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The corner of the plaza opened into a memorial. Lio had been very clear about his wants for the place, how it was to look; simple and quaint. Something quiet and reflective. Respectful, above all else.
This was the first time he'd actually gotten to see it. Erected yesterday while he was in meetings at town hall, Meis told him; it had been a lovely ceremony. Lots of tears and sad smiles. Or so he heard.
He had tried really hard to not be upset about missing it.
Perhaps it was for the better, that he visited alone now. It was so early in the morning that even night owls were in bed, leaving him effectively alone before the large carved stone, lifting his flame to very quietly read aloud the names engraved upon its face, directly under the bold lettering " In Memoriam; Those we lost before the Second Great World Burn; Victims of Forsight; The dead and the missing."
He was a little staggered by how many names he knew; how many of them he could attach to a face. How vividly he remembered the last time he saw them, and how many of them turned to ash in his care, their bodies far too unnaturally cold in their last moments.
What broke him, though, was the very end.
"... And all the Johns and Janes we could not recover or identify; those who had none left to speak for them. You are loved and you are missed; ashes to dust."
For every face he could name, there were five, ten, fifteen he couldn't. He hadn't been fighting as long as his rank implied; the Burnish had suffered long before Lio ever took up leadership of the Mad Burnish. While, of course, he always knew it, the present and immediate had kept him occupied more than thinking about the past and distant.
Promepolis had not been the only city subjugating the Burnish, either. It was just the most prevalent.
So it was for those he did not know, the ghosts at the fringes of his flame, that he burst into tears, the grief coming in increasingly painful waves as their absences in the new world truly hit him. They had not died in vain, but they should not have died at all.
The new world would have been brighter with them.
Lio had no idea how long he stood there, bawling his eyes out like a child. Funerals on the run had been quick, cold affairs, as much as it pained them all. There had been no time for tears, not if they wanted to keep themselves from the same or worse. But in this new safety, he found the time to finally weep for them, and he hoped it was enough.
As the sun rose over the city, the only trace Lio Fotia left behind was a bouquet of white orchids at the base of the memorial - one flower for every name he knew, and two for the hundreds, thousands, millions that he didn't.