warning: not intended for young 'uns. Adult situations, violence, and nasty language follow.
Chapter Five: Dukkha
--or--
It's Always Darkest Just Before It Turns Pitch Black
you were always half crazy
now look at you baby
you make about as much sense
as a nursery rhyme
love is a piano
dropped from a four story window
and you were in the wrong place
at the wrong time
--Ani DiFranco, Two Little Girls
Anne looks at him. "That's really your recommendation, Ed?"
"Yes. Drop the charges."
"And pretend this project never existed?"
"Exactly. If you've got any better ideas, I'd love to hear 'em, but I think that's our only
option."
Casey's dreaming that he's back in his parents' apartment, standing in the doorway,
watching them fight. He holds on to his sister's hand, tight, can tell without even looking
that she's crying.
"Dad, no, don't--"
Then it changes, and he's up there, looking at them, only it's not them any more, it's two
girls, his girls, his daughters, and he looks at his hand and it's got blood on it.
And he looks into April's broken face...
"NO!" he finds himself screaming, waking up with April's hand on his shoulder: "Casey,
Casey, what is it, what's wrong?"
"Nothing," he manages to blurt out. "Just a nightmare."
"Yeah," Raph says to Casey, "they're on my ass about that kid. I mean, he was
already dead, this way at least they're tryin' to find his family. Probably woulda just
ended up on the garbage heap otherwise."
"How'd they find out?"
"Friggin' Mike followed me."
"Why?"
"'Cause he was afraid I'd flip out."
April, listening through the wall, waits. "What?" Raph says defensively.
"Well--"
"Look, do you have any idea how much I wanted to shish kebab that piece of shit?"
"And then you guys trapped that guy in--"
"Hey, that was Leo's idea."
Casey laughs. "Yeah, I bet you put up a big fight about it, too, right?"
"I didn't say that."
A knock at the shared door; Casey flips it open. "Yeah?"
It's Mike. "Can you grab us another couple cartons--"
"I just bought you two yesterday."
"He's almost smoked 'em already."
Even Casey's impressed. "Holy shit."
Mike shrugs his shoulders. "He says it cuts the cravings down."
"Suppose that's something."
"They stuffed so much shit into him...we'll take anything we can get at this point. It's...it's
hard. He's having trouble just gettin' up and walking around. We finally talked him into
smokin' out on the fire escape and he's getting out that way, but ya can't even mention
training to him..."
"How are you guys doin'?"
"All right, I guess. It wouldn't be so bad," Mike says, "if he said-- if he said
anything."
"He doesn't talk?" Casey asks.
"He says 'no.' Sometimes he'll say 'yes' or 'maybe.' That's about as good as it gets."
Except of course the first week, when he'd finally stopped screaming for the morphine,
and they suggested bringing April up. "No," he'd said.
Mike had said, "Well, maybe later, when you're..."
"No. Not now, not later, not ever."
"Don?"
"I never want to see another fucking human in my life. Understand?"
And Mike had dropped the subject and never touched it again.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Hey, this is Maureen, I'm not at home right now, but--"
Mike moves his finger over the hook--
"Hello?"
"Maureen?"
"So that doesn't bother you?"
"April, will you calm down?" They're in the kids' room, as far away from the guys'
ears as they can get.
"So you coulda done it?"
"April..."
"And he never even told you what he did to the guy who really killed him, did
he?"
"April, do you even have a point?"
"He scares me, Casey. It scares me that he's around our kids."
"I'm huge," she says. "I look like I gotta basketball strapped to my stomach."
"I bet you look great."
"I can't even walk around any more. I just waddle around like a freakin' duck."
"It won't be that much longer--"
"Easy for you to say. You're not the duck."
He laughs, leans further back against the tub. "I miss you so much."
"I miss you, Mike. I know it doesn't make any sense, I've never felt like this--"
"Me neither."
"It's such a cliché, but I mean, we haven't even seen each other and--"
"I'm sorry I never left a message, but I never knew when I was gonna be able to call
back... and..." He twists the phone cord around his fingers. "...I just didn't want you...I
mean, I'm just a wannabe writer, I can't give you anything..."
"Mike," she says, "don't be like that."
