Siblings

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Daniel alias Devotee went to the workshop to meet with Renegade. His teammate and rival had told him that he was going to craft a wooden version of the Refreshroom from the Mario & Luigi series for him as a combination good-luck charm and psychosomatic remedy against fits of conversion disorder. Daniel had been doing very well, but he agreed that a little luck and encouragement wouldn’t hurt. Renegade was sitting at a table with some paints and the handmade wooden mushroom model. A stereo playing nu metal music sat nearby. Daniel was surprised by two things. One, the golf ball-sized model was only half-finished, evident by the unadorned wood of the cap. Two, Renegade was in a melancholy state, looking sad and distant as he inspected the piece.
Renegade glanced up at Daniel as he sat down, allowing him to see his irritated eyes. “Hello, Danny Boy. The bottom half is dry; I just need to do the cap.”
“So I see. I’m surprised it’s not already done since you’re usually so efficient.”
Renegade’s muscles had started to tense in aggravation and his expression had begun to harden, but they eased when he realized Daniel was actually making a complimentary observation instead of a criticism. “Oh. Yeah.”
“Who’s that you’re listening to?”
“It’s Korn.”
He cracked, “Eh, I’ve heard much cornier music.”
The alien chuckled. “Thanks, man.  I needed that today.”
“Yeah, you look pretty down.”
“Yeah. Maybe I should go get some butter tarts.”
Daniel felt that was a reference he wasn’t getting, but he went with it. “I don’t know about butter tarts, but I know a place with great butter cookies. I should pick some up.”
“Sounds good.” The creature carefully dipped a paintbrush into the white paint and started painting the star on the front of the cap. He freely admitted, “Something earlier today reminded me of my siblings who passed.”
Daniel was surprised, but responded, “I’d heard you had a couple younger siblings who had passed away.”
“Mmm-hmm. I appreciate you not asking about them because I think it’s gauche to ask or talk about people’s brothers or sisters who’ve passed.”
It would have seemed odd to some to hear someone like Renegade talk about gauche behavior, but Daniel knew that as wild as he could get, and as blunt as he could get, he still had his moral code. He agreed, “I know what you mean. If there’s a conversation about my dead relatives, I want to start it instead of some nosy person.”
“That’s exactly right. The ones who passed were my baby half-sister and my little brother. See, my parents had four boys and two girls- my two older brothers, my older sister, me, my younger sister, and my younger brother.” He stopped talking until after he had filled in the star. He looked over his work, then rinsed & dried the paintbrush before setting it aside. He grabbed another brush, dipped it in green paint, and began painting the rest of the cap. “My father passed away when I was nineteen. I had already moved out. Sometime after he passed, a lawyer visited me and told me he had a check for me. My share of the inheritance left in my father’s will.” It seemed to Daniel that Renegade’s hand got a tighter grip on the paintbrush. “I told him, ‘I don’t want it.’ The lawyer kindly requested that I accept and sign it- I mean, he has a job to do; I don’t blame him for that- so I asked him, ‘Could you do me a couple favors?  Could you wait a few minutes and then mail a letter for me after I sign my inheritance check to be deposited?’ He said he would, so I got out my bankbook and told him to show me the check. I looked at how much the check was for, then wrote a check for a children’s charity for that exact amount. By doing that, it felt like I wasn’t accepting his money at all. I had some low times at the height of my gambling addiction, but I never regretted doing that. If I were starving & lying on the street with a body covered with open sores and you laid that monster’s money in front of me, I would not stretch out a limb to pick it up.”
Daniel nodded in understanding. “Sometimes it’s the principle of the thing. Some things are more important than money.”
“Exactly! Mom got remarried after that. Have you heard the Brad Paisley song ‘He Didn’t Have to Be’?”
“Yes, that’s a good one.”
“My stepdad was a great guy. He genuinely cared about us, all of us. He and-” He stopped, looked at the mushroom model, and smacked his face in irritation.
“What is it?” asked Daniel. Renegade merely tapped on the paper showing an image of the Refreshroom. Daniel took it and looked between the reference image and the wooden charm. “Oh, the sides should be lighter.”
“Yeah.” His eyes gleamed with rising irritation and anger, his one hand cradling the side of his head and the finger of the other resting against the paintbrush like the trigger of a gun.
“You can fix it after the paint dries.”
He observed the shining paint on the model. “No. I’ll fix it now.”
He set down the paintbrush he had been using and replaced it with the previous paintbrush. He wet it with white and a dab of yellow, then mixed the new paint with the still wet green on both sides. After inspecting his work, he held it up for Daniel. Daniel compared it to the reference and admitted, “It’s masterful. No one would ever know you’d messed up.”
Renegade looked both relieved and prideful. “Good.” He finished painting, set the piece down, and then rinsed & dried the paintbrushes. “I’ll wait for the paint to dry and then give it another coat.”
“You were getting ready to talk about something serious. I wouldn’t want to meet with someone who would be totally unaffected when discussing family tragedy.”
“That’s good to hear. As I started to say, my mother and my stepdad had two children- a girl and a boy. My sweet half-sister was twenty-three days old when she passed.”
