Paradise Falls pain's like cold water, your brain just gets used to it

Ghost asked for the thread to be wrapped up here. <3

Chan couldn't stay still for long. Finley was murmuring to her children and then the trio were huddled together quietly and then Atara's voice lifted and it was like a physical blade in the air, cutting blindly in great sweeps with every word. His pacing was strangled as he tried to hold it back, to not cause motion much less sound, even as his own heart was stuttering and seizing and he wanted to vomit.

Above everything he felt and thought, the one he could not shake for even a moment was how this would, all too soon, be his own children. What he wanted to do was run to them and curl up with them, to pretend the world wasn't filled with pain and loss and enjoy the pieces of his own heart that he'd managed to hold onto.

Instead, he'd only go a few yards, ensuring he was at a proper distance that his own fit of emotion wouldn't inconvenience anyone else. When the time came, when they were all ready for it, he'd return to assist the children in taking care of their mother's body in whatever way they saw fit.