Right Where It Belongs ⌈Dante⌋

[Noel Song]

17 FEBRUARY 2012; MIDDAY.

Bereavement. They were calling it "bereavement," but Noel wasn't entirely sure what it was he was feeling.

Apparently even the lowly hospital orderly was released hassle-free from their duties in cases like these, as it was only yesterday that the phone call came and now Noel was standing in a place so entirely alien that it may as well have been another planet. In terms of phone calls, it had been a relatively brief one—an unfamiliar, accented voice informing Noel that Yu-jin Song had passed away, giving him time to copy down an address, a phone number, and then imparting stiff condolences before hanging up. For several minutes Noel had simply stood there, the phone still held to his ear as each part of him systematically went numb.

Yu-jin Song—his mother. The shock was there but, truth be told, in Noel's darkest thoughts his mother had been dead for years.

She'd gone without a word, without explanation and without a goodbye, and some part of Noel had wondered perpetually what had become of her. In the beginning, rare was the night that passed without nightmares, the terror that Noel was able to keep at bay during the daytime washing over him at night and suggesting the worst possible fates for his mother. It was a demon, not even bonded with him by this point, that had held Noel together through those first few months. Even as Noel sensed a weakening in him, a strain, perhaps, from the effort of maintaining contact through the veil, as it were—even then, his demon did not abandon him. But why had his mother?

Now, Noel supposed, he would never truly know. Likewise, he didn't even know how it was that she'd died. 'Closed casket' had been the phrase employed by the man on the phone, which in itself was somewhat unsettling. He'd offered no elaboration, and Noel hadn't asked for any—he just went.

Of course, all told it wasn't really quite so simple as that. Much to the boy's own displeasure, there were many things that he feared, and enclosed spaces—being trapped—was included among that number. So, needless to say, simply purchasing a ticket for a nearly twelve-hour plane ride was itself something of a harrowing affair. To his credit, though, Noel didn't once consider not doing so. For whatever reason, his mother had abandoned him and somehow wound up in Brazil, of all places. By all rights, Noel could've declined the man on the other end of that phone call, could've let it all go straight on without him. It might even have been the fair thing to do, justified. But this was it, the end of Yu-jin Song, and Noel was going to be there.

"Breathe," Lune told him, more than once, as Noel set out. "Just breathe." But both the soundless reassurances of his demon and the calming effect of alcohol were lost on him as the flight lengthened to an hour, two. Before they'd marked the third, Noel's anxiety had reached its peak and the demon within him had opted to put him out of his misery. "Sleep," was the last echo of Lune's voice in his thoughts, the word a gentle command that allotted no room for argument.

When Noel was Noel again, he stood on solid ground, in a new country. Not once in his entire life had he felt more out of place.

To be fair, this was the furthest he'd ever traveled from home. Until yesterday, Noel had never even left London proper, so there was that. But, that one phone call, the entirety of his savings and a ridiculously long flight later... here the boy stood, in Rio de Janeiro. Brazil. There were so very many things wrong about the last day or so that Noel felt he was wandering in a daze, each step he took falling on shaking ground. The fitful "sleep" he'd spent the majority of the flight in had done nothing in the way of soothing the chaos of his thoughts—muted, like something he was detached from, but still there filling up every available space.

Even in full control of himself again, time seemed to slip away from Noel, moving in an erratic fashion that in the end deposited him standing at the back of a room full of people with a curious anger rising inside of him. Not one of these people were familiar, no one that could've known the woman in that box more than a handful of years—and yet they were here to mourn her, as if they had some claim. That was his mother, but the service ran its course with no acknowledgement of him, of the fact that she'd had children at all. A shadow, a ghost himself, Noel haunted the back wall unidentified, unnoticed except perhaps for the fact he was dressed somewhat more formally than most. It was just as well that the simple black he wore—pants, a button-down, a slim jacket—was for once what made him stand out. Then, as people began to file out, Noel realized it was over. Some lingered, chatting in small groups, but Noel paid even less attention than he had before, gaze fixed squarely on the casket that held his mother's body.

Gone for years, but only from his life, it seemed. The one full day she'd been dead, though, had stretched elastically until it seemed to have taken longer than all the time she'd been missing. Noel knew vaguely that he wasn't going to see her buried. He'd spent enough time already detached from the company of grieving strangers; he'd go later. Even with this decision, though, Noel remained in place. Distantly, he registered the fact that his demon was speaking, perhaps even urging action, but Noel paid him no mind, lost in disjointed consideration.

In spite of the truly questionable things he'd seen, Noel had never been the sort of person to question his own sanity. But now, as he stood here, there was just such a disconnect between he and everything around him that he began to wonder, if rather vaguely. Wouldn't it be fitting if he'd gone mad? Perhaps his mother had seen it coming, taken that as justification. The paranoia, the "imaginary friend" he'd passed Lune off as well into his teen years. Or, more likely, it'd had nothing to do with him at all—Noel really wasn't so self-centered. Either way, his state of mind was beginning to feel dangerously close to broken. After all, look what he'd done, just to save his own life. Maybe for that, where he stood—something close to the every possible definition of the word 'lost'... it might've been right where he belonged.

