A River Flows in You

I wake up every morning wondering why we hated each other so much
Why you had come to accept me before I could find the strength within myself
And, in the end, why it had to end this way

A Tribute to Ari

Post Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

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Ari.

That name itself brings back a thousand fragments of lost abhorrence, followed by a thousand shattered illusions of revenge, and finally…peace.

The moment you chose to ally yourself with us, you unknowingly severed the bond between Fang and I, for too much anger ran through his coarse veins for him to accept that, perhaps, good resides in everyone's heart. Including one of a genetically altered, seven-year old boy. One who had spent a good number of those seven years trying to bring our lives to an unsavory, tragic end. Maybe he simply didn't realize that people change, yet without noticing it, he changed.

I remember seeing your expiration date, and at the time, I had regretted knowing. I had finished you off before, but now you were set to die anyway by a conniving group of adults in white lab coats. It simply added more the fact that they controlled everything during that epoch. They could control the fate of others, the world, life, death. Not to be venturesome, but I don't think any human is suited to determine the generation of life or death. I'm not sure if I believe in divine beings. But the men and women in white were no gods by any means.

I think it was fitting how you died in battle, more faithful than you ever were before. You fought for us because, I think, you knew that this would redeem you of your heinous past. One in which blood splattered across rocks at your feet and, before you could truly comprehend it, another life had been snuffed from this world at the command of your hands. But I think when I saw that dull fear in your eyes, masked by that bizarre mist of gray, there was so much more to this.

I was your sister, the heartless, emotionless child who would rather gain relative love from her father than acknowledge the existence of a young boy who looked on, pained. Pained that his father would never find him to be good enough for anything, despite the fact that he had undergone crippling experiments that had depleted years from his life. Despite the fact that he was his son, the only son he would ever have with his first love.

The son he was now leaving to pursue his scientific dream of creating a genetically enhanced human with avian DNA grafted into them.

You, Ari, hated me with a perverse anger that didn't reverse in the coming years.

But when you knew that your life would come to an end within the stretch of a week, you decided to turn this around.

Past abandonment wasn't a cause worth fighting about anymore.

And for that, I commend you.

We, the flock, who thought we were so superior and noble, couldn't turn our hearts around. Maybe it's because although we knew we faced impending death, we also figured that until then, we would live lives tainted with regret with a vivid hope that someday we could reverse it. I guess it's not until you see death coming that reality truly pinwheels into perspective and you realize, hey, life ends and we can't change the past. And now we're learning this beforehand from you, a person whom we never thought would change out of our close-minded spite.

You died before some of us could turn around and apologize.

But it brings me comfort that you died the same way you had lived your life – fighting.

Ari.

You taught us how to truly live, how to repent for our past wrongs, and how quickly life passes by without notice.

You forced us to learn how to accept, how to forgive, and how to remember that it doesn't matter how big a heart you have – you have to be able to use it to its fullest capacity in order to be considered "big hearted".

You possessed a river of kindness that flowed within the crevices of your soul to a beat more powerful than the beating of all our hearts combined.

We miss you now more than we ever did in your life, and that will just be another thing we must regret in the grand scheme of things.

Let you not have died in vain and let the lessons that you taught us through your actions live on.

Rest in Peace.