Face the Morning

He stopped because he was out of money and was unwilling to call the Professor for more. He stayed because it was, well because it was the exact opposite of Westchester. It was warm here, bright, empty. When it rained the rain was cleansing and healing. And the stars here…so bright, so clear. He wished Kitty could see them.

“Hey bartender! Gimme another!” A kid called. Scott rolled his eyes behind his glasses. Who would think he’d end up a bartender? That had been Logan’s scene, not his. He pulled a beer up from behind the counter and slid it down to the kid.

All in all it was not a bad gig. He’d been out of Westchester for a year, been in New Mexico for six months. It was an amazingly small town. So small in fact, that the bar Scott worked in was the only bar in town. He idly wiped the bar with a cloth.

“Have you ever been betrayed?” A girl asked suddenly, her face streaked with tears. Scott, sighed, he’d never been good at being a confidante, an advisor.

Well, I was forced out of my home and told not to come back. So I didn’t. “I, uh, accepted it. We all make mistakes. And I, um, I have to hope that my betrayers regret their actions,” Scott sighed.

“I’m saying I got over it. I don’t know the circumstances of your betrayal.” All this time and I still sound like a teacher. “You have to decide whether who ever betrayed you is worth going back, or not.”

“I guess.” That was what annoyed Scott. He empathized with these people, put his heart into advising them, and all he got out of it was an “I guess.”

The bar, like many others, closed at one AM. Scott got home most nights by two or so, and when he got back he usually crashed. It was one of the things he had slowly gotten used to and learned to love, this lack of rigidity. If his students could see him now - tan and stubbly, t-shirts and jeans. He didn’t think he’d owned a pair of jeans when he’d lived at the mansion.

He was a sound sleeper, always had been. So it was odd that he woke up at six instead of his usual nine or ten. “Huh?” he mumbled fumbling for his glasses.

“Uh, no.” Scott was thinking, and he’d gotten a little less than four hours of sleep. “What if I don’t want to go back?” he asked.

“Because you don’t trust me, you kicked me out, you betrayed me…must I go on?” Scott asked.

~No. I can understand your reluctance. There is, of course, no pressure. But Westchester has been your home for many years.~

But, and though Scott was reluctant to admit it, the mansion on Greymalkin Lane was home. Not his shabby, one room apartment, though it had become a sanctuary. And what was the point of being in New Mexico if he hadn’t learned how to survive at the mansion?

Scott looked back through the rearview mirror of his dusty white pick-up truck as he left. The little town would always be part of his heart.