There were ten possible paths to where they were going; Four that only took twenty minutes. As a safety precaution, Fallon picked at random what path she’d take whenever she wanted to visit this special place, and never took the same one twice in a row. Even though the building was no longer a safehouse, old habits- built up over decades- die hard.
Unlike her former protege, the elder Emitter didn’t view the silence between them as tense or thick. Maybe a little apprehensive, but that would just be plain smart on Max’s part. Fallon had given her no real information on their end location, if Max had been listening to her training at all while in the Spade ranks, she should be at least a little questioning. For Fallon, the silence offered the space to calm the sudden brush of nerves lighting up her gut the closer they got to the building. She hadn’t ever brought anyone outside of the resistance here, and even then- only a handful of members knew what she had done with the burned safehouse.
The building itself was unassuming: brown-black brick, smudged with soot and dirt and grime from the years of superficial neglect. Few windows, just as dark and grimy as the brick. Tucked away in a darker, narrowed corner of inner Clubs, where only the souls meant to be there, were there. Fallon stepped up to the heavy wooden door and swung it open, stepping inside and motioning for Max to follow.
She said nothing as she entered what she considered to be a sacred space. Simply drew a small matchbox from her pocket and lit two large candles sitting by the door. The inside of the building, in what little light shone through the windows and what the firelight offered, still stood in stark contrast to how the building’s curbside appeal. Fallon had made it a point to keep the place spotless- as spotless as she could anyway. Clearing the little jars and boxes that lined the walls and surfaces of the furniture of dust and grime.
Each shelf, hung low for easier access, held the cremated remains of the fallen resistance members- the ones she had been able to bring the bodies back of, anyway. Some were just little stone or metal plaques. Their souls still made the air feel heavy. In the main room, there were fifteen small memorials, the smaller rooms held fewer, but there was still at least five in each room of the old house.
Fallon handed one of the candles to Max. “C’mon. Through here.” Her free hand motioned down the dark hallway to their left and she lead the way. She stopped in front of a small room at the end of the hall, a former bedroom though the bed no longer remained, and looked at Max. “In there. The new one. You’ll see his name. I’ll wait back where we came in.” She turned to leave but stopped, lifting her free hand and, hesitantly, placing it on Max’s shoulder. “Take your time. Do what you need to do.”
She took her hand back before the younger could push her away and made her way back down the hall.
Max truly didn’t know what she’d expected to find or be told when she’d made her way across contentious borders into Clubs this morning, a one-track mind looking for answers that didn’t know what to do when presented with them. Her heart hung heavier and heavier as they made their way between the burned-out brick walls, the purpose of this building and the shelves lining the walls achingly clear. For a split-second, Max had the impulse to turn on her heels and leave, a calling almost too difficult to ignore -- maybe because she knew what she’d wanted to be told this morning, and this obviously wasn’t going to be the case.
Feet dragging reluctantly to a stop outside what appeared to be a gutted bedroom, Max was painfully aware of the way her heart hammered against her ribs and her throat constricted with what she was about to face. She heard Fallon’s words as if through a dream, tunneled, and barely reacted but for a subdued nod. The touch to her shoulder was unexpected but not unwelcome, and for the briefest of moments, Max missed it as soon as it was gone.
Quiet closed in, contemplative and suffocating, as Max finally took a few tentative steps into the room. For a moment she looked everywhere except where she expected to find what she was looking for, eyes skimming the shelves lining the walls. There were fewer jars in here, but no less weighty than the previous hall -- weightier, even, in the space given between them. Max stepped to the side to set her candle down on a shelf before finally confronting what she dreaded.
Jung Anton, the simple nameplate stated. Despite being no stranger to death and battlefields nor wounds and the corpses they left behind, Max’s stomach twisted and soured as her breath stopped short in her throat. One hand lifted and reached out, but the numb buzzing of her fingertips stopped just short of touching the jar. She didn’t feel like she should. She didn’t feel like she could. Fingers curled back in towards her palms before Max folded her arms over her stomach, more out of a sense of self-preservation than her usual standoffishness.
The first few tears snuck down her cheeks before she even realized, largely because Max thought she’d cried more than enough in the past forty-eight hours. She didn’t think she had anything left, but as the moments ticked by in slow-motion she was proven more than wrong.
Attempts to stifle her sobs were middling at best, and some part of Max wondered how much Fallon could hear out front -- or what she was even thinking, at this point. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Anton had meant something to both of them, something irrevocable, and fate had decided to pull them back together in the wake of his death.
Eventually, Max’s breaths quieted and evened out and the reverent calm settled over the burned-out building again. A strange sense of embarrassment and vulnerability also settled on Max’s shoulders, prompting her to wait a stretch of minutes -- fifteen, maybe twenty -- standing still in the center of the room. Max didn’t know what she’d say when faced with Fallon again, and she didn’t look forward to it. Time might dry her cheeks but it wouldn’t do anything for the redness in her eyes. She didn’t want to have to explain to Fallon what she and Anton had or hadn’t been. Or maybe she did, and that scared her even more.
Turning her back on the room, Max picked up the candle and made her way back towards the entrance, blowing out the wick and leaving it where she’d seen Fallon retrieve it from. Finally, she reappeared at the entrance of the makeshift mausoleum with her arms hanging loosely at her sides. Everything about her looked tired and defeated now, a far cry from the sharp defiance she’d originally greeted Fallon with.
“You didn’t have to show me that,” Max recognized softly, glancing down at the darkened stones in front of the threshold and scuffing at them with her boot. She paused, and eventually added, “Thank you.”
