s paintings didn’t follow any line of reasoning that he could see.
The figure was chained to the ground. Patton couldn’t tell where it came from, but he felt an angry kind of loneliness as he looked at the painting. He wanted to cry and hurt someone. He wanted to know why Remus had painted this and what it meant.
He wanted to kill himself.
Logan knocked on Virgil’s bedroom door and waited for an answer. He didn’t expect one.
“Come in.”
He opened the door. The light was off and Virgil sat curled up in the leather armchair by the window. Logan stepped into the room and shut it most of the way. Enough to block the light, but not enough to feel like a threat. “Can I talk to you?”
Virgil looked up from his laptop. The screen provided the only light on his face aside from the string of purple skull lights along the wall. It made him look like a ghost. “What about?”
Logan pressed his lips together. “I want to know if you’re okay.”
“I’m fine. Do you need anything else?”
He didn’t like to pry, but he also wanted Virgil to develop healthy ways of coping. “Do you want to tell me what you’re doing?”
“No. Go away.” Virgil pulled the screen of his laptop down and sent his face into shadow. “It’s not… it’s just… I’m writing.”
Logan nodded. “You don’t have to share if it makes you uncomfortable, I was just curious.”
Virgil looked back at his work. “Okay. It’s not, like… bad. It just sucks.”
“I’ll let you finish that. Unless you want to take a break?”
He shook his head and Logan slipped out into the hall.
Roman sat in the corner of a bar with Remy. He had wanted to enjoy his birthday. He wasn’t supposed to get wasted and cry over his dead brother.
Remy gently set a hand on Roman’s wrist and looked at his face. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.” Roman just wanted to have a good time. He wanted to pretend Remus had never existed for one night. Was that so much to ask? “Why do I feel like this?”
“Because you don’t know what you’re doing yet. You’re still getting used to-”
“I should be glad he’s dead! Why do I feel like shit!”
Remy pulled the glass out of Roman’s hand and looked him in the eye. “I can’t answer that for you, but I’m going to stop you right here. I don’t want you to think this is an acceptable way to handle grief. You’re mourning. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s don’t drink and cry. You’ll only hate yourself more.”
“You’re right. Thanks.”
“Hey, Roman.”
“Yeah?”
“If you ever want to go to New York… I’m always down to take you.”