A/N: These will probably be better understood after reading "Leave Yesterday Behind".
Thank you to Cruelest Sea for your kind review to my debut Time Tunnel piece, "Leave Yesterday Behind". Seeing that the most iconic writer in this fandom had reviewed my story really made my day.
Not many people turned out for Aunt Clara's funeral; the landlord, her three employees from the bridal shop, one her old schoolteachers, Tony, Maureen, Mrs. Matthews, the neighbor, and Uncle Clyde and Aunt Ginny, who'd flown in as soon as they could after hearing.
The ten of them had clustered near the center of the church, a shapeless black blob resembling a swarm of locusts that might attack at any point.
Tony glanced to his right at Maureen, feet barely touching the floor but sitting up, gloved hands folded in her lap, just as Mother and Aunt Clara had taught her. She was clad from head to foot in black, from her veil to her shoes, her face offering the only break in this pattern.
Last night—every night, really—since the accident had been torture, plain and simple. Staying with Mrs. Matthews certainly hadn't helped either of them. For the most part, she left him alone; perhaps she felt that, at nine, he was mature enough to deal with everything that had occurred without too much intervention.
But Maureen was another matter.
Though well-intentioned, it seemed like the older women spent every spare moment trying to make the five year-old laugh. Tony saw her forcing herself to do so out of sheer obligation, but it didn't take any expertise to see that her heart wasn't in it at all.
And at night, long after she had been tucked in and should have been asleep, she'd come tiptoeing into his room, crying and complaining of horrible dreams. He'd scoot over, making enough room for her, and she'd climb in.
The two of them would lie that way throughout the sleepless night, each providing comfort to the other until finally, as the first rays of light shone through the Venetian blinds, pure exhaustion overtook their young bodies and they were quietly lulled into the arms of Morpheus.
Tony of course had his own share of nightmares. The scene would flash before his eyes countless times over, each detail frighteningly and meticulously in place; the firm lecturing, their distressed but unheeded shouts of warning, the horrible, yet tardy screeching of the Suburban's brakes…
And the blood. Oh the blood! It was everywhere, seeming to blanket the pavement, her clothing, everything.
It all had happened too fast, much too fast; there was no last goodbye, no farewell hug or last proclamation of love as was always portrayed in the movies. No. One moment, there had be an alive, vibrant woman; the next, all that life had been thrust out, leaving behind nothing but a corpse stained with crimson to be speculated by law enforcement officers and paramedics.
There was never a single moment it didn't all sting too far beyond measure. But when the natural mourning Maureen was entitled to was constantly being quashed by an well-meaning but seemingly inept neighbor, it made it easier to put aside his own troubles and comfort her.
But this morning there wasn't a dry eye in the church. At least for the duration of the service, it seemed Mrs. Matthews wouldn't be goading his little sister to smile.
He'd been to too many funerals; Grandfather's when he was four, right after the divorce, then Mom's, Dad's, and now Aunt Clara's. Of course Maureen probably couldn't have remembered the others with any sort of clarity, but he did.
Dying was, of course, in the natural order of things. But why did the people he loved most have to go in such rapid succession? Mom had only been thirty-one, Dad thirty-five, and Aunt Clara just twenty-seven. They could have lived so much longer.
But impending war, lingering illness, and a freak accident had sucked the life out of them long before their time should have been up.
###
At the conclusion of the service Mrs. Matthews led the children out of the church and to her car, explaining gently that they shouldn't see the burial about to take place. Tony might have objected had the lump in his throat not rendered him mute. Instead, he just obediently followed and slid into the back seat next to a pensive Maureen.
The ride was a quiet one; it seemed that Mrs. Matthews was finally beginning to understand that sometimes silence really was golden. Upon arriving at the woman's home and being told to come downstairs if they became hungry, the two children retreated upstairs.
Upon approaching Tony's door, his little sister looked up shyly at him and asked, "May I come in?"
Her eyes were pleading, bottom lip quivering, but he needed no convincing.
"Of course."
She entered and sat down solemnly on the bed, as if waiting for something.
"Why?" she demanded shakily.
He took a place to her left. "Why what?"
"Why did she have to go?"
He sighed. "God needed her now."
"So did we."
"I know. But we have Uncle Clyde and Aunt Ginny. We'll go and live with them."
She looked at him, and with a hint of morbidity in her voice, asked, "Is God always so mean?"
Tony drew in a sharp breath. "Don't ever say that God's mean, Maureen. He only created good; the evil comes from the Devil."
"Why did God let the Devil make evil?"
"Well… the Devil started out as an angel, but he rebelled and got thrown out. Then he decided to start up his own kingdom with his friends who also got kicked out. That's Hell. Where all the bad people go. But you see, if God had stopped the Devil from rebelling, he would have been interfering with his free will. God never does that."
Her face melted into a picture of fright. "Will I go to Hell?" she asked quietly, her voice quivering violently and brows furrowing.
"Oh Maureen." He enveloped her in a hug. "You don't need to worry about that now. If you try hard to be a good girl and are sorry for the things you've done wrong, you won't go to Hell."
"Promise?" she said into his shirt.
"Promise."
