Typing Up Loose Ends: Part Three

by Red Monster

Theresa felt out of place in her coach seat on the airplane. While the other passengers had brought their smaller bags onto the plane, she had gone to her seat with nothing but the clothes on her back, and such casual clothes they were at that. With her semi-tangled hair and lack of amenities, she felt like a refugee fleeing her ravaged homeland in the middle of the night, flying on a ticket she'd sold all her belongings to buy, while her fellow travelers were unaware of the war.

"It's a good thing I told Da not to get me a first-class ticket," she thought. "Then I'd really look like a freak." She had, to her credit, found a window seat, so she could occupy herself with watching the clouds pass by under the plane, sometimes giving way to changing expanses of land below.

"This is such a big country," she mused silently. "If I wanted to visit someone on the other side of Ireland, the plane could go half this fast and it wouldn't take an hour. No, wait, I wouldn't even fly, I'd take a train and it wouldn't take this long." Her game for the flight was to guess, according to how long she felt she'd been on the plane and by looking at the land below, over what part of the States they were flying, and what time it was in that part of the country. The clouds broke, and she saw an enormous river passing below, perpendicular to the body of the plane. "Please don't let that be the Mississippi. Don't tell me we've only gone that far now. But if it is, what time zone would that be?"

The plane landed in Sacramento. From there, it was a quick drive to her aunt's house in Looking Glass.

"This is a nice neighborhood," said the cab driver. He'd looked at her like she was trying to play a practical joke on him when Theresa ducked into his cab at the airport and asked him to take her to Looking Glass. Not that it was a very long way off, just that it was such a small town, and she was about the second person to have ever asked to go there in his taxi.

"My aunt's a novelist," Theresa said proudly. "She writes mysteries." She was, in fact, not one tenth as tranquil as she had the driver thinking she was. She had a lump in her throat the size of a kiwi fruit over the prospect of reuniting with her aunt. Even though she'd known she had to do it sooner than later, which was why she'd opted to fly out the day after getting the ticket, Theresa secretly hoped the cab driver would take a wrong turn and she'd be able to delay the meeting by a few more minutes. On the plane, she'd thought of her aunt's possible reactions to seeing her back, alive and vocal. They ranged from relieved and delighted to frightened and angry, and Theresa had no idea which one was the most likely.

"This is the street, yes?" asked the driver in his indeterminate Near East accent.

"Yes, this is it," said Theresa. She did not, however, ask him to stop at her aunt's house. Instead, she let him drive past it, and told him that the house at the end of the block was her aunt's house. She gave him $20 of the money her father had given her for her travels, waited for him to drive out of sight, and then started to walk around the block. When she got back to her Aunt Tori's house, she was about to take another round to delay the visit, but Tori caught her.

"Theresa, come here, darlin'!" Tori burst through the door and started across her front yard. "Are you okay? I've been worried sick!"

"Yes, Aunt Tori, I'm fine," said Theresa with a half shrug and sad half smile.

"And you're speaking!" Tori exclaimed. She wrapped an arm around Theresa's lower back, and ushered her towards the house. In there, she sat her niece down at the kitchen table and rushed to her phone. "Theresa, I can't say how happy I am to have you back and in one piece, but I have to make a call real quick." She hit no more than two keys on the receiver. "Hello, may I speak to Detective Delgado, please? Thank you... Detective, it's Victoria Donnelly...no, it's fine, she just came back...yes, my niece...just a second ago...oh, she's fine, in fact I've never seen her better!...Thank you!...Bye." She hung up, and turned back to Theresa. "I had that detective on my speed dial," she explained.

"You had the police looking for me?" Theresa asked, surprised.

"Of course! When I came home to find you stumbling around here drunk and looking like you'd been possessed by spirits, and then left in that state and didn't come back after some hours, I was afraid of what might happen to you and started pestering the police about it."

"Um, about my stumbling around here drunk and disappearing..." Theresa began.

"Don't worry about it," said Tori with a wave of a hand. "I know you've had problems with the drink before, and what with losing your voice and all, I don't blame you for slipping up." She took Theresa's hand in hers from across the table and patted it. "All I care about is that you're okay. And you've got your voice back so soon! How did you manage that?"

"I'm just a fast healer," Theresa lied. She was about to say, "I really was possessed by spirits," but decided, gratefully, that it wouldn't be necessary. "Aunt Tori, just how much damage did I do here before I left?" she asked instead.

"Nothing of value," Tori shrugged. "I needed to get rid of some old junk anyway. Now, tell me, where have you been for the past week and a half? Just how much could you do without even a driver's license or bank card?"

