The Wheel
They've all gone, and now it's just me, kneeling in the grass, alone with my thoughts. The summer sun beating off my skin doesn't warm me. Nothing can. Everything is a tortured reminder of what I already know. That my brother is dead. That I spoke at his funeral less than an hour ago.
We buried him in a nice spot, on top of a forested hill outside the city. He liked it here. The few times we came here on camping trips, it was as if the constant weight of all the anger he carried would lift, and he would horse around, splash through the stream to frighten the fish, and make a sport of how high we could clamber up the trees. Those were the good times. Then there were all the bad times.
Times when he would stagger home, drunk, or bloody from fighting, or both. We'd have vicious arguments. God knows I tried to stop him. But maybe it's true - what he said - that I could never understand him, never understand his pain. Maybe if I'd tried harder. It hurts to imagine that I could have done something, could have prevented this. As much as it hurts to know that in all likelihood the opposite was true, that there was nothing I could have done.
I look at the simple headstone in front of me. Why did you do it? I ask silently. Why did you leave us? I can't bear to go back, to see the faces of my remaining family. I will look at them and see broken glass. I will see fragments of what was once whole. Nothing will ever be the same.
I knew it was coming. The inevitable, violent fate that he was rushing towards. Perhaps we lost him long ago. When he gave up on his own family and began turning to the Foot for his place in the world. My stubborn, romantic brother. How could he not see that in the end he would meet his death at the hands of one of those black-clad killers?
If only I could purge my mind of these images. His cold, broken body. His blood dried in streaks and puddles around him. I relive the final battle that I was not there to see. I imagine how it must have happened, how he was betrayed, and how he must have fought with a wild and consuming rage before being cut down. With a sense of curious detachment, I look back and see myself, my own agony in the form of a sobbing or silent heap that shut itself up for days, unable to eat or sleep. Unable to comprehend the enormous injustice of loss.
But more than anything else I see, I see the face of my brother's killer. It is seared into my brain as if tattooed by a red-hot poker. I will carry it with me until the owner of this face falls beneath my vengeful blade, or until I expend my last breath trying. The same inevitability that I rail against has me in its clutches.
I bury my face in my hands and feel the cold weight of terrible comprehension pressing in from all sides. The savage inevitability of fate turning like a wheel, catching me, my tragic brother, my whole line of blood in its churn. I am powerless to stop it even now, powerless to change my destiny, as I was powerless to change his. All the elements of suffering: pain, grief, guilt, and vengeance, will be my horsemen on this long ride to come.
I feel, rather than hear, the footsteps coming towards me. I will them to leave me alone, but they come up beside me. I feel a gentle hand on my shoulder.
"I'm so sorry," the voice says. "Your brother will be greatly missed." A pause. "Will you still train with us, Oruku Saki?"
I look up into the face of the Foot Clan sensai. My voice is measured and even. "Yes. Yes, I'll be there next week."
written by Alex Fisher - 12/00
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles characters are copyright of Mirage Studios