Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

- Mary Oliver, "The Uses of Sorrow"

5: Compassion

'Are you happy?'

Only Hwoarang could condense nearly three years of memories into three little words.

Perhaps he thought anonymity protected him. Say it to my goddamn face, you coward.

Maybe she could have said yes and allowed him a clearer conscience.

But to say yes would be a lie, and to say no would imply her wellness depended on him.

'My happiness is no longer your concern.'

Whether he received the message wasn't important. What she relished was that he was watching. Do you know that I wish for your despair?

More often, though, she was ashamed. She would be more cautious next time. She would make a craft out of self-preservation.

'Sometimes I dream of sitting in a bar where everybody knows my name. I just wanna be old and sit back and have lots of grandchildren.'

He would fly through time, then, forsake the memories of youth, memories of her, for the respect and ease of old age. Maybe it was poetic, maybe it was what he deserved given all that he'd been through—but all Julia saw was ugly surrender.

Where was the wanderer, the dreamer, the rebel?

How could he not know that he didn't have to dream of the future when she could make him realize a glorious present?

'But you did help me. You helped me the most, Julia. You taught me that I deserve better than all that's happened. That there's more to it all.'

It wasn't the lesson she'd been trying to teach.

'I forgive you.'

She hadn't known how else to let go.

It was three in the morning and she couldn't sleep (not that she received much anyway at these hours. Inspiration fancied the graveyard shift, when minds closed and hearts un-caged). Milan could be a nap away, but instead the journalist gazed out her window to the night beyond. Hovering between falling stars and solid ground; where was it safer to land when she let go?

Her photographer scribbled away in a notepad as he flipped through the files in Julia's folder. Perhaps he felt guilty for falling asleep on her earlier and was making up for lost time.

"You'll love Italy, trust me," he said during a pause in his writing. "I've never been to Milan, but if you could see Rome, Venice, Urbino…"

She smiled and nodded but couldn't bring herself to give a damn about Europe or about whatever the Mishima Zaibatsu was doing this time. Right now, she wanted to write about being trapped in the sky, in the dark, with "love." But stories like that didn't make the front page and even if they did, even if Gregorio somehow became uncharacteristically impulsive and slapped her "love" onto A1 Julia wouldn't allow it. She was a proud woman, prouder over the years because of fast-acquired wisdom, uncompromising standards and honest prose, and she wouldn't jeopardize respect and steely equipoise for a story about, well, fluff. Besides, it wasn't news if it wasn't novel, and hell, everyone had a story about heartbreak.

Then again was it fluff if it could bring people to their knees?

What felled a person and made them cry out, oh God? What made them read on and say, I know how you feel; you are not alone? Was that not still power?

And wasn't it Hwoarang who made her wiser, in romance, in self-love?

You fool, she immediately scoffed, obliterating the idea. Don't credit him with such a thing. He was merely a test of evolution. Some women turned to ashes when they touched men on fire, but instead of burning Julia had reverted to water, to a deeper spot in her mind that drowned fatal flames.

So she'd write about it when she went home, then, in the privacy of her own darkness and under scrutiny of nothing but her thoughts and the white glow of a desk lamp. She'd lay it all out and show it to a friend or a stranger and let them tell her how stupid she was. And then it would be done, done done done, and she could go back years later and read it over and laugh at the mistakes incurred, at the childish reveries and faux heartaches. No one fell in love at seventeen, right? It was only another lesson to learn, fate at work to make sure you developed into a Heaven-worthy human being.

To her relief Steve, ever convivial, had struck up a conversation about soccer—football—with a fellow insomniac sitting in front of him. She should use this time to focus on Milan and on the different angles the story could take—of which there were very few; as volatile as Kazama and his family were they were astonishingly predictable—before Hwoarang turned up again and offered her dinner (ricotta pasta, boiled vegetables and an oatmeal cookie, how original). She was tired of thinking about him and yet all she wanted right now was to do exactly that: to purge him thoroughly through thorough thought. Through brutal, brooding prose.

"You ever tried your hand at cricket, Julia?" Steve again.

"I'm afraid the only cricket Americans know of are the insects," she replied with a smile. "We prefer a real sport, you know, baseball."

Her photographer rolled his eyes in mock irritation, then turned again to his newly made friend.

If only worlds collided so simply.

"I want you to be uncomfortable."

Her News Writing professor was doling out final feature assignments. There were ten students, twelve if you counted the two who were always late. The small class size allowed the teacher to personalize each project, not to mention she could destroy writing faster with her poisonous red ink. Julia appreciated honesty, though; brutal meant better and she respected those scarlet slashes on white. Eventually it would only be white – but that wasn't for a long time yet.

As a journalist you could find yourself "in all sorts of diverse situations," so her professor wanted them to find a topic they felt negatively biased about. Learn it, report it and turn it in.

She was nineteen and considered herself as open-minded as one could get, until she revealed how she thought homeless people were merely "uneducated men in tattered clothes" who "smelled bad." It was embarrassing, now that she thought about it, even more so when she saw her prejudice in ink.

Ink was permanence, even if you crumpled the paper away or crossed it out with red lines. Ink lived in the mind, not the pen.

"…Kathryn, go to that liberal bookstore and talk to the owner. Ty, I want you to go to that gay bar and interview a drag queen. Don't give me that look. This is exactly why you have to do it…Julia, go to a homeless shelter and talk to the people living there…"

As fate would have it, Julia's roommate volunteered at a shelter for homeless families, so she tagged along one wintry Saturday, notebook and pen in hand, and followed her friend to a lonely gray building in the heart of the city. It wasn't much to the eyes, another plain portal to Narnia if her mind was feeling creative.

