3 December, 2074

Alain walked a few steps behind his sister, and off to the side... but he never strayed too far. The city had been getting more dangerous, and he watched Shannon like a hawk. With that on his mind, the cold weather and the snow falling around them, and the task that Shannon carries the flower and marches forward for, the tousle-haired adolescent isn't smiling this morning. A look that is one part serious and the other sad refused to leave his handsome lips. He's wearing his father's overcoat, from his years in the military, an age ago, it seems... when things were different. Not because he likes the military, but because it's the warmest thing in the house... and it's very cold today. His arms folded inside of the large sleeves, he shivered and lowered his head, jogging forward a few steps through the snow-covered street to catch up with his younger sister.

The houses around them are old in style, Victorian, steeped in tradition despite the technology rising like a grotesque monster in other parts of the city... everything looking very quaint, with snow heaped all over it. Quiet. Peaceful. The winter of this year in the city is the calm before the storm.

Shannon had purposefully tried to get ahead of her older brother as they walked, the small, cracked pot holding the bedraggled but beautiful red rose in it craddled in her mittened hands. After they had left the florist's shop, the tears would not stop their welling in her large, luminous blue eyes, making the sidewalk before her seem blurry, strangers looking like ghosts floating past as she blinked hard but to no avail. She could hear Alain's footsteps hurredly crunching closer and closer but she could not stop her sniffling, her narrow shoulders hunched up both against the cold and her emotions. She didn't want him to see her crying again, she hated how it made him look, how much sadder he became when he saw her tears. She had heard him last night in his room, screaming into his pillow, muffled, before silent sobs had shook his shoulders while she watched from the open slit of his door.

She wiped her nose against the sleeve of her thick coat - the newest style. Momma had picked it out for her...before she got sick...before the hospital visits became more and more frequent. Momma had loved shopping with her, showering her with gifts and trinkets and beautiful clothes, no matter what the style that Shannon switched to. Momma had loved her... She swallowed, hard against the lump that welled up in her throat, a ragged sob escpaing her lips unbidden.

"Hey... hey, sis..."

His voice took on that hoarse whisper it always does when he's comforting her... a constant, which is a comfort in itself. Yeah, he misses her... but he knows how much his sister hates seeing her sad. Not to mention his father. No... Alain smiles when he's happy, and he does when he isn't, because he knows, deep down, that it helps people. So he managed a little smile now as he stepped up behind his sister, his hands going protectively on her shoulders, one arm over her shoulders. The sadness banished from his face, for now, except a tender little sadness at seeing his younger sister crying.

Shannon sucked back her sobs and sniffled hard, using the chilling, numbing cold as a conveinant excuse.

"'M just cold, Alain..." She mumbled, pressing close to him, keeping her head down so he can't see the wet tracks of her tears. She stumbled in the snow, but not badly, just a childish gait, feet dragging slightly, drawing out the grey tracks in the white crunchy layer of snow.

"Yeah... we'll stop for hot chocolate on the way back. How about that, Shannon."

His voice lilts now when he says her name. It didn't lilt before. It started a year ago when he started hanging out with Jerhyn... then hanging out at the docks more, and working some there. The way a lot of people who work at the docks talk. It's where he gets the money to escape home when he can, and take his sister places other than the house and buy her things she likes.

She nodded, but only to please him, cuddling near. Alain was all she had left in this world to love. She adored Papa, in a way that a daughter should, but he was gruff and though he doted on her with far more gentleness then he's ever shown her brother he is far from a teddybear of a father. His short fuse and thunderous temper matched her own, and when they clash, and they often did, the pair can send the houshold staff running for the hills. No, her brother is her comfort, her only one now that Momma was gone.

They take a detour between houses, a side-yard blanketed in snow, his too-big boots, as too-big as his coat, crunching along as he moves beside his little sister, his hand and his enormous sleeve enveloping hers. A churchyard playground is ahead of them, and on the other side of the small, steep-roofed brick chapel, is the graveyard. He breathed a sigh, sending steam and sorrows out with it.