"Did I leave my wallet here?" Theresa asked. Some time after saying goodbye to Deadpool, she'd realized she didn't know where it and its contents were, and, between making her way up the Eastern Seaboard and looking for places to sleep, she wondered what she'd have to go through to replace all those things.

Tori nodded. "I left it on top of your dresser."

"Oh, thank God," said Theresa. "When I woke up out of my stupor, don't ask me how, because I don't know, but I was on the other side of this blasted huge country."

"That's quite a trip to make in the state you were in," said Tori, taken aback.

"I know," said Theresa. "So I went to see my father, since he went to visit me just after I lost my voice, and I wasn't there. I stayed with him for a night, then he bought me a plane ticket back here."

"That was good of him, but," Tori began. "Why didn't you call me from your father's place? I would've liked to know my niece was alive and well!"

"Well, I wasn't sure if it was a good idea," said Theresa.

"Why not? Is your father so afraid of racking up his long-distance bill?"

"Aunt Tori, I didn't know how you'd react. I mean, I didn't remember just what I'd done to your house, or to you, for that matter, before I left, so how should I have known how you'd feel about hearing from me? Besides, when I showed up at Da's school, he didn't believe it was me, at first, since I was speaking so soon."

"Then who did he think you were?"

"A shape-shifter trying to break into his school, I guess," Theresa shrugged. "Still, I thought, if I came back here, it might be tense, but at least you couldn't hang up on me, and I'd be pretty close to my friends if need be."

"Okay, that's a fair point. But, Terry, have some faith in your old aunt! Did you really think I wouldn't talk to you, just because you had an episode here and broke a few things?"

"No, I thought I might have been violent to you while I was so drunk and delirious, and then you'd be in the hospital, or at home packing up my things and sending them back to San Francisco," Theresa said loudly.

Neither of them said anything for a moment. Theresa sighed and looked at her lap, Tori bit her lip and looked to the side. Finally, Tori spoke up.

"Terry, when I got home and found you in such a state, you didn't try to hurt me. You just looked at me strangely and sort of stumbled out."

"Well, I tend not to remember things I do when I'm drunk, so I couldn't be sure," Theresa explained. "But the good news is, I haven't had a drink since I woke up on the East Coast." She decided not to tell her aunt about wandering around the South in Goodwill clothes and hitchhiking with a truck driver.

"That's wonderful," Tori nodded in approval. "Now, why don't you go into your room, put on something nice, and we'll go out to dinner to celebrate your safe return?"

After dinner, Theresa retired to bed in the room that Tori had set aside for her. Dinner had been pleasantly uneventful and uneventfully pleasant, and, after days of drifting helplessly from place to place with little more than chance to keep her going, she finally had the chance to slow down, relax, stop worrying. Once she was able to do that, however, she found more to worry about. Before she'd come to live with Tori, she'd left X-Force unceremoniously in the middle of the night. She hadn't wanted any ceremony, and had predicted that they would understand why. Her father had traveled all the way out there to be there for her, and she'd been away the whole day, avoiding him and letting her teammates worry. They found out soon enough that she was okay, and she'd just been to visit her father. What really haunted her mind was the last person she'd spoken to before she left--Jimmy. The way he'd looked when she handed him her letter; so tired and vulnerable, which she once thought he'd never look, and the way he'd hugged her so warmly and gently when her cab arrived, floated behind her eyes so persistently that she knew of nothing else to think about. He'd asked her to stay at the warehouse at least until morning, but she'd been in such a rush to get out, why? Theresa knew she had a good reason back then, but for the life of her she couldn't remember it. The scene reappeared to her, just as real as the bed underneath her, and then she knew she had a chance to redo it.

"I wish you'd reconsider, at least stay until morning," said James.

"I can't stay here, you know that," she said.

"Then stay until morning?" he pleaded.

Theresa thought about it for a minute, and decided it wouldn't hurt her to get some sleep before leaving for her aunt's house. "You know, I think I'll do that," she said. Her nightshirt appeared on her out of nowhere, and she found nothing wrong with this occurrence. She was curled up in bed beside James, who wrapped his arm around her before falling back to sleep.

When she woke up, she felt confused at first that James was not waking up beside her. Then, she remembered that she was not in San Francisco, and the last time she was, she could not speak, and did not sleep beside James before she left. "Oh, bugger," she thought.

"Sleep well, dear?" Tori asked at breakfast.

Theresa started to say "Yes," out of habit, but then changed her mind. "No. I stayed awake most of the night."

"Really? I thought you'd be jet-lagged all to Hades," Tori grinned.

