Holiday Homecoming (backdated to Dec)
May. 17th, 2023 03:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
just2handsOh, the things a person could count on when it came to medical conferences that lasted more than a day. The conference rooms would always, always be too warm and the coffee too cold or burnt. And there was never enough caffeine to keep alert through the endless seminars and the darkened rooms with the never-ending slide shows. Thankfully the hookup culture had come to almost a standstill because of Covid, but still there was no way that Anika wanted to stay in her hotel room another night, ignoring call after call to her room phone and even the more persistent knocks on her door to get the young doctor go out for 'just one' drink at the closest bar.
Free finally from the last meeting, she got lost in the building, and ended up going out the front door of the Rosenberg entrance - exactly opposite of where she needed to be. And December in Boston was just no time to be walking the streets, not when she could inside and stay warm. So Anika went back in and traveled through the Cancer Center to the sky bridge and over to the Klarman building of the Beth Israel hospital complex. From there it was a much shorter trip out a door and across the street to get into the garage before the bitter Boston winter wind froze her to the marrow. As rushed as Ani was to get to her rental car and then home, she paused in the middle of the skyway to admire how pretty the holiday season made the New England city. Even the inside of the hospital was festooned in color. The hospital volunteers had done their best to drape the fake trees with colored lights and there was plenty of red and gold ribbon draped around.
She had meant to take I-90 and head back to the city, she really had. Bad enough trying to make it out of Boston during the holidays, getting back into NYC would be murder. Google Map showed it would take less than 4 hours but Google never really took real world traffic into consideration, at least not in her experience. Instead, strangely, Anika found herself crossing the Charles River, heading up Route 1 and then getting onto Route 128. Heading north. North-East. Toward the ocean, the beach.
Toward home.
A little over an hour later, she found herself where Route 127 A turned into an old, old familiar street. Gripping the wheel with pale knuckles, Ani drove up the street staring hard at the brake lights of the car in front of her. She didn't dare to look left or right at the festival of holiday lights that surrounded her until she got to the end of the road and turned right onto Atlantic Road. Atlantic was a short drive to the next right turn at Beach Road. Beach Road to Brightside Ave and back again to Bass Avenue. This time she drove a bit under the speed limit as she gave furtive glances to the right, and longer looks to the left. Around again and again, and after the fourth time she stopped the car in the parking lot of the coffee shop near the corner. The Surfboard/gift shop next door was new and was closed for the night, the surfboard in the window wrapped in big-bulbed Christmas lights. But the coffee shop itself was still open and doing a brisk business.
Ani's heart was pounding, she had to lean her head back on the headrest with her eyes closed and her mouth open to take in gulps of air. Suddenly too warm, she had to press the buttons on the door and roll the front windows down a few inches to get some air. Only a half mile to the beach, and she could taste the faint salt tang of the Atlantic ocean, even here she could smell the ocean air. Or was that just a memory?
There had been lights on at the house. Lights and Christmas lights - the street was lit up with them. Of course it was, it had always been that way, every year at this time. But more, the lights she had been looking for were there. Reds and blues and greens, they were wrapped around the fence, wrapped around the lamp post in the yard. They were hung across the edge of the roof, draped over the eaves and around the edges of the picture window. Lights and music, and people.
The line to the coffee shop was long, but Ani kept to herself during the wait through the door and to the counter. A few minutes later Anika was sitting back in the car with hot cocoa in her cold hands as she blew air into the top plastic opening of the cup. The wait had been worth it, she decided, taking that first sip.
There had been cars in the long driveway. Cars and trucks on the street. And from within that one house the young mutant could feel the slow pulse of long-unused psychic threads stirring, connecting her even now to human beings that she hadn't seen in over a decade. It was unsafe for her to be here, dammit. Unsafe for her, and even more unsafe for them.
They thought she'd died in a bomb blast while back in med school, a half world and a lifetime ago. That's what they had been told, it's what they believed. And she had never once let them know she was alive, that the stories weren't true. Ani had let them believe she was dead for so many years. But it was safer, She argued with herself. An old mental argument, one she always knew the outcome of. Safe, her family was safe. Safer. They were better off not knowing that she was still alive. Let the past stay buried, let them continue to believe. A painful, choking sensation rose in her throat and Anika's eyes filled with tears. She shouldn't have come. Shouldn't have risked it. Stupid, it was so stupid! What would Onida say, what would Nasir, or oh god, Neph or Ashley? What would Logan -
There was a soft knock on the still partially opened driver's side window and Anika jerked upright, nearly sloshing the hot liquid out of the top opening of her cup. Eyes wide, she stared out the window and up at the man standing outside her vehicle. Wiping her eyes, Ani shook her head and forced herself to blink as she pressed the button to roll down her window a few inches to speak. Not low enough for him to reach through and grab her, but far enough down to be friendly. Far enough to hear him better.
