Henry Anderson smiled tentatively at the man inside the death row cell, still a little stunned at how young he looked. He knew from all the media flurry over the entire thing that Tolensky was twenty-five years old, but he looked all of nineteen, maybe younger. Henry'd looked into the eyes of a lot of murderers over the years, and these soft gold-green eyes weren't just another pair. There was a strange sort of jaded innocence in place of the cold emptiness.
Todd's head rose up in surprise, jolted out his private thoughts by the arrival the guard that could almost be called a friend. The large black man settled in a chair just on the other side of the bars, ignoring the jibes from the other cells occupants. "What are you doing here?" Todd asked him, surprised. Henry hated duty in the particular wing of the jail.
"Traded shifts with MacKenzie," the man grunted back at him, voice and eyes kind. "Thought you could use a little company right now."
"Yeah, I guess I could at that," Todd answered softly. "I don't really want to be alone. I'm gonna die in just a few days. And it will all be over, my whole sorry life. Just...done. I never even got the chance..."
"The chance to what?"
"To really enjoy it all. There was a time when I was almost happy, and a girl even. Maybe, I dunno. I never had the guts to try for her as anything more than a friend, ya know? But she was a great friend, and life was okay. Sometimes I wonder where I would be if I hadn't freaked, and joined the X-freaks."
"You almost joined them?" Henry asked, surprised. Todd spoke so bitterly of most of them on the few occasions they'd had to talk.
"Yeah, but it was too weird. First
that Storm witch attacks me with lightning, then the blue furry freak
chases me all around, and finally we end up in this crazy room that's
literally tryin' ta kill us. I ran like hell, man. It was nuts there!
Wasn't for another year or so til I saw it again with Arica that I
realized it wasn't always that bad, but by then I thought it was too
late. To much between me and a room there, ya know?"
Henry nodded. Like Todd, he knew all about lost chances and choices that were really not choices at all. Just one real door, with a door that led into a wall next to it to tease you. After a lifetime of injustice, Henry found it impossibly strange to suddenly be on the side of the majority. Human. After the appearance of mutants, the lines of race and sexuality had pretty much fallen to the side, unimportant to the masses in the hysteria over what potentially could be an entirely new species among them. Henry often didn't know what to make of it.
Todd was musing along the same lines, and he just didn't get it either. They hadn't even done anything to the humans yet, and there had been all this panic. Todd supposed that eventually Magneto would have done something stupid, or Sabretooth, or someone. But before anyone had a chance to do anything aggressive, the humans had. Todd wondered sometimes if they hadn't, maybe things would have been okay.
He'd had the chance to go to Genosha, just like anyone else with the X-gene. Sometimes he though he should have just given up and gone. But most days he liked his quiet life. He spent his days going to work at the landscaping firm. He'd found he enjoyed the work, from shaping formless brown dirt into a haven of plant life to raising the most delicate flowers in the hothouse. He also did some freelance art work, selling it to various magazines and web sites under an assumed name. The two jobs had been enough to get him his house, a car, and a decent sized savings account. Arica would get it all, and he idly wondered if she would live in his house.
After work he played on the internet, drew some, or just spent time working on his backyard. He'd carefully built up fences of hedges, trees and vines to create a secluded haven around a small Todd-made pond. Large, colorful koi swam gracefully in the waters, occasionally surfacing to accept the food he tossed to them. It was also deep enough to swim in. He loved swimming, and knew that Arica did too. Flowers of all colors of the rainbow flourished around the yard, creating a thing of beauty that was eternally ready if he ever found the guts to bring her there to see his work. The air always smelled sweet, lily of the valley blooming everywhere to remind him of the scent she'd loved to wear.
He wondered now what she would think of the place, and it saddened him to know that he would never know what she thought of it. His life was over. It kept coming back to that, no matter where his train of thought took him. Over.
"I would have run too," Henry said, drawing him out of the endless cycle of morbid thought and regret.
"Yeah. I almost joined up later
again, but didn't quite have the guts. It was easy in the
Brotherhood, so long as you showed up for battles that Mystique or
Magneto ordered they left you alone. Didn't expect nothin' out of ya,
didn't care about your grades, no rules, just left ya. I didn't want
to know I couldn't cut it in the X-men's world, ya know?"
Henry nodded softly, his heart aching
for this poor lost kid. "Easy way to live, huh?"
