[Fic] Summers'son 9 epilogue
Yet another little bonus scene that didn't quite fit into chapter 9. While I've opted to relegate Aliya (aka Jenskot, aka Cable's canonical long-dead first wife) to the role of Nathan's ex for fanfictional convenience, that mostly left her standing around awkwardly in the background while her ex and his new boyfriend reunited in the last chapter. It didn't seem particularly fair that the two of them should be seeing each other again without giving them some sort of chance to talk alone.
It's true that leaving Wade's side for more than a second had been unthinkable when they'd worn themselves out for the night, and it remains true for all of a couple of hours more before nature calls at a volume there is no sleeping through. Nathan clambers over Wade and pads his way down the hall in his socks, somewhat displeased to discover that half-awake is more than enough for the full absurdity of the trek from the holding cell to the bathroom and back to be inescapable.
The old familiarity of the bathroom is unsettling in a whole hoard of ways that had either been absent from the ready room or which he'd been too distracted to notice earlier. An old crack he'd watched wind its way slowly up the bathroom wall over the years has leapt ahead, sprung a two-pronged surprise attack and colonised the near edge of the ceiling since he was here last. At least he mostly manages to avoid speculation as to why they'd have replaced the sink while he'd been away, or how Wade might have been involved.
On his way back he runs into Aliya in the corridor, still dressed and looking very much awake despite the hour. "Late night watch shift?" he guesses.
"At this hour?" she says, with a look of surprise that quickly softens into amusement. "It's not even nine."
"Oh," says Nathan, embarrassed. "I thought... it's been a long day."
"Mm," she agrees, the laughter still very much there in her face, because really, there's no way everyone in the bunker doesn't know exactly what he and Wade have been up to, but there's no reason it would bother anyone. It's comfortable like that between them for the several seconds it takes for Nathan to remember that he's having this conversation with his former girlfriend, and then suddenly there's nothing very comfortable about it anymore. Now he has time to notice, she's changed in so many minute ways he'd overlooked in the rush of nostalgia that had blinded him on first sight of her and the others; all the tiny things you don't notice when you see someone every day have added up over his absence. She's taller for one, though with her in boots while he's barefoot it's hard to gauge precisely by how much; she's cut her hair recently, and there's a stiffness in the movement of her right arm - nothing anyone who didn't know her so well would notice, but it was never there before. The peculiarities of time travel have pushed them out of synch; while for him it's been only a handful of months, for her it's been more than two years, and here he is, glimpsing her future while he's muddled around still grasping for a proper hold on what passes for his own present. This is a part of her life he'd long ago accepted he would never get to see.
Whatever might have happened since, they'd been close not so very long ago and this may well be the last chance they'll ever have to talk alone; but they've said their goodbyes once already, and he doesn't know what else there's left to say. Circumstances have nothing to offer him; he was never supposed to come back here. That the Canaanites could follow him back at all is testament to the narrow window of opportunity that exists for him in the past, after his arrival but before he changes so much that the futures diverge completely. The more he influences the path of history, the less there'll be left here for him to recognise if he comes again, until there's no way back at all.
They'd known all that the day he left; it's hardly as though Wade is the boy he'd left her for. But he'd left, and he'd found Wade, and when he had come back it hadn't been for her.
"Thank you," he says at last, "for taking care of him."
"Don't thank me, Hope's the one who had to make him follow orders," Aliya says, shrugging the compliment away. "We didn't risk anything we couldn't afford to lose to get him back to you."
"Even so-"
"You know," Aliya cuts in, "I didn't understand at first what it was you saw in him." The sudden honesty in her voice is startling; she gives a faint, self-deprecating smile. "Well, he sure showed me, didn't he?" There's a horrible moment here where Nathan's sleep-addled brain is petrified by the thought this is about to segue into an anecdote about what Wade's like in bed before she clarifies, "We recognised your fingerprints all over his hand-to-hand technique straight away, but I never guessed how much potential he had before he started to realise it. I've never seen anyone find their feet in the firing line that fast."
The intonation of her voice and the whisper of her mind speak volumes more than she ever could out loud, the echo of old frustrations and trauma past, but it's gone again the next moment when she shakes it off and catches his eye with hers. "We didn't do you any favours, Dayspring. If he hadn't shown up, I might not be here today."
Nathan feels suddenly quite inexplicably short on oxygen. Since the minute he landed he's been dealing with the reality of what Wade's become in his absence; he's hardly begun to process the sledgehammer blow of all Wade had promised him mere hours ago. At the very least he should have reached the state where he'd be numb to any further weight, but to hear Aliya - Jenskot - adding her commendation hits him somewhere where he's still fragile and soft. It's all he can do to stammer, "That's not why I - I mean, he was the first other mutant I met back there, but... you have to understand I didn't approach him to recruit him, I fell for him."
Aliya folds her arms and tilts her head at him with a look that has over a decade's close association behind it. "Are you sure?" she asks, and for the first time since meeting Wade, he's suddenly very much not.
Had there been some part of him that had seen all this in Wade when they'd first begun getting close? He doesn't know and probably never will, but if there's any truth at all to what Aliya's implying, well, if nothing else it makes a mockery of the part of him that still wants to lock Wade up somewhere safe and quiet while he goes about fulfilling the destiny ahead of him.
"It's a relief, you know?" Aliya offers. "We can send you back knowing you won't be doing this alone."
"That's up to Wade," Nathan says, automatically, all previous discussion on that topic notwithstanding. "It shouldn't have had to be his fight; that's he's gone through this much for me already is more than he ever should have had to do."
A gentle squeeze to his shoulder prompts him to look up again.
