Running for Home - 66. March 11, 2022

March 11, 2022

I feel like such a whiny bitch sometimes, complaining about things that shouldn’t matter. But goddamn it, I think this one matters. Kevin hasn’t been in my class for three days now. I understand that talking with Rogue about shit is important, since it gives him someone who can relate to his situation and who can give him advice and a reality check on his perspective, but fuck! How am I supposed to get him to keep up with his classmates? Can I just drop some evaluations from his record for the semester and still have it fair to the class as a whole? I don’t know. I guess I need to ask Emma what she wants me to do. But if this kid is as serious about his writing as I think he is, he should have his ass in his seat during my class time.

To be honest, I’m starting to get a little annoyed that Rogue is still here. I mean, I don’t know what exactly Emma asked her to do, or if she’s being paid for her time or what, but I really hope she isn’t going to be here long term. I shouldn’t feel like I have to restrict my movements around this house just because she’s here and I don’t want to deal with her bullshit, yet that is exactly what I’ve done. I can avoid her most of the day, but I can’t avoid her presence at mealtimes, though she hasn’t made any motions to sit with me again. Thankfully Bobby has been sitting with me. My other friends have made some effort to split their time between opposing camps, which is kind of bullshit but at the same time I get it. She’s their friend, too.

Fuck, this is so stupid. Why did she have to make a big deal out of me being here? Why do I have to care enough about this that I’m trying not to make my friends have to choose?

When dinner came tonight, she approached our table. She asked Bobby if he’d go out with her tonight for old time’s sake. Bobby glanced at me for a moment, seeking my assent. I shrugged subtly because really it didn’t matter what I wanted, he should do as he pleases. I could survive a night without him, if he wanted. She frowned, catching the whole interplay. Bobby agreed to go with her. It was a Friday night, after all. No responsibilities in the morning.

I was annoyed, but tried not to show it. I know it was petty to feel annoyed, but it was there. I finished my meal quickly, and then told Bobby I was going to see if Daniel wanted another driving lesson tonight. I looked around the dining hall and didn’t see him with his friends. Connor was suspiciously absent, too. I sighed and wandered over to where Emma was eating with Sean. Asking a telepath would be quicker than wandering all over campus looking for the boys. I apologized for bothering her and asked her if she knew where Daniel was. She paused for a moment, then told me he was in the library. I thanked her and then headed towards the books.

Well, maybe I should have just left them alone. They were hidden away in the back of the library making out. Well, they were pretty hot and heavy. When I rounded the corner, Daniel had his hand down Connor’s trousers.

Daniel jumped up, away from Connor, turning beet red. I apologized for interrupting them, but then thought better of it and cancelled my apology and told them that there were better, more private places to be fooling around than in the back of the library. Daniel squirmed and said he was sorry, that he just got caught up in the moment. Connor just nodded, trying to cover his hardon.

I sighed. I told Daniel that I was looking for him because I was wondering if he wanted to go driving again. He looked excited for a second, and then turned to Connor and then kind of deflated. Daniel bit his lip and asked if Connor could come too.

I’m such a fucking sucker. I said yes. Daniel smiled brightly. Connor seemed excited as well. Ugh, just what I need. Two hormonal teenage lovers in a car. We headed out to the garage and borrowed one of the School’s cars. Daniel and Connor tried to both get in the back, but I put a stop to that and made Daniel sit up front. I was not going to be the chauffeur while they made out in the back of the car. Talk about awkward! I drove west to Peekskill this time. We’d start out in a church parking lot off the 202, and then if things were going okay we could try some street driving in that sleepy little town.

They were rather chatty amongst themselves, mentioning things about the scenery we passed by every once in a while. It wasn’t that surprising, given that they didn’t get a chance to get away from the School very often. I mostly tried to ignore it when topics veered more towards gossip about other students. It wasn’t like they were being malicious, and I’d be lying if I said that I never participated in a little gossip with Jubes and Bobby when I was their age.

