Dedications: To Ali, who's had a worse week than me, and to Abyss. He took time out of his busy schedule to help me tweak this into something a tad more readable and I *do* appreciate it. :)
Notes: Okay, this was a quickie that just sort of dropped out on the sky on me. I was *supposed* to be writing an essay for my Shakespeare class, but while avoiding, I tumbled onto an Alternate Timelines challenge. The challenge is to write a story that happens during the six-month gap in X-continuum. This little thing takes place during that time and is from Domino's POV. It serves no real purpose other than character exploration and extrapolation, but can't really be called fluff cuz... Well, it's just not.
Maybe this is a good thing.
Or not.
I really don't like rain. I never did. For as stupid and suicidal as it sounds, I love the sun. Yeah, yeah, laugh all you want. An albino sun-worshipper. Beats the hell out of the rain for all that I'm concerned. Rain is just so... It's raining now.
Rain reminds me of crying.
Rain has always meant misery. Annoying is not the word when it comes to rain and jobs. Useful at times as cover, but damned horrid the rest. If there is one thing in this world worse than rain, it's mud. I still have nightmares about sinking into that damn, squishy mud. Among other things.
Shit.
I don't know what I'm doing. Why am I on a train to Siberia? Probably the same reason I'm ruminating on the nature of rain and why I hate it. There's just nothing else left for me to do. There's nothing left that I really *want* to do.
'Things always fall into place' right? I always have been good at delusions.
I tried working. Get back into a routine. Find something in this life that it doesn't *hurt* to do. I don't know how I got so far away from the life I'd chosen for myself. Mercenary work is simple. You get a contract, you finish it, you get paid. You don't ask questions beyond the basics. You don't get personally involved. You do what you do. And that's it.
You don't get your heart broken by a family that was never even yours.
Most people think I'm an emotionally repressed psycho-bitch who can barely hold it together long enough to get the job done. Maybe they're right about some of it. Maybe. Truth is, I'm just too damned tired to care any more.
Here's another reason I hate rain. It always makes me reflective. I hate looking back. Invariably, bad things come up, and I'm sick to death of bad things. Almost as much as I'm sick to death of feeling so damned useless.
When Jesse fried the implant... that was supposed to be it. I was supposed to be lucky for the rest of my life. Guess my 'luck' turned. Damn fickle, it is.
What the fuck happened?
Golly, gosh, but isn't that just the question of the year? How the fuck did I end up on this shitty train traveling through the New Republic of Russia? Why am I not trying to *DO* anything about my problem? Problems...
Problems beg solutions, don't they? They sit there like little puzzles waiting to be solved. And when you pick them up and turn them just right... You can see an order or angle and everything just... falls into place. But that's not my specialty anymore.
I hate this. I really do.
I SHOULD be helping the X-crew get every one's powers back. I SHOULDN'T have left my team without a fight. I SHOULD be trying to find Terry. I SHOULD find out if Nate's dead.
Fucking shoulds.
What am I doing? Running away.
Why aren't I sorry?
I don't know.
I don't think I'll ever know. Or stop running.
It's so much easier this way. I've never really RUN from anything. Years worth of untaken vacations and hundreds of bank accounts with thousands of dollars that haven't been touched attest to that. Always had to be strong. Always work through it. Prove I was tough enough to make it. Take it on the chin and kick in the other person's teeth, right? Hell, I got involved with the father of the man who...
Shit.
Well, I don't *want* to take it anymore. I want to disappear. Walk away and bury myself so far underground that NOTHING will ever touch me again.
Good, bad... it's indistinguishable at this point. All it is is feeling and DEAR GOD I don't want to feel anything anymore. I'm not numb. I've never really BEEN numb. I want to be. I want it so bad I could almost cry. Emptiness. Absence. Anything but feeling. Pain, pleasure... either one makes me scream.
I'm afraid. I'm afraid to try again. I hate it, but there's no other way to describe it. My life has fallen apart so many times... I'm just so sick of having to put it back together. I can't do it again. I don't have the power. Not after this last time. Too much of what was mine is gone. And the worst bit is that it wasn't taken away. It was just retracted.
I am so tired. I can't sleep anymore. Not really. I haven't been able to catch more than a few hours in months. The nightmares are getting worse. I can't stay still otherwise I'll go to sleep. And then they'll come.
They're never the same. The nightmares, I mean. I can never quite remember what happens in them, but I know I've done enough in my life to know they won't be getting better.
So I keep moving. Those untouched bank accounts are finally getting a workout. Train, bus, plane. I've traveled all three constantly. The only reason I know I'm on the Trans-Siberian Railway is because the steward keeps trying to foist shitty vodka on me and, for the life of me, I can't read the station signs. Of course that could have something to do with the shitty vodka.
The drinking doesn't help. Nothing really does. I don't know why I'm still trying. There's just this emptiness inside of me. There didn't used to be. My luck was there. The kids were there. Nate was...
But I don't know what I'm doing and I have no idea where I'm going. I just can't stop because if I do...
So, here I am. Still running.
Clickity-clack, clickity-clack.
I hate the rain.