Miss. Morix

32

    The town has been reduced to ashes and dust. People everywhere were mourning and grieving. Be it family, friends, possessions, houses, even businesses. The destruction was exponential, and the damage done to the citizens of Metropolis was psychologically, and in some regards physically, scarring. I sat though, quietly, and alone in the dew coated grass of a cemetery. I glowered, unfazed by the rustling of the breeze, at the stone in front of me.

Mason Morix.

     I wanted to cry, I wanted to vomit, I wanted to throw I tantrum, I wanted to scream, I wanted to...I don't even know. There was a pit, deep within my stomach. It felt like the reminisce of a hole that formed in my heart. This right here was everything I was working so hard to prevent. I never wanted to live long enough to see his name on a stone, carved defiantly, before mine. I never wanted to bury him. I never wanted to live a life without my younger brother. I loved him more than I loved, well, living. I wanted nothing more than to see him succeed. Instead, I suppose I got what I was deserving of, a grave. My eyes roamed slightly, to note my parents' grave beside him. I wasn't going to let him be buried alone. He spent a lot of his life in prison alone. I wanted to at least read his name with other names if I couldn't keep him company myself.
     I almost could feel his hand, stone cold, in mine as I picked the grass around my knees. Across the way there was another ceremony going on; it was one with gunshots, and trumpets. A military styled funeral. A large casket lowered in to the ground, and an American flag was folded to rest upon it. I spotted a very distraught Lois Lane, dressed in black clothing. I saw his mother trying to hold tightly on to the flowers in her hand. Tears fell as I watched my adopted family bury a member of their own. I watched as my older brother was lowered gracefully in to a hole some grave digger had the 'honor' to dig.
     I wanted to mourn for their loss. I wanted to feel miserable for them, for Lois. I wanted to allow myself to be upset that Clark was lying in that casket. I wanted to allow myself to feel sad along with the crowd over there. But, I couldn't. I felt absolutely nothing. My eyes flooded, but my body sat still. My hands were steady still as I laid grass on to my Mason's stone, forming the shape of a heart. There was a crowd over there, but there would never be one here. No one would visit this grave other than me. No one would remember Mason. I felt alone. I felt envious of everyone across the way. They loved and they lost, of course, and that's terrible, but they had each other. The whole town would build memorials and cry together. Today, on this gloomy afternoon, I cried with a tombstone.
     I let myself contemplate every choice I had made. Had I been selfish? If I hadn't pursued my advances with Lex, would Mason be lying feet under me? He could have been. He could have died in prison instead I guess. If I hadn't been romantically involved with Lex, would Mercy have showed him Mercy? Probably not. I would have still had her job undoubtedly. If I had argued with Lex about his creation before it emerged, would Mason have survived? Not likely, Doomsday didn't kill him. I tried to make it make sense in my mind. I tried to think of a way Mason was to be spared. If I never took the job at LexCorp, and Mercy was never 'replaced' would he be standing side by side with me across the way? No, he'd possibly still be in prison. But alive, he'd be alive. Maybe. What if I had watched my temper with Lois? Was Mercy on the other end of that earpiece? I would never know who was. Were they in cahoots? I wouldn't know that either.
     The only conclusion I could come to was that he wasn't meant to live to see another day. It was unavoidable in the situation Mason was in. It was arbitrary. It was disgusting. It stung. Mason was such a huge part to who I was as a person. My identity consisted mostly of being a proud older sister. I never thought of myself as anything else so fufillingly. I had degrees, I had qualifications, but being a big sister was matchless. Being Mason's older sister was exceptional. He looked just as proud of me the last time I saw him as I did him. If I had known that would have been the last time I'd see him, I'd have hugged him longer. I would've laughed a little longer with him. Now every time I laugh, there will be a slight void it stems from. No matter how much I felt I needed him, somewhere else, hopefully, needed him more.
     We weren't a religious family. Some people are, some people aren't, but this was sort of making me hope that the concepts of an afterlife existed. That he had the chance he deserved to better himself and build the life he wanted for himself. I kind of hoped he would become a lawyer, and help those in the afterlife who maybe didn't get to experience a positive one. More than anything, I hoped that if such things were true, that he was standing with Mom and Dad. I hoped he wasn't alone. I hoped that although I felt broken, and lonesome, he didn't. I hoped after all those years of solitude; he was surrounded by the family we lost. I hoped the worst for him was over now, and that he could breathe again.