"May I help you?" She found herself asking.
"E jọwọ" Began the man, his voice low. What? If she stared any harder, Ani was sure her eyes would pop out.
He was tall, that she could tell. He stood there, bundled up in a long grey overcoat, a bright green scarf around his neck, with his curly black hair cut short above his ears and his eyes a dark, warm brown. "Excuse me" He said again in her own childhood language, a smile starting to cross his lips.
"Grandma says to stop driving in circles and just come in. You are starting to make her dizzy." The words didn't compute, they didn't make sense. Grandma what, who? Grandma, grandmother. GRANDMOTHER?
"Derek?" Came her breath in a whisper, Ani's eyes tearing up again, blurring the image of this grown man's face that was so strange and yet so suddenly familiar. "Derek?!"
Anika found herself outside the car, pushing her shoulder against the door so hard that she pushed the man back a step in her rush to open it. Outside the car, she found herself caught up in an embrace of warmth, of caring and love. Laughing, crying, she hugged her baby brother tight, not caring about skin contact as she pressed her cheek to his. Not caring about the snow and slush of the parking lot, not caring about the ocean wind. The cup of chocolate lay on it's side at her feet, hot liquid spilling out in a burst.
"Derek, how did you, how did she? I - Derek I" Unable to speak, Ani simply held tight, until finally she was able to break herself away and lean back against the car door, giving them both some space to breathe and speak.
"Gram told me to come fetch you. Said we could talk when we got home and to not dawdle too long. Besides, I want to get back in time for the caroling."
...
"So Derek is an Anglican priest with a wife and two daughters and another baby on the way, and Luke sails down to the Florida Keys every winter where he crews a touristy pirate ship out on the Islands!" Ani was laughing so hard she coughed, choking and yet unable to keep the smile off her face. "Luke has a girlfriend, they do whale sightings and trips up to the Isles of Shoals and down to the Cape and around the Vineyard on his sailboat for half the year, then whoosh, they go south for the other half. I couldn't believe it!"
She was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Amarante's room, her back against the side of the bed as Oni sat on the floor beside her, and Mara lay on the bed looking down at them both. Nodding her head, she answered the next question that came, even as she reached out to the open, half-empty bag of potato chips in front of her. "Yes, I guess my grandmother has the same type of gift, and to a slight extent, so does Derek. He is a bit different - he can get emotions, feelings out of books and papers of all things - handwritten papers I mean, and he says his intuition about people is 'really' good" Her eyes opened wide as she emphasized 'really'.
"But my grandmother? She knew, all this time, that I wasn't dead. She said it wasn't faith, it was my spark that she held on to, no matter what the 'government men' told them. My spark that she," Anika made a motion with her fingers "flicked to get me to come home. Spark, thread, I'm pretty certain it's the same thing. Or a variation of the same thing? She sees people in her thoughts as sparks, and when they die the spark is gone. My spark didn't go, therefore I wasn't dead. She didn't know how far away I was, but she knew that much. And Gram's gift is strong, at least I think it is. We really didn't go into it much, there was too much stuff going on in the house with the holiday and the kids and all."
Another pause as she dipped the chip into the French onion dip, nodding her head to the next question as she fished the broken piece of fried potato out of the bowl. "I don't know how to do what she did, I never even thought about it before. And I don't know what I'm going to do now that we are back in touch. I do know that I had to tell my aunts maybe four or five times that I was already in a long-time relationship so that they didn't go trying to hook me up with some overseas distant cousins. Dad and Mom are both on my side about that. But I am going to have to introduce Nasir to them sooner rather than later."
There was a heavy sigh. "It was kind of overwhelming, kind of strange, but goodish, you know? I'm still not sure I did the right thing, I tried to tell them - without telling them - that I'm happy, and safer now. But obviously I couldn't go into details. I think Gram knows, but she's keeping quiet about it around the rest of them. And some of her questions, when we had time alone? They were really unusual, really putting me on the spot. And yes, it felt good, but it wasn't home. Not anymore, maybe not for a long time. Not like here."
"Hi Mom" she mimicked "My best friend is a werewolf and so is my boyfriend as well as most of my adopted family, except for my younger sister who does wild, crazy things with metal and elements. My roommate can walk through realities and has a green thumb like you wouldn't believe. And I once dated a shark, and am good friends with a mer-man. OH! And I got my alien motorcycle from a space-bounty hunter."
