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The flowers that Eno is holding are red.
That’s all he knows about them. He’s faintly aware that there are meanings for each flower and each color, but he doesn’t want to think about this too hard. If he is professing his love or his hate for a dead woman, he supposes he’ll never know. Each option terrifies him. Each option could be poured over for a week, carefully considered from each angle. Eno abandoned that decision, and simply picked the first ones he saw.
So his bouquet is red, and rather pretty, as all flowers are. That is all that anyone needs to know.
Eno swallows. His hands are tight on the bouquet, paper crinkling under his grip. His legs tremble, and he grits his teeth before he finally forces his eyes up. At his side, Sasha places a hand on his shoulder with a quiet murmur.
The grave is still there, silent and unmoving. Completely unassuming, but the sight of it makes his knees go weak.
Talulah Atlas, the gravestone reads. Nothing else. No afterword, no dearly loved, nothing to mark the kind of person she was. It was a miracle that she was given a grave at all.
Why was it that, out of everything, he was most scared of a gravestone and a woman who was long dead?
"Talulah," he forces out of his constricted throat, staring at the carved letters as if they would give him any answers. "It's me, Eno." The boy you raised. The boy you made into a murderer. Was I a boy you loved, once? I suppose now we'll never know. "Sasha is with me too."
Eno looks down at the dirt, words failing him. The ground by the grave is empty. Unlike many of the other gravestones, which hold flowers and well-wishes for the departed, this one is barren. No one visited this grave. No one dared to.
Except for them, he supposes.
Sasha clears his throat. "We didn't know if we should come," he says, hands fisted around his own bouquet. "I still can't forgive you for the things you did. For all the people you killed, all the scars you gave us. I'll never be able to forgive you for that."
Sasha's shoe scuffs the ground, eyes narrowed. Eno leans into him, hoping to give him some kind of comfort. Sasha looks up at him, a brief smile crossing his face.
"But you were my family," he says, voice faltering. His voice splits the air, sounding far younger than he usually sounds, far more vulnerable. "You saved my life. You were the first adult who ever told me I was worth anything. You took care of me—you took care of us. Thank you for that."
Sasha takes a deep breath. "I don't know what happened to you," he continues. "I don't know if, in your last moments, there was a trace of that woman again. If that was why you did what you did. But I hope…" he pauses. "Wherever you are, I hope you found yourself again. I hope that woman is happy."
He takes one last breath, and leans down to place his bouquet on the ground in front of the grave. "I brought these for you," he says. "I didn't bring any earlier because I was angry. It all hurt too much. But now… I think that the woman that you used to be deserves them."
With that, he steps back, eyes closed. His hand finds Eno's and squeezes.
"Talulah," he says again, hoping his voice doesn't waver. "You used to be so important to me."
It's like his throat closes up. He flinches away, hand tightening on the paper bouquet. On his other side, Sasha squeezes his hand reassuringly. Eno closes his eyes, focusing on the point of contact between them, and finds his voice again.
"You used to be so important to me," he repeats. "I just wanted to make you happy. I didn't know what to do, and you gave me a direction. But it…"
He swallows. "It was the wrong direction," he says. "And I don't know if I shouldn't have trusted you at all, or if I could have done something to stop this. I knew something was wrong, but I just didn't want to do anything. I was scared."
Eno swallows the lump in his throat. His eyes sting, and he wipes at them angrily with the back of his hand. "You broke my trust," he says. "And I don't know if I can ever really recover from that."
Eno looks at the ground. "But I miss you," he admits. "I want you back more than anything else. And I hate that I want that. I don't know if I can forgive you, or if I can hold it against you, or if I should. But even so, I wanted to leave these for you.”
He swallows, then lets go of Sasha's hand. It's dizzying, leaving him oddly vulnerable and alone. He takes two steps forward and lays his bouquet by the grave, right next to Sasha's.
He looks at them, all together, for a moment. Then, he travels back to Sasha, wordlessly taking his hand again.
They stand there like that for a long, long moment; shoulder pressed to shoulder, heads craned close, fingers entangled. In quiet mourning, in remembrance of the woman who took them in when they were hungry.
Eno's glad Sasha came with him. He doesn't know if he could have faced this alone.
Later, when they peer out of the front gate and begin to make their way home, heads heavy with the weight of their loss, Eno turns to Sasha.
"I'm glad we came," he says honestly.
Sasha exhales. He turns to Eno, a small smile flitting across his face. "Me too," he responds.
They thread their fingers together, and make their way home.