Watching You Go
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A/N: This fic is post- X-Men #162, but anything happening after that can be disregarded. This isn't the Black Tom Cassidy fanfiction project I've been researching madly for, but this was just one of those spur-of-inspiration things, and I felt I should do it. And yes, I'm one of those strange people who believe Tom and Cain were lovers.
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I remember that it was eighteen minutes past midnight when he called me. I know that because the instant I heard his voice I slammed the phone back onto the cradle, then hit my alarm clock on accident. It froze with eighteen past midnight on it.
I'm not sure how many minutes it was until he tried calling me again. It wasn't many, because I was just trying to get back to sleep when the phone rang again. I slammed it down again and reminded myself to unplug the phone when it was light out.
I'm pretty sure he was using redial, because the next came before I even rolled over in bed.
"What?" I said it too loudly and I was pretty sure I'd woken somebody in this mansion up.
"Cain, I need ye!"
I'd never mistake that Irish accent or the strange huskiness in that voice for anyone else. I also didn't want to hear it again – ever. I hadn't heard it in a long time, but anytime was too soon.
"Don't hang up the fecking phone, you idjit!" Either he'd become a telepath or he still knew me too well.
"What, Tom? Make it snappy, you piece of creepy murdering shit." Meanwhile I wondered how the hell he'd gotten my personal phone number.
"Fine, ye don't wanna talk t' me. Don't blame ye. Just tell Terry I loved her."
It took me a second to understand what he was really saying. Then he told me he wanted me to come to his execution.
Sick bastard.
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I never really believed Chuck when he told me it wasn't right to hunt Tom down to the ends of the earth to avenge Sammy. He pointed it out to me a few million times that Tom was insane, that he wasn't the person I used to know, that he didn't have control over his own actions.
Besides, he told me, unless Tom found some way to change back into human form, he was immortal. It wouldn't do me any good to kill him because he'd just rebuild himself. Just to spite him I tore out all the trees on the grounds.
Maybe that's why I finally decided to come watch him fry in the electric chair. Maybe I wouldn't be the one to avenge Sammy – maybe the law would do it for me.
Me and the law working together. That's kind of funny.
I was wondering how the hell they were going to kill him when he's a tree-octopus. Then I remembered that the voice I'd head over the phone was his, his human voice. I hadn't heard it in forever. I figured he had to have found a way to be human.
Damn. And I was looking forward to setting the big Ent on fire.
From what information Scott got me, Tom turned himself in. Somehow he'd become human again, and he'd walked into a police station and told them to cuff him. I didn't believe that bullshit for a second. Either Scott was really thicker than two planks or he was just trying to make me feel guilty for wanting to torch Tom with a flamethrower.
Scott piloted me to Texas with the jet. He stayed quiet the whole way, but from that Summers dick I didn't expect anything else. It didn't matter because I didn't want to talk anyway, but I bet he was worried about the smug grin on my face.
Sammy's murderer was going to die. I was going to have a really hard time not laughing when the switch got flipped.
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I wasn't expecting to see Tom the way he was. Maybe I was still expecting Treebeard, but it still shouldn't have surprised me when he was human again. I think what surprised me was the fact that he was older, much older than when I'd last seen him. I'd forgotten that the gem of Cyttorak slowed down my aging. I guess I'd always figured him being a tree would do the same, or I just hadn't thought about it.
I still wanted to kill him. Maybe setting him on fire wouldn't be as entertaining as breaking his neck.
He had two hours left to live. I resisted the urge to take those away from him for spite's sake and watched him in his cell. He was reading something; I couldn't tell what. I didn't think he saw me because I stayed near the back of the hall and watched him through the corner of my eye.
Turns out I was wrong. "Well, Cain , me boy, you finally showed up f'r your aul friend, then?"
I wasn't expecting to have to look him in the eyes. Somewhere in me I wanted to save him, but I pushed that thought away. This was the man who took Sammy from me.
Still, I wasn't expecting him to look at me in the eyes. I thought he'd have more shame than that. You don't kill your lover's best friend and look at them like that.
"Hello, Tom." I said it through gritted teeth.
He didn't offer me any apologies. He should have. I wanted to see him weeping for what he did, I wanted him blubbering about how sorry he was, and I wanted him to know that it could never be enough.
And part of me wanted him to apologize so that I could have an excuse to forgive him.
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As far as I knew, Tom only loved three people in his life. The first was Maeve. I remember that he used to talk about her late at night, scaring the shit out of me into thinking he was straight and my crush on him was one-sided. Sometimes he'd talk about her, and sometimes he would just clam up and not talk about anything for hours. I usually found Maeve's wedding picture lying around somewhere when he got all quiet on me.
The second person he loved was Theresa, and he loved her more than he loved himself and all the money and shiny things in the world combined. I think somewhere in the middle he forgot she wasn't really his daughter. To him she might as well have been. When she left it broke his heart for good.
The third person he loved was me, even though he never said it out loud. I just knew it by the way he looked at me sometimes, by how he trailed along me like a puppy when my powers were going crazy and when I got that second gem. Sometimes we switched places and I'd be his puppy. I followed him without even questioning anything he did.
I use to get angry at anything that reminded me of Q-Ball Chuck. I'd rant and rave about him half the night, and Tom'd help me trash him. I'll never tell Chuck all the nasty things we said about him, or the way Tom made me laugh about it. Somehow, Tom made it okay for me to be angry. Then he'd sit on the bed and he waited until I was calm enough to sleep before he dozed off. Whenever I woke up in the morning I'd have knocked him off the bed, but he'd have taken the covers with him and curled into a ball next to the bed.
I use to complain about how I hated Ireland and its stupid castles and dumb bars that served their beer funny. I used to tease him about how he was distracted by shiny objects easier than a fat kid to cake. He just laughed.
He used to call me the biggest gay he'd ever known, and he kept comparing me to that actor Arnold Schwarzenegger. He'd say I worried about Q-Ball too much and that I was a big lug that broke half the beds I slept in. Dammit, he made me laugh.
He made me mad half the time, but by the end I just wanted to pat him on the back for a good joke (then again, that was a pretty bad idea since I was several times his size). I never could stay mad at him for long, and we were happy together.
Then he went crazy and everything got shot to hell.
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He walked down the aisle like it was for a wedding. He didn't seem to care that he was going to die. He still winked at one of the ladies watching, but it wasn't like it did anything other than make him look like an idiot. He'd probably kidnapped her cousin or something.
He didn't seem afraid of it, and I realized that he'd been waiting for this his entire life. Every time we went to do something illegal he was the one who had to worry about getting caught. Not much could detain me – I was the Unstoppable Juggernaut. He was just a human with a staff that shot sparkly stuff.
Looking at him walking to that chair, dressed in orange and with two guards at his side, I forgot that this was the man who killed Sammy. All I remembered was him sleeping on the floor with the covers over his head and laughing about Irish whiskey tasting funny. He still had that limp and that irritating know-it-all look in his eyes.
I understood why he turned himself in, and I believed it. He wanted me to forgive him before he died.
I did. He never heard it because I didn't say it out loud.
He sat in the chair and they went through all the procedures like they should. Before they flipped the switch he smiled at me one last time, the way he used to for me. It made me feel sick, because a few hours ago I wanted this to happen more than anything, and now I just wanted to save him.
Thank God I forgave him before he went.
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Fin - 10/10/04