You Can Go Home Again
by
Dala
DISCLAIMER: All the characters in this story belong to Marvel. So not mine=don't sue.
dala'S NOTE: This is the sequel to my fic "Correspondence;" you might want to read that one first, it'll make more sense.
I really don't know what possessed me to write the first letter.
I had checked into a hotel just across the Canadian border; though I could have made it to Alkali Lake by morning, I felt such a strong pull back to Xavier's mansion that I had to stop. It was almost a physical sensation, a tug and a pain in my heart, the farther I got from Westchester County. From her.
It was a cheap little place, old and run-down, but the sheets were clean. I was too restless to sleep, so I opened the drawer on the nightstand and looked inside.
I noticed the stationary, envelopes and stamps first. The paper contained the name of the hotel, which I carefully scribbled over, but luckily there was no return address on the envelope. I wouldn't be here long enough for her to post a reply, but even if I was, I knew that if I had something of hers in my possession, that if I could smell her scent on the paper and look at her careful script, I would immediately turn tail and go back home. Back to Rogue, to my girl, my Marie.
So I wrote a short, quick letter that wasn't much on the surface. But it felt good to get something down, something that she could read, and it was much safer than calling her. Her voice, I would never be able to rest.
And when I had sent that letter, I stayed for three days in the little hotel. Can't explain why I dreaded continuing on my journey; maybe instinctively I knew that it was pointless to chase the past. Even if I found something, what good would it do? I couldn't go back and stop the people who had given me this adamantium and in return stolen my memories . . . and I wasn't sure I wanted to. Had that never happened, I would have never known her.
It was nearly a month before I reached the lake, because I took my time about it. Most of the day I'd spend riding the motorcycle, but in great loops around the backroads of a small town. I couldn't move backward, and I didn't want to move forward, so I made myself stationary.
Eventually I found the abandoned complex, and spent another two months staying with an elderly lady while combing the area. It came back to me slowly, in pieces: I remembered seeing this stream, or that tree stump, but all the memories were from the days I had spent in half-wild terror after the procedure. The military ground had been wiped absolutely clean, as clean as my head, and I was filled with rage. Several times I started a letter to her about these feelings, how it burned me inside to see things I only half remembered. But inevitably I would shred it before it was finished, and burn the scraps. Such things could only be said in person, in the dark, when she wouldn't be able to see the tears in my eyes.
It would have made every kind of sense in the world to return to Xavier's mansion once I discovered that there were no answers. But I've never been a terribly sensible person, and I was plagued by doubts. She was a young girl; they formed crushes that lasted for a few weeks and then moved onto someone else. I had no way of knowing that she was all the while missing me, pining after me, writing letters of her own that she couldn't send.
Truth be told, I was afraid. Afraid of these feelings, which were so new and alien, and afraid that if I returned, I wouldn't find her the same as when I had left.
So nearly four years passed, and for me they were a blur. I worked most of the time, usually manual labor or garage work, but I never stayed in one place for more than a few months. I even considered going back into the cages again, but then decided that it was not something I would tolerate anymore. It seemed trivial, to fight for money when I had recently fought for ideals and the safety of the world.
A person would probably think I met women, if not the relationship kind, then the pay-for-favors kind. And I thought about it, sometimes, but in the end I imagined myself looking her in the eyes and telling her the things I had done up north. Prostitutes and floozies were not something I could envision myself bringing up, and so I lived like a damned monk.
There wasn't a big change in my life that triggered my decision to return home; I merely woke up one morning and thought, Enough is enough. So I wrote her a quick note and posted it, sent another to the Professor, hopped on my bike and started home.
The journey back was naturally much shorter than my initial ride. Despite the fact that I still had fears and reservations about her feelings toward me, I was just going to have to be a man and face it. If she didn't want me, so be it. I'd once promised the kid that I'd take care of her, and it was high time I started to live up to that vow.
Because of this, reading her letters was especially hard. Every sadness, every pain in the past four years of her life struck me with a sharpness and a depth. So much had happened that I wasn't there to protect her from, and the guilt and shame threatened to send me away again.
It was the love she spoke of, the dreams I'd starred in, the terrible ache she described that was life without me, which kept me there. It was having my hopes reassured that yes, she did love me and she did want me and everything was going to be okay, that made me write her a letter back. It was very straightforward. I was too filled with emotions I couldn't describe to put any kind of romantic finesse into it (although I would have to be sure to outdo that Cajun, and made sure the boy's first sight of me was with her under my arm).
Sneaking into her room, I fought the urge to curl up in the bed that held her smell. I left her the letter and the tags, along with the extra one I'd had made for her, and returned to my own room.
She was there within minutes, my Marie, and we got about the serious business of making up for the last four years.
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