Still In Bloom ↠ Twilight ✓

24 ; a full family

Here's the thing: Wallace had attended his first funeral whenever he was ten.

His small body stuffed in between Daniel and Shelby's, barely at shoulder level, and dressed in a stiff suit with a knot in his tie that pressed against the column of his throat. On Shelby's side was the preacher, speaking the dying rights as he watched Moira McAtee's coffin get lowered into the ground, her three children watching with stoic faces.

They were the only ones in attendance that day. Besides the people in the cemetery that were visiting their own loved ones that happened to look at their pitiful little trio. Even at ten, Wallace remembers wondering what having a large family felt like.

It's with that thought that Wallace gazes forwards now. Watching as Daniel's coffin is lowered into the ground as Shelby clings to Wallace's side, tears adding moisture to the shoulder of his dress shirt. Hiccups echo from her throat as the same preacher, an aging old man with a wrinkled face, says their older brother's dying rights.

It's as Shelby sniffles, trying to collect herself for the fifth time, that Bella's hand slides into Wallace's own. The brunette pressed against Wallace's left, her own bottom lip caught between her teeth as she watches the dirt slowly spilling across Daniel's coffin with watery eyes. On Bella's other side, Edward has his head bowed, bronze hair spilling across his forehead and Wallace can see the agony laced amongst his muscles.

The Cullen's are all in attendance a few feet away. Dressed impeccably in suits and dresses. A few feet away is Dawson, Kinney, and Olly and their respective families. Chief Swan is beside them, shuffling from one foot to the other as he holds a bouquet of flowers in his hand for the condolences he'll no doubt give.

For all the times that Wallace had wished that he'd had a full family, he had never thought he'd get one like this. For what it's worth, Shelby seems unbothered by the extras in attendance witnessing her grief, and Wallace wishes he could share his own. 

The police report said that Daniel died of a robbing gone wrong in Port Angeles. A tragic story of a boy walking home one night in the dark, beaten to death by a few different men, and left for dead. The police report spoke of a boy beaten so badly he was deemed unrecognizable - the only thing identifiable being his teeth, the back two molars to be specific. Luckily for them, Shelby hadn't wanted to see Daniel's body. She hadn't wanted to remember Daniel like that.

And despite the death being different from what was written on the coroner's official statement, Daniel had died the same. As a victim. 

It made grieving hard for Wallace. To not be able to share in his brother's death in the same way Shelby's was; because she was grieving over their brother being a victim to senseless violence. Unknowing that Daniel had distributed some of his own before his death. Against Wallace no less. It was because of that fact that Wallace had insisted that the Cullen's did whatever they had to in order to make it so that Daniel could be seen as innocent, just one more time, in Shelby's eyes.

"Any last remarks?" The preacher's voice is strong as it speaks to the crowd, amidst the warming temperature that belongs to Forks. Spring nearly only the horizon. Flowers beginning to start their bloom. Rebirth amongst death. Maybe that's why people bring flowers to cemeteries.

The funeral closes without any fanfare, much like their mother's had, and that's when Wallace's least favorite part begins. It's Mrs. Schmidt first, whom of which collapses into Wallace's chest, shoulders shaking as she tells Wallace of all the wonderful things Daniel has done for her over the years. It's a moot point, Wallace knows from Dawson's mouth how much the Schmidt's never really favored Wallace's family, but it's not fit to speak ill of the dead.