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Epilogue

Kendall speaks:

It was almost three years after that day before I set foot on the Mansion grounds, on a sunny autumn's day that seemed to paint everything with that crisp gold that seems to be Nature's way of going out with a bang before winter turns the world barren and cold.

The place seemed unchanged and I was almost overwhelmed by shameless nostalgia as I trod towards the Mansion, maple leaves crunching under my boots.

I felt a bit misplaced, having changed so much since I had left on that nippy September morning. I had grown up and blown away, and now the winds of the world had carried me back home.

My time with S.H.I.E.L.D was spent in a constant state of change and self-discovery. I believe it changed me in ways nothing else save for a lobotomy could. During my three years away, I had cut my hair, taken up smoking, broken the hearts of two men, saved the world a bit more, got a tattoo and earned my very first scar.

Laugh at the last bit all you want, punks. I know it makes me sound like a lily-assed princess, not having a mark on me before I went and played with the big kids, but when you grow up with a healing factor that mends deep tissue damage in a matter of minutes permanent markings take on a novel, grand meaning. You bet your bippy I wear that scar like a badge of honour. I had a good friend die in my arms on that mission. But I digress.

I got a royal welcome once at the mansion. Well, I didn't make it indoors before I was bowled over by Pru, mad as a wasp and unable to decide whether to laugh, cry or beat me into a bloody pulp with her tiny little fists. I may have deserved the black eye she almost gave me. We didn't exactly part on the best of terms, but once she got herself under control Prudence was all smiles. Like everyone else.

I don't think I've ever been hugged so much in a single day. During that day I found myself surrounded by my extended, strange family 'til nightfall, eager for stories and souvenirs. I hadn't realised how much I had missed them and how much the feeling seemed to be mutual.

I also hadn't realised that fool of a Petty was waiting for me, still.

With a guitar strapped to his back like a poor man's Johnny Cash and stinky, cheap menthol roll-your-own cigarette stuck between his lips, still.

Between his insanely kissable lips, still.

With an engagement ring in his pocket and the kindest eyes I've ever seen, still. Said he understood if I wanted to think about it, he did. Asked me to be his wife.

Boy idiot, still.

'Course I said no. I told him he could go ahead and be my husband, though. Would have to start as a fiancée, though, the larval stage of a spouse. He said he didn't care, about anything. I think he knew I hadn't been exactly true nor blue and certainly not a nun through three years.

Non, je ne regrette rien.

It would be two more years until I would return home permanently and grab the reins of my old team, a long engagement during which we saw each other seven times. Seven stolen weekends, twenty days over two years of calloused guitarist's hands tracing the lines of the eagle flying over my solar plexus.

When I finally came home for good, tired and achy after a mission from hell, I tried to pick a fight with him.

I asked him if it didn't bother him not knowing where I had been or what I had done. I asked him if he didn't care that I had blood on my hands, blood in my eyes.

The bastard laughed at me. Nearly broke a rib cackling like a hag until I drenched him with a gust of rain. I asked him what was so damned funny... and wanna know what he said?

He said life was too short, and that I was cute when I'm pissed off.

Fool of a Petty.

The next morning after a little visit to the City Hall there were two of us. The ceremony itself was dull and short, but neither of us wanted embellishments or fussing.

Mother nearly had a coronary when I told 'em. 'Course they threw a party for us at the Mansion, so's Luxie got to play flower girl and Dad walk me down the aisle, the whole shebang. Pru cried her eyes out and Dylan took brotherly pride in taking the pictures.

'Course we also took our leave early from the festivities, by innocently commandeering one of the new jets the Institute had purchased recently.

Something borrowed and something new, and if marrying your first love isn't old, I don't know what is. We set course for a small Polynesian island, stuck some John Mayall and The Bluesbreakers in the sound system and I showed him just how high you can fly on a kestrel's wings.

Carpe diem. I'd come home.





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