INTERLUDE: Gone Missing, Come Home

It is a difficult thing for me to admit to fear. I suppose it comes from years of being afraid - there, it is said, no turning back now - and that makes me turn to stare out into the torrential downpour.
Outside, three of her friends - the angellically beautiful blonde boy, the one so hideous his face remained hidden, and the strange dragon-gargoyle-demon - were talking. I could read in their body movements they were both angry and afraid.
I turn from the window, and stare at the bookcase.
Then down at the book in my hand.
She'd given it to me, with that incomprable, impish grin, and accompanied it with a hug so easy and natural I had felt - blessed.
A - joke book.
A gift of laughter, from a person deeply precious to him.
Once I did not....laugh, save for the maniacal gasp that was allowed me.
But now...
How do you explain love?
How do you explain being afraid for someone's safety when you never have before?
The answer, I belive, is simple.
You can't.
So I get up, tuck the book under an arm, and walk across the room, through the door, and up the stairs.
Two young students dodge around me, and I can feel their curious stares as I pass by, but I ignore them.
Finally, I come to the door I'm looking for.
I did something I never had before.
I knocked.
"What?" the voice was mildly groggy, just woken from sleep, and I heard a sharp intake of breath.
Nathan? I shoved the door open and saw my "twin" roll off the bed, legs caught in the sheets, and heard his breath coming quickly, too quickly for normal.
Stry....Rafe... Nathan's mental voice was flat with shock. He held up his arm.
His arm that had been infected with a techno-virus since he was an infant.
The first thing I noticed was the soft white color, pale skin showing through the loose-hanging fabric.
With his metal arm, of course, he had to wear clothes around it.
I had truly never considered that.
"What...?" What? Verbal and telepathic, both simeltaneously, and we both stared at the appendage.
"It can't be...it can't be...." Nathan was actually stammering, eyes on his arm as he turned it, clenched his fist.
"It is."
"But....how....?"
"She's not here." I said it without thinking, and I was as startled as Nathan's gaze.
"What?"
I reached out a hand, and was mildly suprised when he took it.
When had the hate stopped?
When had the rage?
Pulling him to his feet, I felt the vertigo in his mind as his telekenetic powers began to flood back, I saw Nathan turn as white as his pale arm. The arm that had not seen sun in years.
We stared at each other.
"I can't forgive you for Tyler." Nathan said, finally, painfully.
Sometimes the truth can hurt.
Sometimes it can set you free.
"I did not kill Tyler."
Nathan's eyes widened. "What....?"
"Tyler died at the hands of Apocolypse." I was telling the truth. The boy had died the moment he met Apocolypse. Died and gone, and I had been too busy with tactical manuvers of my own army when the horrible incident occured.
Those eyes - twin of mine - stared at me, studied me.
"You're not lying." It was stunned.
"No."
"Why didn't you tell me?!" he almost yelled it.
I considered. "You didn't ask."
"I hated you!"
"I know."
"For God's sake, Rafe, I wanted to kill you!"
I cocked my head, a bit bemused now. "You called me Rafe."
He stared at me. "Well...you are, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because she let me be."
He considered, looked down into his own emotions, then back at me. "She's not manipulating us. It's not telepathy, not mind-control, not...not."
"No."
"What then?"
"Love, I belive." It was the truth. I'd never known love, and when she had offered it, first as simple trust, then as friendship, I had been - awed.
A teen-ager had brought the mighty Stryfe low.
No.
She had lifted me up, beyond Stryfe, to being - Rafe.
"And she...did this?" he asked, looking me straight in the eyes.
"Yes."
"How do you know?"
"I don't know." It was the truth.
"But you know?"
"Yes."
Nathan sat down on the bed, held his head in his hands.
"I had a child once." Nathan's head snapped up. "From the tanks." I clarified.
The truth can be painful.
It can also set you free.
"What happened to...?"
"Him."
"Him?"
I closed my eyes. "I killed him."
Nathan's breath caught. "God, Rafe, why!?"
He was horrified, repulsed.
"Because after experimenting on him for months, I saw him begging for death. There was no way to reverse what Apocolypse had done. I walked in the medical center. I sat down, took him in my arms - and broke his neck." Nathan looked sick. "It was over for him very quickly."
I got up, stared out the window.
"I was fifteen."
