Fic: Blue of Oblivion
E-mail: violet147@yahoo.com
Rating: Strong R. Possibly NC-17.
Warnings: Some serious dark themes. You are warned.
Feedback: Always appreciated.
Pairings: Implied Bobby/John, implied John/Magneto
Summary: What shall they do with their former student?
Notes: Inspired by Sullen Girl by Fiona Apple


Days like this, I don’t know what to do with myself
All day, and all night
I wander the halls along the walls and under my breath,
I say to myself
I need fuel- to take flight-

Every night at 3:47 a.m., it’s the same thing. A soft, continuous padding of feet, each step on the hardwood floor merely making a tiny impression. It takes only a minute for Bobby to bolt out of his sleep and for it to register in his ears what’s going on, but he does not really need to hear it to know that it’s happening again, nor does he need his body’s sensitivity to heat to tell him who’s out there, as their feet retrace steps that they have taken a million times over by now. Yet each step resonates on Bobby’s heart, like each step is being taking by a steel-toed boot instead of the bare feet Bobby knows are out there.

He tries not to wake Marie as he climbs out of their bed. She used to wake up with him and follow the footsteps, but after two months, she claimed exhaustion and left the task to rest upon Bobby alone. He’s not mad at her; she already carries more weight in her head than Bobby could ever hope to share with her.

He opens the door and peers out, and the silhouette is already turning the corner, like Bobby knows it always does. He shuts the bedroom door with a quiet click (it sounds like an explosion in his ears, though), and silently starts to follow the shadow. He knows he’ll be able to catch up quickly, like he always does, but he still walks quietly, stealthily, like no one’s supposed to know that someone’s wandering the halls late at night, when it’s really no secret at all.

It doesn’t take him very long, and when he reaches his hand out, the silhouette jumps and hits the wall with a solid thunk, and Bobby’s heart breaks for the millionth time as he’s forced to look at the utter fear and desperation in John’s eyes for the millionth time since John got back three months ago. He puts his hands on John’s shoulders and says, “It’s me, John, it’s me.” Like he always has to, and like he always does.

John’s breathing heavily, but he puts his hands on top of Bobby’s and nods, nods as if he understands that it’s Bobby in front of him. He takes a deep breath and looks up at Bobby, but his eyes are still so wide, they look like they’re going to pop out of his head at any second. Bobby steps back to let John pull himself off the wall, and when Bobby wraps his arm around John’s shoulders, his heart sinks as John visibly flinches, even though Bobby’s arm is just barely on him.

They walk to John’s room, which is the room he used to share with Bobby, but now he sleeps alone, even though everyone knows that being alone only makes the nightmares worse. The Professor thinks that being alone will help John in the end, but for the first time since he’s met The Professor, Bobby can’t agree with that, not when John’s screaming in the middle of the night or worse…walking around the halls like it’s a tomb.

“I’m sorry,” John tells him after they’re in his room and Bobby pulls the covers out for John to crawl into. His eyes are half-closed, and his hair is falling into his eyes. Bobby used to tease John, back when they were sophomores, about his addiction to hair gel, but John hasn’t touched a single bottle of it since he got back. Sometimes Bobby has to wake him up and force him in the shower, or force him to get into clean clothes. It used to be the other way around, John forcing Bobby out of bed, into the shower, so they could go outside and play around with their powers. But things change, and when it comes to this, it has changed in the ways that the word drastically cannot cover.

“It’s okay, just try to get some sleep,” Bobby replies soothingly, his hand lingering just above John’s shoulder-blade, but just lingering. He decides he’s going to start keeping a mental tab of how many times his heart can be broken in a single night, because John’s looking at him, with such tortured, haunted eyes, Bobby thinks he’s going to start crying any second. But he smiles anyway as John crawls into the bed, and he feels such a sense of melancholy as he tucks John in like he will his future children.

“I won’t…be able to-“

“John. Just try, okay?”

“Okay.” He pauses for a moment, and says, in a quiet, meek voice. “I need to get out of here.”

“But John, you can’t leave the school, he’ll try-“

“No,” John interrupts, and he turns those big dark eyes onto Bobby, but they’re so empty, despite the darkness. “No, Bobby. I don’t mean. Here. I mean….I need to get out of…you know-“

“Please, John.” Bobby closes his eyes, and although he desperately wishes he could touch John’s face, he knows he can’t. “Please. Just try to get some sleep.”

John nods, but only because the automatic pilot switch inside him has been turned on to do such things. “Okay,” he whispers, and he rolls over onto his left side, away from Bobby, and brings his knees up to his chest, letting out a deep sigh. Bobby stands there for a moment, looking at John’s spine and how it used to be so straight and proud, and how it now seems to have developed scoliosis, even though all the tests that the Professor performed on John after he got back said that physically, John was just fine.

Tests are bullshit, Bobby thinks to himself as he shuts the bedroom door and sneaks away back to his room. Everyone knows that John’s not fine. And although no one says it, everyone knows that John’s never going to be fine, until he does get out of here.

Out of life, that is.

