Running for Home - 84. May 10, 2022

May 10, 2022

Christ, I can’t go away for one goddamned weekend to reunite with my father and have a happy family moment for once in my life, already more shit’s gone down. I mean, fuck, what would my life be without drama, right? But it would have been fucking nice to be able to come back home to the School and just fucking relax into work for a week, or something.

Fuck.

Waking up at my father’s house in Bobby’s arms was nice. Too nice. I felt so refreshed and well-rested, that I almost couldn’t believe it. Liam did wake up at around 3am and came to find us, but we managed to get him back to sleep in his guest room without much of a problem. The five of us enjoyed a nice breakfast together, and then Bobby, Liam and I got on the road. We had a ten-hour drive to make, and even though I really wanted to stay longer we just couldn’t. We left with a promise that my father and uncle would work out a plan to come to visit us on a weekend next month and see the School. They both set their own work schedules so there was nothing stopping them from doing it. My father also asked if we could keep in touch at least once a week with a call or video chat. I told him I would love that.

So, all in all, this trip was a resounding success. I mean, yeah my mother has fucked off to Australia and is doing god only knows what with her life now, but I couldn’t have asked for anything more from my father. Even though I have some reassurances from Uncle Mike that my father’s drinking is under control, there is still that little niggling doubt in the back of my mind, the doubt that this is too good to be true. I keep having this feeling that I don’t deserve this, that I don’t deserve to have this, that I’m a piece of shit and I fucked up the world so badly that I shouldn’t get to have my family back, that I shouldn’t get to feel my father hugging me, that I shouldn’t get to feel loved.

But you know what? Fuck that. Fuck that to hell and back. Yeah, I made fucking mistakes, but haven’t I atoned for them enough to at least have this in my life now?

Ugh.

Fuck, I guess I have a lot to unpack with Dr. Sofen the next time I see her. But that shit will have to wait, right now we have to figure out what the hell is happening to the students at this School.

So we’ve had four more incidents of students having their powers go berserk and out of control. Three of them were while we were away on Saturday and Sunday, and the latest was just after we rolled back in here. Unlike the incidents with Gerard and Callie, these were a little more serious - other students got hurt, or there was some property damage. Thank god the injuries were nothing serious, but we are starting to get worried.

Hank has started helping Cecilia with figuring this out because she feels completely out of her depth. None of the standard tests they have run so far have picked up a clue about what’s going on, but now there have been some reports trickling in of similar incidents happening in cities where there are large populations of mutants - the major urban centres like New York and L.A., of course, but also Atlanta, St. Louis, Portland, and in Denver. There’s this rumour, too, of something called Kick, a drug for mutants. But there’s no word on what it actually does or if it’s dangerous at all.

That’s fucking scary. A drug-use problem on campus would be awful to deal with. We are taking these kids in to help them, to remove them from the pressures of society while they come into their own. Their parents have expectations about us keeping them safe from these sorts of things. Then again, we have pretty good control over what comes in and out of this campus, so I have a hard time believing some strange drug that somehow only affects mutants would be able to make it here and slip past our protocols. I guess we will know soon enough, though, since Emma is finally back from her business trip tomorrow and she can do some interviewing of the kids who’s had the incidents with a bit of telepathic scrutiny to make sure their stories check out.

But if a drug somehow is making it onto campus, if this problem is actually a drug problem?

I mean, I guess it’s possible. We have a few students who can teleport, so it’s not outside of the realm of possibility that one of them has turned into a dealer of things the kids don’t want us to know that they have. But each of those teleporters, they aren’t the kinds of kids who would do something like that. Not in my opinion, anyway. Bobby agrees with me. Jean-Paul and Piotr, too.

Oh yeah, news on the injuries front: Jean-Paul, his sister and Piotr and some of the other injured have been released from the medlabs with a clean bill of health. Between Josh Foley and a couple of mutant healers from the Acolytes, things progressed much faster than they normally would have. In fact, Sam and Rachel are both conscious now and healing up nicely, much to Dani and Xi’an’s relief. They are still stuck in beds, but at least they are out of the intensive care unit now and can have some privacy. Maybe in another week, they will be back on their feet as well.

I’m glad for that, glad to see my friends recovering. It’s hard as a friend to see them laid low like that, it’s hard as a coworker to have them out of commission and having us scrambling to fill all the gaps, and it’s just hard to know that we were lucky that we survived that incident without something worse happening.

My friends are all happy for me that I was able to reunite with my father and Uncle Mike, and are encouraging me to take the necessary steps to find my mother. It’s going to take a bit, considering that my father had no information about where she was living or a phone number or anything like that. She’d been staying in a hotel the last time they talked, and she changed her phone number after that, after telling him she needed time apart.

