"Have you ever heard of a "sin-eater?' [asked Anthony.]
No, I said. Tell me.
It's when a local holy man, or a guru, takes on the sins and sufferings of the community by opening to those who are in pain, and filtering the pain and suffering. He takes all the emotional trash and, through his body, through his love and capacity to stay present, clarifies the pain into compassion... Eat the pain. Send it back into the void as love"
-Amanda Palmer, "The Art of Asking"
The funerals are her penance.
They begin, afterwards. Her re-awakening. Her rebirth. There is an emptiness in her she has never known, could not have known. A space that has been occupied since she was a child, since before she could form the memory of liquid starlight flowing in her veins for the first time, and what it must have felt like before.
She feels hollow, and finds she often pauses, feeling for her pulse, because what is there to move through her in the absence of the magic? Her heart pumps loss and regret, but she is certain there is no blood.
.
Edea Kramer seeks meaning in the dead.
She does not lack for opportunity, following the battle. The Gardens are gone, but the earth is covered in the bodies of children. Someone tells her they must be purged, and she hears the suggestion of fire and ignores it. Nearest to her is a boy, maybe eight, with hair that might have been blond before it lay pooled in his own blood under the afternoon sun. Edea walks to him and kneels, and is not surprised to find a simple image tattooed behind his ear indicating that he is an orphan. She looks up; there is a girl beside him, close to the same age, and a few feet away a body that could be a teenage cadet, or could be a very young SeeD. The uniform is mostly burned off, and there is not enough skin left on the face to even tell if the owner had once been black or white.
And beyond, another. And another. Voices are still talking about a fire, but Edea kneels beside the boy and cradles him to her, and weeps.
And while she weeps, she feels a flickering. A weight. She draws in the madness that killed the child, and feels it pulsing through her, changing, and cries love and grief back onto his body. And when she lays him back over the ground she moves to the girl, and then to the Firaga victim, and on, and on, and on.
The voices are no longer talking, and Edea works in silence. And when the moon has risen, and she has held the last body close to her chest, absorbed the tragedy of their death, she walks towards the sea, and collapses at the edge of the tide. The ocean moves further and further away from her, and Edea feels the sorrow she has taken in move inside her.
It is not the heavy buzz of magic as before, but at least there is something there.
And her emptiness hangs instead over the battlefield. The souls have departed, permission granted once they had someone to cry for them.
.
she draws and draws and draws and draws and-
(i will swallow all of your pain)
.
They are not always orphans.
There are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, friends, partners.
Edea sits quietly and listens to anguished sobs, to friends who share stories and laugh through their tears. Though accusations and anger. She sits, and offers tea and a sympathetic smile. Tell me, her smile says. I will take your pain.
She will never forget the first time she comforts a child. Three years old and resting calmly against her shoulder, merely confused by what it means, that mommy isn't coming home. It is the quietest reaction she has seen, but Edea cannot hold all of the hurt someone so tiny has inside, cannot translate the years of pain they have yet to experience into something they can understand. She tries, and tries, and when the family leaves she falls to the floor and vomits into a trash can, but she cannot purge the hurt, not so easily, not this time.
(i will swallow all of your pain)
Edea recalls a voice, one she has not heard in years.
She picks up the phone, but when she hears Squall's voice on the other end she cannot speak, can only breathe into the receiver. He tries twice more to get an answer before he hangs up, and Edea cleans up her mess, and tells her husband she needs to go home for a few days, needs to be by the sea.
She is only mildly surprised when Rinoa shows up, not even a week later, and pulls Edea down to the shore.
Eden moves between them like a bird returning to her nest.
Edea does not remember Rinoa walking away, but for years she would recall the feeling of Eden moving inside her, siphoning everything she had absorbed through the years from the inside out; would recall waking up hours later when Cid finally found her where she collapsed just out of reach of the rising tide.
She does not protest when he draws the GF away, although it leaves her once again hollow, just as she was so long ago in front of the field of bodies.
(i will swallow-)
.
Edea fills up, and when she cannot hold anymore Eden siphons the pain away.
she draws and draws and draws and draws and-
.
They are old, when she buries Cid, her lover, her best friend. She holds his body, as she has held so many, but cannot pull out the heartache, cannot transform peace out of his death.
Her children, the ones who have survived, come to see her. They light candles and murmur blessings, pass bread over his body and embrace her, but it is Rinoa, gentle Rinoa, all grace and hidden power in her growing age, who knows, and who pulls her once again to the sea.
"You still have her, don't you?" Rinoa asks, and Edea nods. Their eyes lock, and Edea knows she understands.
I will swallow all of your pain.
It is Rinoa's voice, not Eden's, that she hears this time, and Edea opens herself to Rinoa's embrace and lets her tears flow, bathed in moonlight, the tide wrapping around their ankles.
"Always my successor," Edea whispers, and Rinoa lets her be the first to break away. She is not quite empty this time, but she can feel movement inside her veins again, can breathe around the grief that has imprisoned her.
Rinoa smiles, and Edea shudders beside her power. It was hers, once, and familiar for so long after, and now she finds it frightens her. Rinoa pulls Edea towards her and kisses her forehead, and turns and walks back to the house, silent as a shadow.
Edea stands with her feet in the surf, and feels Eden stirring inside her.
"I will draw," Edea says out loud.
It has always been enough to satisfy them both.