Chapter Text
It is uncharacteristically crisp for the early autumn after the war. Outside on the still summer-verdant soccer lawn a light dusting of translucent crystalline dew turned each sharp blade into a holy glowing sword in the effervescent morning sun. The wall of the orphanage stood unwavering in the brilliance, casting the faintest sliver of endlessly dark shadow against the sidewalk. For now, the merriment of the children was missing from the first-light symphony. Sparrows peal out the quietest of solos as they shelter beneath the awnings. No, the children would come in later to complete the duet.
Across the silent soccer field stands a slender thicket of marching trees. Silver maple lookouts guarded shy cherry laurels interspersed with resolute cork oak as rosy-aurulence fell dappled through their outstretched leaves. The thicket wasn't large. It served only to separate the orphanage grounds from the chapel, and to conceal an old holy-ground graveyard. Most of the stones were desiccated and age-weathered, crooked teeth jutting out haphazardly from the grassy mouth of the earth. A few of them were new. Two of them in fact were week-recent; they were made of granite and tooled by hand.
One of the new gravestones fell in a direct sunbeam, and shone as bright as any holy light should within the beam. It stands with several older stones atop a hillock near the middle of the cemetery. Fresh flowers were laid out on the soft new grass. White lilies, carnations, dogwood... A single red rose- all carefully bound and placed. The dogwood blooms were not glazed with frozen morning dew as all the other flowers were, but the Red Rose was significantly more withered than the rest. It was as if whoever had left that particular flower had done so in in private days ago when the ground was still soft.
The carved granite headstone reads- 'Takagi Yumiko', and is otherwise devoid of comment.
The other fresh stone was half-shadowed in the tenebrous grasp of the shyest cherry laurel. It too was presented without comment, and this one without flowers. It was at the lowest point in the graveyard, at the edge, hidden from the others. The ground was still wet there, and though grass was already beginning to rejuvenate to cover the bald patch left after laying Yumiko to rest, the ground was still ugly and raw where Enrico Maxwell had been deposited. Perhaps it always would be.
Beneath the shadow-bearing boughs of a nearby split-barked lightning-struck silver maple, atop a gnarled root and grasping desperately at his cross, sits one Alexander Anderson. He's mumbling something to himself, and for once it seems he is concealing himself from the revealing light of God. He's got his eyes firmly on that ugly grave. Yumiko's was pure, and of course it would be. He'd visited it several times already- to think. Dogwood flowers did not last long off of the tree, after all, and had to be refreshed. Maxwell's... Well, Maxwell was always a difficult one, Anderson thinks. It's fitting that it was still raw and fresh. Demanding to be seen, perhaps moping that his grave was here in the shade instead of in some vault in the Vatican City. Anderson grits his teeth. Maxwell was a fool. Finished for now with his prayer, he releases the cross from his hand where he had twined the chain about his fingers.
He looks like someone who has been suddenly slapped as he looks at the grave.
"Yeh always were an idiot." He hisses, almost beneath his breath.
He hasn't brought flowers for Maxwell. Instead, two bayonets were welded together into a cross and were stabbed into the earth covering his resting place. This child was lucky that he lay in hallowed loam. Anderson had an obligation to fight for that one, and had to bury him himself.
...Children should outlive their fathers.
The sun begins to climb, and it doesn't impart the day with a boon of warmth. A breeze rustles through the trees and it nips sharply as it passes. Anderson shivers once, and then stands. "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." He spits out, and he casts his eyes away from the grave. His joints feel creaky, they'd already began to get creaky before he became a regenerator. He turns away, looking up the hill at Yumiko's grave one more time. He had a hunch at who left the red rose (it had been there since the last day of Heinkel's visit), and he kept his trap shut. If she had anything she'd wanted to confess, it would have been to him.
He didn't really feel like he could make an absolution in good faith right now, anyway.
Anderson weaves through the trees, for once slow, on his way back to the orphanage. Then he bee-lines for the door, coming across the soccer field and leaving tracks in the otherwise pristine dew. He opens the door as quietly as possible, but he has underestimated how long he has been out since he was not paying attention. The children were awake and starting chores. Some of the kids give him a sad smile, and others reach out for the hem of his vestments, hesitate, and then think better of it. He passes the Mother Superior of the female wing in the hallway once he enters, and she looks at him with half a pitied sneer. "Well Father? Are you going to help with the children today?" Her voice is accusatory. For a moment, Anderson doesn't react. She continues, a scolding tone taken- "They miss you, you know. You're making them worry." Anderson drops his head ever so slightly, and turns his gaze over her shoulder. He walks stiffly past her, as chilly as the midnight air had been on the walk he took last night because he couldn't fucking sleep, and manages not to quite slam his door behind him.
His room is blessedly dark. Every window is curtained. He flops down on the well-worn couch and puts his palms over his eyes after removing his glasses. He drops the glasses to the floor. The TV is off. He reaches down and grabs a book from the many strewn across his floor, though perhaps he would have been better served by grabbing one out of the stacks on any of the flat surfaces. He's not even really trying to read it, just holding it open on a random page when the tears come. He hisses, sucks hard through his nose, and swallows the wet. Exactly one tear fell into the crease of the scar on his cheek anyway. He slams the book shut, shudders a sigh, and tries something else.
"For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it-" He begins to recite, but a strangled noise manages to escape his throat towards the end.
He presses his hands to his face, and sobs.