"God, Rafe, I..."
"He was two. Mutated beyond recognition, DNA shredded into something hideous." Why was I telling him this? I had never spoken of it aloud. "He didn't even have a name." I clenched my fist, then opened it. The boys outside were heading in, I absently noticed. "So I took him outside the Dome, went through a time-gate - and came here."
"You WHAT?" Nathan's expression was stunned now.
"I buried him out near the lake. Children play there now, do they not?"
Nathan's voice was an incomprehensible gargle.
"Perhaps he rests easier knowing that. In the end, it destroyed any faith I had in Apocolpyse. I stayed because..."
"Why?"
I turned to face him.
"Nathan, where else would I have gone?" It was quiet. Steady.
It was also agonizingly painful.
I showed nothing.
"So you buried your - son - and went back?"
"Yes."
Nathan's hand touched my shoulder, and involentarily, I stiffened. I was unaccustomed to being touched, save by a certain brash youngster with incomprehensible faith in me.
"I'm sorry. I didn't...I didn't know." Was there kindness in his eyes? Surely not...
"The past is, thankfully, the past."
"Or the future." A grim humor, there.
"Or the future." I had to agree.
"We have to find her."
"Logan is with her."
"So they've been kidnapped?"
"So it would seem."
Nathan considered. "Rafe, would you like some...help?"
I eyed him uncertainly, then nodded slowly.
"All right. I have some friends that can help..."
"Just us."
"Just us?"
"Just us." I reiterated.
"Why?" Nathan was puzzled.
"Because we both...need her. We both love her." I said it calmly, reasonably, but I had to turn my head away. It would not do to let Nathan see the shine of tears in my eyes!
No, not that.
Not...yet.
"We'll find the grave first." Nathan said, softly, suddenly.
"Follow me."

We walked around the main mansion and back through the small wooded area.
I was a bit suprised to see a deer staring at us, then we came to the old tree I remembered.
I remembered because it had smelled - beautiful.
When I had returned to the Dome, I had looked it up.
It was a linden tree, extinct in Apocolypse's time.
Seen as unimportant.
I stepped around it, and felt Nathan following as I walked slowly around the lake.
Finally, I came to the place I could never forget.
A small tree was nearby, from the acorn I had once angrily, bitterly, kicked in.
I froze, staring at the point my son lay buried.
Flowers were lay on the ground, a beautiful flare of color and scent.
The small tree - a young linden tree.
On it was carved carefully, "You had no name, so we give you one. Henry Cristopher Dayspring-Summers. Rest in Peace. Love walks with you."
It was from her.
Then I remembered saying once to her, "My child lays dead and cold beneath a stone. Forgotten. Even I try to forget. There is no justice in the world."
She had put her arms around me, and I had - strangely - felt comforted.
"Then we make our own justice, oui? For those who not had it."
I had forgotten that conversation, perhaps out of the vunerabliy - the fear - I had felt.
I knelt down, and smoothed the dirt just a little, trying not to show emotion.
Nathan crouched beside me, and we stared at each other.
Fathers without sons.
Sons without fathers.
For a long, long time, we just - were.
"Nathan." I spoke quietly, gave him the advantage. "I would like to...know you as other than a foe."
He stared at me. Then spoke softly. "I want to know the man....that is my twin brother."
I tensed my shoulders.
They would not shake.
"You always knew I was your clone." I felt so tired then. I had denied it. I had hated him for it. In the end, I had hated myself for that.
"Clones, as she was always saying, are identical twins."
I forced myself to my feet.
"Your family - our...parents...they will never accept me as a son."
"Give them time, Rafe." Again, his warm hand touched my shoulder.
"I..." There were no more words then.
I would not cry.
I never wept.
"Come on. I'll fix us some tea." Nathan's voice was gentle as he helped me up.
I lifted a flower, and gently placed it on the simple grave.
"Good-bye, Henry." I whispered, feeling a strange, tight sensation in my throat. "Sleep peaceful...my son."
Nathan helped me back into the the mansion.
We sat at the table, sipped tea, and planned a rescue.
And, may whatever God is out there not strike me down, I - liked it.
We would find her.
Cayanne would be safe in Logan's care, I told myself. I belived it.
But we had to know, had to see her safe.
Had to know.
So we sat.
Talked.
In the end...
We left the table...
Friends.