"I thought so, too, but I had a lot on my mind."

"Oh, no. Don't tell me it's more of that rubbish about getting violent while you were drunk and wrecking the house and hurting me."

"No, it's not that, Aunt Tori. Remember that nice young man I told you about?"

"Who, James?" Tori confirmed.

"Yes, him," Theresa nodded. "I started thinking about a lot of things last night, and he kept coming back." She took a sip of coffee.

"You make it sound like that's a bad thing," Tori said.

"Well, it was. I don't like staying up all night worrying."

"Now, whatever were you worried about, Terry? Did something bad happen to James and you don't know what condition he's in?"

"No, not that I know of. It's just that...I decided to move in with you very suddenly after I lost my voice, and Jimmy didn't want me to leave. I came back in the middle of the night after wandering around the city all day, and Jimmy was the only one awake, so I gave him a letter explaining why I needed to get out. He didn't want me to leave so soon, but I couldn't wait to be out of there," she sighed. "I hate to think of how that made him feel."

"But you've kept in touch with him since you've been here, right?"

"Yes, we've been emailing each other."

"And he's seemed friendly enough?"

"Well, he mostly sounded concerned at first..." Theresa began. v"But he didn't seem put out or trying to guilt-trip you or anything like that?"

"No, of course not-"

"And how was he after you convinced him you were doing okay out here?"

"I don't know, just...pleasant, I guess. Wanted to keep in contact, and all."

"So, if he was hurt by your leaving, I think he's gotten over it by now."

Theresa's shoulders slumped; she looked down and played with her cereal. "I don't know, Aunt Tori. I just couldn't shake this feeling that I snubbed him somehow. I mean, I still think it was a good idea all along that I came to live with you, but maybe I should've taken a little more time to go over it with my friends, especially him."

"Well, Theresa," Tori began, raising a crinkled eyebrow. "You've been here for months. Why are you just feeling this way now? Why didn't you have one of these sleepless nights when you first moved in?"

"Well when I first moved in," Theresa explained. "I'd just lost my voice, and was all wrapped up in my own pain. So I wasn't really thinking about anyone else's feelings. Now that my voice has come back, I'm not wallowing in self-pity all the time, so I can afford to think about how I'm making others feel. Does that make sense?"

"Of course it makes sense!" Tori pronounced, bringing her coffee cup to the tabletop with a resounding knock. "But I'd like to know more. It's interesting that, of all the things you could be thinking about your friends, the one that keeps you up all night is that you're afraid you hurt your best friend's feelings. Did you ever try, or entertain a notion of trying, to be more than friends with Jimmy?"

"Actually," Theresa began to laugh nervously, and did her best to stifle it. "It was sort of the other way around..."

"My lord, you kids these days," Tori ejected. They were still at the breakfast table, and after hearing her young cousin's story, Victoria Donnelly was collapsed into her chair, staring at Theresa with wide, bewildered eyes. "It's just one whirlwind of emotion after another. No wonder you're on tenterhooks about that boy's feelings. But I don't think the problem is quite what you're saying."

"Then, what is it?" Theresa asked. She sat slumped over her half-emptied cereal bowl with her arms folded up against her stomach, peering uncomfortably at her aunt. "Are you telling me it's even more complicated than I think?"

"No, nothing of the sort. I think you like this boy Jimmy, and you're worried about walking out on him too fast because you want him to still like you," said Tori.

"But then, why wouldn't I just think about him still liking me, instead of worrying all night about how I've hurt him?"

"Because, Theresa darling, everything in your life is complicated," Tori chuckled. "Now tell me, do you remember your dreams from last night?"

Theresa recalled waking up that morning and realizing that her being in James' arms the night before was all a dream. "Yes," she admitted.

"And did he appear in them at all?" asked her aunt.

"Yes." She began eating the rest of her cereal, hoping it would buy her some time before having to share the details.

"And what was he like in the dream?"

"He was himself," Theresa shrugged, talking through her mouthful.

"Himself, meaning, what? How was he towards you?"

"Well, he wanted me to stay. It was back to the night that I left the team, and he was just being himself. He wanted me to give it a few more hours."

"And then what did you do?"

"I decided to stay the night. He liked that," Theresa clipped, and dug into her cereal.

Since her head was folded down so low over her bowl, she did not see her aunt studying her with narrowed eyes and drumming fingers from across the table. After Theresa finished her cereal, Tori piped up again. "There's something you're hiding from me. How did Jimmy let you know he 'liked that'?"

