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The evening wind had been howling for several hours now, gently nipping at Peter’s arms and making him shiver. He curled inwards, drawing his insulated coat tighter around his shoulders. Rust-colored glass crunched beneath his feet as he trod along the well-worn path lined before stopping just shy of a small overlook, where a man sat near a small headstone embedded into the ground.
With a small sigh, Peter approached the stone and sat beside the other person, rubbing his thumb along a shard that just about reached up to his hip.
After a short spell, the both of them drew breath and locked eyes, doe-eyed brown meeting twinkling blue.
“So, do you…” Peter cleared his throat. “Do you wanna go first, or should I go first?”
The older man chuckled softly, his eyes crinkling. “I was only gonna say that they oughtta take better care of this place.”
Peter scratched the back of his head, still avoiding the man’s gaze. “Yeah, we, uh… We just came out of an apocalypse, so… guess people don’t really wanna stop by. No reason to keep up with the… the grass, ‘n stuff.”
Peter lowered his head as a sense of familiar guilt washed over him. “I’m sorry I haven’t been visiting, I just––”
Peter paused. Felt the dirt under their nails, along with the man’s gaze, soft but sympathetic.
“He got you, didn’t he?”
Peter nodded.
A sigh. Then the comforting pressure of a calloused hand wrapped around Peter’s left shoulder as the man pulled him into a side hug.
“Wasn’t your fault,” the man responded in a gentle tone.
“Kinda is, though,” Peter retorted. “I mean, I… I had it. For, like, two seconds, and then—”
"Hey. Your job’s just to try your best. That’s all it’s ever been.”
“I know.”
“Okay. Now say it like you mean it.”
“I, uh… I just have to try my best.”
“There we go.”
“…I miss you.”
Peter clenched his jaw and lifted his gaze to meet the headstone. The words imprinted there never failed to knock the wind out of him.
Benjamin Franklin Parker
1948 — 2015
And Peter's uncle, he imagined, would smile gently.
“Miss you, too, kiddo.”