**

And there’s too much going on But it’s calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion Under the waves in the blue of my oblivion

When John hit puberty and grew five inches and gained muscle in three months, he told Bobby that from then on, he would only wear shirts showing off his arms and his chest, and jeans that made his ass “look like the ass of a Greek God.” Bobby thought it was egotistical, but he understood, because both of them had been extremely scrawny and short when they first started school here. And after Bobby himself hit his spurt and couldn’t stop staring at his suddenly chiseled cheekbones, he stopped teasing John and referring to John as Narcissus in conversation with other students.

Now, when John can actually get out of bed and pick his clothes out himself, he doesn’t go for the body-displaying shirts he used to own, or any of his old jeans. He usually never changes out of his pajama pants, which used to be baggy before but now, hang off his hips, and his shirts are always long-sleeved, sleeves floating past his hands, clinging to his collarbone but billowing everywhere else. He doesn’t bother with socks. He probably hasn’t put shoes on since he got back, and he only changes clothes when Bobby or the Professor or Storm comes in and helps him undress.

He doesn’t go to class, nor does he train, instead, he sits in his room during the daylight hours, sitting in a chair next to the window, staring out like he’s actually somewhere else and his body is all that’s left. But that is what it is; all that’s left of John is his body, not his mind or his quick wit or his stunningly well-timed moments of clarity and comfort that he used to spring upon Bobby at two in the morning.

And everyone has a different opinion as to what should be done with John. There have been countless group meetings about it, with the X-Men trying to decide what to do with the former student, and it just pisses Bobby off how detached they are about it, like John is some fucking number in a file, like Storm and Scott and Logan are parole officers and they get to decide what John’s fate is, like John is some sort of prisoner. Which he is a prisoner, but not their prisoner. He is a prisoner of himself.

What makes Bobby mad is that they act like they know. They act like they know what’s in John’s head, when they don’t at all. Not even Bobby knows, and while that tears Bobby up inside, he refuses to decide John’s fate when he knows nothing of how it feels for John to be stuck with this fate. And while Bobby goes into his room and cries after he visits with John, he will not stand up and make decisions concerning John’s life and what to do with it.

So if John wants to sit at his window, if he doesn’t want to change his clothes or smile or make witty, brilliant remarks or go to a therapy that’s not going to help, then Bobby will not force him to. And he will not stop telling the rest of them that they have no right to say that they should do this to John, they should do that to John.

Because someone already decided to do this to John, and to do that to John, and Bobby refuses to let that happen again.

***

Is that why they call me a sullen girl- sullen girl They don’t know I used to sail the deep and tranquil sea But he washed me shore and he took my pearl- And left an empty shell of me

Bobby’s been with the X-Men for five years now, so all the kids that were freshmen when he graduated are no longer there anymore. Therefore, none of the kids remember the way John used to be, before all this. They do not know that he used to burn so brightly, used to soar above everyone else with the greatest of ease and with the most beautiful, pure smile on his face.

They do not know that ghost-like creature they’ve never seen but heard about, wandering the halls late in the night and howling in agony at the thought of dreaming, is actually not John. Nor do they know what happened to John. Oh, they know what he did, how he left the school and went with the Brotherhood; he used to be an example in class for the teachers to preach about how you should always love humans even when they’ve got a gun at your temple, because if you didn’t, you’d end up like John Allerdyce. But they do not know what happened to bring him back, why he is physically here but mentally gone.

They do not understand yet just how cruel not their fellow man, but fellow mutant, is. That John not only made a choice that endangered the war, but endangered him as well. But then again, John hadn’t known either, what he was truly getting himself into when he boarded that helicopter, when he vowed to follow Magneto to the ends of the earth for their cause.

He hadn’t known that Magneto’s cause had not included complete dominance over humanity, but complete dominance over mutants as well. No one else had known, either, including Bobby, until that fateful day when he had went outside to change the oil in Marie’s car and found John sitting on the porch, back against the mansion, his hands in his face, three of the buttons ripped off his button-down shirt, no socks on, his mouth caked with blood and his eyes swimming in tears.

Bobby had screamed for help and had went over to John, to wrap him in a hug, but when John let out a blood-curdling scream that could rival Theresa’s, Bobby had realized that the school prepared mutants for humanity, but not for each other. They had all been walking around with the knowledge of how to counter plasma blasts and how to make helmets out of anything but metal, but they had been walking around blindly, for they hadn’t known how to counter the cruel and savage acts they could inflict on each other with their own body parts.

No one had known, and everyone had been horrified as John was finally sedated and in bed, blood cleaned off his mouth and other parts, and they had been told that there was no way to be able to tell how many times John’s body, and his mind, had been violated over the five-year span he had been gone. They had simply stared in shock as they finally understood that you did not need superpowers to inflict the greatest of evil on each other. They had said nothing as they learned that the cost of war was not the loss of humanity. They had looked over at John, practically lifeless in the bed, and realized that the cost of war was the loss of innocence.