"If there was someone out there who could...could treat you the way you deserve..." "Mike."
"You deserve someone better."
"I don't want anyone better," she laughs. "I want you."
"I'm not...there are a lot of things you don't know about me--"
"Then we're even."
He looks up at the window, afternoon light streaming in. "Oh, I want to hold you,
Maureen. I want to hold that big basketball stomach of yours and..."
The light reflects strangely; he puts his hand up to his face and realizes he's been crying.
He draws in his breath, too much like a sob, and she hears it.
"Mike, what's wrong? What happened?"
"Oh, Maureen..."
She reaches out, touches air, realizes he's not there, she can't touch him.
"...oh, love, please, just tell me about you, tell me about the baby, I can't...it feels so good
just to hear your voice..."
He said it. Love.
"The baby keeps jumping around," she says after a moment. "It's either sleepytime or
party time. No in between with this kid. It's not as bad as it was a month ago, but
still..."
"Kicking?"
"I've got a master of Tae Kwon Do in here. It's the only explanation."
"Jujitsu," he says. "Jujitsu, I bet. Does--" he almost says she-- "Does the baby like
music?"
"Oh, God, music makes it worse. Then it's opening night at the ballet!"
He laughs, low, and it encourages her.
"Classical, rock, jazz, it doesn't matter. I don't dare listen to opera, God only
knows what would happen if I put that on..."
"Awake now?"
"Yeah. Just kinda wandering around. Exploring the womb or something, I don't know."
"Would you-- I mean, I know it's crazy-- would you put the phone down? So I could say
hi?"
"Yeah. Absolutely." He hears the motion, then her muffled voice. "You're on."
And life feels so good he just wants to stop time and stay there, with that phone against
her stomach, taking in his breath, a half-moment before he says hello to this beautiful
woman's baby, the one he wishes was his.
"Mike on the phone?"
"Yeah," Raph says, too casually.
"Who?"
"Dunno."
Leo frowns at the lie and says, "We gotta talk. The three of us."
April's making bread when Raphael crashes into their apartment; she jumps just at the
sound of his voice. "Well," he says, and his voice is bitter and hard and edgy, "Leo's just
informed us of the new rules. As little human contact as possible. Because, after all,
human contact's what got us in this sh..." he sees Shadow in Casey's lap and thinks better
of the word, "hey, hon, mess in the first place, right?"
"So what does that mean?" April asks.
"Mean's Mike's...ah...f-u-c-ya-get-the-idea. No more Scott Masterson, no more Maureen,
no nothin'."
"Thought he hadn't talked to her anyway," she says.
"Just got a hold of her today. Didn't think it just came outa nowhere, didja?"
"What's he doin' that for?" Casey asks.
"I got some ideas, but..."
"How's Mike takin' it?" April asks.
"I was too..." he looks at Shadow again-- "angry to stay and find out. If Leo calls down, tell him I'm out, okay?"
"Yeah, sure," Casey says as he slams back out.
They both look at each other. "Whatever happens," April says, "it's not gonna be
good."
"Ya got that right," Casey says.
Mike opens beer number four, pours it, drinks as much as he can in the first gulp.
"Used to be a skill, ya know," Don says. "Drinking as much as you could in
one...drau...dra...swallow. Useta have these..." Don talks more now he's drunk, but it's
not making much sense. "Shit, what were they called?"
"Drinking horns?"
"Yeah. Huge. Don't know what the hell they got 'em from. Useta have contests, see who
could drain 'em..." He almost falls over in his chair. "Shit, Mike. We gotta stop this
or...or..." His face goes blank.
"Or what?"
"Fuck." He frowns. "Forgot."
Mike tops his beer off with the vodka, tastes it, pushes it over to Don. "Try that."
Don grabs it, takes a sip, frowns again. "Eh..." He puts the glass down and stares at it. "I
was gonna stop."
"Fucked if I'm gonna," Mike says.
They both stare glumly at the bottles.
"You know what he said?"
Mike shakes his head. Even this drunk, he knows what Don's talking about, realizes it's
the first time he's mentioned it.
"He says, 'I know.' And I said, 'know what?' and he says, 'I know what you are. It's all
right--' he said 'you can trust me.' What bullshit...I mean, how fucking stupid..."
