What You Are Is Beautiful

The Ever Hellish Memory Lane

A/N ^^^^^^content warning for domestic abuse in the second half ^^^^^^ The first describes a funeral and Vincent's true opinion on the Christian God. There's nothing super in depth, but I have placed a single row of carrots at the end of the funeral for anyone who doesn't want to read that.

October 2007

"Today I ask for us all to remember the wise words of Hellen Keller, "what we have once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love becomes a part of us."'" Vincent's would have been brother-in-law recited. He could see the head of his paper as it began to lightly shake in his hands. His eyes gleamed in his sorrow as he retold childhood stories of his late sister, Laia.

The sound of his speech faded off into the background as Vincent felt his grief settle deep in his gut, wrenching away all the warmth of the late spring sunlight as it streamed in and painted its rays along the length of the now closed casket surrounded by flowers and photos of varying ages. He stared deep into the fabric of the world around him, daring for the Lord to emerge before him and face him after such the atrocity as to take the life of an innocent women who was set to soon be his wife.

The cold pit that had settled in his core began to dissipate into the staticky feeling coating his skin and radiating from his brain as the two hour remembrance passed in what felt like seconds. The burning world around him began to cool and reach a steady equilibrium with hisself. And his mind began to slow, no longer searching for a reason, but a comforting lie to fill the space between the moments shortly before and shortly after her sudden death.

He remembered it all. He knew of the physical causes, but there was more. There always was more with things like death. Death is a gateway into the world beyond, the world constantly mingling itself with his own, always taking too much and giving far too little. He knew this. And he knew there was more that he had yet to discover.

He wasn't the first to loose because of the unfair exchange of the so called "great" plan. He knew that people had died before and that people were always left behind, but no amount of rationality could convince him that he had not already suffered the grief that only a God could as he took his turn to approach the casket and speak his final words to a corpse that was a hollowed shell of the woman he had—and still did—madly love.

A quiet voice began to soothingly coo at the back of his mind as he stepped away from the casket and off to the side to clean his now foggy glasses. It was unlike any voice he had ever heard. The voice was strong and deep, hushed, yet seductive as it began to echo his pain and fill his skull with words unfamiliar but soothing, a nauseating white noise. The voice had faded from his mind, but his body was now ringing with a pull to the outer doors of the cathedral and into the sweet air, that for the first time in two weeks, gave him life.

He listened to the birds quiet at the slam of the heavy oak doors before resuming their songs a short moment after. He felt his breathing shallow and his heart continuing to race forward, pushing him to a destination unknown to him and killing him with every second that he resisted its demands.

Before the noise could cease or threaten to become louder, his feet hurriedly pulled him to his car. His fingers moved of their own volition to unlock the door and close it behind him. His eyes followed the scene from far away, his mind not daring to hush the voiceless commands as they came to him, maneuvering his 2002 Toyota Corolla out of the parking lot and into the highly populated streets and bridges of Cudillero. He drove to the far side of town, poorly parking his car halfway off to the side and sprinting away to a place that his mind did not know, but his heart claimed to know entirely. The white noise began to quiet and the sounds of the ocean sloshing about before him drowned out his previous panic, dialing down to a distant, but powerful anticipation.