Family Reunion

[scalesandsecrets]

My Dear Marie,

I know that we haven't spoken since what happened and I want you to know that I feel terrible about it and that you felt the need to leave. It was my fault, I know that now and I want to ask for your forgiveness.

The truth is I don't know how much longer I have and I don't want to meet with the almighty without having made things right between us. Therefore I've decided to come to Westchester, and if you're willing, to make up with you before it's too late.

You can reach me on the number below.

With all my love,
Priscilla D'Ancanto.

The letter had come a week before, hand written in Priscilla's distinctive handwriting, the paper bearing a trace of the cheap drug-store fragrance she'd always worn. Seven days and a number of hesitant texts later and Priscilla sits at a table in the Westchester Coffee House, her hair tinged with white now, deep lines at the corner of her eyes and skin that's getting spotted and wrinkled with advancing age. But there's a gauntness to her appearance that speaks of ill-health, her clothes hanging off her more loosely than they should, a slight tinge of yellow to the whiteness of her eyes and her skin that speaks of liver problems. Raising a cup of coffee to her lips her hand shakes in a way it didn't in the past, every part of her body language reflecting a woman increasingly worn down by time.

Or so it was meant to appear.

Comments

[notmarieanymore]

Rogue hadn't known what to do when she read the letter. She'd read it again and again and typed a thousand texts to her mother only to delete them. She was fine never speaking with Priscilla again after she and Owen had unceremoniously shoved a gun in her face and told her to get the hell out of their house the moment the ambulance for Cody slammed their doors.

But she was curious. She wanted to know what had happened after she'd left. If Cody recovered, if her father had faced repercussions at work because of her, if her friends all hated her. Sure, it was probably better not to know. But she couldn't sit there with Cody's voice in her head and a list full of questions.

And if her mother was sick... It wouldn't hurt to see her. It couldn't hurt worse than it already had.

So a few weeks later, she's pushing open the door to the coffee shop, and approaching the frail-looking older woman. It had been years since Rogue'd seen her, and she immediately clocks the changes in her. She doesn't bother to order a coffee, but walks right over to the table Priscilla sits at.

Rogue's changed, too. She's the same height, but she's filled out more, her hair with her now trademark streaks, and of course, the soft leather gloves she almost never takes off. She stands in front of her as a grown woman, an X-Man. A far cry from the MRS-degree seeking sorority girl Priscilla had probably expected her to be.

"Mom?," she asks coolly, her accent never having faded. She doesn't move in for a hug.