Title: September
Author: A.j. (Aj2245@yahoo.com) 
Summary: Everything ended the way it was supposed to.  Three years 
later...
Rating: PG
Spoilers: The Twelve Saga, the *entire* second Domino Limited Series, 
and general knowledge of both Cable and X-Force runs.
Warnings: Character death, but not real angsty.

Notes: It's not strictly necessary, but if you really want the 'mood' 
of this story, find a copy of Patty Griffin's song "Mary".

|Anything between these little doohickeys are meant as italics.|

*** 

September
by A.j.

*** 

It's official. She's spending entirely too much time near gravestones 
these days. 
 
This is trip different than the one to Jonathan's. A lot deeper and, 
if possible, less ridden with guilt. 
 
Unsurprisingly, Nate's tombstone is butt-ugly. She almost laughs when 
she sees it, all towering stone and intricate scrollwork. Yeats is 
inscribed around the top of the grey-blue marble with all his names 
done in two-inch letters just below. The view, however, is 
breathtaking. September is beautiful in upstate New York. The trees 
hundreds of shades of yellow and red; not yet dead, but not quite 
alive. 
 
She's snickering at the parallels as she settles her back against the 
stone monolith and raises her eyes to the bright blue sky. 
 
The trip from the coast was shorter than she'd expected. All rolling 
hills and stupid SUV drivers. She hadn't really been planning on 
coming today. Or ever. It'd been three years, after all. First too 
shocked to move, then too guilty, then too used to not going. 
 
|"He... he what?"| 
 
She's spoken to Teresa recently. Asked her for information in the 
course of her own personal quest. The girl had looked good. Healthy, 
happy. And from the immense pair of boots barely visible behind her 
desk, Dom had a very good idea on why. It had felt good to see. Right. 
 
Terry'd been the one to call, voice scratchy and dull, relating the 
details. Nate. The twelve. Akkaba. Apocalypse. 
 
She'd been in Minnesota that day. The sky had been blue and wide, and 
the breeze cool against her warm skin. How Terry'd found the secure 
cell number, she'd never known, or thought to ask. Terry had, and that 
had been it. 
 
That day had been hard. A hundred maybes and whys and expectations had 
crashed around her ears, and for the first time in so, so long, she'd 
curled in a ball and grieved. Opening her eyes the next morning |so 
gritty and swollen and tired| she'd been pathetically thankful that 
someone had remembered her. Had thought to call. 
 
Sitting under the colorful trees, she wonders about the funeral. Not 
because she needs to picture it |Scott and Jean crying and everyone 
holding flowers?| but because she's never done before. 
 
He hated lilies. Too many funerals and too much cloying sweet scent 
that rotted too quickly. She remembers walking by flower shops with 
him in the spring and feeling that bubble of distaste when he moved by 
the delicate white blooms. 
 
Roses were more his style. It was a fanciful thing, really. They'd 
discussed flower preferences over after sex however long ago in some 
amazingly clean hotel. Nate never equated to sappy in her head, but 
thinking back, he'd had that side to him. 
 
So, naked and sprawled in the honeymoon suite, |she misses the big 
beds he always gravitated to| head on her thigh, he'd told her about 
roses and thorns and reliance. And how he liked them because they were 
damn hard to kill, and even if their vines got twisted and their 
petals were ragged, they were still beautiful. Delicate and tough as 
hell. 
 
Then he'd made her blush with a compliment and back to the sex they'd 
gone. 
 
She hopes that he had roses in death. A riot of colors and buds and 
blooms, everything clashing and vying for attention. A sea of chaotic 
celebration that smelled like a hothouse in July. Something just for 
him. To honor. To remember. 
 
She doubts it. But she wasn't there, so there's no somber lily-
festooned memory to disrupt that hope. In her head, there aren't tears 
and stony silence. There are tears, because grief causes those no 
matter what, but there's also music. Something with drums, or Roberto 
doing his bad Sinatra impression. Jokes and alcohol and life twirling 
and being for him in death what he'd never been able to ask for in 
life. 
 
She gives him that memory. Wishing it away into the air to wherever or 
whatever his soul or energy is. Laughing, crying. Something. 
 
It's the least she can do, really. It's all she has to give. 
 
She'd been thinking about him more recently. Not in terms of missing, 
exactly, but in the small things. Recalling how he'd made fun of her 
for putting cream in her coffee, or the way a Jerico slid neatly into 
his hand. 
 
Hundreds of tiny thoughts of him crowding her heart and her head until 
it was full to the bursting. 
 
Maybe that's why she'd started looking for her past. Looking back now, 
here at his grave in the autumn sun, she wonders just where that 
impetus came from, and why she'd followed it to its rather bizarre 
ending. 
 
Laz was safe up at the house behind the hill. Jean had merely blinked 
confusedly before whisking him into one of the upstairs bedrooms for a 
nap. Scott had just smiled in his way, and given her neat, written 
directions and a tiny baby pumpkin to set on the marker.  She was 
probably going to have to clear a few things up when she got back, 
but... 
 
So here she was. 
 
The hillside was everything and nothing at all like she'd imagined it 
would be. There was nothing in this place that reminded her of the man 
she'd known. Nothing at all. But it was so entirely him, she caught 
herself swallowing and burrowing deeper into his sweater. 
 
She'd found it at one of her old safe houses. The one in Massachusetts 
that he'd hated because it'd only had a double bed, and that she 
hadn't used for almost a decade. It had been in the bottom drawer of a 
dresser in one of the back bedrooms, dusty, but miraculously untouched 
by moths. 
 
It had seemed natural to shrug it on this morning in the darkness of 
the hotel room. It was warm and big and felt like him. 
 
She felt safe in it. 
 
She misses him. She can think that now. Time has softened the harsher 
edges that his death hadn't rubbed smooth. She misses his wit, and 
warmth, and the way he could melt her at five paces with just a smirk. 
 
She misses everything about him in the way that only distance allows. 
Here, in this place, she feels the weight of that settle and spread. 
And in that instant, she remembers everything she hasn't allowed 
herself to recall. 
 
The warm things. The sexy things. His hands on her face. All the 
amazing, sweaty moments where he had her screaming and made her mind 
melt into the bed or floor or chair or couch or bush or dirt road in 
Panama or the moments where he just made her smile clog her throat and 
eyes. The taste and smell and feel of what he had been close around 
her until there isn't anything but him. 
 
No leaves, no crisp air, and no cold stone soaking through his sweater 
and into her back. 
 
When she opens her eyes sometime later, she can feel the salt water 
drying on her cheeks. She's never cried for him. Not once, since that 
cold desperate night in Minnesota three years ago. But this is 
different. 
 
Somewhere, in the place that used to be full up with him, she can feel 
an easing. She sighs as she blinks upwards, the sun sinking and 
throwing shocks and threads of color across the fall sky. Its 
beautiful and colorfully riotous, and as a smile breaks on her face, 
she thinks she can see roses in the clouds. 
 
-fin-