A letter left on Alison's pillow

[x-jetstream.livejournal.com]

A letter, handwritten, left for Alison.



Dear Alison:

This is not easy for me, so I've decided to write it all down for you. I'm ... drowning, I guess you could say. Nate thinks so, anyway, and as much as I hate to admit it he's right. Forge put it in stark perspective for me - I have a problem. Not the machine, not the MMI, not the hardware.

Me. The problem is me.

That's very difficult for me to accept. Everything that I have - everything I am - I have achieved because I've worked for it. I survived my crash by out-stubborning my injuries and a core refusal to lay down and die like I should. I learned to walk again, to run again, to fly again through sheer bloody-minded stubborn-ness. Some of it I needed help with, and Emma gave it to me. But once she helped me past the first hurdle, they couldn't _keep_ me out of the air. All she did was show me the door - I'm the one who crawled through it.

But now all of that - those habits, those ways of being - they're the problem. I'm trying too hard, Alison, and if this keeps up I will either tear myself apart or wind up like I am now - a pale shell of who and what I used to be. The telepaths can't reach in and fix it - I've asked. I have to do this on my own. You can't fix it for me either, as much as I suspect you might like to.

But that's the catch. I'm not sure if I can. I'm not good at surrendering. Nate just got angry with me when I tried to tell him about this - he's been through something similar (but far, far worse) in his time and he has little patience for what he considers to be foolishness. And it is foolish, but it is also who and what I am. He beat me over the head with the Talk To Charles or Jack bludgeon.

You know about the nightmares. That presence in my mind - cold, alien, watching. I have to learn to surrender to that, to embrace it as a part of myself and not some, as Forge put it, strap-on. Charming boy, Forge. But he's got a point. It was comfortable (and true!) to consider the old system something external to myself. But the new system's not like that. I have to accept it as me if this is ever going to work as designed. Going back to the old system is, I'm given to understand, also not an option.

And I'm not sure how to get past this.

So I guess I'm just asking you for your patience. You can't fix this any more than Nathan can, or than Charles can. This has to come from inside of me if I am _ever_ going to be Jetstream again. But what I really have to know is, and what is killing me inside to ask ...

Is it enough for you if I am just Haroun ibn Sallah al-Rashid and not Jetstream? If I can never come back, if I'm just a man and not an X-Man or a mutant anymore - is that something you can accept? I won't even ask for anything more - all I feel I can ask for is acceptance.

I'd be a liability for you, a big fat helpless target for anyone who wanted to strike at the X-Men through their dependents. Because that's what I'd be. A dependent. Not an equal, not a lover, not someone on your level, but a supplicant. And I don't know if I can be that. I want to be all of those things - your lover, your equal, someone to stand at your side for all the days to come. I don't have any right to ask you to walk away just because I can't do what I love anymore. I won't do that to you. I refuse.

Well, I think I've rambled enough, and it's getting hard to see in here. I will leave this for you to read in peace. Take as much time as you need to give me an indication of what it is that you want.

Love,
Haroun