You appear at dusk, as the sky begins to darken. The flames have long since faded, leaving smoke and ash in its wake, and the rubble is blackened and scorched, warm even beneath the soles of your boots. They are still here, the emergency crews and the firefighters, the police and crime scene units, but they leave you alone. No one says a word, though some of the younger ones stare, not knowing any better, and they are the ones who look away hastily and scramble for distance when your gaze finds them. You are there, and yet you are apart, an enigma in a cape and a cowl, something they can never begin to understand.
Perhaps, in that sense, you and he are not so different.
There is very little to find here. The explosion was all-encompassing, and you know, you know you will not find a body. Beneath rubble there is more rubble, rendered indistinguishable by the heat and the fire, and the ash that coats your gloved fingertips could easily be traces of her as much as they could be the remnants of steel and stone. There is a painful twinge in your chest as you kneel amidst the ruins, the sound of water being sprayed from high-powered hoses and distant voices muffled and inconsequential. There is something beneath the blackened bits of stone there, and you brush away ash as you reach for it, the thing, small and circular and smooth. You hold it between your forefinger and thumb, holding it up to the setting sun.
A coin.
It is not a body, yet you feel as you might have had you unearthed her form beneath the rubble. A scream builds in your chest, trapped, with nowhere to go, and you grip the coin in your fist as you lower your head and close your eyes to the world. Her blood is on your hands. You failed her, as you failed him, as you have failed your city. The madman sits in a jail cell, yes, but at what cost? At what cost?