Work Text:
A Son's Grief
by Pirate Turner
He stood at the edge of the balcony, his strong, muscular arms draped over the top railing. He stared unblinking straight ahead, and although his haunted blue eyes appeared to gaze out over the balcony, he could see nothing but the past. Images flashed through his sharp mind: one after another so swiftly that he almost couldn't follow them all at times.
My dad chased monsters from the dark,
He checked underneath my bed.
An' he could lift me with one arm,
Way up over top his head.
He could loosen rusty bolts,
With a quick turn of his wrench.
He pulled splinters from his hand,
And never even flinched.
The man named Nathan Summers had had a longer and harder life than most others. Even his boyhood had been a living nightmare filled with despair for the most time, but his few happy memories of his childhood came from two people -- Slym and Redd, who he had much later came to learn were the X-Men's Cyclops and Jean Grey, his birth father and step-mother.
He had carried a lot of anger toward his father for a long time, but just when he had began to be able to put all that behind him, it had happened. His father had fallen in the line of duty, and now he was gone forever. His hands tightened on the rail, and his teeth ground tightly together as his heart ached with a misery that he had hoped he would never feel again. He had lost most of those he had dared to love in his long life, but still he had been so foolish as to not realize that his time with his father was so short. Nathan's eyes closed tightly against the pain as his mind flashed back to the memories of witnessing his father's dead body.
Unsinkable ships sink.
Unbreakable walls break.
Sometimes the things you think could never happen,
Happen just like that.
Unbendable steel bends.
If the fury of the wind is unstoppable,
I've learned to never underestimate,
The impossible.
Oh, what he wouldn't give now to be able to go back and stop his father's murderer! He would have gladly given his life to save his father's, but it was far too late now. His father had gone to his grave thinking that his son still did not love him, and although Cable had carried such fury towards Scott for an extremely long time, nothing could be further from the truth. He was, after all, his father.
Although he hadn't been able to understand his father's reasoning while Scott had still lived, Nathan now knew that Scott had done everything he could have done for him. It hadn't been Scott's fault that Nathan had been born with a lethal virus that he could only be saved from by being sent into the future. Scott had not abandoned Nathan but had instead sent him to the one place where he could stand a chance of surviving. Cable was forced to wonder for a second if he could have done the same for his own son when his child had been only a baby, but he had no answer for that or any of the other questions that now plagued his soul.
His father was gone forever, and he would never know how his only son truly felt about him -- the respect he'd gained over the years from him nor the love that he could no longer deny his father. Cable could have told him, could have done something to stop it, but instead he had let him down when he had had another choice, something his father would have never done to him.
Unsinkable ships sink.
Unbreakable walls break.
Sometimes the things you think could never happen,
Happen just like that.
Unbendable steel bends.
If the fury of the wind is unstoppable,
I've learned to never underestimate,
The impossible.
The memories continued to plague his mind, never stopping nor even slowing, and despite his strong will and ferocious stubbornness, Nathan's body shook with the emotions that stung the deepest cores of his heart and soul. From inside the mansion, two compassionate blue eyes intently watched the man that had came to mean so much to her. Her heart grieved for him, but it was only when she saw his first tear fall that Domino started forward, slipping silently through the door and towards the man she loved.
In all our years together I'd never seen him cry,
But the day that his father died, I realized:
Unsinkable ships sink.
Unbreakable walls break.
Sometimes the things you think could never happen,
Happen just like that.
Unbendable steel bends.
If the fury of the wind is unstoppable,
I've learned to never underestimate,
The impossible.
As his tears finally began to fall in an increasing, non-stopping amount, Domino reached Nathan. Her hand tentatively touched his shoulder. Wordlessly, he turned to her, and she embraced him. As he buried his sobbing face into her long, raven hair, her hands stroked him reassuringly. Neither would ever admit it, but in that moment in time, Domino held him gently as he clung to her, his tears wetting her shirt and hair.
The End