The funeral is a quiet affair at her church. Most of the guests are family members, though the Naval Brigade is there as well, like a cluster of exotic birds. I'm wearing a starchy suit with a white rose tucked into the fabric, like a corsage. The suit chaffes at my neck, my arms, and is too tight around the chest, where my armor should be. Walking into a combat zone unguarded is bad form. I regard every adult with suspicion, wondering how many of them might have been there the night she died, not knowing, never piecing it together. Until I can trust all of them, I can't trust anyone to cry for her.

Walking in with Will feels like bad form, too. He's a liability. Even though he has other friends, he can't keep his eyes off me. Some irritating combination of guilt and pity lines his wide eyes and slightly pursed lips. I can practically feel every terrible platitude he's ever learned emanating off of him, waiting to bounce forth and comfort me when he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. We settle into a row together, next to our parents, and I pull at the agenda to occupy myself. It's the same floral print they used for my grandmother's service. It's the same church air, the same refractions of light off of the mural of Jesus, his arms spread wide to welcome his children to heaven. I try to see it as something besides a collection of colors, but even the slight stylization of the mural lends it too much to absolute abstraction.

My skin burns under the suit when I see Evan sitting in the pew across from me, alone. He gives me a quick glance that almost looks like one of Will's; pleading, a little lonely, and then he pretends he's looking at the mural, too. The first bars of the organ start playing.

I try not to scratch at the scars, but they itch.

---

Flesh tears.

I was stupid enough to think I was invincible. I bleed for the first time when he gets to me, knocks me down under the heat of the first floor. The world around us is little more than a collection of flashing lights. I've been here three times in the past twenty-four hours. Skipped a little school. The red of the Delegation is the red of my clock at four in the morning, blearing, eye-watering. It is not the same red as the blood that heats on my arm, in jeweled little beads.

His breathing is heavy.

I raise my sword.

---

The event itself is all Megan, but it's not my Megan. I hear about her love of books five times over, her family's trip to a comic convention and all about her kindness... 'kind' comes up as often as 'nice', an empty, shimmering white thing that settles on the air and perches there, like a vacant smile. Megan was a nice girl, I learn. She did nice things for others. Megan lies behind a veil of white fabric that will hide her broken body before it is burned to cinders, but for now, in memory, we have her, untorn, her, purified, her, diluted to the best, most docile moments of her life.

I don't want to believe I barely knew her, so I listen for superficial things to grab onto. A book series here. An accolade there. Amanda talks about their squabbles in middle school: "She had a particular copy of a Wrinkle in Time she used to keep on hand for light reading and a melee weapon, if necessary," she says, with a sniff, and then goes on to recount the tamest possible version of their live-action roleplay extravaganza at some summer camp, spiced up with words that downplay the nerd aspect and the even more obvious subtext. I'm trying not to laugh as the girls in the front row begin to sob, knowing that Amanda, too, met Megan behind a mask. It would seem that's just about the only place to meet her.

I watch, detached, as the congregation rises, and the man who sings along with them, holding his brother's hand, that man owns my skin but isn't me. Adam Rosenbloom is grieving for a pretty girl he knew almost well enough for a few months, someone out of a vague daydream.

I want my armor. I want my sword. I want to pull her out from the coffin, living, and whisper to her, "Let's go on an adventure." Her mouth is open in shock and delight. The place she once lay is now a portal to the Veins, a dark blot in reality, unrecognizable. Evan, in the congregation, who would join us in a heartbeat, hurl himself over in an act of blatant disrespect to public property, lifts his head to the stained-glass Jesus. He hasn't been looking at the speakers. Instead, from his quiet corner of the crowded room, he positions himself in the pew so that he is bathed in blue light, hands folded.

---

His hands are close to my cheek.

I don't want to die.

I keep reminding myself of this with every blow.

Metal on metal.

Flesh on flesh.

His breathing is even heavier, the air is so hot I can barely breathe either. He's pulling himself apart from the inside. He wants to pull me apart. Every action is an act of spite from something outside his body. When I am close as I am I think I might be able to hear the whining noise that only exists in his head, which controls him, which owns him. He is still beautiful when he fights, and I miss being on his side instead of in juxtaposition with him. I have to defend myself, but I have an offensive weapon. We can't get anything done with him haunting us down the halls. There's almost nothing to do, he's so effective.

I have to live.

I raise my sword.

---

The reception downstairs offers fruit, chocolates, and a slideshow set to generic feel-good music from the 2000s. It is the kind of music she would tell her parents she liked to get them off her back, but I can't think for the life of me what she did listen to. I wish I had some way to guess. A six year old beams up at me from a boxy cardboard display, asking me why I didn't do what I promised to do, distraught behind a smile that she couldn't protect us either. Across the room there is Megan, at her kindest at the local nature sanctuary; Megan, at her happiest amongst the Naval Brigade girls at the National Book Festival; Megan, at her most pensive against the raging sea; Megan, in the mundane; Megan, in the eternal; they've inundated the place in her. I don't know which version I should be begging for forgiveness. I am so distressed by the lack of her in the presence of her, how not one photo is her as I knew her, they're all too small... she wasn't that small. Her face is off in all of these, but I can't explain why, or what would fix it.

