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It wasn’t there.
No statue, no grave. Only a large empty space in the deserted backyard, just like the one in which they used to play as children, scampering around in search of ants or looking for shelter to play hide and seek.
So peaceful, so innocent. Without Ben’s grave.
A timeline she hadn’t shown up to destroy. Yet.
She shuffled her feet, just like he used to do, moving gently the dirt and the dry dead leaves with a soft crackling noise. Just like he used to do. So many years before.
<< Not enjoying the enlarged family meeting? >>
Vanya felt the shadow of a smirk crease her lips as her teenage-looking brother dropped down a glass of margarita to stroll by her, his hands now firmly tucked in the depths of his pockets.
<< Are you? >> she asked in return.
<< Not really. >> he said, scanning quickly the place with a critical frown. << Two days in this timeline and still no sign of how it’s going to blow up in my face. I don’t trust it. >>
<< Oh, well, maybe I could help with that. >>
Five darted her a weary look and she chuckled to herself. It was getting easier, somehow.
<< So this is where you buried him? >>
Five attention was directed back to the bare ground.
<< Yes. >>
They were right in front of it. If she closed her eyes, she could see it. The black onyx statue towering over her from its marble platform.
<< Did he have a proper service? >>
<< Very private. >> she said. << Just us, you know. No public eye. >>
They were both staring at the empty ground, now, each lost in a train of memories of their own.
<< I’m sorry I wasn’t there. >>
<< I wasn’t either. >> Vanya easily replied, Diego’s words from that day still ringing in her ear. << Not when it happened. >>
<< Was it on a mission? >>
Vanya nodded quietly, memories of that unreal afternoon emerging around her. Her siblings and Dad coming home in silence, just four of them passing by her without a single word, the sound of cameras’ flashes and reporters’ questions shut behind the main door.
<< I saw him. >> she heard herself say, breaking the silence. << That day, at the FBI station... >>
Five’s gaze came with an unsurprised silence. He knew, or at least he suspected, which didn’t make much of a difference when it came to Five.
<< He managed to reach me. >> she tried to explain. << In my dream. Somehow he pulled me out of it. And then, he... >> she stopped, her mouth gaping trying to grasp the right word. << I think he’s gone. >> she could still see him, scared in front of her. << He just... dissolved, into my arms. >>
Five silently observed her hands grasping gently the thin air within their thick gloves and then fall down along his sister’s sides.
<< Are you okay? >> he asked cautiously.
She looked down at her feet, half buried underneath a layer of dead leaves. And suddenly she realized she couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t feel the joy he used to feel doing that. She couldn’t feel anything. She felt just like that backyard: a plain hollow space where a grave should have been.
<< Yeah. >> she admitted. << It’s just... do you ever miss him? >>
The silhouette of her brother straightened up in what could look like a casual gesture, but was actually his way to stiffen.
<< To me he’s been dead for over forty years now. >> he shrugged. << That’s something you come to term with, eventually. >>
<< Even when it’s your fault? >>
Five looked up in the distance. Four adult corpses bearing the tattoo of the Academy and the burning certainty that he hadn’t been there for them, not when they most needed him.
<< Even when it’s your fault. >>
Vanya followed his gaze and let her eyes wander through the emptiness of the backyard again. Forgotten memories of little children in the obsessive exploration of their still hidden powers, the marvel and the horror of what they would find along the way. She still couldn’t remember much beyond her childhood days in the cellar, the power of Allison’s still unbroken enchantment mingling together with young age.
But she did remember him.
The little boy who hadn’t signed up for this. The one who reached for her in the worst of her nightmares. To tell her that she wasn’t a monster, that not even destroying the planet would make her one, that it had not been her fault. That she was his sister.
Her eyes stood where the grave should have been. In her timeline the engraving would have been “May the darkness within you find peace in the light”.
He had been dead for seventeen years. She had killed him two days before.
He thought he knew what a monster really was. Some sort of hidden beast hiding and churning in your guts. She wished she could feel that, she wished she could feel anything.
She wished he had been right.
That he hadn’t died to save a monster.