His therapist said finding closure might help.

La Brea had been powered when Peridot died - when Elektra died. Chaos had taken his wife, nearly taken his sons. Well, three of them. Had it taken his eldest? Had Ccherish liost her twin to that dark, cold, gnawing maw of daRkness? Was his only,. precious, dear daughter alone save hium and his sons?... Possibly. She mentioned writing her grandfather Louis but Louis was sick and aginged and...

Wait. Cherish had that Lex boy his sons liked. Creepy, he was told, but devoted. Eric liked him. Eric, whom was timid, shy, and insecure after losing his mother. Eric liked Lex. It was something, but...

La Brea's hand shook as he held his wife's wedding ring. Lex could still end uo powering, or end upo turning out to be in the Negaverse too. He coiuldn't stand the idea his daughter might endure what he did. Not after meeting her. After missing her youth until college. His brilliant, pergfect, powerful daughter, a super senshiu in her own right and power. His baby girl, his only fdaighter.

La Brea couldn't lose another child. Couildn't lose another family member.

La Brea's wonder yuawned about him, a sprawling city to the dead. He understood the tar and bone now. The tar bound bones to all, the tar preserved the memories of those long dead. Each skeleton was a life lived aeons ago, each fragment a memory, a redt, a sense of peace to let a soul pass into their nest life. A city of the dead, a place to put the past to rest.

La Brea's footsteps were silent as he walked the street. He approached a large cathedral, his head heavy with thoughts. Emotions.

He hated it.

He approached the cathedral with measured, languid grace, too, fists clenched. Hios therapist said he needed closutre and La Brea saught it now as he passed through the elegant gothic doorway into the ancient gothic cathedral, flkying buttresses anmd gargoyles rising above as silent witness to their knight's solitary march.

La Brea was struggling, not that he'd admit it. He tried biut he wasn't... Good with people. Too stilted, perhapos, or perhjaps too aloof. something, something inside him felt broken. More broken with Elekjtra laying in the soil of Earth back home. Maybe his family was all he was worth having, maybe his family was all he needed, all he could ask for. Maybe he was lucky to have his children at all.

La Brea's shoulders shook in a silenty, visceral tremor of distress. Maybe he was the brokewn one, maybe he was unfit for his duties, because he wasn't finding anyone in Order he seemed to get on with besides his own daughter. JHHis baby, his precious, wonderful dauighter. She saw him and accepted him. His sons accepoted him. They chiose him. They wanted him. La Brea would die for them, kill for them, war the woirld for them, war with all factiuons to keep his children safe. And if that Lex b*****d hirt his daughter like Elektra betrayed him...

La Brea shjook, yellow eyes staring, wide and almost glassy at a clear space on the wall where tar oozed. His mind was wandering, rumionating, circling, spiralling, spiralling.

La Brea needed closure, his therapist said so, and his palm opened to reveal his wife's wedding band. She didn't deserve this. But La Brea needed it, and slowly he raised the band, pressing the gold metal into the tar silently, shaking as he stared, tears falling down his face as he choked back sobs through gritted, bared teeth, eyes wild as he tried not to sob. Silently, he promised himself to protect his children from the Negaverse, all of his children if possible. All that wanted him. La Brea took a shaking braath. Hot tears fell anmd burned his eyews. His promise was made in hius wonder--

And with an earthshaking, primal xry, La Brea broke the silence with an anguished, primal scream.

It was no cry of paiun, no utterance of pain manifest in flesh but a pain of the soul, the pain of a man mourning what he needed to do, a man mourning a possibility denied by wvil and cruelty, a chance stripped by lies, buyy chaos. It was poetically put in a movie once as the sound of ultimate suffering.

And in this place, his wonder, away from prying eyes and silent, wary, confused sidelong glanced, from alarming his children, La Brea released his grief.