When Silas Burton's mom died, his first reaction had not been grief. She hadn't been a terrible mom, but they had never been close enough for him to exactly fall to his knees over it. He had made peace with that long ago. His first reaction had instead been the thought, the realization that it meant he would have to go back to that small town that he had grown up in. The one that had no clue the girl who had left after graduation had never been a girl at all.

Six years later and he was not someone anyone would recognize. Even his family might not know who he was, maybe his father. He wondered if he could play it off, pass himself off as a distant cousin or something. The thought made his fingers shake.

Still, he boarded the plane, and when he got off, watched the face of his newly widowed father as he realized his daughter was completely gone, too. He was a good enough man, wouldn't cause a scene. Would never cause a scene. He hugged Silas and helped him with his bags, before putting one down because he didn't quite know if he should be carrying his son's bags. He picked it up again.

They got to his old truck, the same one he had had Silas's entire life. The drive was silent, until they left the city and got half way to the town Silas had spent so long running from. He stared out the window, the familiar sights filling his sight and making him want to leap from the car.

"People are coming by." His father finally spoke. "They.. They might not understand."

Silas looked at his father. He knew what he meant. His town had never been particularly Trans friendly. Conservatives with a touch of idiocy. Since he had gotten the call, there had been a lake of rot in the bottom of his stomach. The idea of having to go back into a den of wolves he had so barely escaped the first time.

"You don't gotta tell them you're Gwen. You... Please don't tell them you're Gwen. Not now. Not this time." It was the words of a man who felt defeated. A stoic man who never asked for much, but in the wake of his dead wife and a daughter he had never really had, he was asking him this.

And so Silas nodded.

"Of course. I'm just a distant cousin." He said, and his father closed his eyes for a half a second, before opening them again and staring at the road before them.

They got to the farmhouse at noon. It still looked the same, old and worn and something in Silas's chest tugged. An ache he had never expected, staring at the house he had been raised in. Mentally, he prepared himself for the old photos that would inevitably hang inside, of a life he had tried to live. Shockingly, the only photos that existed were of him as a baby, or a toddler too young to distinguish gender. The sight made him sigh in relief.

"Your rooms the same. We never touched it after you left." His father said, moving to sit on the couch. A familiar sight. Only Silas's mother did not flutter about the kitchen anymore. Silas went to his old room without thinking anymore about it.

He spent three days up there. Going through old things he had forgotten when he had left. Relics of a teenager he had been once upon a time. A girl he loved deeply but had to bury. He slept in his old bed and felt like he was in a tomb.

His mother's funeral was Friday. The town showed up, unsurprisingly. Silas's mother had always been popular in the community. A pillar. All the more reason to pretend to be someone else. Not to tarnish her in death, where she can't defend herself. So Silas stood in the back with the rest of the distant relatives and watched the procession. His hands shook but he did not cry.

And after, he ate at a table by himself, watching the family he once knew, one he used to be a part of, as they mourned.