Phillip's funeral was an affair full of emotions. The sky was overcast yet no rain had dampened the cremation hall's steps. The hall itself was small and the people who turned up just about fit onto the six rows of wooden pews on either side. It was a slight squish but they managed it. Friends and family all in dark shades in an effort to merge with the somber atmosphere a funeral often set. And it was sad, there were tears and choked up throats but there was also laughter and jokes. The grief lightening for moments as eyes crinkled and laughs echoed off the white stone of the hall and the flowers set in stained glass above. 

Basil and Henry sat at the front of the hall. The eve of which was occupied by the plinth where the coffin had been laid for all too see and eventually be lowered down into the furnace below. Both men were in dark suits, Basil with a collarless white shirt on under his blazer and a pair of deep varnished red doc marten boots on his feet. His curls were cut shorter again, short and smart for the occasion. Henry was at his side. The ginger locks having grown out enough to curve round his forehead and brush his eyebrows. It made him look younger and emphasised  the cut of his old fashioned suit. Phillip would have had a comment about it. The man had always treated Henry like a nephew.

 It was just them. The two of them surrounded and yet almost alone. Basil stuck out as the youngest person attending, even though he knew that he was the oldest. Steve was off somewhere and Bucky was still frozen. He was alone and it ached.  

The two of them watched and listened as a woman stood on the stand in the corner and spoke out about how she met Phillip back in the fifties, a different time when she was a different gender. Basil tried to remember her name but the grief and the ache on his bones hung heavy and clouded his mind. Saffie, he finally recalled. 

Saffie was speaking, her wild afro long since grey and brown eyes wise, tears in the corners. "I recalled asking how a man like him came to be in a place like that. A straight, rich and well educated man with a fiancé, what he was doing in a steady bar full of transvestites in soho. At first I thought he was closeted, like I bet many of you thought". A scattering of laughs and agreeing nods from the rest of the guests. Men and women, most old and in their eighties and above. But a few were younger. Basil recognised a few of the nurses from the nursing home. There were a few people who were from the charities Phillip had worked with over the years. 

Saffie continued. "Well, he was unfortunately straight and completely devoted to his fiancé. I was quite surprised, so I asked him What's a man like you doing in a place like this? He just turned to me and smiled and replied. Because this bar serves the best cocktails he's tasted in the whole of London and that he was awaiting a chess friend who won't play unless drunk. Why that was probably one of the strangest meetings I'd ever had working that bar. His friend turned up, I served them cocktails all evening and watched them play chess until they were both to drunk to stand. He vomited on my shoes then complimented my dress. We were friends from that moment onwards". 

Basil let out a chuckle even as his chest ached. He never got to see Phillip drunk. He had missed that, just as he missed everything else in his brother's life. The guilt and the sorrow of all the time he had never had was a physical ache. It squeezed his throat even as he laughed with the rest of the hall. Then Saffie looked up over the rows and her gaze met his. She gave him a warm smile. "It was later that I asked him why he did so much for us. His money funded half of the LGBT charities in London and he had paid to keep many safe spaces open. Just the week before I asked this question, him and Lydia had cooked a bunch of food for the homeless shelter in the south of London. I sat up with him after he helped me clean up after a drag show, and I asked 'why do you do this? what inspired you to look after people that mostly go ignored?' He didn't respond right away. But when he did, he said Because everyone knows someone who is different. A friend, a family member, a distant cousin. What my brother taught me was that those differences don't make you any less human ,and humans shouldn't be ignored." 

Basil dipped his head even as he felt the stares. Sniffled and rustles as people wiped their eyes filled the room. Saffie was weeping but smiling. "I had never heard something like that before. Phillip was an amazing, passionate, spitfire of a man who would curse you to hell and back if you messed with his collections"- more chuckles- ", he saved many of us and was a helping hand up from our dark holes. For that, we are grateful. He will forever be remembered for his work. I will miss a darling friend and comrade. Thank you Phillip Parrish". 

Then she was stepping down from the stand and slowly shuffling over to her empty seat with the help of her cane. Basil straightened and took a breath before getting to his feet. His boots were loud on the floor as he stepped smoothly towards the stand and took the small step up. As he looked over the hall of people, he began to speak. "I am sure you all know me, either from the news and media over the years, or from my baby brother. I am Jahi Basilton Parrish, older than your friend Phillip Amon Parrish by six years. Six years older and by that he will always be my baby brother. Even though I now look younger than all of you, despite being probably the oldest in the room". A few chuckles and he felt a small smile tug on his lips. 

