Monica didn't really understand why people considered cemeteries to be scary places. If this place belonged to people who had lived a fulfilled life, a painful life, a troubled life, an unfinished life, then when they closed their eyes, it must be a great relief and comfort, right? Completing a human life was a miracle. Death should be cherished and not feared.

St. John's Burying Ground wasn't close to Monica's house, but that never stopped her from riding there once every two weeks. Monica was often busy with work, and for safety reasons - according to Ross - she visited her parents less than she would have liked. Thus, each visit was a special occasion she always treasured. When she was little, Ross took her here in late afternoons, tight to closing time. They walked and chatted and prayed as deftly, as quietly as cats. Now, she usually went alone, her brother did not entertain their small tradition no more.

Monica took the cleaning stuff off the bike's steering, along with a bouquet of fresh white peonies. In her parents' wedding photo, her mother held a bunch of peonies just like this. Had to make a bold guess that it was her mother's favourite flower. It wasn't like she could dig the dead up and ask, anyway. If Judy Geller had any complaints, that's unfortunately none of Monica's business.

Monica smiled to herself at that thought. Being free of a mother's judgement might be a rare upside of being orphaned. Ross said their mom was never short of criticism, what made her a great journalist made her an unkind mother as well.

She usually clung to Phoebe and teasingly called her "mom" instead. Phoebe was just a few years older, but when they met, the hippy was already much smarter and gutsier than both Geller siblings. Living with Phoebe was like having someone who was both a friend and a mother, minus all the nagging and false expectations. Phoebe never seemed to find Monica a failure, even when Monica was most disappointed in herself. At times like that, the older girl would hug Monice and hum, "You can do it, you're strong," just one look into Phoebe's eyes to see she truly meant it. That urged Monica to live a life that was no less competent than her brother's.

But at times, she did wonder what growing up under the tutorship of Geller-the-journalist and Geller-the-screenwriter would make of her.

Monica's heels clicked on the paving stones of the cemetery. In the east corner of the garden, there was a man who always cried over the unclaimed graves, ones that were overgrown with weeds.

He was weeping, honest-to-God wailing, not the type of fake crying that people had to squeeze out droplets for dramatic effect. He cried, quivered and bewildered, hot tears streaming like open running tap, his hands that covered his face. Ross often scolded "Crazy man!" when he saw him, but something in Monica felt for the weird man.

One time Monica brought him a glass of juice, muttering that crying too much would make him dehydrated, and the man smiled through his tears, thanked her, then they talked for a bit.

He told her his name was Frank. He cried for the dead and abandoned, for their souls to go to heaven. He had quite an inadequate father, so when the old man died, the funeral was held at a roller-skating site, almost a party rather than a gloomy service. The guests laughed heartily, the atmosphere was so fucking ridiculous and crude, but only his half-sister, whom he had met for the first time, shed tears.

Their dad had left his half-sister long before she was even born, so logically, she should be one of the crowd cheering on his demise. But she didn't. She sat with the casket for a long, long time and only left with red, teary eyes when they carried Dad away.

Frank never saw her again, his mom said his father named her after an ex-lover, so mom didn't want to find her either. But ever since, he vowed to cry for those who were not mourned for, to shed tears in place of the heartless family that person might have.

Monica's view of heartache changed from then on. She and Frank would smile at each other every now and then when their eyes met, then Monica went to find her parents and Heckles on the south side, and Frank continued sobbing.

Today was no different. Frank gently asked her how she was, and she gave him a bottle of watermelon juice. He said he had weeded her parents' graves earlier. He seemed delighted, and they parted ways.

Her parents' graves were indeed neaten. Monica swept around with a broom, took a vase and went to find a water tap, then put new flowers in. She sprayed her homemade cleaning solution on the tombstone, scrubbing vigorously with a brush to remove the mud, dirt and moss from the early fall rain.

Jack Geller and Judy Geller

Your love will light my way, your memory will forever be with me.

Geller. Geller Geller Geller. So familiar and yet so strange. It had been so long since Monica had been called by her last name, it hadn't been yelled out loud anywhere to remind her that the blood flowing through her veins was of the Gellers, the very two prominent writers who had shaken this country. Her IDs, name tags, house leases, NDAs, all read Monica Baum.

Ross seemed to adapt to his new last name well enough, but Monica did not. Something was jarring, gruff, and unpleasant about the name Monica Baum. It just simply didn't roll right on the tongue. In a business where customers always politely called her by her last name, Monica had learned to get used to it, but that did not mean she was happy with it.

She probably had inherited that stubbornness from her parents, who were willing to die for their names.

Monica, on her own free will, had read the articles about their deaths. She uncovered the pain of the past that Ross tried to keep hidden.

