it's electrifying

          she’s glad she’s in her office, tucked away from everyone else, alone. down the hall, she can hear the hum of the television, ellie home for the weekend and inserting herself on the sofa in her usual spot. roman in the kitchen, cooking, the pair of them talking over it all. she has to duck her head and hold a hand over her eyes to keep herself from crying, but it doesn’t work, it never has. wiping quickly at her eyes, she sucks in a breath, tries to keep her voice steady.

          “i love you, too, ridley.” more than he knows, probably, but that seems like something parents always say to their children. “– – do i need to go somewhere? do i need to come get you?”

        he shakes his head even though she can’t see.  “  no,  no  --  i took willow down to florida.  get her mind of things and  --  to clear my own.  “  he wipes away his eyes.  “  i think  --  she’s feeling better.  still shaken.  sometimes some nightmares.  “  

          she knows it isn’t easy. it never has been, not for any of them. maybe there are things that she and ridley can understand that others can’t and this – this particular brand of self-loathing, this confusion, this fear that turned to disgust so easily – she can understand that, as much as she pretends otherwise. she had ridley at a time in her life when she’d come to terms with things, when she’d accepted being what she was, when she knew better. she’d wanted them to feel differently than she had, but she knows, too, that it isn’t as simple as wanting and wishing and hoping. it’s why she’d given them all the chance to talk – the opportunity always there, open – and ridley, angry as he was, had fought against it.

          “i know.” or – she’d like to believe so, anyway. she hopes. “i know that, ridley.”

           he lifts his head up again.  it all hurts.  he felt ready to cry,  to throw something.  (  and there is the tell tale spark from his mutation,  threatening to come through,  because he doesn’t have control of it.  )  he swallows it down.  

          she can’t bring herself to say that they miss him, too. she doesn’t know if it’s true or not – it is for ellie, she’s sure, but the others, she can’t be – and she doesn’t want to get his hopes up only for them to be dashed again. it isn’t fair, really, that she wants so badly to protect ridley when it’s the others who deserve it more. they’ve tried to be there for him. they’ve tried to understand. and they’ve been shut out, time and time again, just as she and roman have.

          “your dad misses you.” she and roman don’t talk about it often. it hurts them both too much and she feels so guilty, as if she is the reason behind it, that she never wants to bring it up at all. but she knows that it’s hurt him, too, this silence, this anger. she and roman know each other well enough by now that they could never speak another word about it and still, she’d know. she’d feel it. “and ellie – you know how she is.” 

          she misses ridley. desperately, deeply. but it’s difficult to admit, as if she’s revealing too much, another weak spot for him to use against her somehow, and how sad it is, that things have come to this. she swallows, bites the inside of her cheek, and looks down at her free hand, studies the spaces between her fingers. 

          “– – you know you can always come home.”

          he misses dad.  and  --  he feels terrible for the way he blamed him for things.  all dad wanted to do was make sure that he was able to defend himself;  if he had viewed it more as spending time with him rather than being forced to do something,  maybe he would have gotten along better with him.  (  there were threats.  he knew that.  and his dad was looking at the world through they eyes of someone who had seen it all.  )

          and mom  --  when he thought about how badly he hurt her,  he could throw up.  telling her that he hated mutants  --  that he didn’t want to be one  --  how much more could he do?  and then he went and did it. did more until they both questioned a simple phone call.

          “ridley.”

          it’s difficult to listen to him like this. she’s never wanted him to feel guilty, to hurt, even when he’s hurt the rest of them. she’s always wanted things to be easy for her children, and ridley is no exception to that. maybe he’s shuttered her out of his life except when he has absolutely no other choice but – it doesn’t lessen that. it doesn’t make her want things to be difficult for him. 

          “everyone makes mistakes. you’re not the only one.” somewhere, along the line, she has. she doesn’t know where. she wishes she could pinpoint it so that she could try to fix it, but when she thinks back, she doesn’t know what she’d done differently with ridley than any of the others. maybe she’d been a little more unsure, a little stumbling, trying to find her footing as a mother when she’d never thought she’d find herself there at all, but she hadn’t loved him any less. supported him any less. she’d made a point of that – wanted to be different than her parents, who didn’t care, who never knew what to do – but maybe she’d been wrong after all.

          she stops, bites back a sigh. she can’t bring herself to say that they feel any way other than how they do. 

          “they’re hurt.” she doesn’t think ellie could ever hate him and, though isabel has a temper just as nasty as josephine’s own, she doesn’t think she could, either. andrew is the only exception, and she won’t begrudge him that. he deserves to feel how he feels after everything. “they miss their brother, too.” 

           she doesn’t know if ridley misses them. she’s afraid to ask.

