Running for Home - 50. January 31, 2022

January 31 2022

Jubilee stopped by earlier. We had a good visit, even if I cut it short because I needed to take my medication and I wanted to do some mindfulness meditation. Her energy is good, helpful, uplifting, but I have to be careful because I feel like if I let myself feel too good right now I’m going to crash. Just saying that seems stupid, but that’s how I feel. The journal entry I wrote yesterday both helped and hurt. I need to get this stuff out, I know I do, but once you open the door it’s hard to close it again. All I could do last night was cling to Bobby. There were a few times when tears threatened to spill over my wet eyes but they didn’t, not really.

Whenever I find myself caught up in the memories of watching Bobby being beaten by Dominik, it makes me feel so guilty. If I hadn’t have been so fucking stupid, if I hadn’t have been so cocksure that everything was wonderful and fine and Dominik was out of my life and I’d just remained as vigilant as I always should have, I never would have got whacked over the head. I never would have spent a month in captivity being beaten and raped. I never would have had to deal with my heart being ripped to shreds, again.

I don’t know what to do.

I’m glad that Bobby’s recovery was a simple thing, and also that he was up and about before I’d even awoken. He had a concussion from getting hit over the head by that tequila bottle and some serious bruising, but none of the internal bleeding that I feared. The bastard can rid himself of a lot of damage to his body by switching into his ice form and then switching back. Just one of the many crazy things about his powers that he’s discovered over time. I’m glad of it, even if a tad envious. At least I’ve had my own discovery about my powers.

Apparently I blew up Dom’s shirt. There was nothing left of it when Jamie, Monet and Guido busted down into that basement not too long after the whole thing went to shit. Dom’s pants were scorched, too, and he’d been thrown back almost seven metres from Bobby. He was covered with burns.

I made fire.

I made fire, and it saved Bobby’s life.

Even just writing this, just thinking about it makes me want to cry. This thing, this thing that eluded me for so long just saved our lives.

Cecilia has ordered me not to try it again until my body is fully healed. She thinks the reason I passed out was because my brain wasn’t ready for the metabolic strain of achieving atomic perception and then forcing a change. That’s fine, really. I saw it. I saw it’s beauty, felt it happen. Even if I’m never able to make fire of my own again, I have the most important flame of all still in my life. I still have Bobby.

After X-factor got us out of Dom’s hellhole, they brought us back to the School in one of the Blackbirds. Bobby apparently woke up just as they were taking off, but Dom and I were out for the count.

That’s right, Dom.

Emma has him locked up in a holding cell in the subbasement brig. They’ve treated his burns, which were only 2nd degree. My fire hurt him, but not horribly.

I am not sure of how I feel about this. Why is he here? Why can’t he be as far away from me as physically possible? Emma told me that part of the reason is that they are unsure exactly what would happen with law enforcement, how they were not contacted at any point once we were rescued and needed to be taken into medical care. Of course that medical care was also across the continent and in a private facility doesn’t help either. The cell has power-dampening technology, thank God, otherwise this entire building would have been leveled by now. I think the only reason Dom wasn’t using his powers when Bobby came is because it would have destroyed his bar, brought it crashing down upon us.

I’m not sure what Emma’s eventual plan for him is. We can’t keep him locked up indefinitely. Emma supposedly had all of Dom’s personal information and accounts hacked and has used it to hire a manager to take care of his bar for the time being, because the bar was actually doing a good thing for the mutant community in the area. It was a safe space for mutants, the LGBTQ, and allies of all persuasions. People were using it. It might actually be becoming popular. Dominik was succeeding. Would have succeeded, but he fucked up. I fucked him up. Ruined him. Destroyed him in so many ways.

I haven’t gone to see Dom. I don’t think I can handle it, seeing him. Not now. Could I look him in the eye? Would I even want to?

The thing that is getting to me the most is the guilt. I had broken him just as much as he had broken me. But in my case it was a slow breaking, slowly eating away at his confidence and identity and trust until he couldn’t handle it anymore. He was doing what he needed to do to survive me by leaving when he did. Would he have been able to handle the arrival of his daughter better if we were still together? Would I have been able to deal with it, or would it have become just another simmering resentment?

Maybe that’s part of what Emma is considering right now, too. Dominik’s daughter. Of course, I don’t know much of anything in that department but I’m sure Emma has her claws into the situation now. Fuck, if the girl has any potential powers at all Emma might even try to scoop her into this school’s indoctrinating clutches.

Fuck, why am I being so callous about this place? Old bad habits, I guess.

Regardless of anything happening with the School, if Emma is keeping Dom’s bar up and running and his profits are going off to his ex-lover to fund his daughter’s life then I guess that is probably a good thing. Dom’s kid - was her name Helena? Anyway, she doesn’t need to suffer just because her dad went psycho and decided to enslave his ex-lover. I wonder what her powers could be?

I didn’t write about this two days ago, but Daniel finally got to see me again. I got to talk to him briefly on the 26th as well, but Cecilia quickly shooed him out. He’d been told when I was brought in that I was okay, but Cecilia hadn’t let him see me for the first couple days of my recovery. Talking to him, I really felt bad that I shut everyone but Bobby out and didn’t give him more time. He told me not to feel bad about it since I must have gone through a lot. He had no concept, really, of what it was like. Thank god he doesn't. I don’t want him to ever have anything happen that gives him that concept, to know the feeling of being completely and utterly at someone else’s mercy, to be violated...

I struggled with that conversation. I didn’t really know much of what to say, and he didn’t really know either. Eventually I got him to talk to me about school, about his new classes for the term, since that was pretty safe. It sounds like he’s doing okay. He avoided talking much about his friends and his roommate, which makes me think that maybe things aren’t going as smooth as he’s trying to lead me to believe. All in all, the conversation was pretty stilted, right up until the sudden hug he gave me when he was saying goodbye. When he pulled back, we were both blinking back tears. We shouldn’t have been. We should have just let them fall.

I’ve really let him down by not making an effort to see him, or let him see me, haven’t I? I feel so selfish, myopic. Why am I coddling myself? Why, when people need-

Need me.

Fuck, is this real?

Truly?

This is one of those moments, I guess, when you can see so clearly how fucked up and complex this world is, of what it means to be an adult. That I can see past myself, even just a little, and realize that even though I’m struggling I still have people who need me and rely on me. I still have responsibilities to shoulder.

Daniel has become a responsibility.

Fuck, what does that mean, anyway? What does it mean to have him this invested in me, in my health, in my presence? What does it mean to him, to me? What are the limits of this responsibility, or do they even exist?

This is something I am not sure I can handle right now, not something I’m capable of balancing and coming to terms with. I am so overwhelmed by everything right now, and yet here is another thing to consider, another thing to rattle around in my head even as I’m being sucked down a whirlpool of emotions and thoughts and memories that I can’t control, even with all the methods I have in my mental health toolbox, even with the drugs, even with Bobby here to hold me and tell me it’s okay and that he loves me.

Love. I guess that is the most important thing of all, right? It scares me, though, because I have nought but disasters in all of my attempts at love in the past. I’ve started telling myself I’m not broken and hoping it’s true. Knowing that I’m lying to myself but hoping it can become true. Hoping for the strength to come out of this still functional. Better, even, than I was before.

Will hope be enough?

I'm selling things short. I don't just have hope anymore. I have a job. I have friends. I have a home. I have Bobby. And before all that, and following it, and everywhere in between, I have me. That's gotta get me somewhere, right?