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He didn't have a right to be here. What made him think he had the right to be here? He was the reason why this boy had been taken from the woman there in the front with her head wrapped up in a scarf. Her shoulders didn't shake, though, and the smell of salty tears filled his nose, but he didn't think that she was crying. That still didn't give him the right to be here, and yet here he was, watching as the man at the pulpit spoke about the life of Vernon Milton Boyd IV.
His hand clenched tightly around the edge of the pew he was closest to. The church was filled almost to the brim, full of people who'd known Boyd all his life, people who might've cared about him. Maybe that girl who was crying into her hands had a crush on him. Maybe she was just emotional. There were so many heartbeats in the room, each of them different, each stuttering and pounding on in different ways. But there was one he kept straining to hear, a steady thudthudthudthuckthud, because Boyd always had a tiny skip in his heartbeat, even after he got the bite. He'd overheard him telling Isaac and Erica that he had a heart defect when he was a child, one that he'd had surgery upon surgery done for, and it still wasn't quite right. But he still felt so much stronger than he'd ever felt.
He'd told him that it was worth it. That the bite had been worth the feeling.
Derek felt his knees tremble a little bit. Isaac was in the crowd of people somewhere, and Derek could feel how hard it was for him not to cry. They hadn't been a real pack, not by a long shot, but they'd had potential. He kept trying to convince himself of that, kept trying to tell himself that they could've done so much as a pack, that he could've helped to fix these kids even as they fixed him.
Now Erica was dead, and Boyd was going to be put in the ground within the day. Erica's funeral hadn't even really been a funeral. Her mother and father were there, her mother stinking of alcohol, her father trembling in the front pew. They'd cried, both of them, about how they should've tried harder. Derek had cried, because he was the one who'd failed. He might have given them a feeling that felt like power, and they might've felt like everything was going to be okay, but it was his fault they were gone now. It was his fault.
They had died needlessly. And it wasn't fair. If he'd stayed away, they would still be drawing breath, still moving through their days. Erica would've came into her own eventually, Boyd would've showed everyone just how smart he was. They would've found their own way without him. They'd had so much potential without him, and he was lying to himself if he'd ever thought he was bringing forth their potential by giving them the bite. He'd been looking for power. He'd wanted to fill the gaps in his own life, and in doing so, he'd destroyed lives left and right.
He didn't have a right to be here, but he was still here. He was here because he'd cared, and maybe he didn't have a right to care either. But he did, and that wasn't going to stop. He'd cared about the way Boyd had softly touched Isaac's curls after a nightmare, and he'd cared about the way Boyd had whimpered in his own sleep, suffering his own night terrors. He'd cared about the way that Boyd and Erica had laughed, not in love, but knowing that if they wanted it, they could have it. They'd had so much potential. They could've gotten married, they could've stayed best friends all throughout high school.
They could've been given the opportunity to ruin each other, instead of him ruining them.
Derek turned and walked out of the service as voices rose up, singing that heaven was waiting for him.
--
She unfolded her scarf slowly, her tears dried on her cheeks. When everyone else had left, and rain had started to fall, she had stayed at the grave. She'd lost all her babies, now. Vernon had been her last, and he'd been the one she'd clung to the most. This had been Vernon's favorite scarf, the one he always smiled when he saw in the mornings before he moved out the door to his truck. It took a lot to make that boy smile, and she'd never quite known how to fix it.
Viola hummed softly under her breath, her eyes closing as she let the material of the scarf run slowly over her fingers. Rain trickled down her face, and she was glad that it was only a small sprinkle. Those had always been Vernon's favorites. She remembered watching him and his little sister playing in the rain like this, laughing, and when they'd come back up to her door, smiling sheepishly through the stains on their shirts. They'd have colds the whole next week, and she'd still kiss their foreheads and tell them she loved them.
His mother hadn't even shown up, not that it had really surprised her. After her daughter had abandoned Alicia and Vernon on her door step when Alicia was only a year old, she hadn't been back since. And then the day on the ice. They'd been so young. Why had she let them out of her sight? She'd gone back to her car, to get Alicia's extra coat, and when she'd come back, Boyd was sitting on the side, and Alicia was gone, and he kept apologizing, telling her he couldn't find Alicia, telling her he was just tired, that he didn't want to skate anymore.
Viola hadn't gotten to bury that baby. But here she was now, kneeling on fresh sod, rain falling on her shoulders. Vernon would've been surprised at how many people came. After they'd lost Alicia, it was like he'd just disappeared. The life went out of his eyes for so long, and she heard him at night, before she could get herself down the hall and into his room to hold him tight against her chest. She heard him crying out for Alicia, telling her how sorry he was, how he hadn't meant to lose her.