Daniel found himself sucking in air in surprise. To make sure he’d heard correctly, he asked, “‘Days’?!”
“That’s right. She passed from what you call sudden infant death syndrome or crib death. She just passed away sometime during the night.”
“My gosh. I’m very sorry to hear that.”
“I wrote a song about it years later. A lot of people said it was one of my band’s most emotional songs.”
“I imagine it was very personal.”
“Exactly right. Mom passed a couple years after that, a few months after giving birth to my half-brother. Where I’m from there are sayings. If a child passes before a parent, they say the child has made a reservation, like they reserved a hotel room and went there first to make sure everything was set up properly. When the parent dies, they say the parent has fulfilled the reservation. Because of this it’s common to leave hotel postcards among the bouquets and whatnot when a child, or someone who has lost a child, dies. Some hotels even donate them to florist shops free of charge for people to use, like restaurants donating to a food pantry.”
“That’s interesting. People have their traditions. I met a family who marked deaths by taking calendars and writing, ‘Jesus called,’ on the date the person passed.”
“That sounds neat. My stepdad passed a few years later. Thankfully he got to spend some time with his son and the rest of us. It wasn’t long after that my sweet little brother… met his end.”  He crossed his arms and stared down at the table sadly.  “At least Mom and my stepdad didn’t have to live with the loss of another child.”
“You’re referring to your younger full brother and not the half-brother, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Was he sick?”
“No. He was killed.”
“I’m so sorry. Do they know who did it?”
“Yes. It was my oldest brother.”
“What!?”
“I don’t like that guy very much.”
“That’s certainly understandable! Did… Did he give a reason?”
“Note what I said.”
“Pardon?”
“I didn’t say my brother was murdered; I said he was killed.”
“It was an accident, then?”
“Mmm-hmm. He said he… He said it all happened so quickly.”
“I see.”
“He broke down after that. He was put in a religious asylum because of that.”
“Wait, a ‘religious asylum’? I’m not familiar with that. Is that an insane asylum run by a religious organization, like some orphanages and schools are?”
“That’s right. I’ve been in one myself. Long story short, he’s still there to this day.”
“You have my sympathies.”
“Thanks.”
“I can tell you and your younger brother were close.”
“Yes, we were.”
Daniel reflected on the tragedies he had just heard about. After a minute or two, however, his thoughts were interrupted by Renegade stating, “I know what you have to be thinking. ‘Cripes, you flip out over all sorts of things! You had a meltdown over flipping bedsheets! You blow up at things all the time like a freaking powder keg! How are you… how are you not flipping out over your beloved younger brother being taken from you like he was!?’”
“You’re wrong. Believe it or not, that’s the one thing I do understand. For one thing, it’s a complicated situation because even though your oldest brother did something terrible, maybe you… maybe you consider him a victim too in a way because you all suffered from the upbringing you all had. For another, I don’t know what you did earlier today. When my parents… When I discovered my parents were dead, I was in denial, talking to their bodies like they’d just wake up if I didn’t admit what had happened. ‘Act normal,’ right? For a couple days after that, I was like a zombie. Later on you can bet I threw fits, but not having fits at first didn’t mean I didn’t care, and not having a fit right now doesn’t mean I don’t care.”
Renegade held his head from emotion. “You’re getting good at stuff like that, man.”
“You really think so?”
“Yeah.” He scooted his chair back from the table. “Let’s take five.”
“Sure.”
Renegade arose from his seat and exited the room. The “five-minute break” ended up lasting an hour, and Daniel was glad because he also needed to be alone to mourn his lost loved ones as well. He sat silently as his tears dripped down. When the album playing from the stereo ended, he turned off the CD setting and found a classic rock station. He sat in thought, remembering both good and bad times, as he listened. Finally the alien returned, his eyes even more irritated, but his demeanor not as downcast as it had been before. With both powerful beings having gotten some emotions out of their system, they continued on.
“The album ended, so I turned on the radio.”
“That’s fine. It sounds like a good station.” He picked up a paintbrush to begin adding the second coat. “I think I’ll watch some Mighty Morphin Power Rangers tonight. Maybe watch ‘White Light, Parts I & II’ again.”
“How many times would tonight be?”
“Just the twelfth.”
Daniel smirked. “‘Just’ the twelfth time watching it, huh?”
Renegade smirked back. “Well, yeah, considering I’ve watched ‘Missing Green’ seventeen times.”
Daniel snickered in amused surprise. “It’s all relative, I guess!”
“Yeah. I’m not sure why I’ve watched those two so much.”
“Those two episodes?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“You like the episodes, right?”
“Very much so.”
“If you like something, that’s why you watch it so much. You don’t hear me saying, ‘I’m not sure why I’ve listened to Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A. so much,’ because I know it’s because I like them. Are you saying you wonder why you like them so much?”
“I imagine I am.”
Daniel thought, “Are you really wondering why or are you asking to give me food for thought? Are you trying to get me started thinking about why I like what I like? Then again, it doesn’t have to be one or the other, does it? You can ask someone to think about things that you wonder about… things you don’t know yourself. I can think about why I like those albums later, but do you really not see why you like those two episodes? One has that transformation, return, whatever you want to call it and the other deals with protecting people you care about. Those things mean something to you, don’t they?”
