THE WILDEST OF THEM ALL - a Peaky Blinders fanfiction
-IN WHICH all sorts of things happen, at home and outside, every day, but Darcy doesn't recall having ever thought that in the life she had there was particularly bad. Life was like that, that's...
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Darcy hated funerals. It wasn't because she was heartless or devoided of empathy. It was just that funerals, they were like a twisted, macabre theater where they pretended to celebrate life while surrounded by death.
She thought it was ironic. People gathering in these sterile, cold graveyards, all dressed in black, to remember someone who will never hear their eulogies, never feel their tears, and never see the flowers they put beside their casket. It's as if they're putting on this grand performance for themselves, attempting to prove to the world that they care, and that they don't deserve the same faith as the person they're weeping for.
And the grief. Oh, the grief is suffocating. It's a reminder of her mortality, a stark and brutal confrontation with the fact that one day, she'll all end up six feet under the ground. Darcy hated the idea of being put in a wooden box, unable to get out.
But what bothered her the most was the pretense. People standing there, next to the grave, talking about the deceased as if they were saints. Suddenly, every little flaw and mistake they made in life was washed away, and they became this perfect, untouchable memory. They sugarcoat their existence, ignoring the messy, complicated human being they were.
Darcy didn't know Freddie Thorne that well, but she knew he was no saint. She put on a somber expression only for her sister, who she knew loved him.
She did like the formality of it, and maybe the theatrical side had earned her satisfaction too, as she watched the faces of mourners; glassy eyes, picture-like frowns, their hands not finding the perfect placement- behind or on the side, fingers twisted or not, grasping their hats as if their life depended on it, prayer perhaps— making it all too amusing. Darcy studied everything. That's what gave her enjoyment, what made her who she was.
"Amen." The word snapped her head up, and looking around, Darcy saw her brother take a step. She had her eyebrows together, a scowl only she had, the one she always had on to keep people away from her.
"I promised my friend, Freddie Thorne, that I'd say a few words over his grave if he should pass before me."
The wind whistled in her ears, accompanied by the wails of her baby nephew, sounds that were more fascinating than Tommy's words. After he finished with his speech, which felt like forever for Darcy, she walked away and hunkered down by a rock, and took out her book to read. It was Aeneid, and all she could talk to Winnie about was how Dido deserved better than Aeneas, and how men were all the same.
"Get up." Darcy lifted her gaze off the page slowly and glanced up to the origin of the hiss, and she wasn't surprised to see her aunt Polly standing before her.
"Why?"
"Cause we're at a bloody funeral and you're reading!" Her aunt snapped, but stopped again to take in a shallow breath. "Not to mention you're sitting on someone's gravestone!"
