John will light your fire (theroofisonfire) wrote in marvel_prep, @ 2015-02-07 14:06:00 |
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Entry tags: | pyro |
Narrative: Aftermath (John)
Characters: St. John Allerdyce
NPCs: —
Location: John's New Place, NYC
Timeline: Feb. 7, 2015
Description: John puts things in a perspective. Probably not the right one.
Rating: PG-13
John deleted his Facebook not long after he got back to the school. He also put things together and was out after a couple of dates, leaving little trace he was even there for the past month save for being a face that a few people were becoming reacquainted with seeing more often. Unlike Jean, John didn't have strong ties to any of the staff or students there as much as Jean had. However, Sage had come to speak with him. She didn't say much but only because John didn't say much to her. She'd once been his squad leader and taught him what he wanted to know. How to lie, how to pretend to be someone he wasn't, how to disappear if he really wanted. John wasn't sure if he wanted to disappear as much as he wanted to separate himself from everything that made him think of Jean and what happened. And strangely enough, it was like everything was falling into place for him to remove himself efficiently from the school. Finding a place in town had taken some work, but only a little. He found and met someone living in an affordable part of town (one of the very few) who happened to be looking for a roommate. John had the money available to pay the rent and he wasn't looking to be the other man's best friend. It would be like living alone, his prospective roommate said, as he was a med student and was working night shifts at the hospital while attending school. John found it suitable though and it met his needs. John knew he could've lived at the Baxter Building, but somehow that didn't feel like he was moving out of his life but just going to another corner. He'd still see faces he knew and faces that were caught between him and Jean. John wasn't going to let them feel like they had a choose a side. He chose for them by not talking to them. If that wasn't enough, John changed his phone number. He had yet to give his new phone number to anyone, and was going to be selective about it. John didn't want to be bothered until he was good and ready for it. He knew this isolation wouldn't last forever, because for now he needed to get this shit together and figure out what came next. It'd been selfish of him to hope for Jean to just accept his decision for his future and not let things progress, but it was Jean's independence despite her domestic behavior that John enjoyed. He was trying to keep busy in order to ignore the fact that a big part of his life was now gone and it was his own fault. He couldn't even explain the complexities of it all, and frankly he didn't want to. When he got to the dorm he used to share with Jean, John found it empty and used his key to gather the things that she'd put aside for him. Among them was the picture the two of them painted together on Valentine's Day the year before. The artwork that he'd proudly shown off in their shared living space, and not it was his. While John didn't throw it away, it found a place in a closet to be forgotten about. Perhaps he'd burn it later but John wasn't quite ready to eradicate every aspect of Jean from his life. Even if his behavior might imply otherwise. John finished moving his things and suddenly he had nothing to occupy his time. Standing in the room on the Saturday afternoon, he only only a little sunlight that managed to creep past the mostly cloudy day to illuminate his new living quarters. It was absent of Jean in almost every way. Everything that he still had from Jean was shoved away with the painting. That included the other gifts she'd given him. The room was more than just physically bare in many ways, but it was empty in a lot of other ways as well. John needed to do something instead of just standing there and noticing how strangely vacant everything felt, so he went and sat at his computer. As his fingers touched over the keyboard, lightly pushing the buttons to enter his password, the desktop appeared to show him the generic wallpaper that replaced the picture of Jean and him at Coney Island. Bringing up his word processor, he released a breath and tried to think of what to write but nothing came. John breathed in and out, tugging at whatever thread that might lead him to a story but they were difficult to find. Every idea of romance he tried to use failed to reach his fingers and make it onto the screen. Closing his eyes, he tried to focus and visions of the future appeared instead. Jean. Rachelle. A happiness that was no longer available to him. At least not that one. Maybe he could find that sort of joy again some day, but John knew that while he seemed to long for it now, he hadn't wanted it enough to try to make it happen. Instead he fucked it all up and left it in shambles. But Jean had people. Jean had friends who would all rush to her side. She'd be fine. The visions of the future then shifted to a figure in form-fitting black and poisonous words that planted deep inside of him. John told himself that if he really wanted that future, he would not have let it cultivate inside him, but perhaps the soil was already bad to begin with and he was just trying to be something he wasn't. Jean saw the good in him, she even saw some of the bad, but there was more bad in John that he shoved deep down. He wasn't sorry about almost killing those kids back in Australia, and if anything, he still harbored an anger and resentment toward them. He'd have burned them still if he had the chance to go back and do that. And there were others too. People that never fully approved of his relationship with Jean and tolerated John for her sake. He didn't make things easy, but the truth in the end was that they never liked him, and they were likely overjoyed at the break up. They were willing to talk about how lousy he was, that he was no good for anyone, and point out that if anything, John was just dragging Jean down. In some ways they were right. Jean was too good for John. But Jean had also seen good in him and they were always so reluctant to see it. They sent gifts to Jean to get under his skin, said snide little comments that they knew would grate his nerves, and John returned the favor. Those were the people that would rush to help Jean first though, and they would genuinely want to help her through it. But they would also happily tear what was a genuinely happy time between him and Jean apart and diminish it to a mistake. If they had their way, John decided, they would twist every good memory that Jean and him shared into something horrible. Yes, John was happy with Jean but John knew what happened, as ugly as it was, would be for the best. Him trying to end it had been an act of mercy in some ways, but at the same time it was selfishness that motivated it all. He loved Jean, but not enough. He knew that so he let her go. Jean didn't want to be let go, so he had to push her and make her see the ugly truth of what happened. It was a mess. Such a mess. You see, darling, it's already in you and it always has been. The words came from a future he'd thrown aside, but somehow it made John wonder. Maybe he'd never been meant for that life with Jean and he'd always known that one day he would turn into something else. And in many ways John valued money more than others had. He didn't have a lot of it growing up and when he did have it, he saved and occasionally squandered it on things he wanted. Opulent signs of his better financial situation. And now it would only improve. He'd have money from the books he could normally easily throw out and the books for the publishing company were already done by the time they spoke to him. Sure, he didn't have Jean, and money couldn't buy happiness, but it could buy distractions that felt really damn good. To buy those distractions though, he needed to work. And so John's fingers began moving over the keyboard, words appearing on the screen, and the vacancy inside him and the room left for when he wanted to mourn the good person he'd been once upon a time. |