The Space Between

by Alison Boehm

Damn you.

Goddamn you to straight to hell, Nathan Christopher Charles Dayspring Askani'son Summers.

Well. That felt better than it had any right to.

Guess you're wondering what I'm doing here, after all this time. Or not. No one can ever tell with you, which is more than a little damned annoying, if I may say. Mr. Stoic And Unflappable gets played out after you've seen it for over a decade.

I suppose I came here to talk about running. Now, I know it's hard, but try to keep yourself contained--

·

Hell of a fucking crack for me to make. *Hell* of a fucking crack.

Christ, why am I even doing this? The sane part of me is screaming at myself to turn around, to walk away right now before any more is said. And I've hardly said anything, which only makes it all the more ridiculous, but there's still this, this *something* inside that's trying to drag me away, and it's just so tempting to give in and let it--

But no. No. Because I'm tired of running, Nate. I'm bone-wearingly tired of it. I got in a car and ran two years and three thousand miles after X-Force-- after the kids--

Look at me. To this day I can't even say it. As if saying it will somehow make it real, makes it not just a horrible two-year-long nightmare I still haven't woken up from.

After they died.

After I got them killed.

Because I did, you know. If it hadn't been for me, if I'd waited instead of charging in there guns blazing like I always did, if I'd handled my shit on my own and never even joined back up with them, the whole lot of them, Tabitha, Jimmy, Sam, and even that cocky, green-as-hell brat Bedlam- you'd have *loved* him, by the way- would still be here. Still be out there blowing something new up. Still be unable to do anything at a lower decibel level than "jet engine". Still be *alive.*

But they're not. And I had nobody handy to blame but myself. So I ran.

I ran because I knew that if I bothered to stop and take any time at all to think about it, I'd start to realize it maybe wasn't my all fault. That maybe I didn't deserve the emotional Cuisinart I was putting myself through on a daily basis. And I was so absorbed with crucifying myself that I couldn't accept the slightest *hint* of those kinds of thoughts. Instead, they just made me hate myself even more.

So yes, I ran. And the cities and villages and countries blew around me like dead leaves, colorless and paper-thin, until it seemed as though I were the one standing still, watching them whirl past my peripheral vision in a blur. But just like any good roulette wheel, it eventually had to stop somewhere. And you know where that somewhere was?

Colorado.

The very *house* in Colorado. Frankly, y'know, I was surprised it was still standing. I mean, I wasn't there for the discovery, since a certain little cockroach teleported me 2500 years into the future, but I'd imagined the reaction as being a bad one. Not to mention, I thought I torched the place pretty good before I left. But apparently not.

It was mostly intact, if completely abandoned and half-gutted by fire. There was a For Sale sign standing in the front yard, either placed there by a real estate agent with a *very* twisted sense of humor or some jackass kids playing a practical joke. Almost obscured by the grass growing up around it, but still visible. Untouched, for years.

Inside was a different story. What little furniture that hadn't burnt had been smashed to toothpicks by- grieving locals, I suppose. Picture frames shattered- there was one of the two of us, you know, leaning against a Jeep in god knows what country. I stared at that picture, lying there under its blanket of broken glass, and just wanted to dive into it, shred myself to ribbons on the glittering shards glinting in the half-light. There were deep, painful holes gouged into the walls as well. It was as though these people, unable to do anything to the creature who'd hurt *them* so badly, took out their rage and sorrow and mind-numbing pain on those blood-soaked walls. The house resonated with it.

And it was where I ended up. Running from one failure straight into the cradle of another. Strangely enough, the attic of the place hadn't been touched, save for a little fire damage. I made myself go up there after I'd inspected every other room. Don't really know what I was expecting- perhaps another hanging garden of silently swinging corpses, only this time they were all wearing X-Force uniforms- but there was nothing, of course. Even the bloodstains had been worn dull, licked clean by purifying tongues of fire, half-hidden by years of dust and faded by generations of tiny skittering feet.

I slept up there, amongst the cobwebs and the rats and the memory of death.

Told myself it was because none of the other rooms were inhabitable. In the end it was just an elaborate form of torture, a complicated dance between my old friends Guilt and Self-Flagellation. Because every time I closed my eyes up there, the room became a football stadium, pale-handed figures stretching on for days, just twisting forever in the silence. All with four repeating faces.

It was the longest time I'd spent in one place in almost two years, and yet I was still running. Running standing still. The last day I spent there, I walked out to the cairn of rocks in the woods behind the house and stood over them, waiting for- something. What, I couldn't tell you, Nate. Maybe forgiveness. Maybe salvation.

Something that never came.

Then I got back on my bike and ran two thousand more miles, ran two days straight from those pale, accusatory faces. I remember reflecting as I sped away that it should've been snowing. That would've been sufficiently poetic, don't you think? Would have brought it full-circle. But life never follows all the little rules that it should, you know.

And so here I am.

I'm still not really sure why. Maybe I had to see for myself. Even though I knew what had happened with Apocalypse and- Scott- I still didn't believe--

I mean, Christ, Nate. When *Domino* is sitting here telling you you're taking the guilt thing too far, odds are it's probably true.

Look at us. A couple fine pieces of work. Though I have to say *I* didn't get myself ki- *killed*--

·

·

·

You utter bastard, now I'm crying.

It was all I could do not to reach out and smash Jean's mouth in when she was telling me. Because didn't she know, you did not go running headlong into a firefight with no regard for yourself, and you Were Not Dead? Only you did, and you are. And it wasn't even anything *important* to die over, you stupid bastard. You'd defeated Apocalypse, fulfilled your destiny, but lost your father- again- and this was just some goddamn stupid random X-Men mission, and they should've known better than to take you along, so soon after Akkaba, with the way you were blaming yourself for Scott's death. You and your fucking martyr complex, Nate. And you went and got yourself killed. Because you were so consumed by guilt over what had happened, you just didn't care what happened to yourself anymore.

Looks like you ran the farthest of either of us.

You know, I guess I do know why I'm here, Nathan. I'm here because I spent the space between then and now running scared. And now that I'm just tired and ready to stop, there's no longer a place for me to come back to.

Because you were all the home I ever wanted.

G'journey, Nate.

~fin

back to Alison Boehm's stories | Dayspring archive | comicfic.net