They told him he did not need to identify the body; they could do so through dental records, to save him the pain. He declined, despite vocal protestations. To shirk such responsibility would make him a creature more pathetic and cowardly than even the killers themselves. Perhaps if the method had been different, if the officers had not with averted eyes and stilted words explained the way Daren had died and the state in which his body was found, Tanim might have avoided the morgue. He could imagine a gunshot wound easily enough, or the curved bruise of a noose, but this? No. He needed to witness for himself the slurs carved into his lover’s charred skin – faggot, freak, queer –  and hear from the coroner directly that Daren had been alive through it all. It was the very least he could do when he was unable to do anything of value. Living with the inescapable images of the broken, burned body seemed a meager tribute, but it was something.