"I knew by the age of fourteen that I liked boys in a way that didn't apply to girls. When I read fairytales as a child, I dreamt of kissing princes rather than princesses. At first I hid it. It was a older boy in my school who taught me the word homosexual. All that word did was give me an answer and a fear in one second. I knew then that I wouldn't be able to be normal. Phillip found out when he was twelve and came to visit me in uni. He caught me kissing a boy round behind my dorm building and thought that the other boy was bullying me. He came round with fists flailing to scare him off". He laughed at the memory. "It was hilarious and adorable at the same time. Him in his too big uniform and floppy hair. Even as a child faced with something that he had been taught was wrong, all he wanted was to protect me". Tears were soft and cool on his cheeks yet his lips tugged into a fond grin. 

"I explained what I was and the enormity of this secret later that day. Phillip took it in his stride and hugged me. My baby brother trying to comfort me. The boy who would hide up trees to escape my singing. The boy who used to leave all his dirty socks in balls under his bedsheets and collect random rocks he'd found on the side of the road. The boy who I had to save from wasps because he was terrified of being stung. He comforted me in that moment and I knew then that I could never live in that world, a world where I couldn't exist. It would have crushed me and I didn't want Phillip to see me waste away. I joined the army five months later and he screamed at me for an hour before tripping over his bed and skinning his knee. I had to bandage it up again as he sobbed. It hurt leaving him and I can't explain how much. I think we both knew what that moment meant". He paused to take a deep shuddering breath. 

"I won't bore you with a story that has literally been memorialised in museums and that you have probably all heard many times before. It was written in my letters home, to Phillip. For even in the midst of my chaotic love story, he was my support and my confidant. He was my baby brother and the only person in the world who I could spill my feelings to". He paused to snort and roll his eyes. "So of fucking course he had to have my letters published for the world to see. Thanks Phillip". It was heavily sarcastic and prompted the laughter he was aiming for. 

"I missed almost three years to war. Then my lover died and I returned home for what we knew would be the last time. Phillip knew, he could read me like a book. He knew that I couldn't ever put him through watching me waste into a shell of who I was, which was what would have happened if I had stayed. He put on a brave face but I knew it broke both of our hearts to say goodbye. I told him I couldn't live in that world, so he went on to create a better one where I can live. He helped make this world we're in today. He's no Hank Pimm, or Tony Stark advancing the world with technology. He advanced this world with love and acceptance and this world is a much better place for him being in it. He gave me the greatest gift I could ever ask for, even though neither of us expected for me to come back. I may not have asked for my powers, but Phillip was the one who taught me how to live with them. He was my baby brother but he took more care of me than I ever did of him. I will never stop being grateful and appreciative of all the work he, and others, put into making our world what it is today. May we keep fighting for those who are ignored. For my brother, Phillip Amon Parish". He bowed his head towards the rose wood of the coffin and stepped down from the stand. His feet carrying him past the rows of pews and out of the open door. 

He half collapsed into a seat on the cold stone steps beyond. Above the sky was grey and he could hear the echoing of music behind him. Roslyn by Bon Iver & St. Vincent. The melody seemed to curl around him as his shoulder shuddered. He couldn't watch as the coffin was lowered down. The last tie to before now gone. The only person who had known him before everything, before the war and the trauma. His little baby brother who he had never expected to die before him, who he had never seen grow up and live his life. The knowledge that he was untethered and drifting in this world without his little brother was painful and it tore his chest apart. Basil sat there alone and sobbed so hard that he shook and heaved. Above, the sky opened up and it finally began to rain. It soaked his shoulders and his suit. Mingling with his tears and drowning out his gasps. 

Basil sat there and shook as the rain slicked the cobbles and people began to pour out from the hall around him. He had never wished to be invisible and forgotten from the world as much has he had wanted in this moment. Phillip had always been there and now he was so alone that it crushed him. 

The rain stopped and he inhaled deeply, head pressed against his knees. It took him a minute to breath long enough to regain a tiny shred of composure before looking up. Henry was stood over him, a umbrella held out to shelter him from the rain around them. The ginger smiled gently and sadly. "Come on Baz. Phillip would be chewing you out for being a dramatic mess at his funeral. Lets get you dry". He held out a hand and Basil sniffed before taking it. The taller man pulled him to his feet and he leaned heavily into his side.

"He would have such a go at me", he muttered. "I can't believe you were trying to catch a cold at my funeral. Obviously doctors don't listen to their own advice". He laughed wetly and if it sounded more like a sob, then it was only for the two of them to know. 

"Fucking Phillip. My little brother. How am I supposed to do this without you watching? How am I supposed to do this by myself?" Henry had no answers to his questions and they trailed off into the rain. 

unedited 

who cried?