           “you’ve made mistakes, ridley, but you’re not terrible. and we – we still love you. i still love you.”

           another few quiet moments as he tries to catch his breath,  his thoughts.  “  i miss them and  --  “  his voice cracks down the middle.  “  i miss you and dad.  “  he’s lonely.  he’s been isolating himself for so long that it’s come to this;  him almost broken by it.  (  broken anyway.  still breaking.  )

         “  i don’t know how to come back from this.  i don’t know what to do.  “  he shouldn’t come to her for this.  “  and  --  i know,  mom,  that i don’t deserve anything from you.  not after everything you and dad have given me.  and i’ sorry.  “ 

          “ridley?” of course it’s him. his name on the screen, his picture. his voice down the other end of the line. (he’s the only one who calls her mom instead of mama, the only one who makes the word sound clumsy, unfamiliar.) “– it’s me. hi.”

          there’s a long silence. she lets him take it. wonders why he’s called, still, but she knows better than to answer. he doesn’t want to just talk – ridley has never called her just to talk, not in years – and nothing has happened for him to have a reason to. no birthdays, no anniversaries, no big changes for any of the others. she’s surprised he hasn’t called roman instead, but after the last time they saw him, it seems less likely. 

          “ridley –” she knows that tone in his voice, the way he’s struggling with it. she slides her glasses off her face and pinches the bridge of her nose, wishes she could will away the headache she can feel lurking in her temples. her voice softens, quiets. “– it’s okay. it’s okay.”

          “  no,  it’s not okay.  “  he says,  pacing around the room now.  “  i made a lot of mistakes,  mom.  and i’ve hurt you.  i’ve hurt this family.  i’ve hurt willow.  “  (  the worst of all.  his own daughter  --  how badly he damaged his own daughter.  how he had almost lost her.  )  “  i am  --  i am a terrible,  selfish person.  “ 

         he stops pacing,  rubbing the bridge of his nose.  “  i’ve messed up,  mom.  i’ve messed up so much and i don’t know how to fix it.  “

          ridley leaves, and it doesn’t surprise her. he doesn’t tell her where he’s going, and if he tells roman, then roman doesn’t share it with her. it would be easier if she didn’t worry so much, and there’s a part of her that wishes that she could stop worrying for him and muster the same sort of apathy he shows for the rest of them. two months of silence and – that isn’t unusual. they’ve gone longer before, though she doesn’t want to think of those times, the long stretches without phone calls or text messages, only hearing about how he’s doing when he allows willow to come over, always dropped off without coming inside, never lingering long enough for her to see him. 

          two months of silence and – her phone rings. she watches his picture light up the screen – the pair of them and willow, five-years-old and wild-haired, all three of their grins matching – and almost doesn’t answer. (she doesn’t want to. she’s been there before and it’s been met with venom and anger and she’s tired. she’s so tired.)

          on the last ring, she picks up, tries to ignore the hitch in her chest. “– hello?”

          “  --  mom?  “  there’s a break in his voice along with a surprised tone.  (  he wasn’t sure that she was going to answer in the first place.  if she didn’t,  he would understand.  he deserved  her silence.  he had given her enough of his.  )   “  --  hi.  “  

         he’s not sure what he wants to say now.  there’s a lot he’s though about during the duration of his trip.  a lot he should have thought about earlier.  and  --  he was a terrible person.  he was a selfish person.  and it came to his daughter being kidnapped for him to realize how far exactly his parents went for him and how ungrateful he was.  

         after willow,  after everything,  he takes a long leave.  he takes willow with him,  lost as she looks,  unsure as she is.  and they go.  they get away.  (  but it doesn’t solve anything.  it never was going to  --  it was just time to breathe.  he takes her to the ocean,  where she loves,  and lets her go out and play.  he doesn’t hover over her like he wants to.  he doesn’t tell her no to the things he normally would.  

         two months.  two months they stay away.  while she goes down to the hotel restaurant to eat something,  he picks up the phone, and  --  he calls his mother.  

they sit quiet in the kitchen together. ridley holds a cup of warm hot chocolate to his hands, wrapped now from the burns. he was -- out of practice. ( but he had never really been in practice at all, had he. ) but willow was safe, and the state of his hands didn’t matter. nothing really  mattered but her safety, curled up in bed, clean and  asleep.

mom comes back in after being on the phone with who he can only assume is his father, in DC doing -- whatever it was he did now. she looks to him pensively, and he knows a conversation that was supposed to happen a long time ago had to happen now.

         “I was wrong.”