. Epilogue .
The letter had sat on her pillow when she had returned to the mansion, plain, neat, unassuming. For the first day she had read and re-read it. Afterwards, the weeks had rolled by steadily – of course, nothing mattered much to her but the arms of a newfound lover, and soon that slip of white notepaper had been forgotten.
Years later, she would find it while moving house, at a time in her life when she had thought all choices had been made, ended, and done with.
Ever after she would never remember exactly how it had managed to find its way into her suitcase.
*
‘Dear Rogue,
I know what you’re thinking; that I shouldn’t have left, that we should have sat down and talked about this like adults. To tell you the truth, I’m not liking writing this at all. Only two lines down and already it’s sounding cliched, but the way things are right now, I believe this is the best way. I don’t want us to end up saying things that will only hurt each other. I don’t want tears and recriminations. I don’t regret things ending the way they did. Why make things any worse for us by justifying the reasons why?
This is the reason why I am writing this. I have decided to rejoin the Savants. If you managed to bring Gambit back to the mansion, then I guess you’ll know why. You chose to follow your dreams; whatever body or mind you happened to follow them in, it’s the way this ‘fate’ played out for the both of us. And if you believe in this ‘fate’, and choose to let me go, then perhaps I should abide by it too. Destiny gave me my task – I became her ‘Chronotrigger’, her ‘Time-Trigger’, the one who set her conception of fate into motion by instigating all the events you X-Men tried to prevent. It was something I loathed, because I have never believed in one single guiding force, one that herded us all to one, preordained end. Perhaps it’s strange then, that when I met you I thought I had found the very thing that could help me break away from the purpose that Destiny had created me for. That was why you were so precious to me Rogue. Because you took me away from everything that bound me to this insidious framework called fate.
Ironically, perhaps in meeting you I set off one more event in a chain of many, and committed the crime I’d been so avoiding. I sent Gambit away and spoiled the destiny you and Irene and all the others think should be. You couldn’t carry on loving me because you believed I was something that your premonitions told you I was. Maybe I am that thing – and maybe now I’m a fool for going back to the old cage that held me. But that’s my role in all this – I am the trigger, and what I’m triggering now is the destiny you believe in so badly, Rogue. I can only hope – out of love for you – that it is the right one. Because whatever the future holds for us, we aren’t yet bound to it as we are to the past. You still have a choice, Rogue. Use it wisely.
Best wishes,
Joseph.’
- END -