Theresa groaned and looked upward for divine intervention, but knew she had to answer. "I got into bed with him, and he put his arm around me. But really, don't go getting all excited, we had our jammies on and we just slept. That's it."

"Still, it's very sweet," Tori smiled. "You know what I think the problem is? You really like that boy, and you want him to still like you. And you're afraid that if you stomped on him hard enough, he doesn't like you so much anymore."

"My, you've just got everything in my head figured out, eh, Aunt Tori?" Theresa sneered, taking her breakfast dishes to the sink. "Not even I can sort through it, but I can't get anything past you, can I?"

"Well, you tell me, do you like him? As more than just a friend?" Tori asked.

"Yes," Theresa rolled her eyes. "Now are you happy?" She started to wash her dishes.

"Well, Terry, that's wonderful!" Tori spoke up over the running water. "You know, now that your voice is back, you can go back to San Francisco and move back in with your friends, and there you can start something with him."

Theresa pretended not to hear.

"Go ahead, ask him out," Tori continued. "A lot of women are doing that these days, going after men instead of waiting for it to happen the other way around, and it works very well for them, I hear. If Jimmy's problem is that he's just shy, then that's the ticket."

Theresa placed her clean dishes into the drainer, and walked out of the kitchen without a word or a look at her aunt.

"Okay, maybe that's a sign," Theresa muttered under her breath. She sat in front of her aunt's computer in the study, where the Internet connection was. She had just tried to dial up, only to get the "check your password and try again" message. "This is your last chance, or your monitor is toast," she growled, re-typing the password and hitting Enter. This time, the connection went through. She opened up her email program and hit the shortcut keys to check her mail, looking for some reason to disregard her aunt's advice from breakfast. There appeared several junk messages, a message from her father with the subject line "How was your flight?", and two from James.

Theresa drew in a breath to compose herself, and continued. She deleted the spam, then opened up her father's message. It was brief and pretty routine, just asking her to write back and tell him she made it back safely. "Yup, the flight went just fine," she wrote back. "(No, scratch that, we crashed in Nebraska and they're pulling my lifeless body out of the plane right now. >:->) Aunt Tori's fine, too. Love, Theresa."

After moving that message to the folder marked "Da," she opened up the first of James' two messages. It was dated nine days before, just an ordinary reply to the last message she'd sent him in their regular correspondence. She felt a gentle rush of contentment well up in her, upon seeing those words again, and realizing how much she'd missed hearing from him. Instead of replying to it, she moved on to the next one from James, this one dated five days later. "I haven't heard from you in a few days," he wrote. "Are you okay? Did you get my last message? Write me soon." Theresa hit Reply, and wrote back, "Don't worry, I'm fine. My aunt's ISP got their lines crossed and cut off her service for several days. We just got back online yesterday," she lied. In truth, she had been walking along the interstate in central Virginia when he sent her that message. She hit Send, then Exit. Finally, Disconnect.

"Checking your mail?" came a voice from behind her. Tori stood in the doorway of the study.

"Just finished, Aunt Tori," Theresa answered.

"Good, then," said Tori. "I'd like to work on my new novel, so I'll need privacy."

Theresa stood up from her seat and walked towards the doorway. Her aunt slipped in and sat down at the other computer. "Listen, Aunt Tori," she began.

"Yes?" Tori turned around in her swivel chair and looked up at her niece.

"I'm sorry." "About our exchange in the kitchen?" Theresa nodded. "I understand it's a sensitive issue, so you're forgiven. Just think about what I said, okay?"

"I am."

Theresa went outside to tend her aunt's garden. That was her favorite part of living with Aunt Tori; the nicely laid-out plot of herbs and flowers behind her house. She had been raised by her father's cousin, Tom Cassidy, whom she called Uncle Tom. He taught her gardening in her childhood. Even after he sent her to boarding school to hide his career as a criminal from her, and news of his arrest and imprisonment reached her, she still loved to tend plants just the way he'd taught her. It was the one activity that reminded Theresa of the uncle she loved; rather than the one she couldn't trust. Tori usually stayed at her keyboard for a few hours when she worked on her novels, so Theresa had plenty of time alone with the plants. She was back in her own clothes, finally, and had finished combing her hair back to curls rather than dreads. Never in her life had she anticipated feeling so comfortable in jeans and a t-shirt and a smooth ponytail.

"I have my voice back, so why not go back to X-Force? Tori has no problem with me leaving," she asked herself. "Well, just because I can speak and use my powers again, doesn't mean I shouldn't look for something else to do with my life. Besides, I like it here with Aunt Tori. She's very nice, and it's pleasant here."

