Danny is standing ramrod still at his son's funeral.
There is no denying that everyone there is grieving, but no one's pain is greater than his, not even Sam's, who has cried so much this past week that she hasn't even bothered applying mascara. It would just run. Danny has been in such a whirlwind he can't cry like his wife. His pain goes too deep to cry, because tears couldn't touch the depths of this. He watches them lower the coffin in with focused blue eyes, taking in the moment, the aftermath of all his mistakes.
He was only twelve years old.
Was. Is no more. Will never be older, never go to high school, have to endure a prom, go to college, get married. Never drive a car or try out for sports or go through phases.
Danny watches the coffin and not the priest going over the standard eulogy that doesn't begin to cover who his son was. His son was laughter in the face of disaster, a smile on a terrible day, gentle grins as he played video games, cheering when he won, a collage of joyous expressions. His snark and sarcasm were good natured, and his words were uplifting when life seemed too much to take. He was every bit the average boy he should have been.
His DNA was the problem. Ghost and human DNA could not endure together. The degeneration had been so fast. Coughs, a lack of appetite, chills. Nothing that raised any alarms in the winter when everyone was getting sick. He seemed happy enough still, with his friends to hang out with and his crush eternally stumping him. His purple eyes were always gleaming with an inner light as he played basketball and ran around the house. When the lethargy set in, he still insisted he was fine, just tired.
He slept more. Danny had attributed it to him being a growing boy. He hadn't thought anything of it when his son began playing video games more and playing basketball less, because it was winter. His eyes flashed green, but that could have been ghost powers manifesting. How foolish they'd been, letting things progress.
The coughing spells turned so drastic he couldn't breathe. He was taken to the doctor, given medication, and they put it out of their minds for the next two weeks as work and ghost activity picked up. He began coughing up blood and hiding it, began to sleep long nights, crawling into bed after school. His grades were slipping. His smile remained, though, even when they found him passed out on the bathroom floor and took until the paramedics arrived to wake him up. He smiled and said he was sorry to worry everyone, it was just a stomach flu. He laughed and blamed the school food. Told them to give Uncle Tucker hell for not being the right kind of doctor, because a Ph. d in Engineering wasn't gonna help.
Even when he spent three days in the hospital, unable to keep anything down, organs slowly shutting down, ectoplasm leaking out his mouth periodically, he chuckled and said that it was as good a reason as any to get out of school. Until the fourth day, when he didn't speak at all, staring ahead with empty eyes.
The next day he was dead, his body having rejected the ghostly powers within him upon puberty.
Danny knows it's his fault.
There's so much he didn't say. He didn't get to tell him how proud he was of his son's grades. He didn't get to help him practice basketball in preparation for trying out for the team. He didn't get to give him advice on his crush and how not to mess things up. He hadn't spent enough time with him, had no idea when he went into his son's room that the kid was into Baroque music and had a piano on his Christmas list, hadn't known he had such a talent for drawing. He had made a present for his crush and had written a lengthy card to go along with it. The girl is here at his funeral in such tears Danny cannot give it to her. She knew him better than he did.
And yet it was his DNA that destroyed him, that left him broken in the hospital, smile smeared with red and green, shaking with chills. Danny knows he has to explain things to his parents. He knows he won't be able to hide anymore. He doesn't care. All he cares about it being buried six feet underneath the earth. His greatest failure stares him down, in the tombstone, the coffin, the heavy air. He has never felt guilt like this before, so sharp it rips through him like a serrated knife. There is no righting this. There is no hope for the future, only a desolate past that he engineered himself through carelessness.
He has killed his own son.
When it rains, the world weeps for the father so broken he cannot.