Hey Now, You're a Brawl Star! (A Brawl Stars Story)

Piper Arc Chapter Three

Trigger warnings: Non-graphic death, grieving

Mark had pushed Piper to the ground and out of the way, so she thankfully didn't see her husband get shot. However, she did hear it, and the sound of his body hitting the pavement was enough to make her feel sick.

Then she heard something faint. It sounded like plastic skittering across the ground. Against her better judgement, she turned to look at Mark to try and figure out what it was, and turned back around to vomit almost as soon as she did. Everything about the sight was disturbing, but what really made her heart drop was thinking about how just half an hour ago, he had been putting face paint on her. She reached up, her fingertips brushing against the small red heart on the side of her nose. That was the straw that broke the camel's back, and Piper started to cry. Heavy, gut-wrenching sobs shook her entire body as she curled in on herself. After a few seconds, she felt a small hand on her shoulder. She took a deep breath to try to compose herself, then turned around to see a little girl wearing a loose yellow shirt and holding a small device.

Her Husband's memory chip.

Piper held a shaking hand out, and the girl gave her the chip. Piper held it to her chest, fighting the urge to start crying again.

"My mom can probably help you with that, when you're ready." Piper looked up at the girl.

"Who's your mom, sugar?"

"Pam. Pam Junker." With that, the little girl retreated into the crowd, leaving a shell-shocked Piper sitting on the ground, clutching all that was left of her husband to her chest.

When the ambulance arrived, Piper decided to get moving. She hauled herself off the ground and began walking in the direction of her car. She didn't realize that the keys were still in Mark's pocket until she accidentally set off the car's alarm trying to open the door. She jumped back by a few feet before nearly crumbling again. She stalked off to go see if she could find a cab, making a mental note to call a tow truck for her abandoned car. After just a few minutes, she was en route to her parents' house.

When she got there, her father opened the door, and she collapsed into his arms, still clutching Mark's memory chip. Her father pulled her close as she began crying. Her tears quickly soaked through the shoulder of her father's shirt as she let herself truly mourn for her husband.

Three days passed before she thought about that little girl again. Those days passed mostly in a blur of sleeping and watching reruns of old brawls with her dad.

"She has a daughter now, you know," he said out of the blue one day. Piper looked up at his face sleepily.

"Who?"

"Pam," He said, gesturing to a close-up of the woman that had appeared on the tv screen. Piper stared at her father blankly, trying to process what he just said. "She married an EMT or something, and they had a kid."

That little girl's face appeared in her mind, and all of a sudden, it seemed far too likely that she was actually the daughter of Pam Junker and that her mother actually could help. It seemed far too much to hope that she would be able to tell her husband goodbye, at the very least.

Piper glanced back at her room, her mind racing. "Daddy, If you could bring someone back from the dead, would you?"

"Was he ready to go?"

"What?" Her father snorted.

"Piper, your old man ain't as dumb as he seems. I know who you're talking about. So, was Mark ready to go?" Piper bit her lip and looked out the window, where there was a flock of magpies gathered around her mother's bird feeders. She counted nine of them before responding to her father.