love me when i'm gone [au & rw]
It started so simply, because things of its nature always did.

He probably should have been more worried than he was, but Artie had been through a lot since his arrival at Xavier's. Even for someone who was ostensibly useless in a crisis, survival through enough of them manufactured a certain desensitization to a new one. There was nothing that someone like Artie could really do in situations like this, and he'd come to realize that long enough ago that he knew better than to get in the way during moments of heightened security. This time, as like with the others, once the patrols started and the disappearances became evident, Artie was content to be shuffled between his more vigilant, more competent friends until whatever attack they were enduring was over, and he could go back to the normal patterns of his life. With most of his friends on teams, there weren't a whole lot of other options available to the mute--or maybe it was more that it never occurred to him to look for other options. It was probably the complacency that got him, in the end, the very fact that he'd allowed himself to grow cavalier and comfortable.

What had started as a chess game with Art had turned into two boys with bodies too old and too small for the size of their spirits moving pieces over the board in a haphazard set of rules that made sense to no one but them. They'd been playing for a while, ever sense Cal had left for his patrol, and even people trying to stay out of the way of the world have to play by the rules of biology from time to time, so it really wasn't that strange, not to the mute or to the young alien, when Artie found the need to excuse himself to go into the bathroom. Neither of them gave a moment's thought to being alone for just a few minutes' worth of hygiene-related privacy.


When Artie came back out, drying his hands on the sides of his jeans, everything had changed.

While neither Artie nor Cal were the type of person who could really be called a neat freak, they'd always kept their room in at least some semblance of order. But now, as he stilled in the doorway, Artie realized a few things about the bedroom he'd been occupying for years. The first thing that stuck out in his mind, perhaps even before he realized that Art was gone, was the fact that Cal's things were missing. Just as he wasn't exactly a neat freak, Cal wasn't exactly a clothes horse, or the kind of person who really hoarded material possessions, but there were enough things--shirts for wider shoulders, pants for longer legs, a second laptop, a drum Artie had given him a long time ago that the mute was pretty sure had never seen use--that marked his presence in a room that was otherwise dominated by Artie's things. They were all gone, every last one of them with the exception of that squat little djembe with the glow-worms painted on it, simply gone missing in the amount of time Artie spent in the bathroom. Left in the places they had been were random rings and footprints of clean space in the dust which had suddenly sprung up. Thick, gritty dust that Artie started to push off of the desk with his fingers, not ash or soot or the result of anything but years of disuse. The whole room had a stale, stifled feel to it as if the door hadn't been opened in years, and as Artie was wont to do, he started to grow worried, his heart rising up into his mouth to fill it with a faint, nagging taste of copper.

The door stuck when he tried to open it, but Artie was persistent, and after a few tries he finally got it open with a wrenching shriek of strained wood, and slipped into the cooler, livelier air in the hallway. He noticed at once that the dust that covered his room did not extend to the hall; no, the carpet, even the walls and the air itself showed evidence of constant use and movement. Frowning to himself, he headed down off to figure out where Art had gone, and possibly to remind him in very stern bubbles that they weren't supposed to be alone.

Artie found him in the kitchen, stacking together bits of the most ridiculous sandwich the mute had ever seen. It made Artie smile, but the expression was quickly removed from his face when he moved across the room to put his hand on Art's shoulder and Longshot didn't give any sort of reaction at all. For ten minutes or better, as he started to fill with a growing sense of dread, Artie did everything he could think of to get Art's attention, and nothing worked. He could break crockery, shake the other boy, whistle like a kettle or stomp around in a squeaky rampage with his Chucks sliding against the linoleum, and Art never so much as fluttered an eyelash, responded at all like something was wrong. It wasn't that Artie couldn't affect the world at all--the shattered plates on the floor spoke otherwise--but rather that nothing that he did do seemed to register as strange on any level to Longshot. Unnerved and disheartened, Artie moved on.

He went through all of his usual haunts in order--the art room, the music room, the tree down by the lake, the common room. In every place, any evidence he might have left in his passing was faded. Not removed, it wasn't as if he'd been erased from existence, but rather like he'd been there, once, but hadn't been around for a long time, and no one had bothered to clean up after him. In every place, whomever might be going through the patterns of their own lives simply didn't acknowledge his presence, not even when he painted red letters two feet high on the side of the art room wall. His sense of panic and malaise grew until he found himself moving through the paths of the memorial garden, looking for at least a stone with his name, an indication of what happened to him, and finding nothing.

Nothing at all.

With desperation clutching at his heart, Artie traced the pattern of the patrols through the grounds until he could finally catch up with Cal. Cal, the one person who had known him longer than anyone else. Cal, the one person whom he could rely on to know him and remember him and think of him when everyone else found it easy to pass him by. Cal, who never allowed him to be silent even if his was mute. Cal, the lynchpin around which Artie had constructed so much of his recent life.

And it was exactly the same. No matter much Artie flailed or attempted to use his powers, no matter what he did or tried, Cal simply didn't recognize that he was there. There was no flicker, no registering on the horizon, no indication as Artie ghosted after the other in the halls that Cal even noticed the hole that Artie must have left in his life. Indeed, there was no evidence that he'd even left a hole.

What really brought it all crashing down around his ears, however, was when Artie tried to open the link that had tied their minds together for years, now, and was met with nothing but static. It was like a slap to the face that made his whole body go numb, from the metallic, acrid taste in his mouth all the way to his toes. He let Cal move away from him, then, and things started to blur around the edges as the gravity of the situation finally started to sink in.

He was alone.

Not even just alone, but forgotten, as if he'd never been of enough consequence to remember. Ineffective and too useless to even leave a mark on the world, he'd been pushed neatly out of the minds of everyone who'd ever mattered to him just because he wasn't worth keeping in their minds or their hearts. The one thing he'd ever thought he might have accomplished in life, and he'd still fallen short.

Artie ended up on the front stoop when the tears hit, and he had no idea of how long he cried, time stretched all out of proportion or meaning. When he finally moved past them, the hysteria calmed into a strange sense of mellowness which felt uncomfortably like numbness, he simply sat, hands between his knees, looking out over the grounds and considering what he might do with himself, the hows and whys and whats of moving on. He exhausted himself exploring possibilities he wouldn't have even thought himself open to.

At some point, he must have fallen asleep, must have wandered off without realizing it, because with a start, Artie came back to himself sprawled on the expanse of his bed. It probably should have occurred to him, how his room was more or less back to order, how it'd clearly been open recently, but he'd never been the most observant of people. Instead, he straightened, and reached out with his mind yet again to try and touch on Cal's, where-ever Cal was. Yet again, there was no response.

He was still alone.

But maybe he could cope with that.


[narrative; closed]