Viola had watched him bloom again, just a little bit, in high school. He'd finally started eating again, and there were more smiles. He brought friends by, a curly-haired boy with a skittish smile who refused her warm hugs and ate like he'd never eaten before, and a blonde girl who looked like she'd just stepped out of a hoochie magazine but who was just as respectful as any proper child should be. They were just as broken as her Vernon, though in different ways. They had the same look in their eyes, that same haunted sort of look that made her heart ache for them. She saw the bruises on Isaac's body, knew that flinch from the same sort of abuse her daughter had endured before Viola finally opened her eyes to the truth. Maybe that was why her daughter had ran out. She recognized the way that Erica curled in on herself, shy and afraid of judgement, arms crossed tight over her chest, like she could block out the world. She knew that coping mechanism as well. It was one she'd used many times herself as a child, against cruel words from the women she'd worked for, and when she felt like the world was falling down around her.
How many times could one woman fail?
Soft footsteps came towards her, barely heard over the rain, but Viola didn't hear it until the rustle of the plastic around the flowers made itself known.
"There are enough flowers on this grave, don't you think? Vernon always hated flowers. Said they died too quickly. But, he'd sit down and make daisy chains and flower crowns if the kids asked him to."
Viola turned her head, arching a brow at the man that stood before her, his expression as painfully uncomfortable as any she'd ever seen. His hand was clenched too tight around the stems of the flowers he held, and he looked like he might bolt at any moment. Viola turned back to the grave for a moment, and then sighed, trying to push herself up off the ground, her bones creaking and cracking, her body protesting her every movement. A hand curled around her elbow, and she wanted to swat it away, tell the man she didn't need her help, but she was old now. She was an old, sad woman, and she had nothing left now.
"I knew Boyd- I mean, I knew Vernon. I-I was trying to... To help him."
"You look a bit too old to be 'helping' my grandson, honey," Viola commented softly as she got herself straightened up, her scarf trickling down between her fingers. The man looked even more uncomfortable, almost constipated.
"I didn't do too good of a job at it... And I'm so sorry," he murmured, and then reached out, laying the flowers down in the middle of Vernon's grave. Viola watched him with shrewd eyes, studying his features for a moment. He was large, but not imposing. If anything, he looked just as broken as the three teenagers that used to sit around her table and not sleep because they were all too afraid of what might be in their dreams.
"You knew my grandson, honey? Knew him well enough to bring flowers to his grave?"
The man shook his head slowly, lowering his head, his hands so tight at his sides they looked about to break. Viola tutted softly under her breath.
"Did you care about him?"
"I wish I could've known him better-"
"Honey, look at me for a minute." The man lifted his head, his eyes looking as wide and scared as Vernon's had when he'd first told her that he'd lost Alicia.
"Come on now, honey. There's no need to look so sad. My Vernon is gone now, and there's nothing we can do about that, as much as I wish I could. I'm an old woman now, and he was the last of the babies I'll ever have. He's gone now, and there's nothing I can do about it. And there's nothing you can do about it. Why you might ever think it's your fault, and don't deny it, I can see it in your eyes, I don't know, but it's not your fault, alright? Put your guilt down on the ground like those flowers, and remember that if Boyd meant enough for you to come here and not run scared like you obviously want to, then I can't be upset with you. I don't even know your name, son."
"It's Derek, ma'am. Derek Hale."
Viola nodded softly, a smile crossing her lips. "Vernon and his friends mentioned a Derek once or twice. It's alright now, honey. It's alright." She opened her arms, and Derek looked terrified all over again, but he hugged her tight, and they stood there as the rain trickled off to a halt, Derek crying into her shoulder and Viola slowly rubbing his back. The older woman finally stepped back, laying her scarf over the grave, knowing that it'd get stolen or the wind would sweep it away before she came back. But, she needed to know something was still there with her baby.
The man's face was still stricken, lost and wet with his tears. Viola hadn't cried, not yet. Sometimes she felt as if she had cried all the tears she had left. She had raised those kids up to be as good as they could be, to walk the right paths. It was bad enough that these kids had died before their mother, but the fact that she was still here broke her heart, and she'd thought that the pieces of her heart could thread a needle.
Viola turned away from the grave, quietly shuffling away, her old bones aching. The man didn't follow her. She didn't call out to him, and he didn't speak a word to her.
It was her turn to grieve.