Amy Dallon.

Dean's family remains stoic, as they watch their son be placed in the ground, they don't cry, their faces are blank. Woody once told me that the worst thing that can happen to a parent is to outlive their own children, I didn't really get what he was saying at the time but watching Dean's parents try to keep everything together proves that point. Vicky isn't holding back, she's openly in tears, mom holds her close. A PRT Agent brings the two parents a folded american flag as a military band plays taps.

Another funeral and it seems like I've been to quite a few, Clockblocker is next to me and he seems bitter.

"They could at least pretend their kid is dead."

I stared at him.

"Don't do this."

Dennis frowned and the funeral ended, the mood was somber and depressed as we filed out of the graveyard. Funerals were a part of the life style, sooner or later you ended up losing people. In mom's day, starting out being a hero was about helping people, now it's about stopping villains and fighting in the war. Way mom talks about it in the early days people like, let's say Shadow Stalker? Well that would not be considered to be cool.

I look around at the surviving Wards, at Dean's friends, pretty much all of us look like veterans of war, even Vista, because when you get down to it we are. With the service over I put an arm around Vicky, she leaned into me.

"Look um, I'm here for you if you need me..."

She hugged me, I winced with pain.

"Amy thanks, but I just need to fly around and just deal with this, maybe punch someone who has it coming, and... yeah I'm not trying to be a bitch you know, but..."

"You need space."

"Yeah it really hurts right now and I don't want to talk about it."

I backed off and watched her lift off into the sky, then I wandered the grounds. The unwritten rules firmly covered cemeteries, attacking a funeral or even just fucking with someone's grave was considered to be a really shitty thing to do and would have concequences. Fuck, people even mostly respected the Endbringer graveyard in the special district, mostly...

I saw other funerals taking place, I didn't interfer, it wasn't done and plus I didn't want to deal with questions about whether I could have stopped it. Was that selfish? I don't know but there were things you had to do to keep yourself sane. Gallows humor, not getting too attached, I had to learn that early. Did it fuck me up? Probably.

"Greg?"

He was sitting down on a bench, looking depressed.

"Figures the one day you want it to rain."

We stared at each other.

"Small world?"

He leaned back.

"Not really there aren't that many cemeteries in this town."

He kind of slumped and I put an arm around him.

"It... sucks."

I'm not good at this, Vicky is much better at the social stuff.

"I'm leaving, going to go home, I've been putting it off but you know, gotta do what you got to do."

"You ok to drive?"

He shrugged.

"I applied for a license and I got it, fast tracked."

"Really?"

"Yeah, apparently people are pulling strings for me behind the scenes."

I blinked.

"So the government?"

"Knows? I've been handing in written excuses for years, the official kind, if the government doesn't know then they're pretty goddamned incompetent. It's kind of like a open secret now. People know but they don't talk about it officially."

"You think gossip would be a thing."

"There are lots of rumors, some of them are even true, but you can't chase them without concequences so people don't."

He got off of his bench and started walking back to his van.

"You should go back to your family."

"They will be fine."

He closed his eyes.

"No... they really won't be fine with you walking off, getting a breather yes but just up and leaving, that's going to piss them off."

He paused.

"What's this really about?"

We stopped walking and let the wind blow.

"I'm dealing with a lot of crap right now and I want to get away for a bit and... it's not sounding good is it?"

Void smiled.

"I never really appreciated my parents while they were alive, they were always working, always had something to do. Yeah they would buy me toys and give me stuff but I always felt like kind of an annoyance, like they had me out of some sense of obligation."

"And now?"

"They had lives of their own, they were trying their best to be good parents but it's not like there's some kind of hard and fast set of rules on how to do it. I miss them now, go back to your family Amy. They need you."

He walked back to the van alone, I turned around and walked home to my family.