Jack Geller was once a famous screenwriter, with many complex, multi-layered, and momentous psychological plays. He came from a middle-class family that had to make ends meet every month. The poor thought he was rich, the rich looked down on him as poor, so Jack hovered between the lower and upper classes, which retained him a rather rich, down-to-earth perspective on society. He wrote under multiple pseudonyms, but most of the most daring arts were published under the name Geller. University students loved his profound criticism of the government, his books were pirated and passed around among young intellectuals like forbidden apples, as an unorthodox protest to the dominant classes.

Then Jack married Judy, an ambitious young journalist for the Washington Post's Political column. As a pair, they made up for each other's shortcomings. Jack taught Judy how to dig deeper into the layers, Judy opened the way to the dark sides of political battles for Jack to see. Jack's theatregoers read Judy's newspaper. Judy's readers watched the exaggerated, sarcastic plays written by Jack.

Nothing could've stopped them then. They were unstoppable.

Or at least they naively thought so.

At that time, the incumbent President's term was nearing its end. A party wanted to push Jack Geller to become the new President, and this news quickly spread among the workers and intellectuals of the states. Rode on the waves of support, they began lobbying for Jack. Judy directed her columns to be sincere but also glorify her husband's abilities, which further endeared him to voters.

The newfound ambition brought many important meetings and social parties to the Geller family.

A few months before the election, eldest son Ross Eustach of the Gellers was nine years old, and Monica Elizabeth Geller was only five. Jack and Judy were invited to a meeting with several important Senators, it was impossible not to attend, so the party's strategists suggested they bring Ross and Monica along. A whole, tight-knit family with a smart son would increase the politician's credibility, they believed.

Unfortunately, that day Monica fell ill with a high fever. Ross suggested his parents go to the party and he would stay home to take care of his little sister with their nanny.

"I'd hate to miss the fun, but there will always be another event, right Mom, Dad?" heartily said Ross.

The Gellers agreed, and they went.

And

they

died.

Never to come back again.

Ross held his sister - who was still sleeping soundly - in his arms, watched the 7 p.m. news on television.

They said,

[ A midnight blue Mazda had plunged into a deep canyon. The officers believed that the chauffeur lost control on a dangerous mountain road. There was a rock slide, which could be the main cause, and it was still obscuring the path from the city to the accident site. Hence, the search for the bodies was gonna be difficult, the victims might never be recovered. ]

They said,

[ The party announced that politician Jack Nicholas Geller and his wife, Judy Rose Geller, had not appeared at the pre-vote meeting. Rival presidential candidate Leonard Green Sr. publicly mocked Jack Geller for his lack of diplomacy. ]

The nanny sitting behind him let out a terrified scream.

Last week, Jack Geller had just received a call to have the family's midnight blue Mazda repaired.

Ross immediately connected the dots. There were dots, too many many many dots, and in a horrifying second, they all linked together. They had always been.

Coincidence was a very lazy conclusion. The universe was too vast for everything to be just a chain of unfortunate events.

Ross's instincts told him to run. Fast. As fast as possible.

The nanny rushed upstairs, gathering necessary items and stuffing them into backpacks for two children. Tears streaming down her face, she kissed Ross and Monica one last time, knowing that whoever had orchestrated the Gellers' deaths would assume the kids had died with their parents. But still, they would go to the Gellers' house to search again. It was too dangerous to stay here.

Ross pressed her lips together tight to keep his crying at bay, his teeth biting against lips so hard they bled. Monica lay on his back, bewildered, dizzy, not yet awake from her medicine, and so, so small, so young it pained her brother's heart. The smell of blood and metallic on his tongue compressed into the fuel of his fury. The nanny sent them on a dingy, nightly delivery truck, driving far from Long Island, the last stop being New York.

They woke up on the street, dirty, cold. The people passing by didn't even bother a glance at the two children.

Monica blinked her lovely blue eyes, tearful, needing her parents.

"Papa? Mama?" she asked him, babbling.

Ross cried.

He hugged Monica tightly, sobbing.

"They're dead! We don't have papa and mama anymore, Mon! There's no Gellers anymore... It's just you and me."

Monica cried too when Ross cried. She didn't really understand what was happening, but she knew her brother was being miserable, which meant something disastrous had happened, because Ross was strong and never cried.

Monica dropped her head on Ross' shoulder, looking at the empty, scary street. Darkness awaited them.

Two years later, when Ross was fighting with a knife-wielding robber for food, too hungry to fear death, Phoebe took him in.

Under pressure from the opposing authorities, the investigation into the mysterious deaths of the Gellers was closed and called cold. Jack and Judy's bodies were recovered due to the depth of the abyss. The rear window was broken, so they believed that two children had fallen through the glass and into the abyss. The Gellers' former nanny came to claim the car was indeed Gellers', wailing in front of the camera, so people even further believed it was just a goddamn tragedy.

