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The day of Ashton’s funeral, it was snowing.
It was cruel, Murdoc thought, that she should be buried again in snow. A final, twisted reminder of what took her from the world. He supposed it was also poetic, in a painful way; before their parents died, Ashton loved to play in the snow. It was one of the very few things Murdoc could remember from back then. It seemed he would never be able to separate the two.
He didn’t know most of the people at the funeral. Family from the husband’s side, friends that Murdoc didn’t recognize. No one knew him, either. Few people addressed him, and when he answered their questioning with “an old friend”, they moved on. He felt oddly hollow, as if he were the one dead, watching the proceedings as an invisible, incorporeal specter.
Murdoc sat near the back. He didn’t make eye contact. He looked down when the family filed in to sit at the front of the room. An old friend of Ashton’s, that’s all he was to them. Less than that.
He had never been religious, and he didn’t listen when the preacher led a sermon, then a prayer. The preacher began a winding list of Ashton’s accomplishments and the fond memories her family had of her. Murdoc knew some of them. Others were more specific, intimate moments between people that Murdoc hadn’t seen. It hurt more than he expected when he wasn’t listed among Ashton’s next-of-kin. Of course he wouldn’t be, he reminded himself. He was no one here. He was nothing.
Murdoc stayed near the walls when attendees began filtering out. Nobody gave him a second glance, already thinking about the rest of their day, except for one man among Ashton’s immediate family. The husband, Murdoc remembered. They locked eyes, but the husband looked away almost immediately, ducking out the door to walk to Ashton’s grave.
Murdoc didn’t want to follow. But he knew he would, anyway.
The cold was bitter. The sky was grey, marbled by bright blue where the clouds didn’t quite cover. Snow covered the grass in a thin, crackling layer of frost, and spotted the coats of the small family gathered around the casket. Murdoc stayed away, watching the proceedings from a distance. He knew it was cold, but he didn’t much feel it. He pulled his jacket tighter around himself, more for comfort than warmth. The snow-flecked gloves gripping his sides didn’t feel like his. Somehow, he felt detached, as if it weren’t really his sister inside the box being lowered into the ground. As if she were perfectly fine. As if she were building snowmen on her lawn with her daughter. Her child, who Murdoc realized distantly was the same age he had been when his and Ashton’s parents had died. How would she remember Ashton? Hazy, blurred impressions? The echoes of a voice? A few diamond-sharp memories without context or emotion?
It was when the final word had been said and Ashton’s casket had been lowered into the ground that the husband approached Murdoc, Ashton’s child trailing behind him.
“Noticed you hanging back here,” the husband said.
“I didn’t…” I didn’t want you to see me. “I didn’t want to intrude.”
“No intrusions here.” The husband extended his hand cordially. “I’m Tim. This is Lumi, our daughter. How’d you know Ashton?”
Murdoc didn’t look him in the eye and pulled out his stock response. “I’m an old friend of hers.” He could feel Tim’s expectant gaze drilling into him. “Murdoc.”
“Well, Murdoc,” Tim said, “you want to go inside and warm up a bit? It’s a little nippy out here.”
Murdoc did not particularly want to continue talking to this man, but he had no home to go back to here, and the chill was starting to numb his fingers. He nodded wordlessly and followed Ashton’s family back into the funeral home.
“So you were old friends?” asked Tim when they were inside. He had sat down in one of the plush chairs in the lobby, and Lumi had gone off somewhere else, presumably the bathroom. Murdoc elected to continue standing. “Did you, uh, come over here from England and meet her?”
“We were young,” Murdoc said, too tired to lie properly. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen her.”
“Yeah.” Tim fidgeted nervously. “She… never talked about a Murdoc.”
Tim was distracting himself, Murdoc thought. Focusing on some new character to ignore losing Ashton. “It’s been a long time,” Murdoc repeated.
“We, uh, we met about fifteen or so years ago,” Tim said. “She’s a fantastic woman. So nice, so funny… wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
I know. “Sounds like her.”
“And such a great mother for Lumi, too,” Tim went on. “You know, that kid… She’s just a bit strange. She talks so rarely, and when she does, it’s almost always nonsense to me. Sometimes I think I’ve got her figured out, and then the next day, she’s a completely different person. But Ashton, she always knew the right thing to say, the right thing to do. She understood Lumi.” He sighed, brushing a thumb over the framed photograph in his hands, the only picture that hadn’t been packed up from the funereal display. “I don’t know what I’m going to do without her.”
