THE BLACK PARADE.

We'll Carry On.

[end of flashback]

The platinum blonde haired boy walked towards his Grandmother's casket for the first time. Unable to distinguish what to feel nor how to react, He was sad, yes, but he had been crying too much it felt like if he'd cry more, nothing will come out from his eyes.
Tears won't make her come back anyway.

Father stood beside him as they emerged towards Helena's black, polished coffin. With freshly picked red rose on his hand, Gerard looked up from the velvet, carpeted floor to see what he would inevitably have to accept.
Grandma Helena is gone.

The woman who thought her everything he ought to know when Father was away. The woman who took care of him when no one else would, when nobody else likes to. What scares him more is what the future will bring, the what ifs racing throughout his already troubled mind. Father noticed him and squeezed his hand to comfort him and take away his anxiety, as if that was possible. Father couldn't look too sad today, for his son's sake so he thought. With a small, half hearted smile, Father took one step more. The step that would take Grandma's dead body into view.

Once Gerard saw her, his mouth pressed shut in attempt to not cry once again. But his beaten heart refused to not let go, it had other plans. The heart, which is always wise enough to know the truth deep down within.

Death.

We'll all end up there in the end. No matter what we do, the details you alter, we will always end up here. Death. Yet, it's believed that there are things more powerful than it-- the thing that keeps so many people's lives worth living for. As sappy as it might be, that thing's called love.

He glance behind him once more in hope that it was just a terrible dream. But no, the bloody red rose was still placed delicately on Helena's cold hands.
She was still asleep.

Gerard wanted to wake her up.
Father's hands were still clenching his in mere protection from their own 'family', also known as the ones who pushed them away and left them nothing but dirt on their heels all because of a lie. The lie that haunted them for years and years, yet no matter how they try to clean Mama's name, everyone sneered. Small minded people, that's what they are.
Maybe that or they're just too brainwashed by their religion. Gerard always wondered how loving Jesus turned them all to hypocrites.

Gee's eyes were still locked on the black, glossy casket, as they spun their heels to leave the eerily silent church. No movement was made from the altar. He bit his pale, chapped lip and continued walking with his Father, clenching his hands to his for some reason Gerard doesn't know. It's not like the other Way's would attack them.. Right?

Ever since, Mama did it, the Way family had casted them out of their family for they have became, 'sinful' and a 'disgrace'.
Everyone have loathed them, and spit on them to shame. Mama didn't mean to do it. No one could explain why she did it anyway, yet already accused her immensely without even hearing what she had to say, locked her up and Father couldn't do anything about it. Father knew she was innocent, but she wouldn't tell him why she did it. She refused to, for some reason.
In a small town, like New Haven, nothing can be really and is ever really private and as soon as it got to the church ministry, eventually the loathing and mock followed behind them like a swarm of bees. Ready to sting on them, and it did. It had affected their family in a whole new way, threatened Father and Mama so much that the thought to just escaped occurred on their desperate minds. Of course it never happened.

But it would've been better if they did. Sometimes, Gerard wondered, what if they did run away?
Would it even be possible to have such a normal life?

It's not too much to ask, but for Gerard, being normal would be a blessing and even that may even make him believe in God, if he actually exists.
It confused Gerard in the back of his mind, where all his unwanted thoughts were kept still. He still can't stop thinking about it though.
The thought of actually having a complete, happy family. Not the broken mess, excused to be one that he has.
If there was one important thing Gerard learned, actually practically drilled into his mind at such a young age, is that people always, and he means ALWAYS hate the things they don't understand.
Except this idea they call God, of course.