Ani turned to Onida with a shrug. "See what I mean? We really don't have anything in common anymore. We all love the ocean though. And our whole love of music - we get that from Mom. There is that at least." She popped another dip-filled potato chip into her mouth, chewing and trying to swallow before she spoke again. "So! My grandmother was asking me, so I have to ask you both - When do you guys want to come meet my Grandma?"
Free finally from the last meeting, she got lost in the building, and ended up going out the front door of the Rosenberg entrance - exactly opposite of where she needed to be. And December in Boston was just no time to be walking the streets, not when she could inside and stay warm. So Anika went back in and traveled through the Cancer Center to the sky bridge and over to the Klarman building of the Beth Israel hospital complex. From there it was a much shorter trip out a door and across the street to get into the garage before the bitter Boston winter wind froze her to the marrow. As rushed as Ani was to get to her rental car and then home, she paused in the middle of the skyway to admire how pretty the holiday season made the New England city. Even the inside of the hospital was festooned in color. The hospital volunteers had done their best to drape the fake trees with colored lights and there was plenty of red and gold ribbon draped around.
She had meant to take I-90 and head back to the city, she really had. Bad enough trying to make it out of Boston during the holidays, getting back into NYC would be murder. Google Map showed it would take less than 4 hours but Google never really took real world traffic into consideration, at least not in her experience. Instead, strangely, Anika found herself crossing the Charles River, heading up Route 1 and then getting onto Route 128. Heading north. North-East. Toward the ocean, the beach.
Toward home.
A little over an hour later, she found herself where Route 127 A turned into an old, old familiar street. Gripping the wheel with pale knuckles, Ani drove up the street staring hard at the brake lights of the car in front of her. She didn't dare to look left or right at the festival of holiday lights that surrounded her until she got to the end of the road and turned right onto Atlantic Road. Atlantic was a short drive to the next right turn at Beach Road. Beach Road to Brightside Ave and back again to Bass Avenue. This time she drove a bit under the speed limit as she gave furtive glances to the right, and longer looks to the left. Around again and again, and after the fourth time she stopped the car in the parking lot of the coffee shop near the corner. The Surfboard/gift shop next door was new and was closed for the night, the surfboard in the window wrapped in big-bulbed Christmas lights. But the coffee shop itself was still open and doing a brisk business.
Ani's heart was pounding, she had to lean her head back on the headrest with her eyes closed and her mouth open to take in gulps of air. Suddenly too warm, she had to press the buttons on the door and roll the front windows down a few inches to get some air. Only a half mile to the beach, and she could taste the faint salt tang of the Atlantic ocean, even here she could smell the ocean air. Or was that just a memory?
There had been lights on at the house. Lights and Christmas lights - the street was lit up with them. Of course it was, it had always been that way, every year at this time. But more, the lights she had been looking for were there. Reds and blues and greens, they were wrapped around the fence, wrapped around the lamp post in the yard. They were hung across the edge of the roof, draped over the eaves and around the edges of the picture window. Lights and music, and people.
The line to the coffee shop was long, but Ani kept to herself during the wait through the door and to the counter. A few minutes later Anika was sitting back in the car with hot cocoa in her cold hands as she blew air into the top plastic opening of the cup. The wait had been worth it, she decided, taking that first sip.
There had been cars in the long driveway. Cars and trucks on the street. And from within that one house the young mutant could feel the slow pulse of long-unused psychic threads stirring, connecting her even now to human beings that she hadn't seen in over a decade. It was unsafe for her to be here, dammit. Unsafe for her, and even more unsafe for them.
They thought she'd died in a bomb blast while back in med school, a half world and a lifetime ago. That's what they had been told, it's what they believed. And she had never once let them know she was alive, that the stories weren't true. Ani had let them believe she was dead for so many years. But it was safer, She argued with herself. An old mental argument, one she always knew the outcome of. Safe, her family was safe. Safer. They were better off not knowing that she was still alive. Let the past stay buried, let them continue to believe. A painful, choking sensation rose in her throat and Anika's eyes filled with tears. She shouldn't have come. Shouldn't have risked it. Stupid, it was so stupid! What would Onida say, what would Nasir, or oh god, Neph or Ashley? What would Logan -
There was a soft knock on the still partially opened driver's side window and Anika jerked upright, nearly sloshing the hot liquid out of the top opening of her cup. Eyes wide, she stared out the window and up at the man standing outside her vehicle. Wiping her eyes, Ani shook her head and forced herself to blink as she pressed the button to roll down her window a few inches to speak. Not low enough for him to reach through and grab her, but far enough down to be friendly. Far enough to hear him better.
"May I help you?" She found herself asking.