There is a part of me that wonders if I should just let it be. I just can’t, though, not now. Not now that my father and I have established a connection, one that seems healthy and positive. She’s my mother, and I need to show her how I’ve grown up, how I’ve changed. I need her to know that I’m not a failure. I need her to know that it’s not her fault, not entirely, and that I’ve moved on to bigger and better things than my terrorist past. And I need to know that she’s doing okay, even if it’s not in the way that I hope.

I guess I will yet again hire X-factor to investigate for me. I sure as hell don’t have the time or resources to make any headway looking for my mother. Christ, I’m going to have to get these people something nice one of these days. Between helping search for me and rescuing Bobby and I from Dom after I blew up Dom’s shirt, searching (unsuccessfully) for Joanna, and securing Liam and Joanna’s possessions from her home in Iowa, they have done a lot for us. Even if Emma has paid for all but the latter, I still feel like I owe them something.

The mini shipping container containing the stuff from Joanna’s house that X-factor thought we might want to keep for Liam arrived while we were away - the photo albums, his toys and clothing, some things kept in places that indicated they were precious to Joanna. The rest of the goods from the house we had donated to charity, so hopefully someone who is having trouble getting by is given the furniture or whatever to help them out. We are going to go through the container this weekend and have Liam decide, with our input of course, what he’s going to keep and what can be gotten rid of. I hope it’s not a battle, and I hope he’s able to put together some positive memories of his mother and treasures to save for the future.

Fuck, I’m sorry I’m such a mess writing this today. I’m all over the place.

I guess that’s my state of mind, all over the place. It was hard to come back from Detroit to the School, back to the grind. Not because I don’t love my life here or I hate my job or anything like that, it was just… hard. After how wonderful the weekend was, how much peace it brought me, it was hard to come back here and be swallowed into the tempest of problems we face.

For a long while, after Iraq, the only problems I had to deal with were my own. Sure, I was doing some journalism on the human-mutant conflict, but I feel like that was more ego back then than anything else. I mean, obviously I contributed to some of the shift in discourse we’ve had over the last eight years, but… I don’t know.

I accuse Dom of being a hedonist, but I was pretty selfish too.

Maybe I needed to be, at least for a while. But maybe I should have been working on myself a little harder during all that, too. I mean, I guess I was doing that while I was at UCLA, while Dom was in jail, but… I don’t know. When Dom was around, there was just so much entropy, so much to deal with just keeping the ship on course that I didn’t have time for anything else.

No.

No, I’m not going to pin this on him. I think I just let shit be like that. I blamed him for all my problems during those years, but the truth is I didn’t do a goddamned thing to solve them myself. I just wallowed in the misery. The government psychiatrists did so much goddamn work with me, and my psych the first couple of years after I got out, but I didn’t follow through and keep working on myself even though I knew I had a long way to go to heal.

It was easy to blame Dom, wasn’t it? It was easy to focus on his contributions to the problems I was facing, and not self-reflect. And now, after all this time, it turns out that Dom had a reason for being the way he was, so I can’t even blame him for what he does deserve now.

Ugh, whatever.

So yeah, I was a fucking projecting mess. A selfish, blame-tossing mess. I blamed everyone else for my problems and state of mind - my parents, the foster system, my teachers here at the School, society at large, Magneto, the government, Dom…

Have I stopped being like that, somehow, over the past year?

I guess getting away from all those things, of completely starting over here, of all the things that have happened to me, I’ve been able to start to see how much of this comes from me, from the darkness inside me, from the anger and indignation over what I’ve suffered and lost. But I’ve also opened myself up and allowed myself to be vulnerable with people again. That floors me, that my friends, that Bobby, that Daniel and Connor and Kevin and Liam, and now my father and Uncle Mike too… that they’ve all gotten under my skin to one extent or another and given me the strength and opportunities to fucking stop running away, to stop biting the hand that feeds me, and embrace things like community and love and empathy and caring for one another.

I owe Emma a big debt for giving me this opportunity.

Okay, that’s enough self-reflection. The problems at hand are a bit more important right now than working on me. Besides, I have an appointment to do just that on Thursday with Dr. Sofen. It’s going to entirely be about my father, my uncle, my mother and the reunion and how it makes me feel and all of that jazz, but until then I need to buckle down and keep focused. I have a job to do here at the School, I have a novel that needs writing, and I have a family that needs taking care of.

Fuck, I have responsibilities.

Who the fuck ever would have thought St. John Allerdyce would have responsibilities, and I would enjoy it? Thrive in it?

How much the world has changed.