08-17-2014, 09:24 PM
Spoiler:
"Leonard... Oh, Leonard... My sveet, sveet boy." The hand of a pale woman reached out from the meager bedroll she lay on to grasp the face of a young man with short copper hair. The woman was smiling, but Leonard did not share this expression. His head bowed, tears running down his cheeks, his face contorted with a frown. Leonard cringed as the woman coughed once more, the result of a deathly cold that was finally beginning to take its toll on the frail woman's body.
"My son... Look at me." She said in a stern voice, showing for the strength she possessed even now. Leonard looked up from the ground to the face of the woman he had known as his caretaker for his entire life. His mother, on her deathbed, even now a display of the depraved health that they knew all too well. But they were not alone. His friend, Duke Dukenson was behind them, as well as one of his uncles and two of his aunts.
"Promise me somesing, vill you son?" The woman's eyes scanned over Leonard's face as he frowned and nodded once in agreement. "Live your life to ze fullest. Do vut you sink is right. I know I raised you like zat, but you must alvays remember zat." She reached her hand from his face down to his chest. "Zis is vut matters more zen your soughts." She weakly tapped where his heart was.
"Yes, muhzer." Leonard said, gulping lowly. "I promise zat, vis all my heart." He smiled briefly to reassure his mother, but the frown quickly returned as his mother went into another coughing fit.
"You vill become a great man, Leonard. I know it, unt I vill be vatching you shine vis ze pride of your blood." Leonard's mother said in a hushed and weak voice. "I hope vun day... Ve vill see each uhzer again, ja?" She smiled one last time before laying her hand on Leonard's shoulder, grasping it tightly. The grip was cold, and hard, but Leonard stayed there, audibly crying now as he brought one hand up to his face and the other to hold his mother's hand, grasping tightly over it.
"Ja, muhzer... Ja... Ja..." Leonard silently repeated to himself as time seemed to take over for him. The next thing he knew, his mother's grip loosened, and the hand fell from his shoulder. Leonard gently put the hand and arm at his mother's side, leaning over his mother's body and sobbing.
"Leo." Duke walked forward and knelt down beside him, patting him gently on the back. "I'm sorry, Leo."
Leonard put his arms around his mother's still body and hugged it tight against him, rocking back and forth slowly. He heard Duke's words, but didn't listen. He was too consumed in his grief, this woman in his arms who had raised him with such good intentions yet met such a slow, painful end. He soon felt three more hands gently patting him on the back, and he knew that he had the support of his friends and of his family.
After a minute of grasping his mother's still body, Leonard slowly set her back on the bedroll, but it felt like hours to him. This was likely the last he would ever see of his mother, alive or dead, and he knew it. Deep in his heart, he wished that none of this had happened. What had made his mother deserve this? Especially this, of all things...
Leonard was helped up by Duke, and taken outside of the small hovel that his family had come to know as home. His uncle and aunts followed closely behind, and all five of them stood silent as the graves for a moment. His uncle cleared his throat lowly, and Leonard was reminded of something. The man was raised on the ideal that crying was for women, or children. Crying was not what real men would do, no matter what. It showed weakness. It showed failure. But here, before him, was his uncle, tears rolling down his face and a stone expression on his face. Leonard thought about how he should have known this. He may have been his mother's child, but these were his mother's siblings. They had grown up with her, they had known her and played with her. His aunts and uncles shared his grief today.
"Uncle Reanald." Leonard said, a lump in his throat. Reanald looked up, silently, and his reddened eyes told of his weakness to answer. Leonard simply walked forward and wrapped his arms around the man, squeezing firmly as his uncle sobbed and held him in return. Duke, behind them, looked to his aunts, who now looked at the two men and then at each other, wiping at their noses and their eyes.
"Vhere are you headed off to, Leonard?" One of his aunts asked of him.
"I vill go vis Duke unt see, auntie Gertrid. Ve vill see." Leonard responded after unburying his face from his uncle Reanald's shoulder.
Duke put his hands into his pockets, looking down at the ground and kicking a stone aside. "We got lots of options, misses. Just gotta see one and do it. But uhh... We'll have to do something else first." He looked at the hovel's doorway, and gulped. "Putting the past under us, so to speak." With that, Duke brought his hand up and scratched his short black hair.
"Ja..." Leonard said, releasing Reanald as his uncle walked over to his aunts, holding them close in a group hug. He turned and walked back into the hovel with Duke, both of them taking a moment to look at the stiff body of Leonard's mother. Leonard cleared his throat and then they walked forward, together, and grabbed a shovel they had placed nearby, then wrapping Leonard's mother respectfully in the bedroll she had died in. They picked her up, and carried her outside with not a single glance at each other. As they left the hovel, more of Leonard's aunts and uncles showed up. He looked at them all with his sad eyes and nodded briefly. They parted, and he and Duke took his mother's body out of the streets of the Alterac Commons, to an empty patch of grass and wooden stakes that was the makeshift 'Hoffman Cemetary'.
The two laid her corpse next to an empty spot and began digging, preparing the grave. It took them a while, and Leonard's back was strained from it, but eventually the grave was dug and his mother's body was placed within the hole in the dirt. As Duke stood holding the shovel upright, Leonard crouched and looked to the sky. "Ve vill see each uhzer again, muhzer." He nodded, smiling grimly. "I promise you zat." He then stood straight and put a hand over his heart. "May ze Light vatch over you in your darkest hour, unt guide you to its hallowed halls, vhere you might find peace from zis darkened vurld, unt serenity in ze sight of ze majesty of ze Holy Light of Creation."
"Light hear us unt hold ze departed close to you." The crowd behind him, of his aunts and uncles, all repeated in near unison.
Leonard slowly turned, and scanned the faces of his aunts and uncles, inclining his head in a silent respect for their sister as much as his grief for his mother. He then straightened and he and Duke both walked back to the streets of the Alterac Commons. Leonard went to his mother's hovel and laid down in his bedroll, bidding farewell to Duke as he closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep. He knew his life was only beginning, and the travesties he would have to face would never go easy on him.
He, as all other residents of the Alterac Commons, knew that all too well.