Rinoa/Caraway: Knives
Title: Knives
Claim: Rinoa / Caraway
Prompts: Deception, saying goodbye, till death do us part (#24, #57, #27)
Rating: G
Summary: Julia's funeral.
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If anyone here had known her Mother well enough, people would have known she hated black.
This was what Rinoa thought as they piled in, pretty pearl necklaces on gaunt necks and eyes being patted with monogrammed handkerchiefs. She didn't know half of them. They whispered and held concession with her Father, muttering vaguely about loss and bravery. He wasn't brave, she thought. Just because he's sitting there and being quiet (like he always is) doesn't make him a "great" man. Everywhere it was 'the great General Caraway', everywhere 'tragic loss for Galbadia's second most prominent statesman'. They tossed around tragedy like a cheap tool to sell more papers, oblivious to the actual tragedy Rinoa knew she was facing.
She felt like she was a firework, ready to whir violently with colour and smoke. He, meanwhile, was a still body of water; you could only gaze long enough before you started seeing things. And when you dived in a million knives dug into your body, deceitfully warm and glowing in the moonlight, edging you closer and closer until--
A shuddering, icy cold.
He had insisted on a closed casket. People went up and touched the mahogany briefly, though as if silently afraid of some curse of the dead. There were lilies everywhere, but she would have wanted roses, ripe and unfurling in the sun, and not in the cold pallor of some anonymous church.
Rinoa thought it was like one of the parties her Father held, in which her Mother would smile politely and people would be whispering and swirling wine in with vicious words. Common, flighty, promiscuous, inferior. And even now, they were shutting her Mother away, because sympathy is nothing without a face.
Women walked to her Father, perfumed and wide eyed, clutching his hand oh-so-tightly and murmuring sweet delicate sympathies. Old women gossiped with gloved hands and stony faces. A good man, and now, ripe for the plucking for the younger 'more suitable' girls of their family.
As he skimmed his hand over the carefully engraved casket, he simply sighed with a resigned acceptance. Rinoa stood by him, warming the golden hinges with her hands. She looked up at him, curious as to what his face would tell her. It told her little. He simply shook his head and walked away, back into the warm hive of people.