Serena is across the room by an old piano, in a stunning black dress. She watches the slideshow with her arms folded.

We couldn't find an excuse to get Harper in.

Amanda lowers my hand, which currently contains a recent photo of Megan on a day hike with her family. "Rosenbloom."

"What do you want?" She's already asked me about the incident itself. The third time, I was even willing to answer. I wasn't involved. I wasn't there. She knows. I know. I was too far away to have done anything.

"What were you to her, exactly?" That's not anger in her voice, no, no, that's fear and jealousy. This is so much worse than I originally suspected. "What were both of you to her?"

"Define both of us," I say.

Amanda rolls her eyes. "Evan Drake's kind of a creep. I don't know why Megan would hang out with either of you, especially considering you're almost a stereotype of a stereotype of what people envision when they think 'bitchy white male'."

"Thanks." I say, finally putting down the photo. I skewer some cantaloupe with a toothpick. It feels cruel. "Sorry that your friend switched friend groups, sorry you feel obligated to take it out on me, and believe me when I say that no matter what I tell you, you're just not going to get it."

"I think I would, and that's exactly why I need to talk to you," she insists.

Evan slinks past out of the corner of my eye, towards the exit. I push my chair out and stand. "No, you really wouldn't. I'm sorry for your loss, loved your speech. Nice chat. Bye."

Amanda grabs my arm, but I twist her off without having to stop walking. She's not the one who's had months worth of physical assault to deal with. She hasn't had to wrestle masks off desperate addicts on the rickety walkways of the refurbished passages of an underground nuclear facility. I barge past my parents, who are talking to Amanda's mom. Evan's gone. Serena shoots me a glance. I signal her to remain neutral. I push past scores of people I don't know, tenderly as I can breach a crowd, past my brother, past her siblings, past dozens of people who have part of her heart or face, and an arm gets me right around my shoulder. I'm ashamed to admit I swing around before realizing I don't have a sword in my hands, almost rigid with fear. It's instinct.

"Leave me alone."

"Do you know anything about-" Amanda pauses. "A man named Ignatius Faust?"

"He's like... a book character or something? This is the worst possible time for you to be interrogating me about nerd shit." I say, completely candid. I grit my teeth. "Okay. Fine. You win. Megan and I were romantically engaged, but we never even kissed, so we're not in danger of wrecking your... your legacy. We mainly did dumb shit around town, in places where no one would see us, because it felt good, for a moment, to be alive. She makes everyone feel that way. Like they're special. It's what she does. Did. I'm sorry for your loss, Amanda, but I need to go."

Amanda's glare lifts, and she lets go. "I really misjudged you, didn't I?"

"Yeah," I say, and I don't say, I'm so much worse than you're thinking. "Grief makes you do stupid things. No hard feelings." I finally kick her off my tail with that and force through the doors. He's standing outside, probably waiting for a cab. I straighten my stance, my mind reeling through all the ways that I could die out here alone if the Delegation sics him on me.

Grief makes you do stupid things. I walk forwards.

---

He's vulnerable in the heat of it, once or twice. We do not give each other the benefit of open arms any more, but there are moments where we could have done it. Sometimes he lurches a little forwards or a little backwards in a way Onyx would have been ashamed of, on his strings. Sometimes, it's just Anthem and the Delegation. Sometimes, it's just us.

Hot metal on hot metal. Magnified sunlight on a forest flame.

Evan, come back to me.

Right now, as we are, with no one to put us out, we can only make each other worse.

Evan, come back to me.

Footwork, Megan used to say. She used to chide me on bad form. I'm a young knight against a dragon. I'm already in the stomach of the beast. When we are together, there's no light in the whole world.

Evan. Evan please.

"How many," I say, pressing him against a wall. He's so close that I could kiss him again, steal the kiss back from his lips, be close to her again, too, by extension. I want them both. I have phantom limbs where they should be.

"Recruited a hundred and then some," he says. The Delegation makes him convulse, occasionally. He usually can't even talk. He manages, "Move faster."

Can't hurt him. We're leaving anyways.

The sword drops.

---

He has Lucifer's braced shoulders, the lithe but fatal tilt of his limbs, but he's small and his hair is messed up in a way more familiar to Evan, the old one. The expression is all new, though-- there is no life in it at all. He looks possessed.

We share a moment of silence, our own personal funeral, and his gaze rolls from the street to me.

"I'm not programmed to attack you in my civilian form," he whispers, at last. The voice is not entirely his, graced by a smooth cruelty, like a polished knife, "but I'm going to warn you right now that the noise is kicking in, and I will do so anyways."

Go ahead, I think.

"I meant it when I said I was coming for you," I say, instead. "Keep fighting."

Evan does not answer. A cab pulls up, driving old rain from the sides of the streets and slicking the wheels. I stand breathless as he files in and pulls away; I remain there until my parents come out to look for me with Will in tow.

---

I am cold under the uniform and burning across my hands and face.