Trigger Warning: Disposable Death
Beira had seen death before. He had seen the cold lifelessness of a natural death in person, he had spent many hours in the hospital, listening to goodbyes. Knowing that someone's time here had ended. He had seen the ashen paleness of a body shutting down.
Michael didn't look dead.
He looked like he was sleeping, and Beira found that he had to kneel to take his pulse just to make sure.
He was still warm. There was no heartbeat. He wasn't breathing.
Beira exhaled; his skin was crawling. But, he had agreed to this. It was a small thing he could do, in the midst of too many big things swirling around him. It was one less thing for Sterling, and Yu, and Priam to worry about. One less thing to disrupt their lives.
There was an assurance now, as Beira, that Ilya didn't quite have. A skin he was wearing, not unlike a glove. He told himself that all he had to do was power down and things would go back to normal. It would be like he'd never done this at all.
He knelt to lift the man's limp body, ignored the twitching in his fingers. He didn't know if he should think of Michael as a man or a thing right now, but in any case, he was a burden. A task to be completed.
He had never been to his homeworld and didn't know what to expect beyond what Soleiyu had told him. He knew he was the only one who could get there, and that was all that mattered. He carried Michael in his arms, with more tenderness than he deserved, and pressed the home button on his phone.
Space travel was not what he expected, but then, he'd gone into it almost completely blind.
One second he was under the sun on Earth, and the next he was under a full moon somewhere else.
On Beira.
There were thin clouds drifting across the sky, and snow.
Of course there would be snow.
He hadn't had enough of it already.
It was fine.
His Homeworld was quiet, and he appreciated that. A thin layer of snow crunched beneath his feet, and maybe he would catch the whisper of the wind as he walked. He didn't know where he was going.
There was something sad about this place, maybe beyond just the emptiness of it. The trees were black, withered branches reaching across the distance for one another, with only empty space between. There was no path to follow.
The cold was numbing, in a way that wasn't unpleasant. It was peaceful, almost. It kept his mind from wandering too much as he carried Michael--or, the husk of him--past the trees.
His destination was unplanned, but he knew he'd found it when he arrived.
Nothing moved on Beira, except for him and the falling snow. There were no leaves on the trees to dance in the wind, no animals to watch. There was nothing.
A fitting place for someone to rot.
He stopped walking when he saw the clearing; he stood on a bank above it, but it was only a few feet below, and the ground sloped easily. He walked down with ease and decided this was fine. It was out of the way, but not as if it were an afterthought. Somewhere he could visit if he needed to, somewhere he could forget if he needed to.
He laid Michael's body on the ground.
If he had been a less meticulous person, he could have probably just found a hole to throw him in and left.
But, he had requirements. This was his world. This was his backyard.
He paced the clearly, walking heel to toe so he could measure its width. He walked back over his steps to find the center and, ten feet from the bank, he knelt.
He dug.
The ice was easy to move, but the ground not so much. The first few inches felt like digging through rock. It moved, but not without difficulty. His hands were numb. And filthy, but some distant part of his mind had already tricked himself into thinking they weren't his hands. He was too cold for his skin to crawl, but not so cold that it slowed him down.
He didn't know how long he dug for, only that when he had finished, his hands were covered in smeared dirt. His knees down were covered in it. The white of his uniform was tarnished.
He was too cold to be sick.
He was taller than Michael, and he might have fit comfortable in the hole. He didn't lay down to test the theory. He reached over and pulled his body--Michael's cold and stiff body, closer.
He still looked like he was sleeping.
Beira stared, for a long time, at his face.
There were passing traces of Yu, at best, but he could find no real similarities. Maybe it's because Yu was so full of life, so animated. So warm.
He brushed the snow off of Michael's face, maybe out of some sense of decency. He didn't know why. He was going to cover it with dirt in a moment, anyway.
Beira didn't know how anyone could do this for a living.
Michael was a problem. Michael had been a problem.
He had tried to kill Priam. And Sterling. To hurt Yu.
He had burned down a house. He had poured all his time and effort into destroying everything Yu had worked so hard to build up for himself.
Being in the Negaverse was a problem of its own, but Michael had been a doomed person even before he'd been handed the power to cause such chaos.
Briefly, Beira wondered if he had ever had a chance. He wondered if something had changed if Michael would have been different. If he could have come out of this a better person. If he could have found some way to heal, himself and those around him.
He wondered if anyone would miss him.
He exhaled, and once more scooped him into his arms, carefully laying him down in the hole.
How could anyone miss him?
It seemed like Michael had devoted everything into this, into breaking Yu. He must have spent so much time researching, stalking, scheming. How could he have had time for anyone else, to give them the opportunity to get to know him?
Was there anything to know, except for a bundle of cruelty and malice?
He hoped not.
It was easier to think that Michael was simply a manifestation of the worst of humanity. Someone who simply thrived in hurting others, who could not be fixed or reasoned with.
Beira climbed out of the hole with ease; he only needed to take one large step out of it.
He started filling it at Michael's feet; he knelt and began to push the dirt mound back in, over him.
It was easier than digging, at least.
When his feet were covered, Beira covered his knees, his waist, his chest. Those were easy.
He faltered when it was time to cover his face, because it still looked like he might just wake up. Like he could open his eyes at any moment and tell him to stop.
But, he hadn't. Beira could see his own breath, in little puffs of white. Michael made none.
It seemed disrespectful to look away, so Beira watched as he covered Michael's face with dirt. He was not unkind, he did not simply brush it in. He moved small handfuls to frame his face, at first, and when he could procrastinate no longer, he scattered the dirt gently across his face until it disappeared from sight.
He was gentle, because, maybe in some other life, Michael was no so bad.
In this one, though, the only memories he'd let were bad ones.
The snow was still falling when Beira finished packing the dirt, but he was already filthy and it didn't matter. He'd come this far already. He smoothed the dirt, evened it out as much as possible, and stood.
The brown contrasted disgustingly with the fresh snow.
Beira wanted to go home.
He stared at the grave for a long moment and had to force his eyes away. Michael didn't deserve anything. He knew that.
But Ilya was human, and maybe this was more for him than it was for Michael.
It didn't take him long to find a rock; there were a few scattered at the base of the wall he'd buried Michael under. It wasn't perfect, but it was something--a flat piece, nearly three inches thick. It wasn't symmetrical enough for his own taste, but it was a marker all the same.
The snow had begun to fall quicker, and he could barely see the ring of trees around the clearing through the haze of white. He laid the rock at the head of the grave--centered it, while he could still see too. He was a perfectionist and it took him nearly a full moment.
The snow was hiding the dirty he'd disturbed quickly, like the whiteness could erase the mess he'd made.
He was too cold to appreciate it, but he stayed to watch it disappear.
His sense of time had warped; it might have been a minute and it might have been twenty, but when he could no longer distinguish the grave by color alone, he thought it might be all right to go home. He knelt, once more, and swept the snow off of the stone he'd placed. There was no name to read, there was nothing there.
Michael was gone, swallowed up by this lonely world.
Beira hoped the damage he'd done would fade as quickly as he had.