To Steal a Weeping Widow

Chapter Forty-Five: March Mourning

Mural by Banksy (2003) in Beit Sahoud, Palestine, often referred to as "Rage", stolen by the company Guess in 2022 along with some other Banksy works and used for marketing, clothing, etc (details of copyright and news reports are rather limited, but Banksy was very upset about his works being stolen) - value unknown (picture credits unknown)

Chapter Forty-Five

March was the slow dawn of mourning.

March was calling my parents, and saying I'm sorry.

March was holding Simon as close to my heart as I could, just shy of burying him in my veins, and being held, like warm soil embraced the dying.

March was knowing how goddamn unfair it all was. It was being so overcome with loss I couldn't breathe, realizing how much this surely reminded Simon of his mother, and being tortured, because I was unsure how to fix it. It was feeling that grief rip me apart at the seams; standing still, as torment etched its reminders in my soul, marking me with a tattoo I'd wear forever. I was painfully aware of how much Simon hid his own pain, how he opened his own scars for me; how Simon was always taking a knee to hold up the sky above my weeping shoulders.

Believe me, I knew in my deepest trenches he did it to protect me.

I knew he hid his pain so as not to overshadow mine. I knew that—yet my fear whispered he did it for other reasons. My insecurities gleefully hooted it was because he didn't trust me; I wasn't worthy for his darkest parts, it said, because he knew just how dark my own twilights were. Surely, he had no desire to share our nights when my dusks scared him enough. Why would he?

March was fear.

March was spending every day at Damar as I watched the fading of an empire. It was spending foggy mornings and waning days with Geraldine, but never saying what needed to be said; feeling trapped between my anger and my grief in a way that paralyzed me.

Purgatory isn't an in-between, it's Hell with a different name and marketing.

I'd known it, I'd sworn it, I'd continue confessing it to the skies again and again—I was a coward.

I was too afraid to do anything but exist while Geraldine withered. Incapable of anything but witnessing like the spectator I was, too angry to forgive, too hurt to forget, and too terrified to know the truth. March was learning grief was a many-faced thing; Janus haunted my nightmares and woke me with my own wailing. Grief didn't always come with warning. Grief didn't always rattle before it struck. But sometimes... sometimes, it did. When grief gave notice, when it wasn't a harsh strike but an elongated poisoning, it was brutal and drawn out. If there was time to prepare, as enemies gathered on the horizon, then waiting for loss was all one could do... so it was long. And hard. And splattered with guilt.

GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY GUILT—

Guilt for leaving. Guilt for staying. Guilt for even closing my eyes, because time was fleeting, running out in front of me. Guilt for things not done, words not said, guilt for everything, anything. Guilt for stopping—even to breathe—because the clock was ticking—because I knew there'd be days in the future when I would kill to come back to the present. It was knowing I would regret these moments no matter what, that these were the moments I'd do anything for just one more of when the dust settled. This was now, and these damn nows would haunt me one day.

March was watching the Whitehills come together. It was being horribly blessed to witness the empire tighten its armor and stand proud, joining forces in a way only families like theirs could. Whitehill was a family so fierce, so unflinchingly united, so effortlessly powerful in their closeness, that even the creeping onslaught of mourning was celebratory. The process of grieving was worshipful and beautiful, it was what anyone would wish for when their own demise loomed. The Whitehills celebrated her life with her; they didn't panic over its ending.