The manager's name was Bob and he was tall, old and white-haired. They sat down and talked about homelessness in the city, in the country, and he smiled and gave her pamphlets (Julia's roommate would later tell her how lucky she was; Bob was rarely in the office). And as she asked her list of questions he told her the most important thing to have for these people, for all people, was compassion. Compassion was key to change. It was a warm, loving spiel, but one she could still distance herself from.

It was only when she finally interviewed the "clients" that her heart began to break. They weren't old men in tattered clothes who smelled bad; they were entire families. Teenagers. Children. Babies. Men without light in their eyes. Women with wind-roughed skin and exhausted voices. No homes. No jobs. Just a little bit of hope and a few minutes to answer a naïve college sophomore's questions.

That night, Julia wept in her bed. In all those tired, beaten souls she had seen Hwoarang's face. She knew his secret intuitively.

"I tried to hold on to the house after my parents left, but eventually it foreclosed. I've been at a men's shelter for awhile."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't want you to think I was weak."

His voice was hollow; it frightened her. His honesty revealed his apathy. They'd been fighting. He had still cheated on her. But right now, as he told her the entire truth, all she wanted to do was hold him and tell him it would be all right.

I'm sorry this had to happen to you. If I could, I'd take it all away. Let me soothe your sorrow. Let me know you, if only for a few seconds.

But he was already gone.

It was then that she called Raven. Only then did she let someone hear her cry.

Raven too was a casualty of compassion. She had reached out for him, and he'd held her close without ever touching her. And she'd wronged him.

Years later, she would be driving home from the office and sometimes she wondered how Raven was doing. She would want to call him just to hear his voice, his laughter, just to let him know that she still appreciated him, even if she was colder and more distant than she used to be.

Instead, Julia drove those midnight highways alone and allowed the memories to replay quietly in her mind.

She learned to value the pain. Evolution required it.

There were stories writers claimed had to be written, for the sake of veracity, for sanity, for the lives of others, and this one was one of them. In that single story about homelessness she'd learned the truth without having to ask. All she had to do was open her eyes.

Now is the time to write. You are ready to know. To see. To let go.

If there was such a thing as fate this was the closest to it she'd ever known.

Along the way, she discovered the truth about herself.

Perhaps that had been the purpose all along.

A hailstorm pummeled Milan, so their plane landed in the Rome Fiumicino Airport instead. After waiting in baggage claim for almost an hour, the carousels making too many empty revolutions Julia and Steve realized their bags were lost.

"Mi hanno perso i bagagli," Julia said to the customs clerk slowly, remembering one of the few Italian phrases she'd memorized should a nightmare like this occur.

Lost luggage was common in Italy, apparently, not efficient like back home. Sure, Americans were obese and brutish and unsophisticated, but they were on schedule, damn it, and sometimes that's all it took to be top dog. And as an American journalist who worshipped no god but AP style, measured her world in inches and planned interviews weeks in advance, Julia was in need of some efficiency. She hadn't had any sleep or breakfast and had unwillingly relived heartbreak for sixteen hours on a plane with a deadbeat ex-lover. Yes, she needed some efficiency.

"Can I see your passport, Miss?"

Of course they speak English. Julia exhaled a breath of relief and handed the woman Steve's and her papers. The Brit, on the other hand, was already talking to a Brazilian couple in line behind him. He seemed oblivious to the current crisis; Julia tried not to clench her teeth too hard.

The woman at customs examined their passports and baggage stubs and spoke in rapid Italian to her co-workers. She thought a moment, made a couple phones calls, and turned back to Julia.

"Your bags are at carousel six—on the other side of the airport. Just go through those doors and you should find it. They may be in storage now," she said.

"Grazie."

"Prego!"

"That's a cute little word, isn't it? Prego!" Steve beamed as he chased after Julia. But she wasn't listening anymore.

Two hours ago, back on the plane, Hwoarang hadn't said a word. As they were disembarking he didn't even come to her to say goodbye. He'd merely lingered in the back near the restrooms, those lightning eyes watching her carefully for a few minutes before they shifted back to his work, back to his life and to the woman and daughter he had at home, wherever that was.

How realistic. How sparse. How sparingly, truthfully journalistic.

A part of her was still a romantic, then. A goddamn poet. A part of her had expected a profound gesture, a final act of remorse. But in that stubborn silence the final illusion shattered.

"It's here, isn't it?" Steve called to her.

Julia had walked right past number six. More exchanges followed. Steve handled it this time, with that smile and those hands, at ease, weaving through time and tension as he would in the boxing ring. She admired him for it; still, the occasion called for an authentic cappuccino at a nearby coffeehouse.

"Here we are," the blonde announced with their luggage in tow. "Safe and sound."

"Europeans," she breathed, but with a smile this time. "How the hell do you do it?"

"You just do," her photographer chuckled. "You Americans are always worried about something."

She couldn't disagree with that, so she ordered another cappuccino and handed it to Steve.

"Let's just sit here for awhile," she sighed.

She looked through her cell phone and found Raven's name. It was time she recognized and acknowledged real love when it found her, even when she couldn't feel the same way in return. Maybe she'd call Miharu too, and Michelle.

"Is everything all right?" Steve asked.

Julia sipped her drink, the foam coating her tongue and lips. She listened to the different languages around her, to the bustle of travelers and impetuous dreamers, to the heartbroken philosophes and scrambling businesspeople, to the lonely wanderers of no particular time and place. She listened to that movement. How it changed. Thrived.

"Yes," she smiled. "Everything will be all right."