A/N So here you go, something to brighten up a morning. Bye! oh, and thanks for reviewing
So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind.
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time.
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial.
For what it's worth, it was worth all the while.
It's something unpredictable, but in the end it's right.
I hope you had the time of your life.
-GreenDay, Good Riddance
The coffin felt surprisingly light against his shoulder. There were five other men helping to support the weight, but it still felt lighter than it should. He looked over next to him where the boy was supporting his end stoically, trying to fight back the tears. He could feel the lump in his throat, but it didn't want to budge. It just sat there, unmoving.
A limo had never felt more claustrophobic to him than now. He had never felt like he wanted to claw his way out of a place before, but now he did. The entire drive to the cemetery was entirely too long, even though it was only a few blocks. He wanted it to be over already, he wanted to go home and get drunk and forget about it.
The graveside service had already started when his mind slid back into focus from wherever it had been. He didn't even know where it had drifted off to, just that it had. Paul had been gracious enough to give up the seat next to Maggie, acknowledging that even though the other man may have had her, he still had the right to be there as the father of her child.
The hardest thing he had ever done was making the call to Maggie, Jordan had offered, but he knew it was something he had to do himself. She'd sounded so calm at first until he'd heard her telling Paul what the call was about. Her sobs through the phone had cut through him like a knife. The last thing he heard her say as Paul hung up the phone was that her child couldn't be gone.
The child that was now safely ensconced in the wooden casket. The child that lay in there, cold and empty, and dead. Just dead. Gone. Here one minute and gone the next. She had looked so bright, so alive just hours before Jordan had called him, telling him to come in, she had been so vibrant just hours before he saw her lying there, cold and dead.
He found Maggie's hand to be gripped tightly in his own, she was crying on his shoulder as they sat there as the preacher read the last words. He had never been much of a religious man, Abby had only gone to Catholic school so that she wouldn't have to go to Boston's public schools, not for any personal preference of his.
He had never seen the point in religion. It was something to put blind faith into, and he never put blind faith into anything. If it was not tangible, he did not believe in it, if it could not be proven, he didn't believe in it. It was what grated on him about Nigel, the boy's ability to believe any story about the paranormal that came through the morgue.
He frowned, thinking about that place, it was the place that this had started. If it wasn't for that, he wouldn't be thinking about his baby laying there on a cold metal table like all the others that he had wheeled in. Only she wasn't just another dead body for him to cut up and go "guess why they died." It was his little girl, dead.
She would never laugh again, never have that same spark of life. She would never get to go to Harvard Law School, she would never get to beg him to borrow the car again, she would never fight with him again over the most mundane things like whether or not what she was wearing was appropriate.
It was funny how the one thing that his mind dwelled on missing the most was the fights. But they were just so central to their relationship that he couldn't not think of them. He had to remember them, and realize that there was never going to be another one, realize that never again would she storm out in an angry fit.
Blake sat on the other side of him, sobbing uncontrollably. He couldn't help but feel sorry for the boy-he couldn't blame him, not when he saw the way that Abby's death had affected him as well. He wrapped a consoling arm around the boy's shoulders and Blake looked up at him with at tinge of admiration in the ice colored eyes.
The service seemed to take far too long. But at the same time, it seemed to end much to suddenly. It felt as if there should be more to it, that it should be a priest saying a few words, and then suddenly the entire line was filing forward, gently laying red roses on top of the casket before it was lowered into the ground.
Jordan was there, lurking in the background. He wrapped his arm around her, longing for any human contact. "You OK?" She asked as he opened the door of the black limo for her.
"Yeah." He lied as they drove back. He wound up being dropped off first and he crawled up to his apartment and poured himself a nice large glass of scotch. He needed it right now.