When we arrived, Daniel wanted to go first. He wanted to show off to Connor what he could already do. Well, he was a bit over excited and jerked the car around a bit before I got him to take a breath and be a little more measured and subtle with the pedals. Connor was cheering him on. After about twenty minutes, Daniel suggested that we give Connor a turn. I guess Connor’s birthday was in January and he’d also gotten his learner’s permit, so I gave him a shot. He did very well. Better than Daniel, even. I could see that Daniel kind of had mixed feelings about the whole thing. It sucks when you are excited about something new you can do and someone comes along with little to no experience and blows you out of the water.

We did eventually do a little street driving, slowly, in a quiet residential neighbourhood. They did okay, I guess, but we didn’t attempt anything particularly difficult. No parallel parking and no reversing out of driveways, thank you very much. We stopped in Yorktown Heights on the way home for a snack at the Starbucks. They got some pastries and one of those sweet refresher drinks. I just got a coffee, even though I probably didn’t need it and would regret the late caffeination when I eventually tried to go to bed. We sat for a few minutes and I talked with them about what they did well and what they needed to try and improve upon.

When we got back, they both thanked me for taking them out and then ran off hand in hand. It’s hard to imagine, now, that just a few months ago that would have been unthinkable for them. That’s not to say they had it easy now - I know Daniel was still having occasional issues with his roommate, whose homophobia seemed to run a little deeper than just basic misunderstanding and lack of empathy. I’m wondering if Emma will switch that up next year, or if she thinks this is a good learning exercise for both of them. Daniel’s mental health is in a better place now than it was a few months ago, but still… should he have to suffer his roommate’s slights just because he’s a little different?

Sigh.

Growing up ain’t easy, that’s for sure. You couldn’t pay me enough money to return me to my teenage years. Hell, even my early twenties. Maybe not anytime, except when I was on my own doing my degree work at UCLA. I wonder what my shrink would think of that, that I’m unwilling to relive most of my life.

Or am I?

I mean, it’s what’s gotten me to where I’m at now. I wouldn’t be the same person, I wouldn’t have this job, and I definitely wouldn’t have Bobby. Or would I? Could there have been an easier, smoother path to a reality kind of like my current one? One where my parents didn’t turn out to be abject failures at life, one where I lived up to my potential in high school, one where I didn’t turn into a terrorist due to the failure of all these people and institutions in my past to save me from the demons inside me?

I guess that’s a hard pill to swallow, that maybe, just maybe, I could have been somewhat ‘normal’. Would I appreciate what I have now as much as I do, had I come into it from a different direction? Probably not. At least, not in the same way.

I went upstairs to my room. I probably should have headed to my office to do some marking or other school work, but I really didn’t feel like it. It was a Friday night, after all, and I had the rest of the weekend to take care of things. I sat down on my bed and picked up the Sartre that I’d started reading. Xi’an told me that, despite how influential Existentialism is a Humanism was, some of the ideas in the book were considered outdated even by Sartre by the time of his death. I could see why. Sartre was arguing that the individual is ultimately responsible for everything about themselves, that their actions are completely under their control. It discounts everything about genetics and predispositions from nature, instead focusing on individual choice and development. There are ways in which it’s an appealing view, that each human should stand on their own merits and choices and face the consequences of their actions. At the same time, one cannot dismiss the effects one’s genes and upbringing have on their behaviour.

I have sympathy for someone like Magneto, given how he was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp for being Jewish and never wants to be treated like disposable filth again. But I can also insist that justice be served. Has justice ever been served on me? I went from terrorist to government assassin after spending some time in jail. That wasn’t justice, that was me trying to survive by getting the fuck out of there before someone killed me. But I ended up tortured and raped as a consequence of that deal, so what good did it do me anyway? Did I still get what I deserved? Was it karma? Is karma a real thing? Is it justice?

I sighed and tossed the book aside. I wasn’t getting anywhere, anyway.

