All That Remains: Day 7

Word Count: 42,023

Summary of Events:

Will's paternal grandparents and aunt came to visit him after Enka had left to check up on his house and the perishables within it, and Will became incredibly irritated by his aunt's exhortation for him to think positive without any instructions on how he was supposed to do that in the face of the tragedy he'd been involved in. Chloë, along with Tristan's sister and mother and all the other loved ones of the deceased gathered at Anderlecht's home pitch for a large public viewing of the bodies, for which some fans had been waiting hours in order to not miss out on a chance to pay their last respects…

Excerpt of the Day:

Now the doors were minutes away from opening, with police in position to ensure the group kept moving and no impassioned fans tried to take mementos from the bodies or the coffins. All they were allowed to do was take pictures or videos.

Chloë shifted restlessly on her heels. The cool wind was chilling her legs despite her choice to wear decently thick tights, and she really wanted to get this event over with so that she could go back to hiding her acute lack of grief.

Finally streams of purple, white, and black emerged from the access points and were guided by police toward the beginning of the line, which was located to Chloë’s left, where the team personnel were arrayed, their coffins adorned with special arrangements of purple and white flowers that were holding up cards that said their name and position.

The players each had the team shirts which had been secured to their coffins when they’d arrived from Frankfurt laying across the lower portion of the coffin with a smaller arrangement of purple and white flowers in order to not obscure their name and number on the shirt.

As for the bodies themselves, they were fully dressed in their own actual team kit, with the only difference from the norm being that flesh-coloured sleeves were slid over the arms of those who didn’t usually wear a long-sleeved undershirt while they played in order to look a bit more normal.

Chloë watched the stream of fans advance, with almost all of them snapping photos of each person as they walked past, some lingering for a moment, some even lowering themselves across the lower half of a coffin to weep.

Many of them spoke to the family and friends assembled at the head of each coffin, with some even exchanging hugs. Chloë didn’t want to be embraced, she was sure she’d feel stiff, and she didn’t want people to get suspicious of the truth.

Finally the first fans arrived, snapping photos with their phones and expressing earnest condolences that Chloë forced herself to nod in acknowledgement of while Elle and Amandine sobbed their thanks.

Following the arrival of the first fans, the stream was constant, leaving Chloë with hardly any time to observe much of anything, as she was too busy striving to look like she was grieving and sad, despite the fact that she was actually annoyed to be standing out in the cold and wishing the whole ordeal could be over.

Despite the fact that it felt like she stood there for about a month, she was eventually caught by surprise when she looked away from a fan who’d expressed condolences to her and found there wasn’t another fan waiting.

Looking down the line, she saw that mortuary personnel were closing the lids of the coffins, handing the floral arrangements and things to families, and moving the bodies out.

She slid back the coat sleeve and looked at her watch. The hour hand had advanced three twelfths of the way around the face, and the minute hand was a little bit past where it’d been when she’d last looked. Three hours had, in fact, elapsed.