feathers ↣ w. worthington iii

(6) Winter = The Worst Season

"Your very existence is a source of inspiration and feeling of belonging." Mari Andrew

Lilli spent the rest of October without any mutant interaction. And then November went by. And then December. January and February dragged on without any incidents. By early March, 1984, Lilli had almost completely forgotten her old mutant life. She had a job, was applying for community college later that year, and had new friends. She never used her mutation and hardly ever thought of it. Life was just as it should have been had she not had the gene. The six months she had missed the year before had been almost entirely forgotten.

Except for the nightmares. They plagued her sleep. She couldn't get Kezing's face out of her mind or the terror she'd felt watching Peter die. She felt phantom pain all over after months of fighting and being injured. She couldn't get the voices of her friends out of her mind. Nighttime was the worst time of the day for Lilli. She stayed up late and woke up early to avoid the nightmares. She lived off of coffee and tried everything she could to not ever sleep and succumb to the nightmares.

But there was nothing she could do to stop herself from thinking about Warren. He breached her safe haven of consciousness and followed her around every day, his face burned into the insides of her eyelids and his voice playing on repeat in her ears. She'd loved him, he'd been her partner in crime and had always been there for her even when she'd hated him. He'd meant everything to her, and she'd left him. Like a cruel coward, she'd left him.

Since Lilli had stayed true to her promise to Cas, she didn't know what was happening in the mutant world. She didn't know who was winning the war. She didn't know who was still alive. She was in the dark about everything, and tried her hardest to put it all behind her. To remind herself she shouldn't care about the lives of filthy mutants. And, to an extent, it worked. But there was always the nagging voice in the back of her mind— it was usually Warren's— telling her she was a mutant too and she'd left her mutant family.

Lilli was pretty good at ignoring that voice, which was exactly what she was doing as she walked home from work on a freezing cold Wednesday night. The snow she trekked across was dirty and muddy, as all March snow is in Ohio. There was slush piled on the roads and the early evening sky was gray and bleak. It was a depressing weather day, and Lilli's mind was filled with thoughts of summer as she wrapped her thin coat around her tighter. Her winter coat was in the wash after she'd spilled spaghetti sauce all over it, so she was clad in only a thin red fleece and a heavy white sweatshirt, looking like a giant candy cane. It was only 25 degrees.

Lilli hated winter.

She finally came up to her house, nesting idyllically among other houses in her neighborhood. Its windows gave off a warm orange glow, inviting Lilli to come in from the frigid cold. But as Lilli started walking up the driveway, she paused as she saw an unknown car sitting in her driveway. It looked familiar, but she couldn't quite place where she'd seen it. It was just a red SUV, but Lilli couldn't shake the feeling that she'd seen it somewhere.

A burst of cold wind reminded Lilli of the cold and she quickly forgot about the car as she rushed inside. The warm air hit her like an oven and Lilli smiled as she smelled dinner. Chicken nuggets and Mac and cheese— no matter how old she got, it was still her favorite. Lilli hung up her fleece and stepped into the kitchen, expecting to see her mom standing and stirring the pot of Mac and cheese.

Instead, she was met with her parents sitting and talking amicably with Jean Grey and the ladle of the Mac and cheese stirring all by itself.  

"What the hell.." Lilli murmured to herself, frozen in her spot. What was Jean, of all people, doing in her kitchen talking with her parents?