I decided to go for a walk out back by the lake. Once the cold air hit me, though, I almost reconsidered. I was craving a cigarette like a motherfucker, but I’d gotten rid of my leftovers after I recovered from Dom’s kidnapping. I was off them cold turkey while I was captive, anyway, so there was no use starting back up once I was safe. I’d wanted to quit again, anyway. I’d only started smoking again in the first place because of Dom and his lawsuit.

The moon was bright over the lake, and I could see some stars. I’d never learned my constellations, beyond the Big and Little Dippers, Orion and Cassiopeia. I walked off towards the back woods, skirting the edge of the lake, watching the reflections in the water and listening to the night sounds. It was supposed to be calming, but it wasn’t really helping. My mind was too stuck on myself and my own situation. Stuck in a mix of satisfaction, striving, and self-loathing. Stuck in a mix of regret, anger, and acceptance.

I’m such a fucking mess.

And then I felt it, that familiar urge to play with my powers. To work out my frustrations in flame. But I didn’t have my lighter with me. Didn’t have my wrist igniters, which were down in the sub-basement with my training uniform. I almost turned around and headed inside, but then the thought struck me:

Maybe I could do it.

Maybe I could do it again.

I bent down and picked up a stray stick from one of the trees. I held it up. Examined it. Stared at it. Brought my vision closer. And closer. And closer. I opened my mind, my perception, and tried to see, to feel, to find that place that I found before, running on instinct. I was so close, so very very close, just on the edge yet so very far from having it.

Suddenly, it was there. I could see it. I could see everything, see how it held together, how it vibrated within its bonds, how it moved. I smiled. I reached out with my mind and touched it, ever so gently at first, watching it react. I touched it again, this time pushing hard. It broke free, brightened, cascaded…

And there I was, holding a stick with a small flame burning at the end of it.

I felt giddy, light-headed. I started laughing. I did it. I could do it. Finally, after all this time, I could do it.

I could make my own fire.

Still, I was feeling more than a little dizzy. I let the flame wink out and headed back inside, feeling infinitely pleased with myself. It took a lot of concentration, but I could do it. It wasn’t just a fluke, a result of desperation, a fucking Hail Mary to save me and Bobby when the worst was happening. The question now was whether this is something innate, something I’ve always had, or if this was a secondary mutation. I sincerely hoped not. Those were scary - you never knew just where things were going to end up if your X-gene cluster destabilized and started mutating again. I’d have to have Cecilia run some genetic tests to see if anything had changed. Maybe she’d already done something, I don’t know. Everything from the initial stages of my return was a haze in my memory - everything except Bobby being there with me.

I let out a deep breath. I wasn’t going to let these worries ruin my mood. I wandered down to the staff kitchen and dished out a bowl of chocolate ice cream. As I tucked in, my thoughts wandered to the past. There was a part of me, deep inside, that always knew I could do it. It had been infinitely frustrating to have such awesome control over fire and yet not be able to start it without some outside implement. It made me feel like I was incomplete, like I was somehow stunted. Living in a place like Xavier’s, it gave me a level of insecurity that was hard to put to words. Everyone here was so special, so gifted, but I was the only one who needed help to get going with my powers. Yet, no matter what I tried I just couldn’t seem to bridge the gap between what I was doing and whatever it was that was necessary to take my powers to the next level. Professor Xavier coached me. Dr. Grey coached me. Hell, even Magneto coached me for a while, before giving up at the utter disappointment that I was.

I wonder why it took me this long? I wonder why it took the situation with Dominik to bring this out of me? I mean, I’ve been in mortal danger so many times now that I’ve lost count. You’d think, at minimum, I would have found my way to this place when I was captured in Iraq. You’d think that my will to survive would have triggered and let me burn those bastards to ash. But it didn’t. Did I lose myself there? Did I give up on myself?

Maybe it’s because it wasn’t about me. Maybe, this time, it was because it was about Bobby. Dom was going to kill him and he was going to make me watch, helpless.

Well, I wasn’t fucking helpless.

