The memory of eleven years ago felt as raw as ever.
Cold rain was the only thing Rod and Catra could feel when staring at Elena's grave. Though the man's conscious mind registered the silent expanse of the graveyard as a memory, every detail felt nothing but viscerally real.
Behind them stood Alex Anderson. Her usual confident demeanor was subdued and her shoulders were slightly stooped. She was Rod's boss and the formidable leader of Grand North's government. Yet, in that moment, she was simply a friend showing respect for the hero's loss.
The simple gravestone before them bore only a few words:
Elena Claws
2100 - 2140
Rest in Peace
Rod's eyes were unblinking, even if raindrops streamed down his face and traced paths across his black suit. It was a heavy weight that mirrored the burden in his soul. The words, the grief, the sheer reality of it stripped him of all ability to speak or move… to even truly breathe.
Beside him stood Catra. She was too young to fully comprehend the finality of death, but an instinct screamed a single truth: she wouldn't be able to see her mother again. Not truly…
"Daddy… is mommy not gonna be able to come to the park with us?"
She turned her head towards him. Her wide and innocent light brown eyes were already glistening with tears. They searched her father's face for an answer… For reassurance.
It made Rod's breath hitch. That simple question ripped through the haze of his own shock. In the overwhelming sorrow, he'd almost forgotten she was there. But looking at her distraught face twisted the knife deeper in his already shattered heart.
He stared at his daughter for a second, feeling the fragile mask of his own expression begin to crack… threatening to shatter completely.
"No, kiddo… but I promise you something..."
He forced himself to lean down and reach out his hand, gently wiping a few tears from her soft cheeks.
"In the future… far into the future, we will all be able to go there… together as a family."
They headed straight home after the funeral. And when they arrived, the familiar comfort of their house felt like a hollow mockery.
Rod closed the front door behind them and the closing click became a lonely echo in the sudden silence. Unlike him, Catra walked away without a word. She headed to the kitchen like a solitary figure consumed by a child's grief.
The man yearned to cheer her up… to bring back that light in her eyes, but his mind offered no solutions nor comforting words. It all culminated with the girl's small voice breaking the silence.
"Gonna eat a little, daddy…"
"Okay. You gonna be alright, kiddo?"
"Yeah… I have to wait for mommy somehow," she murmured while fresh tears slipped down her face.
Rod simply looked away… The dark hole in his heart stretched wider and deeper, consuming him whole. It was as if the very air had been sucked from the room. He needed to escape before the brittle shell of his composure breaks completely.
"I'm so sorry, Catra…"
A full day bled into night. That whole time was only marked by the sound of Catra's heartbroken sobs echoing from the kitchen. They gave way to stars that ascended into the sky. That's when her small body finally moved.
She pushed herself up from the floor and scanned the contours of the house for her father, yet, he wasn't there.
"Daddy?" she whispered when shuffling through the hallways of the first floor.
The girl lingered there for a few minutes before moving upstairs. She stopped in front of her father's bedroom door.
"Daddy?" Catra asked again, slowly pushing open the wooden door.
Her breath hitched… Her father was slumped in his office chair with his back to her. The man was staring at something she couldn't quite discern, but that didn't stop her. Catra slowly moved closer to a man lost in his own world of sorrow… and when she drew nearer, a broken sound reached her ears. It was a whimper… almost like he was crying silently.
That's when everything moved slowly… all culminating with her small face changing into a mask of shock.
Rod was looking at it. The photograph… The one Elena took on their graduation day. His tears fell one by one, staining the image that now held a window to a happier time.
Catra had never witnessed her father like this: Broken, vulnerable, consumed by despair… It broke something fundamental within her, something that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
"DADDY, PLEASE DON'T CRY!" she whimpered when tears erupted from her own eyes.
Rod's head snapped up and his grief-infused gaze met hers. He tried to move, to rise from his chair, to go to her… but his body slipped. He fell from his office chair and Catra watched in wide-eyed horror.
The little girl instantly sprinted as fast as her small legs could move. And just when her father looked up, Catra swung her small arms around him tightly.
It felt like an eternity for both of them, a timeless space suspended between grief and love… And in those brief moments, something shifted… and everything changed.
Eleven years later, the echoes of that memory still repeated inside the camping tent back in the present.
Inside it, Rod's gaze was fixed on that same graduation photograph now clutched in his hand, reliving the happiness, sadness, and his sin once more.
He slowly lifted his view and saw his daughter's sleeping form in the nearby sleeping bag. It was time to sleep… Time to return to his nightmare.
The man then closed the tent door behind him with a heavy sigh… and accepted his fate.