Ross and Monica Geller were announced dead. Theoretically, they didn't exist. With no home to return to, Ross boldly took Monica to the small apartment Phoebe shared with her grandmother.

They introduced themselves as Monica Baum and Ross Boris, the names written on their fake documents (Ross learned a thing or two from his father's suspicious friends) but Phoebe immediately sniffed out the lie. Phoebe raised her eyebrows in doubt and Ross sighed. Tired of fighting alone, he told Phoebe everything.

Monica was happy to have a roof over her head, she could put things at rest, started a whole new life, but for Ross that was never enough. Anger burned in his heart, and the guilt that he had put his parents to death was an endless source of wrath. Ross buried himself among the possibilities, what if he had gone with them that day, if they had stayed home to take care of Monica, if Jack had not gone to fix that car.

Because Monica was the only reason Ross was alive, the only family he had left, he swore to take revenge on the government, to protect his sister even if the world fell apart.

Phoebe shrugged in response. "As long as you don't make me agree with you, you can do whatever the hell you want."

The first IHG meeting took place on the street, with some counterfeiters Ross met on the street and a few of Ross's college classmates. Monica was 15,

And now they were like this. Ross was still pursuing his old grudge, IHG had grown many times bigger than where it first was, Monica guessed that the glorious day of his triumph wasn't very far away. She knew that in Ross's heart, protecting his sister was still the ultimate goal, but the distance between Ross and Monica - and between them and their Geller roots - made Monica unsure that she truly agreed with his ideals.

In any case, what was done was done and the snowball effect was now too great to stop. Leonard Green, the son of Leonard Green Sr. - their parents' old rival - was in charge of the presidency and running it just like his father had. Ross would aim to overthrow the Green empire.

Monica sighed, looking at her parents' silent tombstones.

"Is this what you wanted? Is my brother fulfilling your unfinished wish, or is he heading into a dead end?"

No one answered.

Only Frank's sobbing echoed in the distance.

Monica wished she could cry as easily as he did, so that she would at least not be seemingly out of touch with emotions of those involved with the Gellers. The members of IHG often looked at her with pity and compassion, but, to be honest, Monica didn't really feel the catastrophe that deeply. Even sitting here, facing the bodies of her parents, Monica wondered if she had come here for the last piece of memory, or just a desperate attempt to get a little closer to her parents, to her past.

Monica was a Geller through and through, though she had little evidence to prove it. Ross showed her pictures of her parents and said she had her mother's eyes, her father's hair, her mother's ambition, and her father's tenacity. The food she cooked also had the flavour of old days, when her mother used to cook for them. He would say, "Our mother would have done this, she would have done that" if Monica had invented her own way of cooking.

Ross sometimes stared at his sister for too long after eating a home-cooked meal, then sighed deeply, sadly and gathered his stuff to leave. It's been way too long since they last had a full amicable day hanging out with each other. Monica never understood what was going on in his mind. Maybe he felt connected to the other half of his destiny. Maybe he was looking for the remnants of their parents in Monica. Monica dare thought that he saw her as an ideal, a spiritual figure, rather than an independent being.

She wanted to be an independent individual more than anything.

She couldn't live her whole life in the past, borrowing her peace from her brother.

If you spent too much time looking in the rearview mirror, you would crash, that's what they say. Why would it matter so much to pay blood with blood? Monica had seen the armour piling up in IHG's storage, it's gonna be a messy business. Ross wouldn't let go without a fight and he might lose, be killed amidst the chaos, or win, though might be less of a man than before. Why couldn't they just make peace with the past, and just take revenge on those who'd harmed mom and dad (even though they're probably all dead, too)? She'd met some of the Greens and Rachel Green's friend at Javu, they didn't seem too bad.

The sun was getting higher to the sky and it was getting to noon, the street outside slowly turned a little busier as people left the comfort of their bed, seeking for a fulfilling weekend. The cool breeze stopped the heat from overwhelming Monica's already suffocating mind.

Monica raised her head, watching the falling petals.

Her train of thought brought her back to the man that day. The customer who ordered mac & cheese in a fancy restaurant and waited two hours to see her off at the bus stop. His name was Chandler, she remembered. She didn't know his last name. He didn't seem to be very eager to reveal it, either.

He looked so sincere. He didn't shy away from her gaze, or pretended to use overly delicate words to communicate with her. He looked straight into her eyes, and said, "The food is delicious, I want to eat more, I will wait for you to make it. This is a tiny flower but I folded it very carefully, for you."

He looked at her as if she were an independent entity. As if he did not see anyone else around, only her, the saviour of his tummy, the one who satisfied his hunger.

She could not wait to see him again. To make another Chan-special. To see those azure eyes sparkle with happiness.

Monica smiled.

"Mom, Dad, I've met this man. I don't know him but somehow I just know he's special, and I can't wait to see him again."