He was not supposed to be here.
Some sense of morbid curiosity led him to pay off one of the limousine drivers to take his place. Marcus watched black umbrellas bobbing along the path between the headstones through the driving rain, people hurrying to huddle beneath the pop-up canopy the groundskeeper set up.
Leaning against the hood of the limo, he tugged the brim of his hat down over his eyes to protect his face from the rain and adjusted the clear plastic poncho on his shoulders. He was way too far away to hear anything but water colliding with the car and ground around him. As he watched, he became more thankful for that little mercy, honestly.
The preacher stood up, walking around his empty casket to the little podium they'd set up. Beside the preacher, a blown-up picture of Marcus he didn't remember taking. His brothers' graduation, maybe? The preacher waited a few minutes for everyone to settle before he started talking. The rain slowed, but it was still nearly impossible to make out his words. Just the cadence, practiced, rising and falling like the tide.
Instead, he watched the congregation. His parents and siblings in the front row, Ophelia scrunched between his brothers, all of them clinging to each other for support. Victoria behind them with Morris McGinty, obviously tense, but otherwise emotionless. He even spotted sweet Shirley in the back, quietly sobbing into a handkerchief. Another twenty or thirty people filled the remaining chairs. Faces he knew, but not well.
When Calliope stood, his stomach immediately dropped. Like some vicious cruelty, whatever gods were watching calmed the rain as she took the preacher's place behind the pulpit. She cleared her throat and adjusted the microphone a little before she started.
"I'm not good at public speaking, so apologies in advance..." She paused, looking down at a piece of paper she'd pulled from her purse before looking back up at the crowd. "When we were young, my baby brother was tormented. You'd of never known it, th..." She tilted her head back and took a deep breath, wiping at her eyes.
Marcus dragged his bottom lip between his teeth, feeling his eyes well up already. This was possibly the worst idea he'd ever had.
"The Tenneson family. My chaotic, perfect little family. Full of bright and powerful witches and wizards. Honest to the heavens, war heroes." She nodded to their parents. "Brilliant minds and entrepreneurial drive. Marcus didn't get any of that, and people made sure he knew. We made sure he knew, even if we didn't mean to. You would have never guessed that it bothered him. That's because he didn't let anyone see him break. Anybody but me."
Marcus' hands tightened to fists in his pockets, nails digging into his palms in an attempt to keep his shit together as hot tears streamed down his cheeks.
"I don't know if Marcus ever really understood this, no matter how hard I tried to pound it into his thick skull, but this idiot got gifts that none of us standout Tennesons could have ever dreamed of." Calliope took a shaky breath, glancing over at the casket as she swiped at her cheeks to fight off the tracks forming on them.
"He had an uncanny ability to connect with people. If you had the privilege of calling him a friend, you know what that meant. He was brave, protective, and tenacious when it came to the people he loved. No matter how terrible they'd been to him. No matter how much they made him feel lesser."
Marcus choked on a sob, lowering the visor of his hat even further as he tucked his chin to his chest. It was tempting to just get back in the limo and wait it all out, but something kept him rooted to the spot.
"Marcus Tenn..." She paused, looking down at her paper again as thick droplets fell onto the pulpit. "My brother wasn't brilliant. He wasn't ambitious. All he wanted was to play with magical animals that most of us would run away screaming from. My brother was a Mundane, but he didn't need magic to be the best of us..."Calliope continued, her voice breaking. "I just wish he knew that before he..." Her voice crumbled behind the tears.
Marcus broke.
As the preacher escorted his sister back to her seat, he stared up at the drizzling sky. Rain hit his face, cooling his cheeks as the droplets mixed with hot tears that poured from his eyes. He heard the preacher ask if anyone else wanted to say a few words, and whatever sick part of him that was making him watch this looked back toward the group.
For a beat, no one moved, and he'd thought he might escape this without further destruction. Ophelia folded over on herself, chest to knees, in a sobbing motion that almost made the charade seem real.
Then Victoria stood.
He swallowed hard as she walked directly up to the empty wooden box. She leaned down and pressed her forehead to the space where his head would have rested, then kissed it, soft and lingering. Trembling fingers plucked a pack of cigarettes from her jacket pocket and shoved one into her mouth as she walked off.
He couldn't take this anymore. It felt like he was encroaching on something deeply private and intimate, even if it was all a sham and it was all for him. Fighting against his own feet, he turned and forced them to move around the limo until he collapsed into the driver's seat. He pressed his forehead to the steering wheel and sobbed.
He didn't dare move from that spot until the funeral was over. He dropped off the passengers at his parents' house for whatever little reception they were having after and followed the other drivers back to the funeral home. Leaving the keys in the ignition, Marcus snagged his bag from beneath the bench he'd stashed it, got changed, and left the jacket, pants, and hat in the passenger seat, before starting on the long walk back to his faceless hotel room.
The spectacle replayed in his mind over and over as he walked. His sister's words. His family sobbing in front of an empty box. Victoria's silent gesture. He'd hardly registered when he collapsed onto the bed, not bothering with the lights. Curling in on himself despite the discomfort of springs that dug into his side or the hoodie that nearly strangled him, Marcus cried himself to sleep.