****

And there’s too much going on But it’s calm under the waves, in the blue of my oblivion Under the waves in the blue of my oblivion Under the waves in the blue of my oblivion It’s calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion

John has not used his powers since the day he came back. Bobby notices this one day as he sits in John’s room, sitting in the chair John used to sit in with his lighter in his hand, making various fire shapes in his hand, including a penis. Bobby chuckles a bit as he remembers how pleased with himself John had been, how John had tracked him down in the library, pulled him aside and showed him what he could do.

“You’re weird,” Bobby had said.

“I’m the coolest fucker on the planet,” John had replied.

He’s still smiling to himself when John looks up from the window, looking at him curiously, like he doesn’t remember what a laugh sounds like. Bobby quiets himself and apologizes.

“What are you laughing about?” John asks. His words are very precise now, as if he’s thinking and choosing what to say now instead of just blurting it out like he used to.

“I was just remembering how pleased you were with yourself when you made the fire penis,” Bobby answers. There’s a ghost of a smile on John’s face. This is the first time John has smiled in three months, and Bobby can’t help the slight flame of hope that’s burning inside him, that maybe he’s wrong, maybe John WILL be fine someday. John turns back to the window and sighs deeply, leaning his head against the class, and the smile, along with the uplifting of hope, disappear as he closes his eyes.

Bobby just lets the silence sit, as he tries to think of happier times when John was not sinking down to the bottom like he is now. He tries to shut off the voice in his head that’s been screaming ever since John got back, the voice that keep chanting what Bobby cannot bring himself to say aloud. He tries to close off the flashes he’s been getting non-stop since John got back, flashes of John pinned, of John screaming, of John being slapped and his legs being pushed apart, of Magneto’s face leering above John’s, of Magneto’s voice rasping in some European language that sounds harsh and cruel in John’s ears, of Magneto pushing himself all the way inside John, relishing every time John broke.

Bobby closes his eyes and tries to bore the images out of his head. He’s going to be sick if he thinks about it anymore, but it’s all he can think every time he’s with John, and he cannot imagine how it is for John, who has to think about it every waking and sleeping moment. He cannot imagine how John is able to swallow back the nausea of having to live it over and over again, when Bobby himself can barely hold the bile back for just a few moments.

“What do you see?” Bobby ends up asking after an eternity of silence. He waits for John to open his eyes, but he doesn’t, he merely clinches them tighter. Bobby’s not surprised that John is not going to answer; he never answers anything anymore, least of all questions that remind him of old memories.

So when John actually says, “Waves,” Bobby is shocked. He waits for John to say something, waits for a pearl of wisdom, something that will tell Bobby that John’s not dead, just in a coma with his eyes open. And when John opens his eyes and his head swings over to look at Bobby, Bobby holds his breath in anticipation, waiting. “They’re very blue,” John ends up saying.

Bobby blinks, as he waits for John to say more, but John is looking at him like it is Bobby’s turn to speak. Bobby licks his lips and says something he didn’t know he had intentions to say. “Did you ever try to get away?” he asks. John glances down, at his feet, then looks back up at Bobby, and he nods.

“Every day,” he whispers. John looks back out the window as Bobby tries to recollect himself, and he ends up shivering a bit, as if he’s cold.

“Are you cold?” Bobby asks. John nods. “Do you need your lighter? So you can warm up?” Bobby asks.

John shakes his head, and he runs a hand through his hair. “I can’t warm up. Not anymore,” he shares.

“What do you mean?” Bobby asks, his voice barely above a whisper.

The pain in John’s voice…Bobby can never forget it as long as he lives. “Something happened when he... I don’t know what. I can’t. I can’t control them. The flames. Not anymore. They’re gone.”

Bobby stands up and walks over to John slowly as John wraps his arms tighter around his knees. “It’s not so bad. The flames being gone. It’s like. I’m glad they’re gone, because it reminds me of him, because of his. Passion. The fire in his eyes when he spoke about. You know. The war and shit.” Bobby is standing in front of him now as tears spill out of John’s eyes, and as he looks up at Bobby, there is still no life there, even as they shine. “The waves are calm. They don’t burn. It’s nice,” he chokes out, his shoulders heaving as he starts to sob.

Bobby wraps his arms around John, and John flinches so violently that Bobby almost falls over, but his grip is tight around John, for he will not let go, not now. Eventually John starts to relax and he wraps his arms back around Bobby, and he cries into Bobby’s chest, his hands gripping handfuls of the skin on Bobby’s arms. Bobby closes his eyes and instead of seeing the horrible images he’s been seeing for three months, he sees only light and faith.

Bobby starts to gently rock him, smoothing John’s hair down, and eventually John’s sobs start to die out, until John is breathing against Bobby’s chest and his arms are wrapped around Bobby in an actual embrace. Eventually he looks up at Bobby, his eyes still shining from the crystal tears, and while there is no smile on his face, there is a tiny bit of light in his eyes. “Hey,” he says softly, as if something’s dawning on him.

“What?”

“Your eyes. They’re as blue as the waves.” His voice is the calmest its been in three months.

Bobby smiles, and while he wishes he could kiss John on the lips, he will settle for placing a phantom kiss on John’s forehead, and hugging John tighter to him. “You can look at them as long as you need to,” he murmurs.


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