burn the atlases | {terrence/gregor}

"I owe you an apology."

He didn't. But he was not known for letting dead things lie clearly, standing in a graveyard, peering down at a boy standing in a six-foot deep hole. It'd been two weeks since their last encounter, and between that and Aunt Maggie's reluctance for him to be going back so often in the first place, he'd at first been convinced to just never go back at all. He didn't need to see some dumb rocks with his parents' names carved into them in order to miss them, anyway.

"I suppose I can be prone to impatience when I'm feeling particularly..." He struggled for the word, smoothing out the black fabric of his pants. Thunder rumbled overhead and the clouds churned- why would he need the cemetery when all of Twelve usually felt like a place meant to be mourned, anyway? The fallen leaves rush across dying grass to escape the bitter wind. It was all so- "-melancholy."

In truth, he'd been watching from afar for quite some time, biding his time, trying to think of the right thing to say. He'd considered telling the boy off again, reminding him of the nature of his job, explaining that it's probably totally normal for teenagers to have meltdowns because of a bouquet of flowers not being replaced on time. Then he considered leaving without speaking. But it felt too easy to be right- he knew he couldn't trust himself right now. If his bitter, scarred up heart was telling him it was better to let the wounds fester, it was up to him to know better.

"I would like to make it up to you. If you're finished here, of course."

Didn't they have some sort of contraption that did this part for them these days? Though, he supposed now that he was considering it, he knew very little about the gravedigging business, but enough about District Twelve to assume anything worth having wasn't there.