nola_cyclops | (no subject)

(no subject)

Caleb

Hey. I just wanted you to know I'm going away for a few days with Oliver. But if there's anything you need, if anything happens, please reach out.

Zach

I'm going to Westchester. Fool's errand, I know. But I need to see that it's not there, as stupid as it sounds.

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Good ones, I hope.

Mostly. I keep thinking about the earliest days, when we were too young to argue over much more than who drank the last of the milk and returned the empty carton to the fridge.

But it wasn't all innocent. Every one of us was dealing with emotional upheaval.

Who, us?

God, we really were.

Remember when Bobby was shivering all the time because he couldn't regulate his body temperature?

I do. He was just a kid.

We were ALL just kids. I cried out of homesickness every night the first week.

That I didn't know. But then, I didn't have the homesick problem.

You had your own things going on.

Trying to be the perfect leader. The orphan thing. The 'how does one be normal' thing.

You'll figure it out someday.

Ha! I don't know, I think if I haven't by now I never will.

I see some improvement!

Me too: I'm finally better at chess than you.

Look at you, attempting jokes!

Hahahahaha. If I ever land one... everyone will think I'm a skrull.

What if we've all been replaced by Skrulls and are in a shared stasis reality?

I've considered that. It feels too complex a world for it, and too generous, but that doesn't mean it's impossible.

I suppose there aren't many Skrulls lurking in Narnia either.

There is that. I'm waiting for one of your brilliant insights, though.

You'll be waiting for a while.

That's fine. I'm not exactly having any breakthroughs of my own. Just living my life while waiting for that other shoe to drop.

Maybe it won't.

Maybe it won't. The longer it doesn't, the more it feels like Jean's and my honeymoon, our decade in an alternate future that lasted just days at home. That wasn't this safe, but it was a full life in a new reality. The threat of being suddenly pulled out of it faded away. Life at home mattered less; life there, with Nathan, mattered more. We didn't know it would be temporary. We don't know if this will be. We didn't know how time worked in relation to where we were, and where we used to be... maybe it's that same kind of multiversal shift. But then, if it is, who did this? That was all Rachel, mother askani Rachel.

Would you be as content to stay here as you were to stay there?

Maybe. At least then it felt like things would be okay at home. That there were plenty of really good people taking care of X-Men business. We were safer, it was easier. But a long time off-world changes your perception, so the longer we stay here, the more content we'll get. Would you be content?

I love teaching, and I love the friends and family I have here. I think I could stay happy being Zach.

I think everyone else would say something similar. I don’t know why I can’t.

You were raised to be the fixer.

Well, yes. And there were still things to fix in the future. A son to raise, forces to fight. The same cause, really.

Would doing those things make you happy?

I don’t think happy is the word. Maybe it’s a sense of purpose. Maybe it’s not even that, but that it’s how I always first and foremost defined not just myself but the world around me, and everyone else in it. Maybe I’m just too weirded out by being happy here. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just always my role to think about these things so everyone else doesn’t have to, just in case.

Be prepared, just like the Boy Scouts.

God, I haven’t been called a boy scout in years. The things you miss.

I suppose Cyke is out of the question.

I hope not! I'll answer to any of those names.

You're so easygoing and accommodating.

Yes, that's me. It's hard to not call you Hank!

You can, if you want. Do you call the others by their old names?

Oliver and I use all of each other's names all the time, depending on the moment and whatever name we think of first. Katie prefers not to be called Jean. Caleb hates it when I call him Alex but I do it anyway.

That's your prerogative as a brother, I imagine.

Exactly. He's not getting rid of this bond that easily.

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