It's All Fun and Games {Ambrose Blitz}

I wasn't expecting any other late night visitors. I know that most of the Dempsey clan is out of sorts right now, but that doesn't mean I expected any of them to be at her grave when I was also at her grave, because that's awkward. You'd think that maybe I might have calculated for that. Then again, maybe I did. Although, maybe I didn't want to be dealing with an angry Dempsey. Then again, if someone can show me a Dempsey that isn't angry, I'll be surprised.

Slowly I lift my head, look the man who's just been yelling at me up and down, and then with a sigh, rest my head back down. With a wave of my hand, I gesture to the spot beside me, "Wasn't expecting you Dempsey, but if you're going to insist on being here, might as well get comfortable." Not waiting for him to really settle down, I carry on with my thinking. It has occurred to me that he possibly won't lie down and insist on my getting up, but ,"If you must know, we're stargazing," I add, as if to reassure him. It's funny because I never bothered to explain myself before his daughter came along and mucked up my life. But I suppose one never really knows what life will throw at them and all that twiddle twaddle. You know, life gives you lemons, squeeze the juice in the eyes of your enemies, or something along the lines of that. Taking another drag of my cigarette, I hold out my case to the Dempsey I'm not currently laying on top of.

"Cigarette?"

"I suppose it is a terrible habit, but it's less of a habit, more of an addiction. I could be addicted to something worse though, so in the long run it's healthier than heroin."

Taking another drag, I search the heavens, completely uncaring about how uncomfortable I might be making the older man beside me. If I cared about people's comfort, I would be a completely different man. For a moment, we sit in a stagnancy, a silence, as the Dempsey man tries to find his footing in my oddities. My intentions of course, have never been to confuse, it's just that most people end up that way after speaking with me for longer than five second. Me, I've always enjoyed the company of the more mature because while older, they usually keep up a lot better. Although, this ones being a bit slower than I would have hoped. he was a Dempsey after all, I was expecting keen thinking, fast and ready to go.

With a sigh, I gesture at the lump of rock in the ground behind me, "If I stargazed anywhere else, the point would be lost, Dempsey." Not entirely true, stargazing anywhere is always nice, it's more depending on who you're doing it with. I'm not sentimental, I promise. Just a tiny bit. A minuscule amount, not enough for them to claim there's anything there. "I've chosen this spot, in particular, because this is where my friend is, and the point to stargazing is to do it with a friend, she liked to tell me, so here I am, here she is, and here you are. Here we all are. Stargazing." Giving Kiera more ashes, I pause for a moment, and then ask for the sake of moving on the conversation, "Do you often visit your dead daughters so late at night?"

In curiosity, I look to where he points, trying to find the one jumble of stars that apparently looks like something in the rest of the jumble of stars. I never spent much time stargazing before. I never had to wish for a better life because I was told that there was no such thing. I've been raised in a perfect environment, or so I've been told. I could disagree there, but all the people I could hold that argument are quite far away from me now, home in the capitol. I've never admitted anything like this before, and specifically not to a man who is a total stranger, but to be perfectly honest for once, "I didn't know that one. I don't know any of them, do tell."

I could tell this fine young gentleman where his daughters could be, because the District is small and unless they've fled it, there are actually only a few places his daughters could possibly be. In the ground for one, there's two out of six found for him. The problem is, as soon as I actually bothered to look for them I'd have to keep them, and maybe he knows that and that's why he hasn't asked for the Peacekeeper's help. I'm also quite curious to know if he knows what his nephew is. All questions to save for later, especially when he says the one obvious thing.

"You knew her."

I'm silent for a long while then, stopping again to give her ashes, stopping to simply stare at the stars. I search for pictures in the sky, but my logical mind tells me that there is nothing there but stars and the rest of the world is full of children. Children that draw pictures in the sky. I'd like to be a child possibly, but no. I already went through that whole thing once, why do it again.

"Yes," I finally say, giving a slight nod. I'm not sure how much I can say, but again, there is no point in holding anything back, seeing as she's dead. "When she died, it was always you, no one else, she said. Well I'm the you."

Admitting it out loud proved to be ahrder than first suspected. For a moment, a weight sits on my chest. Akin to an entire body, as if I'm not the one laying on top of her, she's on top of me, and pressing down, down, down. How foolish, though. There's nothing she can make me feel, do, or say anymore because she's completely wiped clean from the world. She can't affect me, she shouldn't effect me but she does. It doesn't make logical sense, that a person so mutilated and gone can still effect from beyond the grave. Then again, is it her who is effecting me, or is it me that is affecting me. If it's me affecting me, is this what guilt is? What loss is? I don't know these things. I don't know the stars either.

He points to another constellation, and I stare up at the jumble of shiny dots in the sky, not seeing it yet again. I don't understand what's so damned special about the stars in the first place. They don't do anything for us at all, all they are, are clouds of gas floating in the sky. Yet most people are content to stare at the stars their entire lives, instead of staring at their own feet. "Ambrose it is, then," I say, "You can call me The Detective. I do have other names, but that's what I go by mostly."

By proper etiquette standards I should have gotten up to shake his hand. Vests was teaching me about handshakes, but for the most part it wasn't working because I usually forget. I don't understand the point of transferring germs. A barbaric ritual in my thoughts. My thoughts are usually the right thoughts. He asks if we were happy.

"If happiness was walking down an alley and hoping to see her and then her coming around the corner, then yes, we were happy. She tried to kill me once, I think, but now I'm not altogether sure. We weren't really together. We never even kissed. I would have liked to try it. Missed my chance. But tell me Ambrose, was she happy?"