I put my dishes in the dishwasher and headed upstairs. Bobby would probably be happy to hear that I’d been able to replicate what I did to save him, though this time with some control and without passing out. It was probably not the best idea to do that outside, by myself in the evening instead of under some more controlled circumstances in the Danger Room, but fuck it. Since when did I ever do things the safe way?

When I got upstairs to the room, the doorknob was chilly. I frowned and opened the door. It was quite cold in the room. Bobby was laying on the bed on top of the covers looking tense as hell. Whatever it was that had him upset, it had to be pretty bad. I walked over to the bed and sat down next to him, asking him if he was okay even though I knew he wasn’t.

That stupid bitch!

Apparently Rogue discovered that we’re together now and she decided it was her job to tell Bobby just how crazy and wrong that was given my past. She acted like things were fine for the first hour and a half they were out and then suddenly just dropped on Bobby all these things about me, all about the horrors of the psychic debris that was leftover in her head after she drained me on Bobby’s front porch when I tried to save us from the cops. Apparently it was bad, but Bobby wouldn’t go into it. Well, of course whatever she pulled out of me was bad back then! I was sixteen years old, I hated myself, I was in love with someone who didn’t love me back, our school had just been attacked by a government-sanctioned hit squad, and Bobby’s brother had sicked the cops on us and one of them shot Logan dead (or so I thought in that moment). Of course I was fucking murderous and disgusting!

And you know what? She’s fucking right. If I was still the same person I was back then, the same person I’d been when I went to jail, or the same person I was when I was in Freedom Force, then Bobby would have no business being anywhere near me.

But I’m not.

I’m not, and it’s galling that she thinks she can waltz in here not knowing anything about me or who I’ve become over the last decade and just tell her ex boyfriend what to do. Apparently she and Bobby had a big argument. He defended me, of course. He asked her how dating me is really any different from her on-again-off-again relationship with Gambit, what with his history of thieving and his time working with the Marauders. According to her, since Gambit wasn’t fighting for mutants to take over the world, his kill count had different meaning than mine. When Bobby pointed out that Emma and Sean clearly trusted me enough to put me around impressionable children, Rogue let out that she didn’t trust Emma in the first place. Emma was just as questionable as I was, in Rogue’s view.

Bobby wondered if anybody at all was good enough to pass her moral purity test. Then he asked her if she was just mad that I was with a guy now, if her reaction would have truly been any different if it was Jean-Paul he was dating. She said he wasn’t being fair. She had no problem with Bobby dating men in general - it was why she broke up with him in the first place, so he could figure himself out and go be with someone who’d truly make him happy.

Apparently that shocked Bobby. She knew about him, and never told him. He was so deep in denial he didn’t even know about himself, and she still knew. I guess I’ll have to give her that. She didn’t hang on to him all clingy and princessy all those years ago. She let him go. She wanted him to be happy. She just didn’t want him to be happy with me.

Bobby laid out an ultimatum. He told her that she had to make a choice: make an effort to see who I’d grown into and accept me for who I am now and not who I was in the past, or their friendship was over. And he told her that she might find more people at the School standing up for me than just him.

I hugged Bobby tightly. I kiddingly asked him if he wanted me to burn her. He laughed and said no, we’re not sixteen. Then I got Bobby’s attention and asked him to look at the candle on the dresser across the room. And I did it. I lit the candle, all on my own.

I was overwhelmed by another wave of dizziness, but the look on Bobby’s face was worth it. He looked surprised and happy and proud. He kissed me, then asked me if I’d gotten permission from Cecilia to be trying that again. Leave it to Boyscout Bobby to remember I’d passed out from doing it when I saved us from Dom. I told him I didn’t, but I’d decided to try anyway. I admitted that it did make me feel out of sorts to bring my awareness down to the molecular level, but I thought it was worth practicing to see if I could get better at it. He agreed, of course.

I used my powers to spread the flame to a couple more candles we had scattered about the room and shut off the lights. We made love in the candlelight, silently affirming that we didn’t need permission or approval from anyone else for our love.