"Don, you gotta trust people sometimes, or you'll go crazy, it was just--"
Don shakes his head. "Stupid."
Mike wouldn't even know how to answer that one sober.
"Know the worst part?" Don asks, picking up the vodka bottle.
"What?"
"It was terrible. He was the worst--" his sides are shaking and he tries to pour but
he's laughing too hard-- "I shoulda just bought a new magazine or somethin'..."
They're both laughing now, tears coming down their faces, couldn't stop if they tried, and
when they're almost calmed down, Raphael walks in, heads toward the rack of weapons,
stops, double-takes, stares, starts counting empties. One, two, three, four--
Don sputters out, "He couldn't dance for shit, either," and they lose it all over again. Beer, vodka, tequila, where did they get all this? Five, six, seven--
"Wanna drink?" Mike manages to gasp.
"Nah," Raph says. "You guys have one for me."
"We already have," Mike giggles, and they erupt in laughter again.
"What?" Leo asks.
"We got Cheech and Chong in our training room, no big deal, I can live with that. It's
your friggin' fault, and I gotta problem with that, not that you give a shit..."
"Mike's upset?"
"Oh, he's gotten past that," Raph says sardonically. "In fact, you could probably cut his
heart out at this point without him noticing. Oh, wait, you already did that, how could I
forget?"
"Raphael, you know as well as I do that I'm just..."
"Trying to stop him from getting hurt?"
"Yes."
"How fucking noble. And I thought you were just jealous 'cause it didn't work out with--
"
"She has nothing to do with it," he says, too quickly.
"Don't tell me you still don't think about her."
"That was a mistake."
"So how do you earn the privilege of making our mistakes for us, Leo?"
"It's not that," he says. "Look, you know what's going to happen. We both know--"
"We don't know shit, Leo. The one thing this should have taught us was that."
"We know we can't trust humans."
"What about April? What about all the shit she's gone through for us?"
"One person. One. In twenty years--"
"There's been more than that."
"Not many."
"Even if we can't trust them, we can't live like this."
"We are."
"This isn't living. This is barely even existing."
"Raphael, what does it take to get to you? Do you have to be the one
strapped into the cage? We're endangering ourselves, we're endangering our friends,
April and Casey are halfway to a divorce, Don almost got killed--" he's out of words,
reduced to gesturing. He collapses into the chair, puts his head in his hands.
"Raph," he says softly. "Please."
Raphael sees the crack in the armor and strikes. "You're wrong, Leo. It's that simple.
You're just too fucking stubborn to admit it."
Leo looks up at him for a moment.
"Let me put it in language you'll understand," he says calmly.
He kicks him in the knee, hard, pushing the leg too straight. Raph shifts his weight, but
it's not fast enough; Leo's on him, one kick to the chest, the next to his head. Raph
manages to hit with his right, connects, but not hard enough; Leo flips him like he's
nothing and by the time Raph recovers, he's chewing carpet with a katana scraping his
throat.
"I am not in the mood for this shit."
"Leo--"
"Shut up." Leo pushes his knee further into the neck, hears the oddly satisfying sound of
Raph gasping for air. "I took your advice and used a real one this time, and this
time you are going to listen to me. I am not putting up with any more of your bullshit.
Clear?"
"Le--uurk--"
The knee pushes in. "Is that clear?"
"Yes," Raph gasps.
"I do not want to hear another fucking word from you. Somebody's got to be in
charge here, and it's not going to be you."
Leo gets off him, kicks at him with his foot. "Get up."
Raphael can count on one hand the times he's been afraid of someone else, let alone Leo,
but at this point he'd get on his knees and bark like a dog if Leo decided it was a good
idea. He gets up and Leo slaps him with the flat of the sword.
It stings like hell and he wants to put his hand up, but he won't.
Fear or pride, he's not sure which.
His heart feels like it's throwing itself into his shell, and he looks in Leo's eyes and what
he sees looks more like himself than it does Leo.
"I'm sorry," he says, half-whispers, and the tension eases a little. Leo turns away and
Raph gets in the bathroom, shaking, finally puts his hand up to his neck and realizes he's
bleeding.