"E jọwọ" Began the man, his voice low. What? If she stared any harder, Ani was sure her eyes would pop out.
He was tall, that she could tell. He stood there, bundled up in a long grey overcoat, a bright green scarf around his neck, with his curly black hair cut short above his ears and his eyes a dark, warm brown. "Excuse me" He said again in her own childhood language, a smile starting to cross his lips.
"Grandma says to stop driving in circles and just come in. You are starting to make her dizzy." The words didn't compute, they didn't make sense. Grandma what, who? Grandma, grandmother. GRANDMOTHER?
"Derek?" Came her breath in a whisper, Ani's eyes tearing up again, blurring the image of this grown man's face that was so strange and yet so suddenly familiar. "Derek?!"
Anika found herself outside the car, pushing her shoulder against the door so hard that she pushed the man back a step in her rush to open it. Outside the car, she found herself caught up in an embrace of warmth, of caring and love. Laughing, crying, she hugged her baby brother tight, not caring about skin contact as she pressed her cheek to his. Not caring about the snow and slush of the parking lot, not caring about the ocean wind. The cup of chocolate lay on it's side at her feet, hot liquid spilling out in a burst.
"Derek, how did you, how did she? I - Derek I" Unable to speak, Ani simply held tight, until finally she was able to break herself away and lean back against the car door, giving them both some space to breathe and speak.
"Gram told me to come fetch you. Said we could talk when we got home and to not dawdle too long. Besides, I want to get back in time for the caroling."
...
"So Derek is an Anglican priest with a wife and two daughters and another baby on the way, and Luke sails down to the Florida Keys every winter where he crews a touristy pirate ship out on the Islands!" Ani was laughing so hard she coughed, choking and yet unable to keep the smile off her face. "Luke has a girlfriend, they do whale sightings and trips up to the Isles of Shoals and down to the Cape and around the Vineyard on his sailboat for half the year, then whoosh, they go south for the other half. I couldn't believe it!"
She was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Amarante's room, her back against the side of the bed as Oni sat on the floor beside her, and Mara lay on the bed looking down at them both. Nodding her head, she answered the next question that came, even as she reached out to the open, half-empty bag of potato chips in front of her. "Yes, I guess my grandmother has the same type of gift, and to a slight extent, so does Derek. He is a bit different - he can get emotions, feelings out of books and papers of all things - handwritten papers I mean, and he says his intuition about people is 'really' good" Her eyes opened wide as she emphasized 'really'.
"But my grandmother? She knew, all this time, that I wasn't dead. She said it wasn't faith, it was my spark that she held on to, no matter what the 'government men' told them. My spark that she," Anika made a motion with her fingers "flicked to get me to come home. Spark, thread, I'm pretty certain it's the same thing. Or a variation of the same thing? She sees people in her thoughts as sparks, and when they die the spark is gone. My spark didn't go, therefore I wasn't dead. She didn't know how far away I was, but she knew that much. And Gram's gift is strong, at least I think it is. We really didn't go into it much, there was too much stuff going on in the house with the holiday and the kids and all."
Another pause as she dipped the chip into the French onion dip, nodding her head to the next question as she fished the broken piece of fried potato out of the bowl. "I don't know how to do what she did, I never even thought about it before. And I don't know what I'm going to do now that we are back in touch. I do know that I had to tell my aunts maybe four or five times that I was already in a long-time relationship so that they didn't go trying to hook me up with some overseas distant cousins. Dad and Mom are both on my side about that. But I am going to have to introduce Nasir to them sooner rather than later."
There was a heavy sigh. "It was kind of overwhelming, kind of strange, but goodish, you know? I'm still not sure I did the right thing, I tried to tell them - without telling them - that I'm happy, and safer now. But obviously I couldn't go into details. I think Gram knows, but she's keeping quiet about it around the rest of them. And some of her questions, when we had time alone? They were really unusual, really putting me on the spot. And yes, it felt good, but it wasn't home. Not anymore, maybe not for a long time. Not like here."
"Hi Mom" she mimicked "My best friend is a werewolf and so is my boyfriend as well as most of my adopted family, except for my younger sister who does wild, crazy things with metal and elements. My roommate can walk through realities and has a green thumb like you wouldn't believe. And I once dated a shark, and am good friends with a mer-man. OH! And I got my alien motorcycle from a space-bounty hunter."
Ani turned to Onida with a shrug. "See what I mean? We really don't have anything in common anymore. We all love the ocean though. And our whole love of music - we get that from Mom. There is that at least." She popped another dip-filled potato chip into her mouth, chewing and trying to swallow before she spoke again. "So! My grandmother was asking me, so I have to ask you both - When do you guys want to come meet my Grandma?"