"Nate," says Aliya, "Not everything in life starts and ends on the battlefield. It's enough to know you won't be the only one missing us when you go back."
That last bombshell delivered, she kisses him lightly on the cheek and is gone down the corridor, leaving Nathan to put his heart back together again in his own time.
It's true that leaving Wade's side for more than a second had been unthinkable when they'd worn themselves out for the night, and it remains true for all of a couple of hours more before nature calls at a volume there is no sleeping through. Nathan clambers over Wade and pads his way down the hall in his socks, somewhat displeased to discover that half-awake is more than enough for the full absurdity of the trek from the holding cell to the bathroom and back to be inescapable.
The old familiarity of the bathroom is unsettling in a whole hoard of ways that had either been absent from the ready room or which he'd been too distracted to notice earlier. An old crack he'd watched wind its way slowly up the bathroom wall over the years has leapt ahead, sprung a two-pronged surprise attack and colonised the near edge of the ceiling since he was here last. At least he mostly manages to avoid speculation as to why they'd have replaced the sink while he'd been away, or how Wade might have been involved.
On his way back he runs into Aliya in the corridor, still dressed and looking very much awake despite the hour. "Late night watch shift?" he guesses.
"At this hour?" she says, with a look of surprise that quickly softens into amusement. "It's not even nine."
"Oh," says Nathan, embarrassed. "I thought... it's been a long day."
"Mm," she agrees, the laughter still very much there in her face, because really, there's no way everyone in the bunker doesn't know exactly what he and Wade have been up to, but there's no reason it would bother anyone. It's comfortable like that between them for the several seconds it takes for Nathan to remember that he's having this conversation with his former girlfriend, and then suddenly there's nothing very comfortable about it anymore. Now he has time to notice, she's changed in so many minute ways he'd overlooked in the rush of nostalgia that had blinded him on first sight of her and the others; all the tiny things you don't notice when you see someone every day have added up over his absence. She's taller for one, though with her in boots while he's barefoot it's hard to gauge precisely by how much; she's cut her hair recently, and there's a stiffness in the movement of her right arm - nothing anyone who didn't know her so well would notice, but it was never there before. The peculiarities of time travel have pushed them out of synch; while for him it's been only a handful of months, for her it's been more than two years, and here he is, glimpsing her future while he's muddled around still grasping for a proper hold on what passes for his own present. This is a part of her life he'd long ago accepted he would never get to see.
Whatever might have happened since, they'd been close not so very long ago and this may well be the last chance they'll ever have to talk alone; but they've said their goodbyes once already, and he doesn't know what else there's left to say. Circumstances have nothing to offer him; he was never supposed to come back here. That the Canaanites could follow him back at all is testament to the narrow window of opportunity that exists for him in the past, after his arrival but before he changes so much that the futures diverge completely. The more he influences the path of history, the less there'll be left here for him to recognise if he comes again, until there's no way back at all.
They'd known all that the day he left; it's hardly as though Wade is the boy he'd left her for. But he'd left, and he'd found Wade, and when he had come back it hadn't been for her.
"Thank you," he says at last, "for taking care of him."
"Don't thank me, Hope's the one who had to make him follow orders," Aliya says, shrugging the compliment away. "We didn't risk anything we couldn't afford to lose to get him back to you."
"Even so-"
"You know," Aliya cuts in, "I didn't understand at first what it was you saw in him." The sudden honesty in her voice is startling; she gives a faint, self-deprecating smile. "Well, he sure showed me, didn't he?" There's a horrible moment here where Nathan's sleep-addled brain is petrified by the thought this is about to segue into an anecdote about what Wade's like in bed before she clarifies, "We recognised your fingerprints all over his hand-to-hand technique straight away, but I never guessed how much potential he had before he started to realise it. I've never seen anyone find their feet in the firing line that fast."
The intonation of her voice and the whisper of her mind speak volumes more than she ever could out loud, the echo of old frustrations and trauma past, but it's gone again the next moment when she shakes it off and catches his eye with hers. "We didn't do you any favours, Dayspring. If he hadn't shown up, I might not be here today."
Nathan feels suddenly quite inexplicably short on oxygen. Since the minute he landed he's been dealing with the reality of what Wade's become in his absence; he's hardly begun to process the sledgehammer blow of all Wade had promised him mere hours ago. At the very least he should have reached the state where he'd be numb to any further weight, but to hear Aliya - Jenskot - adding her commendation hits him somewhere where he's still fragile and soft. It's all he can do to stammer, "That's not why I - I mean, he was the first other mutant I met back there, but... you have to understand I didn't approach him to recruit him, I fell for him."
Aliya folds her arms and tilts her head at him with a look that has over a decade's close association behind it. "Are you sure?" she asks, and for the first time since meeting Wade, he's suddenly very much not.
Had there been some part of him that had seen all this in Wade when they'd first begun getting close? He doesn't know and probably never will, but if there's any truth at all to what Aliya's implying, well, if nothing else it makes a mockery of the part of him that still wants to lock Wade up somewhere safe and quiet while he goes about fulfilling the destiny ahead of him.
"It's a relief, you know?" Aliya offers. "We can send you back knowing you won't be doing this alone."
"That's up to Wade," Nathan says, automatically, all previous discussion on that topic notwithstanding. "It shouldn't have had to be his fight; that's he's gone through this much for me already is more than he ever should have had to do."
A gentle squeeze to his shoulder prompts him to look up again.
"Nate," says Aliya, "Not everything in life starts and ends on the battlefield. It's enough to know you won't be the only one missing us when you go back."
That last bombshell delivered, she kisses him lightly on the cheek and is gone down the corridor, leaving Nathan to put his heart back together again in his own time.