Cold Fire Rising

Chapter 29

Chapter Twenty-Nine

----

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares. -Henri Nouwen

We need to give each other the space to grow, to be ourselves, to exercise our diversity. We need to give each other space so that we may both give and receive such beautiful things as ideas, openness, dignity, joy, healing, and inclusion. –Max de Pre

----

"Really? Just like that?"

"Yah. Just like that."

"All of them."

"That's what I said."

There was a long silence.

"Dude," Casey muttered. "You...you can't. Nobody can."

Michelangelo gave him a sarcastic look. "Gee, Casey. And you're the one going on about how I have no brains."

Casey held up his hands. "I only tease, okay? I didn't mean it, I never did! Look. Mikey..." He paused again, leaning against the edge of the roof, staring into the night. "The whole time I've known you, you've been this happy-go-lucky, fun-loving, carefree, sometimes careless, goofy prankster. You're happy the way some people are left-handed. And I've always envied that. And I've always wondered how you do it, how you keep it up."

He sighed and stared his friend in the eye. "You know it's not possible to just bury all the bad memories like that. You know."

Michelangelo's left eye twitched. He wasn't smiling at all. "Yeah? Yeah? How do you know I know?"

"Because I...!" Casey started to snarl, then thought a lot better of it and took a deep breath. "I know that you should keep on being your silly bright self and not this...hardened war-torn sullen type. It's not you, Mikey, and you fucking know it isn't!" Aaand he hadn't mean to raise his voice, but there it was. So he just stared and kept staring, upper lip curled only a little. He'd had plenty of stand-offs with Raph, and this was Mikey, this was nothing.

Mike stared right back, his huge eyes narrowing slightly. "Oh? Tell me."

Casey, not used to his best friend's little brother sounding so...pissed off...sighed and hung his head. "Okay. You know about my dad, right?"

"Yeah. That he beats you when he's drunk."

"I take those beatings for my little sister," Casey said. "I try and get her to run off when I see the signs. But I know she listens. A while back, I asked her what she ever remembers, and she said she just wanted to make all those memories disappear so she would never have to think about them. But when she tried, she just got nightmares. So, she told me that she accepts that the nightmares are part of her life, and that she just wanted to focus on being alive and at least being cared for. Having a home and food and warm clothes. She loves butterflies."

He stopped. His hands tightened on the dry tar, making dents with his fingernails. Mikey didn't say anything. They stood there, leaning on the tarred barrier between the roof and the street. Sirens came and went from every direction. People yelled. Cars honked. Manhattan slept fitfully and full of loud dreams.

"I love butterflies," Mikey said breezily. "Donnie says they were actually called flutterbies and then some writer mixed the word up and got it backwards. I always liked that fact. I'd rather call them flutterbies, it makes so much more sense."