|[ Alex Summers | Havok ]| (cryinghavok) wrote in beyond_evo, @ 2022-12-24 17:13:00 |
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Entry tags: | havok |
AND WHEN I FALL I WILL RUN, RUN BY YOUR SIDE TO THE SUN.
Alex had been watching the moonlit snow drift past the window for some time before he even realised he was awake. He wasn’t sure what had roused him from his slumber. Maybe he was just being a little kid, too excited to sleep in the knowledge that Christmas morning would be dawning any moment now. That would make sense, he didn’t remember his actual childhood Christmasses so maybe he was making up for it now. Recreating the magic he’d lost.
But nah, he just needed to pee.
Attempting to strike a balance between waking up enough to get out of bed and retaining enough sleepiness to ensure he’d be able to nod off again once he returned, he turned his head to look at the wonderful woman sleeping at his side, smiled fondly, then slipped out from between the sheets and padded his way to the bathroom in nothing but his boxers. He liked the mansion at this time of night, the hush of it, the occasional noise of someone moving around in another room or on the floor below. There was something comforting about it, particularly in the glow of Christmas. The calm punctuating their stormy lives.
Once he was done, Alex paused at the sink to wash his hands, blearily eyeing his bearded face in the mirror, suspiciously checking out his skin for wrinkles. Somehow he managed to splash his chest as he turned off the faucet, so he grabbed the corner of a towel to dry himself off. The trickle of water ran directly along the line of his scar. He found himself studying it in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. He rarely looked at it, hardly ever remembered that it was even there because it had been with him for the entirety of the life he could remember so didn’t seem anything but normal, but he knew what it was, how it got there. It had been a mystery once but when he met Lorna, when he came to this school, the truth of it had been revealed to him. And still, it didn’t seem to matter very much. His death was, had always been, nothing more than an abstract idea. He couldn’t be distressed by an incident he didn’t even remember. It was nothing.
But as he dabbed at the scar, it began to throb, to ache, pain rippling out into his chest like electricity. Alex knew immediately that he wasn’t sick because this feeling, this sudden sweeping disorientation, had happened to him a handful of times over the last couple of years. This was what it was like when a memory of his former life resurfaced for the first time.
Until now, his returning memories had been largely trivial events, little moments of his history with Lorna, offerings of kindness from his brain to let him know they’d always been in love, they’d always been happy. This was different. This wasn’t a sweet recollection of cutlery drawers or falling asleep on the beach.
This was his death. This was the moment Lorna killed him.
Alex’s eyes were wide, staring into the mirror, but he didn’t see himself. Instead he saw that street in New York, littered with rubble and cloaked in bitter smoke, plasma blasting wildly from his fists, blindly. In that moment, the only thing which had mattered to him, the only thought which existed, was destruction. Alex’s mind had been wiped before he died, long before the government got their mucky hands on his corpse, washed clean by that monster Essex. Maybe, he thought distantly, he’d died the moment Essex’s work had begun, maybe Alex Summers was lost before Lorna took to the sky above the city and did what she had to do.
He felt the compacted metal spike pierce his back, travel through his organs and burst through his chest. He saw the blood, the tip of the spear protruding from his shattered ribcage, the tattered flesh dangling pathetically from the exit wound. Saw the faces of his sons from a future which may never come to pass, watching on in horror. The last thing he saw as darkness closed in was a silhouette above, haloed by the sun. The woman hovering there, the green of her hair. His killer and the love of his life. Alex’s death at the hands of Lorna Dane wasn’t an abstract idea anymore.
He gasped, sucking in oxygen, knuckles white as he gripped the edge of the sink. Alex was back in the room, the towel discarded on the floor tiles at his feet. The scar on his chest was quiet again, its usual pale inert self. It had just been a memory. It hadn’t been real. Except it had. Not right now, but years ago, it had been very real. He wasn’t sure he’d ever truly understood that until now.
Putting the towel back on its hanger, Alex stayed in the bathroom for a few more minutes, collecting himself, getting his breath back, but finally he emerged. He paused in the darkened doorway of their bedroom, not certain he wanted to turn his head and look at Lorna. What if he didn’t see her the same way anymore? What if this changed everything? Alex inhaled and looked at her.
He got back into bed. Gently, he wrapped his arms around Lorna’s sleeping form, curled into her, kissed the back of her neck. He didn’t go back to sleep that night.