"But I also like it with X-Force. I miss them, I miss the city, and God help me, I actually get something good out of risking my life to save a world that'd just as soon be shut of us," she thought. "At least there, I pull my weight. If I don't get a day job soon, I'll be bored out of my skull and feel useless here."

"So, then, why not try to start something with Jimmy? I want to be with him, and he's about the best I could ever hope for," she thought.

"Oh, let me count the ways. He might not feel that way about me anymore. It's been a long time since I could even sort of clearly tell. And then, even if he does still like me, what kind of a girlfriend would I make? I've got all sorts of issues to fuck up a relationship, and I don't want to put him through that."

"You know, he already knows about my problems, and after he learned about them, he was still smitten with me. Of course, that doesn't mean I should try to start a relationship."

"And then, what if I ask him out and he says no? Wouldn't that make things kind of awkward in that warehouse?"

"Well," she thought after chewing on her last question for a few minutes. "We'd get over it soon enough," she decided. "Still, I'm not so sure I'm cut out to get that involved with another person, what with my substance abuse and abandonment issues and trust problems and whatnot."

"Well, Theresa, this looks lovely," came Tori's voice from the direction of the house. Theresa, on her knees and picking weeds and dead tree leaves out of the garden, looked up and saw her aunt stepping out of the back door of her house.

"Thanks, Aunt Tori," she said. "You know I like to garden."

"Yes, I know that. So, what is it you want to do?" she asked the young woman pulling intruders out of her garden.

"Um, what do you mean by that?" Theresa asked.

"I mean, now that your voice is restored, you can go back to your old life if you want."

"Well, I would like to go back to X-Force, crazy as it is," said Theresa. "I do like living with you, Aunt Tori," she began.

"No, it's quite alright, darling, I don't take it personally," Tori cut in.

"I just feel more useful over there," Theresa continued. "I mean, I can get behind what I'm doing with them."

"Yes, I can see what you mean," Tori nodded.

Theresa went back to poring over the garden. "But I'm torn about Jimmy."

"That's okay. I think it's best to give it some thought before you go running after a relationship; it means you'll really be into it if it does happen," said Tori. "But, if you don't mind me asking, what is it that's tearing you up?"

"Aunt Tori, do you honestly think I'm relationship material? I'm all screwed up, with more 'issues' than the National Enquirer. Why would I want to expose anyone to that?"

"Theresa, from what you've told me about this James fellow, he already knows about your 'issues,' and isn't bothered by them."

"Yes, but that doesn't mean it'll all be okay. Who knows how badly I could screw things up?"

"Why don't you give yourself a chance? You might find that you're not half as badly off as you think."

"And why do you say that?" Theresa asked, pausing from her gardening.

"Well, you're lucid enough to know you're not perfect," said Tori. "If you were really far gone, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Besides, nobody out there's gotten their mind all straightened out. We've all got our problems, but we're still willing to take a chance, and try to love someone."

"I don't see a special someone in your life," Theresa was about to say, but bit her lip. She knew the answer might be something involving "spousal death," or "infidelity," or something else to make her sorry she asked.

"What if I go back there, and it doesn't work out?" she asked instead.

"How about this?" her aunt began. "You pack up a bag of what you'll need to get by for the next few days, and go back to your friends in San Francisco. If everything's okay back there, drop me a line, and I'll send you the rest of your things. If there's not a place for you there anymore, just come right back."

"Thank you," Theresa smiled. "I'd like that."

"Good!" Tori pronounced. "Now, what about James?"

"I'll ask him if he'd like to give it a go with me," she answered. "Maybe not the very day I arrive," she shrugged, "but I'll work up the nerve soon enough."

"I'm sure you will," Tori said. "So, when are you going?"

"Can't I stay here for a few more days?" Theresa asked.

"Of course," Tori laughed. "I'm not about to send you on your way when you just flew in yesterday. Take your time."

After Tori went back inside, her words, "give yourself a chance," echoed through Theresa's mind. It was the first time in her life that someone had told her she wasn't as messed up as she thought. She had been loved, supported, helped, and trusted, but this was the first time Theresa could remember someone who actually knew her, explicitly expressing such faith in her.

"Aunt Tori's a smart woman," thought Theresa. "If she thinks I can do it, then maybe I really can."

"But, then, what if I screw it up after all?" she asked herself. "What if I give myself a chance, and blow it? And what if I hurt Jimmy in the process?"

"'We've all got our problems, but we're willing to take a chance,'" Tori had said just a few minutes ago.

"I guess, everyone takes that risk," Theresa thought. "So why shouldn't I?"

[next part]

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