Sunday Afternoon
The sky held the weight of mourning.
Gray. Still. Too quiet for a Sunday.
Rows of black suits filled the courtyard beneath the guise of mourning "analysts" lost to a tragic car crash—an illusion tailored for the public, ironed and pressed with just enough grief to pass.
But those seated in the front rows knew the truth.
Operatives. Agents. Friends. Gone.
The flags barely stirred.
Aldrin stood at the podium.
No notes. No teleprompter.
Just silence and the breath of ghosts at his back.
He looked out over the families—wives, husbands, children, parents who would never know the full measure of what their loved ones had given. Couldn't know. Wouldn't be allowed to.
He exhaled.
"I've been asked to say a few words," he began, voice low but clear, each syllable weighed like a stone dropped in still water. "But I find the older I get, the less comfort I find in speeches. Words don't shield you from loss. They don't fill the spaces left behind."
A pause.
"They don't bring anyone back."
He let the silence linger. No one moved.
"But sometimes—words can still honor. They can hold the weight with you, even just for a moment."
Aldrin glanced down, then returned to the crowd. "What we do... it isn't glamorous. It doesn't make headlines. There are no medals. No parades. Just hard choices. Shadows. Sacrifices."
He let his hands clasp together. Steady.
"These men and women chose that life. Quietly. Fully. And even in the end, they did their job. They followed orders. They stood in the breach so others wouldn't have to."
A faint wind moved through the trees, soft like breath.
"I've seen a lot of death," he said, eyes darkening for just a moment. "More than I'd like to admit. And I've learned that it never gets easier. Not really. But you learn... to carry it. And in carrying it—you remember them."
He turned slightly toward the caskets. "We remember them."
"To the families—" his tone shifted slightly, gentler, the blade dulled for the sake of hearts already bleeding, "I can't promise you full truths. But I can promise you this: they were brave. They were loyal. And they didn't die alone."
Aldrin stepped back, voice now just above a whisper. "Thank you for letting them serve."
He descended from the platform and took his place at the front row. Silent.
The priest moved to close the ceremony, his words faded behind the gentle breeze and distant cries of mourning.
Iris watched from further back, seated beside Isabella, her gloved hands folded tightly in her lap.
She hadn't been able to look away from him—not during the entire speech.
There was something in the way Aldrin stood there, shoulders slightly heavier, as if carrying not just the weight of this tragedy, but all the ones before it. As if every name etched onto his soul pulled at him with invisible threads. And yet—he had given them dignity. A voice. A final shield of words.
He didn't cry.
He never did.
But grief didn't always come in tears.
Sometimes, it came in silence.
Sometimes, it came in how he sat alone after the caskets were lowered, staring at nothing, as though daring the ghosts to stay with him.
And Iris—she sat quietly and watched, chest aching in a way she didn't have words for.
How does a man like that ever rest?
She didn't know.
But she knew this: she'd never let him carry it alone.
Not if she could help it.
The ceremony had ended, mourners dispersing in slow clusters—whispers, sniffles, polite nods beneath the low-hanging clouds. Only a few remained. Aldrin had not moved from his seat in the front row. His shoulders were still squared, still resolute, but the stillness was different now—less a mask, more a burden.
Iris lingered behind a marble column before finally stepping forward. Her heels made no sound on the stone path, her gloved hands still knotted in front of her, holding tight to something unseen.
She stopped just beside him. Not too close. Not yet.
"The man who stood there," she began, voice quiet, the way someone speaks inside a cathedral or before a storm, "he didn't speak like a commander. He spoke like someone burying a part of himself."
Aldrin turned his head, just slightly, his eyes catching hers beneath the soft gray light. But he didn't interrupt. He let her go on.
"There's a shadow in your words," she said, gaze lingering on the row of fresh-turned graves. "A weight I don't think you've ever put down. Not really. Maybe you can't."
She paused, searching for the right language—abstract, careful, true.
"You wear duty like armor. But today… it looked like a shroud."
Aldrin exhaled, slow. And then he stood.
He looked at her—not as Chairman, not as strategist, not even as the man at the center of a hundred whispers—but as himself.
"The sword never gets to mourn the hand that wields it," he said finally, voice deep, but gentler than before. "It only learns to bleed quieter. To keep striking. Because duty isn't about what we feel. It's about what we carry through it."
A moment of silence passed between them, heavy with meaning.
"You see shadows," he continued, eyes locked on hers, "because I've walked too long without light. And even now, when it flickers… I'm not sure I know how to follow it."
Iris's throat tightened.
And yet, even now—even after death and violence and rumors and the constant walls between them—she saw him.
Not the myth.
Not the mask.
Just the man who wouldn't let go of the sword, because someone had to keep holding it.
She took a step closer. Barely enough to close the distance. But just enough to be noticed.
"You don't have to follow it," she said softly. "Maybe just… let it rest near you for a while."
Aldrin didn't smile. But something in him eased. A fraction. A pause in the storm.
His eyes lowered briefly to the earth before them, to the graves, to the silence that spoke more than any elegy ever could.
Then, as if it were a promise wrapped in shadow and steel, he murmured, "I will not break. Not while others still stand."
And together, they stayed there for a while longer—silent, side by side, in the afterglow of grief and honor.