Chapter Text
The sky over the cemetery seemed to have caught the mourning of those present; a gray layer of dense clouds completely covered the sun, letting fall a fine, cold drizzle that chilled to the bone.
Y/n felt like her legs wouldn't respond and her lungs had forgotten how to breathe, her eyes were swollen and sore. Dressed in a black outfit, she clung with trembling fingers to Elliot's arm.
In front of them, the sight of the wooden casket reminded them that today was the worst day for the Ludwig family, because inside the small casket lay little Poppy. She seemed simply submerged in a deep sleep, her cheeks still rosy from the mortuary makeup and her reddish curls arranged on the sides of her face.
But it wasn't a dream.
She wasn't going to wake up.
Mothers who have gone through this abyss often describe the loss of a child not as a sadness, but as a physical mutilation. You feel as if a hand has reached into your chest, torn your heart out alive, and left you breathing out of pure inertia. The pain is so sharp that it becomes physical; you lack air, your ears buzz, and the weight of the world concentrates in your stomach, sinking you down.
When the mechanism began to lower the casket into the grave, Y/n's world fell apart completely. She let out a heartbreaking sob, a muffled scream that she had been swallowing all this time. "POPPY!!!" she lunged forward, but Elliot held her back. They both knelt in front of the grave and wept bitterly.
Looking at her husband, Y/n saw a facet of him that terrified her: Elliot's face was distorted in an expression of painful and deep grief, as if he had lost his soul; thick tears streamed down his cheeks and his eyes reflected a void so deep and dark that it seemed bottomless.
He wasn't just crying; he was breaking. Y/n wrapped her arms around him, and they both melted into a desperate embrace, giving each other what little strength they had left as they watched the earth cover their only treasure, knowing, with infinite cruelty, that she would never cross the door of their house again.
The following weeks turned the Ludwig home into a mausoleum. Time ceased to make sense; there were no longer mornings or nights, just a continuous present of pain. They became like zombies, specters dragging their feet through the hallways of their own house.
Y/n spent hours in the living room, her gaze lost in Poppy's picture frames, seeing her daughter's clothes still hanging in the closet; sometimes she could hear her little girl calling her, but when she turned around, no one was there. Crying became a part of her.
Elliot, for his part, chose evasion. He immersed himself in work to the point of absolute exhaustion. He spent fourteen, sixteen hours away, seeking for physical exhaustion to turn off his mind. When he returned, he didn't go to the master bedroom; he locked himself in Poppy's room, curling up on the small empty bed, surrounded by toys he had made himself, which would no longer receive laughter.
Y/n found him there every night. She didn't reproach him; instead, she got into bed with him and hugged him from behind, crying silently against the back of his neck. They shared the same hell, but the distance between their pains was beginning to grow.
Alone in the silence of the afternoons, Y/n would kneel by the window and pray. She didn't ask for explanations, she just begged for a miracle. She asked for something, anything, that could mitigate that fire burning in their chests, a way to fill that unbearable emptiness that was killing them inside.
Seven months after the funeral, the confinement became suffocating. Y/n felt an imperative need to go out, to breathe air that didn't smell of mourning. Without a fixed direction, her feet guided her by inertia toward the route she used to walk hand in hand with her daughter.
She passed by the community park. The sound of children's laughter, the squeaking of the swings, and the voices of mothers calling their children with love hit her like a punch that hurt her to the soul. She quickened her pace to get out of there, but her steps brought her in front of Poppy's old school.
Seeing the uniform of the children coming out, Y/n felt an irrational urge to run toward them, look for her daughter's red hair in the crowd, and scream her name. Panic and sanity fought in her mind, forcing her to flee from there too, her heart beating in her throat.
She walked until her legs burned, finally stopping in a quieter part of town, leaning her exhausted body against a tall metal fence. There, hiding her face in her hands, she began to cry again.
It was a silent crying that got stuck in her throat, swallowing her screams so as not to draw attention, feeling like the loneliest and most miserable woman on the planet.
A slight sound jolted her out of her thoughts. She opened her eyes and saw a small, bright green plastic ball had rolled across the ground, gently tapping her shoes after passing under the bars of the fence.
"Excuse me, ma'am? Could you pass it to me?"
Y/n blinked, quickly wiping the tears from her face before turning around. On the other side of the fence, inside what she recognized as the yard of the local orphanage, stood a boy. He couldn't be more than eight years old; he was small in stature, with somewhat messy hair and dark eyes that shone with an innocent shyness.
Y/n reacted quickly upon hearing the little boy's request. She bent down, picked up the ball in her hands, and threw it over the fence. The ball fell perfectly into the little boy's hands. "Thanks!" the boy said with a sincere smile. However, he didn't run off to play. He stood there, ball in his hands, looking at her. "Ma'am... are you okay?"
Y/n forced a smile that came out crooked. "Yes, little one. I'm fine."
"It's just... you look very sad," the boy insisted, tilting his head with empathy and that honest, childish curiosity. "Your eyes are very red."
Perhaps it was the overwhelming loneliness, or maybe the purity in the boy's gaze, but Y/n felt the need to speak. If she spoke to an adult, she would receive looks of pity; with him, it was just a human conversation, even though she didn't like having to involve this little one in her problems.
"It's just... I recently lost someone very, very important to me," Y/n whispered, her voice cracking. "And my heart feels a little broken."
The boy made a face of understanding, lowering his gaze. Then, with a determined gesture, he stuck his free hand into the pocket of his worn shorts. He searched for a moment until he pulled something out: a small chocolate wrapped in a somewhat wrinkled green paper. He extended it through the metal bars, stretching his little arm as far as he could.
"My caregivers don't let me hug people from the street," the boy explained with utter seriousness. "But when I'm sad, chocolate always makes me happy. So... I hope it makes you happy too."
Y/n's heart squeezed in the best possible way. The gesture was so pure, so unexpected, that she felt a warmth she hadn't experienced in months. She approached the fence, took the chocolate gently, taking care to touch the boy's small fingers.
"Thank you very much..." Y/n said, and this time, a real smile, though small, lit up her face. "It's the best gift I've been given. What's your name?"
"Oliver," he replied, proudly showing his teeth, though one was missing, perhaps it had fallen out recently. "But my friends call me Ollie." At that moment, the whistle of one of the caregivers resonated in the yard, announcing it was time to go inside for a snack. Oliver turned for a second and then looked back at Y/n. "I have to go! Have a good day, ma'am!" the boy shouted as he ran toward the large brick building, waving his hand in the air, saying goodbye.
Y/n stood there, static, holding the green chocolate against her chest. She looked at the orphanage building. She thought about how sweet Oliver was, and how unfair it was for such a noble soul to have to grow up in an orphanage, probably dragging his own pains.
She looked at the chocolate in her hand, and then toward the gray sky, where the clouds seemed to subtly part to let a ray of light through. Her prayers had been heard. Not in the way she expected, but the answer was there.
Y/n tucked the chocolate into her bag, turned around, and walked back home with a firm purpose. She had made a decision. She was going to save Oliver, and in doing so, she hoped to save herself and Elliot.
To be continued...