He had a realization, and he felt slow for not having it earlier. “It was never the ‘power’ aspect of Power Rangers that interested you, was it? Shoot, you even made that claim that you could take on the lot of them. Most people’s power doesn’t mean a dang thing to you. It’s been the transformation aspect that’s interested you from the start, hasn’t it? In that series, you can just pull out a morpher and become someone you weren’t before, and you can do things you couldn’t before… help others you couldn’t before. Even if something happens, it’s not necessarily the end because you can come back in a new form with new abilities. For someone who was abused, and lost two siblings, and then gained power & abilities most people can only dream of… that has to mean a lot.”
After finishing the second coat of paint, Renegade announced, “After that dries, I’ll apply some glaze, and after that dries it’ll be all done.”
“It looks great!” Trying to make conversation, he asked, “So, do you have a paper where you’re marking how many times you’ve seen certain episodes, or is it a mental tally?”
“It’s both.”
“You can remember all seventeen times you’ve watched ‘Missing Green’?”
“Mmm-hmm!”
“Prove it.”
“What?”
“Prove it. Tell me about all seventeen times.”
The maniac smiled a prideful and excited grin. “What, you think I can’t?! Well, you just keep track!”
Daniel grinned as he took out a notepad. “Go on, then!”
Renegade recounted his various viewings of the episode. Daniel took notes and responded with his own thoughts & observations. Partway through the conversation the paint dried, allowing Renegade to apply the glaze. His recollections continued for long enough that the glaze dried as well. After Renegade finished, Daniel looked over his notes. “Sure enough, that’s seventeen!”
“Ha! Don’t doubt me with stuff like that.”
“You shouldn’t doubt me either.”
“I never have. Not from the start.”
Daniel drank in the compliment before asking, “So, how are your other relatives?”
“Thankfully they’re doing well. Yours?”
“Thankfully they’re doing well too.”
They talked some more and then Renegade handed Daniel the finished Refreshroom charm. “There you are!”
“Thanks!”
“No problem, man.” He collected his materials and the stereo. After a pause, he told Daniel, “Where I’m from, there’s a sort of tradition of inviting someone to watch a show with you if you’ve watched it more than ten times. If you’re interested, you can let me know what time is good for you.”
Daniel was surprised. “You’re inviting me to watch?”
“Yeah.”
“You haven’t done that before.”
He snorted in amusement. “Yes, I do remember that I haven’t. I have my reasons, but… I just felt like asking this time. Are you interested or not?”
“Sure; I’ll call you back later.”
“Good.” He glanced to the side. “It… It was good to hang out today. It’s good for you to be here.”
“I think so too. You’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. You?”
“I’m fine.”
“Good.” He lightly brushed the side of Daniel’s face with his claws as though he were painting tiger stripes or whiskers, a gesture which Daniel correctly assumed had some relation to the episode they were going to watch. “You’re coming along nicely, aren’t you?”
“What, you mean my training and the whole ‘trying not to be a violent a-hole’ thing? Thanks, I like to think so too.”
Renegade chuckled, and as he turned to leave he sincerely responded, “Glad to see it, bro.”
It took Daniel a second or two to process the last word. “What… What did you say?”
“Just saying it’s nice to see my rival doing well. I suppose there is one more thing I should give you before I go.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s just the knowledge that when it comes to what you did today, I think your brother would have done the same thing.”
Daniel was so caught up in this statement that he was barely aware of Renegade’s departure. He set the handmade good luck charm back down on the table, then cried tears of pride and happiness.
== Notes ==
*The butter tarts line is a reference to the intro of the album version of the song “Steal My Sunshine” by Len.
:*“Hey, have you talked to Marc lately?”
:*“Uh, haven’t really talked to him but he looks pretty, uh, down.”
:*“(chuckles) ‘He looks pretty, uh, down’? Yeah, well, maybe we should cheer him up, then.”
:*“What do you, uh, suppose we should do?”
:*“Well… does he like butter tarts?”
*“He Didn’t Have to Be” by Brad Paisley is a song about a man whose stepfather treated him like his own son. The singer states that he hopes he can be at least half the dad his stepdad didn’t have to be, but was.
*I came up with the hotel postcard tradition due to reading about hotel postcards while planning this story.
*The custom of using the phrase “Jesus called” to commemorate a death is my own family’s.
*The reason Renegade hadn’t invited Daniel to watch Power Rangers with him before is he thought it might remind Daniel of watching shows with his family and/or friends during his childhood and make him sad. At this point, however, he feels Daniel will be able to handle it.
*Renegade’s gesture of pretending to paint tiger stripes on Daniel’s face actually has deep meaning. In “White Light, Part II”, it was stated that a character was chosen to be the new White Ranger because of his courage, strength, and honor. By making the tiger stripes gesture, Renegade is discreetly indicating he thinks Daniel has those qualities as well.
==Narration==
thumb|left|275 px|Narration done by me and posted to my channel
Previous- Gift Exchange
Spiritual predecessor- Two lunatics talking about Power Rangers
By Raidra
Category:Stories
Category:Raidra