Murdoc didn’t respond. His voice had seemingly left him of its own accord, curling deep in his chest to hide away, to escape the reality of what had happened, what was happening. He didn’t want to talk, anyway. Speaking seemed too much work, too taxing for what little it would get him.
Tim seemed to return to himself, forcing congeniality into his demeanor. “Well. Uh, you got any family of your own? Wife?” He glanced briefly over Murdoc. “Or, you know… some— something else?”
“No,” Murdoc said. “No, I…” He swallowed, organizing the words in his head. “I don’t have… anyone. Like that.”
“I’m so sorry.” Tim sounded ridiculously earnest. “You must be so lonely.”
“I’m not alone,” Murdoc said, too quickly, too sharply. “I have—” The name MacGyver was on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. “Friends.” That’s one way to say it.
Tim nodded, clearly put somewhat ill-at-ease by Murdoc’s unsteady answer. “Of course. Ashton had friends, too, as— I’m sure you know. Being… one of those friends. Old friends. Um, how long ago did you say you met her?”
“I—” Murdoc fumbled with his words, unable to force anything out. Suddenly his chest felt tight. He had the bizarre sense that some sort of spectral hands were wrapped around his neck. “I— I need to leave,” he mumbled, and left the room, walking without aim and without looking back at Tim. He found an empty room and closed the door, allowing himself a breath of relief.
Murdoc turned and sank to the floor, leaning against the closed door. It was only then that he recognized the room as the viewing chamber. He hadn’t looked at the body when it was open. He had no issue dealing with corpses, but he could not bring himself to look at Ashton’s. Something about how she was dressed up, laid in the casket with a spattering of blood-red roses, felt wrong. It had made him remember the bodies of their parents, pale and blank but peaceful, as if they would wake when he called their names.
A small noise from the corner of the room drew Murdoc out of his memories. A girl, with frenzied blonde hair and piercing brown eyes. Ashton’s daughter.
The two of them looked at each other for a moment, deathly silent. Lumi was curled with her arms around her legs, rocking back and forth. Murdoc could see the ghost of his sister in her appearance, and the reflection of himself in her movements.
“You have her eyes,” he said softly.
“I have yours,” Lumi whispered.
They fell quiet once again. Neither of them wanted to speak. Murdoc wasn’t sure if, right now, either of them had the ability to. They stayed that way, child and assassin, niece and uncle, huddled on opposite sides of the room, saying nothing. Eventually, Murdoc realized he was shaking.
“It’s… okay… to not know… what to do,” Murdoc said finally, struggling to get the words out. It felt like a block in his throat, forcing down the words even though he knew his voice was still there. “It… it’s going to be hard. You’re not… going to know how to feel.” He drew in a shaky breath. “But that’s okay. Just… be like her. Be…” Innocent. “Strong.”
“I don’t feel strong.” Lumi’s voice was barely audible. She didn’t look Murdoc in the eye.
“You will someday,” Murdoc said. “I promise you will.”
“I miss her.”
“I know.”
“She’s never coming back.”
“I…” Murdoc’s voice stuck in his throat again. “I know.”
“How can I be strong without her?”
Murdoc glanced across the room to Lumi. She was rocking, still, back and forth, back and forth, but she did not cry. “Time,” he answered honestly. Something was clutching at his chest. He tried desperately to keep his voice from trembling. “You learn… to live.”
Murdoc and Lumi didn’t talk after that. It could only be a few more minutes before Tim came searching, so Murdoc decided to take his leave. He rose— his legs protested, dull pain lancing through his right— and looked back at Lumi. This time she looked up at him, too, shadowed and sheltered in the corner of the room. She had been right. Her face was Ashton’s, but her eyes… her eyes were Murdoc’s own.
The cold was worse when Murdoc stepped into the open air again, or perhaps he just felt it more. The snow was falling harder. The graves were covered in white; from where he was standing, Murdoc couldn’t tell which graves were fresh and which ones were old. Ashton was gone. His only remaining family, he had thought, the only good thing left in his life.
Ashton was gone. Murdoc would go back to HIT; he had already decided that. He had no reason not to return to his old business. He would return to HIT and take his place back as one of the organization’s best assassins, and he would ignore the pain of losing his sister.
Ashton was gone. But a piece of her remained. Lumi had her mother in her blood, and in that, she held her mother’s innocence. Murdoc couldn’t protect Ashton, but maybe he could save Lumi from his world. Maybe she could live for her mother. Maybe she could live for the life Murdoc never had.
Murdoc started through the empty white rows of tombstones, his boots leaving a set of crisp footprints on the path. The prints would be covered soon enough by the snow. Soon enough, the snow would wash everything away.