Raph finds Leo sobbing, huddled down like a child by the refrigerator in their old
home in the sewers, walks in without him so much as raising his head.
It'd be easy, he thinks, just slip the blade over the shell, he wouldn't even know it...
He catches himself before he can think anything else, anything worse, as if any thought
could be worse.
April knows something's wrong when Raphael shows up at the front door. "What is
it?"
"I'm leaving," he says quietly. "I just wanted you guys to know...wanted to say goodbye.
If that's all right."
"Do they know?"
"Not yet," he says, looking at the floor beyond her. "But Mike knew I wasn't gonna be
able to hold on much longer, and I don't even know if Don cares..."
"What about Leo?"
He looks up at her. "I'm getting out before we kill each other....look, can I see the
girls?"
"Yeah, sure," she says, moving away from the door. "Come on in."
He walks in and she follow him to the living room. Shadow's been stacking her blocks
up and knocking them down for about an hour now. It gets old for April, but she's found
that half of parenting is humoring your child when she's happy and quiet and not
harassing her sister. She knocks the latest stack down just as they walk in, and laughs
like it's the funniest thing she's seen all week. Of course, April thinks,
considering how much "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood" we've been watching lately,
maybe it is.
Raph laughs, kneels down to her, says "Hey, Shadow, how's about a hug, huh?"
She runs over and he grabs her, spins her around, always too fast for April but Shadow
loves it, and she starts giggling again. She sits down on the couch. Raven's laughing too,
now, watching them both from the playpen, waiting for her turn. They're really going to miss him, she realizes.
"Did you see Casey?"
"Yeah," he says, putting Shadow down and reaching for Raven, "hey, how's my
girl?"
When he's finished whirling her around, he takes Shadow up again, one in each arm.
Raven's tossed a bunch of her stuffed animals out of the playpen, and April leans over
and starts picking them up, feeling like an intruder, but not wanting to leave the girls
alone with him. "I gotta go away for a while," he murmurs to them, "so you gotta try not
to forget me, okay?"
"'Kay," Shadow says.
"I won't forget you two, I promise." He kisses their foreheads, squeezes them both. April
winds the key at the back of Raven's musical duck; listens to the pleasant tinkle of
Brahms' lullaby, tries to calm herself down. "They're all murderers, then," Casey had told her. "You knew they were ninja."
"But it's not the same..."
"Not the same as what? Dead's dead, April, face it. Look, I could care less how that
creep died. I don't see why you do."
She looks up, watches him put Raven back down in her playpen. He leans over and
kisses her forehead with a tenderness April can barely even fathom.
"So where are you going?"
He stands up. "I don't know. South, I think. This weather's really starting to get to me."
He walks toward the door, and I follow him. He turns toward her at the door.
"Look," he says, "I'll be back, someday, I just..."
He holds his arms out to her, and she flinches, thinks better of it the second she does
it.
"Raph, wait--"
"I'll see ya," he says, and turns away from her.
Leo finally stops crying, hours after he first came down to the sewers. He's never lost
control like that before in his life. Never even thought he could. I've failed you, sensei. Failed you, and my brothers, and myself.
At two, he comes back to the apartment and packs.
At three a.m. he sneaks on to a cargo ship headed to the Gulf of Mexico.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Half the equipment in the training room's gone by the time Mike comes to enough to
stop himself, to stop breaking and crushing and-- his hands are a mess, dripping blood,
what the hell was that from?
He takes a deep breath. They've tried everything, he's tried everything, nothing makes it
better, nothing eases the pressure, nothing kills the hurt.
They're gonna die.
He'd rather die at this point. Anything's better than what they're doing now.
He crosses over the wreckage, opens the door to the apartment. Don's out on the fire
escape smoking what's probably his fifteenth cigarette today. Mike opens the window.
"I got an idea."
Don just stares at him with those hollow eyes.
Author's Note: Dukkha, the title of this chapter, is also Buddhism's First Noble Truth, and very roughly translates as "life is suffering." They do get a bit more optimistic from there. BuddhaNet is a pretty good Australian Buddhist site.
Contents are the property of phishtar, with the exception of the Ani DiFranco quote; and of
course the characters, who are the intellectual property of these guys. If you try to profit from any of this,
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