Author's Note: I'm reading all the side stories, and taking notes for the future plot lines. I also have a few ideas for a few side stories myself. ;-) I am also really excited to get the story to Burke Prep, but figured that a massive change like Ken loosing "his Dad" as you termed Ethan to be, needed to be realistically dealt with first. Besides it gives the story a bit of a breather before we start ramping the misfit energy and action adventure tensions back up. I also feel like Ken needed to change a bit himself before we make it to the next overarching story arc.
After admitting that he couldn't go any place in the mansion and not be haunted by the ghosts of his mentors, that he felt a bit lost and overwhelmed at having gone from being supported by two mentors, to enjoying the break of a role reversal, only to have that role reversal made permanent suddenly without warning, and now he had to figure out everything and teach two new little brothers he'd never thought he'd have to Amelie and Anuli over breakfast, thankful that the boys hadn't shown up, he had ironically felt... better.
Which was something that Anuli was forcing him to admit to her, here on the balcony overlooking the graveyard where the two freshly buried graves were prominently seen.
"You boys like to hide your feelings, bottle them up and bury them down deep and then you wonder why you all die younger than women do after carrying around the heavy burden of them everywhere you go. You cling to your traumas like they give you power, when really they're like a tick slowly draining you of blood and spreading disease. Whereas if you just sat down, and dealt with the emotions you're feeling, experienced them and talked through them, you'd be done with them and you wouldn't have to deal with them again--well for the most part. Some emotions do linger, but not all. And I'm not saying that putting emotions to the side isn't helpful in some circumstances, but not every single one. If you have the time to deal with them, it's the most efficient and healthy thing to do."
"Yeah, but talking through emotions... is difficult when you don't want to accept the reality they present. Because I know logically that Jack and Ethan are perfectly fine--hell, better than fine as they have a whole second chance to live their lives and come out for the better. Meanwhile I feel like..."
Ken looked around desperately for inspiration, until he saw a bird landing in a nest, "Like a bird that's been pushed out of the nest just as its parents are migrating south for winter..."
Anuli was quiet for a second before laughing, making Ken feel embarrassed. Why was he doing this again? That's right Amelie had said it would help him--fat lot she--
"Stop pouting and closing up. Don't take that as me not valuing what you're feeling. It's just the way you expressed it was so clumsy, and messy and that's what made it real, and relatable--and why I could laugh, cause I've been there too. Feeling overwhelmed, like I'm expected to be perfect, only to fail. Remember when the Sorcerer Scientist took Ethan? I had thought I had her trapped with my spell? Only for her to use her robotic half to fly over my spell without trouble? I wanted to sink through the earth and not show my face at being so stupid," Anuli admitted.
"But that was just a simple mistake... hell, I forgot about her robotic half until that moment," said Ken finding himself beginning to laugh without meaning to.
"See? Now you're laughing at me and my clumsy mistake. But you don't see me all clamming up and pouting about it, like this!" said Anuli as she crossed her arms in front of her chest, drawing Ken's brief attention to her lower cut top that revealed more than he had thought it had a moment ago, before his eyes met hers just as she screwed her face into a contorted mess that Ken couldn't help but laugh at. She joined him in laughing a moment later.
When the laughter died down, and their eyes rested on each other again, Anuli leaned over the ornate metal table they were sitting at and took his hand that rested on it, and said, "Sometimes we need to laugh to keep from crying, and sometimes it can heal like nothing else in this world."
Their eyes lingered and a warm electric pulse seemed to transfer between their hands. It was a moment that would be well remembered in both their lives until a bird landed on the table next to their hand hold and pecked at it--causing them to shoo the bird and become a tad self-conscious.
"Well, I wish I could laugh the ghosts I see in my mind away... that would make things so much easier."
"Instead of that, just talk about them... eventually they'll fade. They'll never quite go away... not a day goes by that I don't think of my brother in some fleeting moment, but I talk about him when I do."
"You had a brother?!"
"Ifeanyi. He was my older brother. He protected me when I was little and teased me when I got too fussy, and wrestled with me when the mood struck us both--which was nearly every day. My poor mother's china closet never did preserve anything in it, not with how we kept knocking it over... He... he died when some men came to our town and shot guns through the streets in a driveby, killing dozens and dozens of people at random--just to kill us because we were different from them. A different tribe, a different religion, different politics... we were just different from them, and so they wanted us dead."
