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"Matthias was dreaming again. Dreaming of her."
The wooden casket was in the middle of a field, surrounded by flowers and tears. It was expensive, and no one quite knew where Kaz managed to find the money for a proper funeral. For a casket tailored to Matthias, and a plot of land for it to remain for eternity.
The casket was a dark brown, like the trees back in Fjerda that he would watch his father chop down when he was younger. He had always thought that he'd join his father in the traditional family business, until the Inferni came. Until Matthias was sent on a path that led to him being reduced to a corpse in a casket.
"For the majority of my life it has been 'no mourners, no funerals'. But now it's five mourners and one funeral," Kaz had said, his black eyes betraying the emotion his voice lacked. Demjin. He could practically hear Matthias saying it.
The empire he had built with each of them was now crooked.
Ruined.
Halfway through the ceremony, it started raining. It was as if the sky was crying alongside them. The dirt turned to mud at their feet, but it didn't stop Nina from kneeling alongside the casket, sobbing. The mud stained her black dress, but she didn't care.
It had been a few months since she started working in a pleasure house, and she fortunately had money to spare. She strolled through the streets until she came to a sudden stop. In the mirror of a shop (probably outside her budget) was the most gorgeous black dress she had ever seen.
The fabric seemed ever-shifting between blues and blacks, like the night sky. It had an embroidered skirt, and ruffles. Ruffles. She burst into the store, not caring how she looked with dirt-stained clothes in probably the most prestigious and clean store in all of Kerch.
She practically had a heart attack when she saw the price, but deep down she knew that she needed it. Sure it was way outside of her budget, but she deserved this. She could starve, she could be homeless, she could take her services to the next level, she would do it all for this dress.
As she tried on the dress, she thought of how Matthias would react to seeing her in it. She looked forward to seeing the blush creeping up from the ends of his ears, the way he would stutter as she approached. She wanted it to be just like when they met.
When he broke her out, when they fled together. When Nina pretended to not notice when Matthias' gaze stayed a moment too long on her. She pretended not to notice as he started faintly blushing when she approached. She pretended not to notice when he begged her to prove to them that they were travelling together. She pretended not to notice when they dragged him away. She pretended not to notice the last pleading glance he sent her way.
And here she was, wearing that dress for the first time at his funeral. Staining the embroidered skirt she was willing to starve for, for the man she was willing to die for.
Nina was shaking. She couldn't tell if it was because of the cold in the air or in her heart. Dark circles covered her eyes, sleep only caused her to remember. To remember the blood that stained his shirt and her hands. She was also skinnier. She could hardly eat anything lately without remembering him, so she didn't.
Though it worried them, there was nothing they could do about it but help her grieve.
She set down a wilting rose on his casket and kissed the course wood. She sat there for a few minutes, staring at it. Staring at what her love had been reduced to.
She would have stared until the day she died if Inej hadn't pulled her away. "Courage isn't having the strength to go on, it's going on when you don't have the strength," Inej had told her as she tried to hide her tears.
Inej had to be strong, for her.
Living in the Barrel meant that death was something that you were constantly exposed to. From a random drunk bleeding out in the streets to a mark Inej had been sent to kill, but she had never had to deal with the death of someone she called family. Unlike Kaz.
Kaz was staring at the casket. He stared at the very thing his family had been unable to have. His mother had died from childbirth, and her family wanted her cremated and for her ashes to be kept with them. His father, or what was left of his father, was too gruesome for them to bury, so the brothers had left the body for the neighbors to deal with while they went to Ketterdam. And of course. Jordie had been burned alongside dozens of other bodies, lost to the sea.
He would be lying if he said that he didn't secretly resent Matthias for getting what they never got. He would also be lying if he said that he didn't hate himself for it. He hated himself for being unable to save him. For letting him become just a body in a casket.
While a casket and tears was unfamilliar to Kaz, it was all too familiar for Jesper, only the photo on the casket was Matthias and not his mother.
Jesper knew death all to well, after all he caused so much. But most of his marks were farther away, he didn't have to deal with watching them bleed out while their closest friends surrounded them, trying (and failing) to save them.
Wylan had been hiding, unable to look at any of them without remembering the way the blood stained them and the way the light faded from their eyes as they realized that Matthias was dead.
Gone.
Some part of him, some voice inside his head, kept telling him that it was all going to be fine. That Matthias was going to wake up, that they would find him in a random location like Wylan had found his mother.
But he knew that it was foolish. Those thoughts were those of a child unable to grasp the concept of death. But weren't they all children? Weren't they all just teenagers? Shouldn't they be in University instead of mourning the death of their friend?
Shouldn't they be full of happiness instead of sorrow?