Home for Christmas
by Cosmic
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Marvel, no money, etc. Continues my Domino/Cable series that can be found e.g. on The Dayspring Archive. A sequel to ‘Don’t Look Back’, but can be read on its own. Extrathanks to Threnny for the beta. Feedback, as always, would be loved at cosmic1982@hotmail.com
Dedicated to Tangles. Happy birthday! (even if this is more than just a *bit* late) *snugs*
I came. I said I would, didn’t I? I made a promise, only now I keep my promises. At least, I try to. Sometimes the circumstances just...get in the way.
This isn’t cheating. It isn’t. I’m here, just like I told you I would be that night. Seven months. Nothing changes in seven months. Nothing.
Or maybe everything. Maybe my whole life has changed during those months. Everything has changed. Everything always changes, those subtle, little differences you never notice until you wake up one day and find your whole life has changed, and you along with it.
I’m not the same person I was when I left. Things have changed, I’ve changed. My whole life...God, Nathan, I actually have a life. A life and a regular nine-to-five job.
You probably wouldn’t even recognize me on the street, if you saw me. Business suit, high heels, briefcase. All that and... you wouldn’t know me to be the same person I was before. Not before I left, but before...Before a lot of things.
Don’t get me wrong, Nathan. I’m not bitter. Not anymore. Far from it. I love my life, I love my job, I love my...everything.
Maybe I shouldn’t have come. I have a life back home. Back home. This isn’t home anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time. Maybe it never really was.
I promised myself the past doesn’t matter anymore. Of course it does. It always did. Just not in the same way. Not in the heartbreaking, aching way it has for as long as I can remember. I’m living in the present, now, and for the future. No more being stuck in the past with all those wishes and hopes and regrets.
I blink back the tears that suddenly appear in my eyes. I’m not going to cry. Not anymore. No use crying over spilled milk and all that.
I look at you once more. This is so much like last time. Me, looking at your sleeping body, making promises I shouldn’t keep.
You’re so beautiful, when you sleep. At peace with yourself and the world. Sure, there are new wrinkles here and there, but you’re doing well. That’s what matters.
I don’t dare come closer, you could easily wake up as it was. That sixth sense of yours. Or was it seventh? I could never sneak up on you, not without some hard planning, at least, but I could always watch you sleep from a distance. You never woke up, when I crawled under the sheets to join you. You never woke up, when I slid out of bed and left you.
It’s strange, really. You’re a light sleeper, yet my comings and goings never woke you up. Unless I needed you to. Or maybe it was unconscious thinking on my behalf. Make more noise and you’d wake up. That had to be it.
That and the way your bed still seems to call out to me, asking me to join you. To join you and run my fingers through your silver hair. I want to kiss you so badly right now it hurts.
It still hurts. That’s why this time, it really is for keeps. Forever. Never again would I look at your face, shining by the ever dimming moonlight. Ever dimming...
I look outside. It’s getting light, the sun will be up soon. And you’ll wake up. I better leave before that. I turn to leave, but by the door, I look back, gazing at you, once more, for the very last time this time, and sing, voice not even a whisper, hoping that you will and yet that you won’t hear. “I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in _your_ dreams.”
~fin