She said it calmly and as easily as if it were saying hello or talking about the weather--and yet, Ken could see in her brown eyes with golden flecks, the beginnings of tears forming in the corners of them.
"And they didn't care who or how many of us they killed. Ifeanyi was shot playing football in the street with his friends as they drove by. I was watching as one moment he was kicking the ball up field and the next he fell forward on top of the ball with blood running down his head. I remember feeling so shocked that my brother... my nwanne nwoke was bleeding that I didn't notice one of the other girls grab me and pull me down to avoid more bullets."
"That's terrible to have lived through that... to have seen all that. And yet... you talk about it so... easily..."
"I've had lots of practice... because once my parents figured out that our town wasn't safe anymore, you can bet I was on the first plane to here... to stay with my Aunt Uju, who has this New Age hippie shop she owns and sells shit from, and she had me in therapy almost the moment my feet landed here."
Ken wanted to say something, to show her that what she experienced was wrong and should never have happened, but something told him to just let her talk. That she knew he knew it was wrong... that he didn't have to prove that to her. All he had to do was listen, and that was enough. And so he leaned in and did just that.
"At first I hated therapy. I tried destroying the room, thinking it would get me reassigned, but that only made my trips more frequent. Eventually I just broke down and talked about living that moment where Ifeanyi got shot. How I couldn't sleep but see his dead body in front of me, how I wasn't eating much at all, nor talking much either--because what was life worth if a boy could just get shot and killed for practically no reason at all?! And when I was done talking... I felt oddly a little better, and so I kept talking, and eventually the dreams went away, I started sleeping more, eating more, and living my life one day at a time. Not every day was perfect, don't get me wrong, there were some days where I would just roll over in bed and see my brother laying in a pool of his own blood right in the center of the room, and I'd just stay in bed, crying. And other days, I'd hardly think of him except when I heard a joke I knew he'd appreciate, and I see him, in my mind's eye, smiling and happy. Things will get better the more you talk about them."
"God... I feel like..."
"Like?" asked Anuli when he trailed off.
"Like such an asshole," admitted Ken. "Here I am, whining my ass off about how I "see the ghosts of my mentors in every room of the mansion" when they're not really dead, at least not physically dead, and yet, you... you're sitting here, amazingly brave and honest about a truly horrible thing that happened to you, that ended with actual death. I must sound like such a spoiled asshole."
"You're not an asshole. You have as much right as I do to mourn the loss of Boxer and Lumberjack as I do Ifeanyi. Like you said earlier... they may not be gone, but the men they were are as good as dead. You knew that enough to organize a funeral for them and to bury their disguises to try to end that chapter of your life. All that you're struggling with now is closing the book. And doing that doesn't mean you don't take it down from the shelf from time to time and revisit it, but you do need to close the book, and this... talking like we are now, is part of how you do it."
"So you're saying I should go to therapy? I'm not sure I'm comfortable talking to some stranger about our problems... what if they're a spy for one of Grit City's Underground?"
"Therapy isn't for everyone... but you have Amelie... and you have me to talk to. If you want."
It was Ken's turn to take Anuli's hand and squeezed to show his gratitude.
"Thank you," he said quietly, looking into her eyes. She squeezed his hand in reply to his squeeze.
After they had been silent for a moment Ken then asked, "What's the other part to closing the book?"
"Hmm?" asked Anuli
"You said that talking was part of how I close the book on that part of my life... what's the other part?"
Anuli was silent, and pulled back her hand from his hold.
"You're gonna think it's silly."
"Try me."
"Well, you buried the men that Ethan and Jack used to be, but you cling to the boy you were under them. I'm not saying you need to "kill the boy to let the man you'll be be born" or any of that macho bullshit overgrown boys tell themselves to do. However, I do think it's awfully hard to let go of those ghosts if you still run around calling yourself the Khaki Karateka and defining yourself by the standards that your mentors set for you."
"You want me to quit being a vigilante?!"
"No, stupid. You need to figure out who Ken Izumi is as a vigilante when he's not stuck acting as a sidekick to Grit City's finest. And that's not going to happen overnight, which is why this afternoon, and every day after until you figure things out, I'll be training the boys in The Gym, while you take some time to yourself and think about who you want to be--and not who The Blue Boxer thought you should be."