"Yeah. Easy and harder than anything. I knew even then I was only screwing myself," Todd answered softly. "It wasn't even that I was afraid that she would see me screw it all up, I was just afraid that I would lose the last bit of faith in myself. Of hope that I could be something more, even if I chose not to be."
Henry just nodded, and the two lapsed into companionable silence.
Arica let herself into the pretty little house, amazed at how charming Todd's home was. It was a small victorian, overflowing with flowering vines of some kind she couldn't think of a name for. And it smelled really good here, like her childhood. Entering the cool darkness of the house took all the strength she had, the emptiness of the house pressing down on her painfully.
The living room she found herself in was nicely decorated, large paintings covering the walls. It was a little disconcerting to see herself in three of them, but Todd had always liked to paint. He spent hours on those, painting you. See all the work that went into those, all the care? As if every tiny brushstroke meant something to him...
Arica sighed softly, wishing she could live in this wonderful little house someday, and knowing it was never going to happen. Thankfully all the paintings seemed
to be on canvasses, and wouldn't be left behind. The furniture was surprisingly nice, considering Todd had never spent more than two seconds thinking about things like that before. She wandered from room to room, taking in the little things that identified the house's sole occupant, touching them to draw out small flashes of his emotions.
"God, how pathetic do I look now? I'm acting as if he's actually going to die!" she told herself angrily, glaring at her reflection in the mirror hanging on the hallway wall. It's presence confused her somewhat, Todd hated mirrors. She knew that. No matter how cute she found his appearance, he was convinced he was the ugliest thing to walk the earth.
After a quick tour of the home, she let herself through the patio doors into the backyard, and stopped in wonder. Protected from prying eyes on all sides by a ring of vegetation, it was a small haven of fantasy to her wondering eyes. The sweet scents of honeysuckle and lily of the valley washed over her, bringing back endless hours of sitting idly on his porch talking to him wearing her favorite perfume based on the tiny lillies, and more summer afternoons hunting down honeysuckle to lap at the sweet nectar. He'd confessed he'd never tasted it before, and it took her a long time to convince him to try it. She smiled as she remembered the blissful expression cross his face for one unguarded moment when he'd finally let her run the delicate flower stamen across his green tongue.
She'd wondered if he would get that look from looking at her naked body. She wondered if she would ever find out, and sat down on a cushioned patio chair. That's when it hit her, the mirrors, the flowers, the fish in the pond. All the little details she'd told him she wanted when she found a home of her own. The utensils of a gourmet chef in the kitchen of a man who hated to do more than microwave to cook. The large, empty walk-in closet in the bedroom. The silk bed dressings of a boy who'd once laughed at her for spending so much money when plain old cotton worked.
This house was designed for her to live in.
The shy, wonderful boy she'd been friends with felt the same. He'd never forgotten a single thing she'd talked about, no matter how silly or trivial, even when he'd made fun of her sometimes over them. He'd come here and quietly made what he thought was her idea of paradise for her, never once asking her for anything. Probably hoping for the day that the mutant hysteria subsided and merely knowing her wasn't risking her life anymore. Instead, he'd just made this place for her, and made sure that it landed in her hands when he thought he was going to die.
She put her head in her hands and wept. Tears of regret, tears of relief, tears of hope. It all intermingled in her, and she let all the pain and anger. Was this what had made Magneto? Had she stepped on his path? The sense of betrayal by the masses around her was strong. No matter how she tried, she just couldn't quite let it go. After all she endured for them, they were going to kill the only thing she ever loved?
A young man who would create something like this without ever even asking for something as small as a kiss in return? Maybe she could get that man who took care of Magneto's finances to shift ownership of this house to Rogue. Give her and others a place to go without the media in their faces, a small place to hide from the world for a little while. Todd was sentenced to death in this country, he wouldn't be coming back. And she was pretty sure breaking him out of death row meant she was never coming back either. It would be a shame to let this wonderful little place go to waste.
The shadows lengthened over her as she curled up in the chair, basking in the flashes of emotions of the man who had created all of this for her. If she'd had any doubts when Hank asked, when she had lied outright to Logan and Xavier, or forced Kitty in agreeing to cover for her as long as she could, they faded right there. She knew she was doing the right thing for her heart. And heaven help Magneto if he failed her.