[Dante Alencar]

Death comes to all.

Dante forgot who it was who had spoke of death and taxes being the only two absolutes in life; but he argued that even in some places, ironic as it were, taxes bore no weight or prevalence. Death. Not even life could be guaranteed; some people only had brief glimpses, tiny snatches of existence, in blurry non-sentience, before the Reaper snatched them from the cradle and ferried them straight back to the nothingness from whence they came. Death: it was the damning absolution of humanity.

Yu-jin Song had been a contact of his. She was pleasant to be around; a philanthropist in a way of speaking, her attitudes and her ideals, though often rose-tinted or kaleidoscopic - that was to say, in the city of the favela, ambitious to the point of almost waking dreams - and she had been very close to the inner mechanics and ideals of Liberation itself. At the heart of it she agreed with the sentiment; and perhaps not the methodology, but as Dante had clarified times before and would to times again, for every just cause there was a just cost. And if dozens had to die - innocent or not - so millions could live free across Brazil? That was a cheque he had no qualms about signing.

Song was another casualty that was now marked down at the bottom of the list in fresh ink of the ever-flowing paper records of those that had died because of his cause, but the list of people that would be saved if his objectives succeeded were beyond that even in conception. And of course he grieved for her; Dante was utilitarian, but he was not callous, and he and the woman had been close, closer than most.

Silently he lurked at the back of the funeral, having arrived late to pay his own respects. Dante never liked to tarry; and though he knew that tolerating an extended period of time of almost suffocating grief, and the sentimentality that he sometimes couldn't bring himself to admit he was too in possession of, making his own appearance and paying his own respects - closed-casket - was far more personal, far closer, and far more respectful a send-off than sitting idly through a procession he felt nothing but nervous - for fear of being recognised - within, and felt much more fitting, personally, to him. But how could he answer trying to put himself in Yu-jin's shoes? She was dead.

As it happened at the end, barely ten, fifteen minutes after his arrival, people filtered out, dwindling into small groups as the music ceased. Most of the people here must have known Song from the public face you put on; he recognised no-one he knew mutually as understanding the real truth behind it all, and what he suspected was, most likely, and definitely unfortunately, the real reason things here had been closed-casket. Yu-jin's more illicit activities in what some considered the "underworld" had warranted her an untimely demise, and a bloody one at that. The cartels had never appreciated Liberation's presence: and oh how they loved to send messages.

It wasn't long before everyone filtered out - clergymen and all - that there were only he and another single person left. To be fair, Dante reserved the right to stay for as long as he wanted - after all, he was the one who'd paid for the arrangements. It was a promise he made - though in slight jest some of the time to the less-endangered members - to all who so much as affiliated with Liberation: the cost of their funeral would be all but covered. And though this Korean woman, who had taken on herself so much responsibility and so much passion in the cause, yet at the same time keeping it all a relative secret, had been the first in a month or so to join the list of the regime's deceased, she was no exception.

The only one left at the back was a younger man. Slim-fit jacket, charcoal-black tone to his clothing, introverted look about him; as Dante rose his head from his cupped hands and let his eyes flicker open from a short prayer to the God he didn't know even to exist, Kurdai rang through with a question be already knew the answer to. Who is he? The revolutionary didn't hasten to acknowledge it with an answer. The revelation was fitting together seamlessly in his psyche already.

Yu-jin had told him once - just once - of a child. A child in time; a child she'd left behind in London. There was only a single mention of him; but for the rest of the time the pair had spent, he could see the regret of a mother, the empty, non-existent tears she couldn't cry, self-hatred for leaving the boy behind. And with one person left in the room, looking hollow and perplexed, and a far cry from as distraught as a son should be at the passing of his mother, Korean, just as she had been, two and two didn't need putting together: they simply fell into four simultaneously, and the equation had been completed.

The visionary rose to his feet and let the soles of his polished dress shoes tap against the tiled floor of a rather pristine, small Christian church that he'd found on the outside of town. Sidling into the pew next to the boy - a few inches smaller than he - he left it only moments before extending his hand in a sombre initiation of a shake. "Your mother told me about you. I don't know your name, however." His tone was light; quiet. Almost fitting for a funeral, especially considering the visionary's repute for being one who knew how to command thousands with the power in his own words.

"My name is Dante. She was..." A light exhalation. This boy was only maybe nine, ten years younger than he was. But the lines in Dante's face told a different set of stories - and an anthology far longer and bloodier - than in the shorter Korean child's. There was a difference; one had been here for hours; the other for years. One knew this place as a destination; the other as a battlefield. One was a tourist: one was a soldier. "...a friend of mine."