bairnsidhe

 Quest closed her eyes as she released the casket.  Her job as pall bearer was over, the few feet allotted to her cadre complete.  With a hero as influential and beloved as The Knight, everyone had wanted to carry their share of the grief.  She hadn't known Gale well, he'd been a senior hero even when Zita had been a lab assistant working off an apprenticeship to Chop Shop and zyr programmer, but he'd inspired her.  His medieval sense of chivalry and duty had given her the idea to call herself Quest, to identify with a search that would never end, answers as elusive as a questing beast.

He'd been her hero.

He'd been everyone's hero.

Quest felt the pain cracking in her chest, the tight shell around her emotions creaking like ship timbers under the grief swirling up around her.  She wasn't an empath by any means, not as a power anyway, but it was hard not to feel the weight of everyone reaching for a bulwark that was no longer there.  Her own loss was locked tight, numbed by force of will and years of training in the sort of mental self-control it takes to have a calm head when everything is exploding.  Others, not so much.

"God, you look like shit," said a warm, familiar voice.  She jerked to look at Dacia.  They'd agreed to avoid letting their private and powered lives get crossed, and this was a hero's funeral, and Quest was in uniform.  So, it appeared, was Dacia.  Nimbus was sticking close, a draping duster of shadow under the protective shade of a black umbrella, but Darkmatter's trademark anonymous androgyny was on display.

"What are you doing here?" Zita hissed, feeling her other identity, the one that she should be leaning on, slide back in irritation.

"Supporting you, and showing my respects."  Darkmatter tilted her head.  "The Knight was a good man, nobody doubted that.  He was strong, honest, fair... kind.  Do you know how few people are even polite to supervillains?  We notice when people care about us.  We miss them when they go.  It doesn't quite hurt the same, I didn't know him personally, but I can feel the loss.  And the pain on your face is frankly concerning, you look like me on a bad day."

"It feels like a sucking chest wound," Zita admitted.  "A critical part of myself is just... gone.  And I'm not sure I have a right to the feeling.  He wasn't my mentor, I'd barely ever met him, just seen him in passing when he visited the Sentinels when I worked there.  I hurt, but it feels... voyeuristic?"

"You feel what you feel," Darkmatter said flatly.  "But if you don't have a right to hurt, I have even less.  I never met him, he was just a celebrity to me.  I still miss him, though.  I want to read the Saturday paper and see another of his letters to the editor, I want to see a clip of him organizing another impromptu boffer joust on the internet.  I want to know he's there, making the world a better place."

Zita lost all grip on her own guilt over the imposition of her pain.  Her instinct to comfort and validate Dacia swamped the self-doubt like a badly made boat.  She pulled her girlfriend-slash-nemesis into a tight hug.

"Oh, and uh, there's one more reason I'm here," Dacia whispered.  "I'm doing a favor for a friend.  Help me keep people from freaking out."

Zita paused, wanting to agree without hesitation to her beloved's request, and wanting to question her nemesis on that rather ominous phrasing. She didn't need to, however, when a strangled roar erupted at the front of the procession.  A great, silver scaled, horned figure was snarling at Doyenne.

"Dragon?" Zita asked in confusion, tilting her head.

"It's not that surprising," Darkmatter said dryly.  "You would show up to my funeral.  He's known The Knight his whole life.  It's not friendship, but it matters."

Zita wanted to argue, to point out they had layers of complications on top of confusion when it came to their partnership.  Quest knew it didn't matter, but also that Darkmatter was right.

"Give way," Quest called up.  "Mediation team, give way."

They headed forward, people falling back in an orderly fashion.  She wondered at that, until she saw Darkmatter nod at a woman in an elegant gown of eggplant purple and silver.  Princess's empathy could latch onto a reasonable order like letting a mediation team through, giving her enough of a boost to calm the savage crowd.

"Helen, no offence, but you need to take a deep breath," Quest said calmly.  "You're in pain, and you're not being rational."

"He has no right--" Doyenne started, but Dragon cut her off with a strangely quiet roar.

"He has every right to anything he feels," Quest said firmly, staring down the unofficial leader of superheroes.  "Just like you do.  If he's here to grieve, we need to let him."

Helen Riley glared at her, then past her to Darkmatter.  "I suppose you're also on his side," she sneered.

"You've lost someone, so I'm ignoring the tone," Darkmatter said sourly, "but there's no sides here.  Someone is dead.  We all hate that fact.  We're all in pain.  We're all sad and angry and afraid.  We're all going for a swim in our worst emotions.  But Dragon and I are a bit less thrown by that, because we stared into our abysses long enough that they got socially awkward and backed down long before this happened.  You try to be good most of the time.  I think that's commendable, but it left you unequipped to step up and deal."  

"Stop tilting at the fucking windmill and do the right thing," Dragon growled.

"Maybe don't insult her to her face," Zita muttered.  Helen smiled, though.

"I deserved that.  I just miss him."

"We know," said Princess, who opened her arms.  Doyenne collapsed into the embrace of the anti-hera, and Dragon stepped deftly around the two.  Darkmatter put a hand on Quest's arm and guided her back to the casket.  Dragon positioned himself at one corner, Darkmatter behind him.  Quest stood opposite her nemesis, and Doyenne wiped her face and took the remaining position.  Princess let out a trilling chord, a sound that shouldn't be possible from a human throat, and the crowds filtered back, ready for the procession to continue.

They had a hero to lay to rest.