Shannon's mitten squeezed her brother's hand gently as she heard his sigh. This was the hardest thing either of them had ever done. She let him steer her through the playground and across the kirkyard into the gated graveyard. Under the blanket of snow it was impossible to tell which graves were new and which were old...but their mother's stood out like a beacon with its large sculped sepulcher of a weeping angel bent low over the tombstone that bore her name, on its knees its mightly wings drooped to either side as it burried its face in the crook of one elbow, the other arm draped carelessly off the front of the tombstone as if the heavenly host had swooned there in enternal sorrow. It was both beautiful and haunting. Releasing her bother's hand Shannon strode bravely to the tomb between the narrow pathway cut by the other lesser tombstones.

Alain stood there for a second, kind of wanting to smoke... and then followed his sister to his mother's grave. She's there, six feet under... no. She's nowhere, or recycled into this cruel world. He's not sure, and it made him sigh again. He wanted to know where she was, and wished he could believe that she's somewhere, and watching them. Preferrably at the living room window, watching them play in the yard. That's what he'd prefer. His eyes grew wet, and he began to swallow. God...

Shannon knelt in the snow and set the poor potted rose down on the ledge of the gravestone in the snow. It's green leaves have already begun to droop with the cold, though its brilliant red petals stand out like blood against the cold grey marble and white snows. She brushed the flakes from the stone carefully, lovingly...Momma wouldn't have liked the snow... Mittened fingers traced the letters of her name slowly.... Melisandre Claire D'Mourir...

"Oh, Momma..." She choked on the whisper, hot tears running down cheeks pinked with the bite of the cold wind, tasting the salt of her own tears as they dripped into the corners of her lips. She rose, and with all the brash impetuiousness of her thirteen years, flung her arms round the greiving angel's head and gave way to her sobs, narrow shoulders shaking as she burried her head in her arms.

"I hate you, Momma...I hate you!"

For a long moment she was alone in the darkness with her own tears and the cold, unfeeling stone angel, until arms wrapped around her, the itchy wool of the coat and her brother's growing adolescent strength. Out of instinct, though, out of his own sadness, and tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes, he found himself reaching a bared hand forward to trace the letters of her name and love her. She fought for so long to stay, and she stayed for them. The only reason she stayed for as long as she did. Shannon had never known any mother but a doting mother with a broken body and a breaking spirit, and Alain could barely remember when she was strong.

She turned from the angel to wrap her arms around Alain. Were they really that thin? When did she start feeling this frail? It had been days since Shannon had last eaten and even with layers of winter clothes between them she felt light as a bird in his arms though her hug was feircely strong. Her sobs slowed and soon she only sniffled against her brother's broad shoulder.

"I don't hate her, Alain...I'm sorry... Do you think she heard me?"

"Nah... and if she did... you know how she is. Just smiles."

He touched the side of her face, catching a few tears, willing his own to stop, now. Ugh, it's always the hardest thing to do.

"Y'know?" He smiled past her at the defiant rose. "And I think she likes the flower."

She nodded and gave his cheek a soft kiss as she pulled back but kept her arms round his shoulders as she looked at him, reflecting his gentle smile back like a mirror. If they had been closer in years they could have been mistaken for twins perhaps, different sides of the same coin. She wiped his wet cheeks with her soft, warm mittens.

"Yeah...I think she does too."

"C'mon, canard."

His soft smile as she wiped his cheeks turning to a grin, standing slowly.

"Let's get some hot chocolate and pastries. My treat."

But before he can take a single step... he's looking back at the tombstone, and a little sadness returns to the handsome lips. He kisses his fingers, then presses them on top of the weeping angel's downcast head.

"Miss you, Mom."

She nodded and wound her arms round his waist as they walked, leaning her head against his side as they made their way out of the graveyard together. She wiped her nose on her sleeve once more before glancing up at him.

"I love you, Alain."

"Yeah?" He looked down at her, grinning, but then tender. "Well, that's good. 'Cause I love you too, Shannon."

A little half-push/half-pet was given to the top of her head as they crossed the kirkyard through the thick snow, leaveing behind the stone angel and its eternal sorrow, kept company in the snow by one defiant red rose.