Running After the Rain
By Em
“Happiness is good health, and a bad memory.”
- Ingrid Bergman

“When do you leave?”

“Daybreak.”

She nodded, her eyes still on the horizon as if she couldn’t even look at him and it occurred to him that it was a kind of unintentional conditioning, what he’d put her through. She never asked him not to go anymore or how long he’d be. She hadn’t even said she’d miss him the last couple times. As if she thought they wouldn’t be welcome.

Not that he could blame her.

He did it to her – he made her that way with his non-responses every time she did, with his insistence in going every time. He knew that.

He couldn’t do anything about it, though.

He’d thought a couple of time that he could break the cycle and ignore her when he got back, but he’d miss her just thinking about not talking to her when he got back. He knew the Mansion would just be a building if he couldn’t talk to her, have moments like these with her. It might be best for her if he didn’t, but he’d said it before – he wasn’t a damn hero. He wasn’t that selfless.

“Just for a coupla weeks this time,” he said into her silence.

She nodded again, her fingers absently picking at the seams of her gloves and let the silence grow, like the twilight spreading around them.

He didn’t usually mind the silences, but this one felt loaded with the unsaid, even to him.

Or maybe that was just him.

“Why do you need to know so badly?” she asked suddenly.

He was only mildly startled by her speaking, but was rather thrown by her words. “What do you mean?” he asked.

She looked at him, but away too quickly for him to read her expression except for what he could glimpse through profile in the shadows of the deepening dusk. “You are so insistent on finding out about your past – what you’ve already lived,” she said softly. “I kind of understand you,” and the slight thickening of her accent belied the apparent calm of her expression. “But it’s been years now,” she continued as he knew she would. “Years of fruitless searches, of leaving for weeks or months, only to come back just as empty handed,” she looked at him again, and this time kept his eyes. “Why, Logan?” she asked. “What do you hope you’ll find?” She shook her head and he lost her eyes again. “I can’t understand that,” she admitted. “Not when nine times outta ten I feel like I’d love to have someone erase my memory of everything from about age 4 until the moment I stepped off the semi in Laughlin City.”

He frowned. “Why would you want to do that?” he asked seriously.

Her gaze fell to her lap, the fingers of her hands curled into each other, and she took a deep breath. “I had a pretty good childhood, you know?” she said, and her voice sounded different, almost detached.

“Most kids do,” he answered.

She nodded, agreeing with his assessment. “We weren’t rich, by any means, but I got most of what I wanted, bein’ an only child an’ all, and I fought with my parents all the time, but you know…” she trailed off, her head rising again, but her gaze focused on the horizon once again. “It was a pretty good childhood.”

“So why would you want to forget it?” he asked once she had been quiet for some time and it appeared to him she wouldn’t offer the information.

She looked at him and her expression was closed off – she was trying so hard to be strong. “They turned on me when they found out what I was, Logan,” she said, her voice just slightly above a whisper. “My parents, my friends, everyone,” she paused as her voice cracked and she swallowed past the emotion in her throat to continue, but her expression was hardening the way he’d rarely seen it before. “Kids I played with growin’ up, neighbors I helped with their groceries, they all turned on me –“ she shook her head, screwing her eyes shut. “They called me names and Cody’s sister…” she swallowed again. “She threw a pitcher of water at me when I tried to visit him in the hospital.” She raised her hands to rub at her eyes, and he could see the strain on her from trying not to cry.

He felt his hands fist at his sides, his jaw clenching in an attempt to stop himself from demanding names, to stop from making elaborate plans on just how he’d go to that town she grew up in and teach those assholes some manners. It wasn’t easy, but he knew it wasn’t what she needed, so he refrained. But he couldn’t speak – not and have it sound normal, so he kept silent and let her finish.

“I know I can’t blame them – they don’t know any better, they had to blame someone, and I was the easy target, the Professor’s always sayin’ we can’t blame them for being ignorant,” she sighed and he bit the inside of his mouth to keep from telling her she can damn well hate them if she wants, because he knows that ultimately, the Professor’s way is best for her. “And it hurt, but you know…” she continued, heedless of his efforts to remain outwardly calm. She sighed again. “It wouldn’t be so bad if my parents hadn’t…”

She couldn’t seem to bring herself to say it. Instead, she sighed again and made herself look at him. “So you see?” she asked. “The good memories,” she shook her head. “I’d gladly sacrifice those if I didn’t have to remember the hatred in my mama’s eyes as she called me evil and devil spawn – hell, it wouldn’t even be so bad that they hated me so much, if I didn’t remember what it was like to have them love me, tuck me in bed and read me to sleep.” She blinked and looked down again, shaking her head. “It’s my personal opinion, but memories are seriously overrated.”

How could he argue with a statement like that? A reality like that? He didn’t know what to tell her except the truth.

“If you’ve ever talked to people who’ve had a loved one abducted or disappeared...it’s something like that,” he spoke quietly. “Yeah, there’s a risk that even if I find something, all I’ll only find is pain, but...” he trailed off and shook his head. “Sometimes, it feels like anything is better than not knowing,” he sighed. “That knowing is worth the risk.”

She looked out over the grounds and for a while he thought she wouldn’t say anymore and when she did, her voice was empty and hollow like he’d never heard it before. “It isn’t.”