Mom,
I know I don't email you a lot, but figured I would email you since I haven't been up to visit in a while. Things have been really busy with Archer, and the shop. Well, I can't say so much about the shop... trying to find ways to generate more foot traffic. You know I'm not great with sales and promotion, so I find myself sitting at the counter staring at the shelving, wondering if I need to rearrange them again. So if you have any ideas, feel free to throw them my way.
I'm making enough to pay rent and utilities for the shop, but only just breaking even. I know that's not a bad thing, but colder weather is going to mean a dip in sales, and I want to have a buffer for those months when I don't make enough to pay rent and utilities, you know?
Anyway, I don't mean to worry you. Things are great. But you know me, I'm dad's kid through and through. I know he wanted to have his own wood shop, and I wish we could've given that to him. But even if he did, he would always be looking at the next step. I get the idea now.
I'll be up to visit soon,
Wynne,
This is the last time you will be hearing from me without legal counsel present. You are violating the restraining order that we have on you, and this is the only warning that you will receive from me. Contact me again, and you will not find yourself pleasantly confronted.
But let me make one thing perfectly clear: I am not "forcing" Marina to do anything. She is a brilliant woman who knows exactly what she wants in her life, and her decision and words are her own, not mine. Do I agree with her actions? Yes. You put my daughter through hell. You put her on drugs when she didn't need it. You lied to her for years, you gas-lighted her, and you expect me to just forgive you? Do you know how long it took to get Marina to trust me once she went off the medications? Do you know how hard I worked to make sure she felt she could trust me, and depend on me, but also maintain her relationship with you? I never once took her away from you. I never once told her she couldn't see you, live with you, or speak to you. To accuse me of doing this now is simply an attempt of character assassination. I won't have it.
It's clear to me that you are still living in your delusions. I never once moved you, nor did I promise a life with you. We had a one night stand, and I never heard from you again until Marina was 3. I have been nothing but kind and polite to you, despite my disagreements with you. I have co-parented with you successfully -- to a fault, one that is of your own -- for years. But I never once promised to marry you, or to love you. How could I love someone who treated my own daughter so horribly? Tell me, how could I ever respect someone who has lied to me for 22 years about my son? The fact that you lied to me is fine, I never expect you to treat me the way I deserved to be. While I am tired of being walked over, lead on, and lied to, this is just how you have always been. But to lie to Marina is completely unforgivable. It is her choice to never speak to you again, and I respect that. I stand by it.
Do not reach out to me again. You will be hearing from my legal team. Do not make me repeat myself. For your own good, don't break the restraining order again.
Sincerely,
Marcus
Leanne,
I know you're working on the new positions that we still have open but I need you to prioritize Engineering and Support -- we don't need to worry about a personal/executive assistant for me at the moment. I know you're only going to try to fight me on this, but I really need you to focus on other positions.
I'm sending you a few other jobs that I'd like to see created for some of our smaller departments; these are attached to this email. Put time on my calendar to speak about these once you've gotten some good responses. We should also be looking at some of the interns and try to get them to apply for full time positions as well; we might as well start from hiring up and then look for outside sources.
Thanks,
Marcus
I'm not sure who this is, but the fact that you were right about my son proves you know some things that I don't. Do you know what is behind the memory loss? What else do you know? How often does this happen? Has this happened to me before? Are Marina and Teddy part of this?
Sent from my iPhone
It's one thing that he can't really remember the week, but sadly he's so used to it that he doesn't think twice. It's a lot of deja-vu, things he knows he's experienced before (or even years before) but he can never quite put a finger on it. But this new thing? It happens at the worst possible time.
It happens at the worst possible time, because he is alone, and no one is around to see it happen.
For the last few weeks, Marcus had been trying to come to terms with things he had seen, things he knew he had done, and emails and letters he had read. The strange feeling that his children (still plural, which was so wild to Marcus) had more to them than he knew, that he had more to him that he knew. Letters written in his handwriting, saying thing that only he would know to be true, to validate the integrity of the letter. The words tell him to believe what he's reading, to believe what he's seeing. To believe what he's feeling. Because a side of him is far stronger than the other, and it's time he let that other side take control. He doesn't understand what that means, and is pretty sure he'll never understand that - it's the second (or possibly third) time he's read those words, going over the letter as if it would tell him something else. But the last time the notes from this "Max" indicated that Teddy was his son and he was correct, so Marcus felt that there was far more weight to the words. There had to be.
As if it would help solve his current problems and frustrations, as if it held the key to everything that was seemingly locked away. He was wrong of course, to try to find his answers in a piece of paper, in electronic letters he didn't even remember writing. So he tried to focus on something else. Anything else other than what is currently going through is mind, what is currently plaguing him, what is currently frightening him. That's when it starts.
When he's run low on his glass of bourbon, when he's starting to leave his home office to yet again refill his glass that his metal letter opener comes flying towards him directly off his desk. He hears it first, and turns around to face it. He then sees it, flinches, and holds out his hand and the letter opener stops in mid-air. With one hand on his empty glass and the other hand holding out to seemingly stop the opener, he takes a step forward. Curiosity gets the better of him, because once again the laws of Physics are failing him, the second time in a few short weeks. Only this time, there is no one else around to witness it. This time, Teddy isn't running around him at the speed of light, and they're not excitedly talking about the scientific reasoning for everything.
He's alone. He reaches out to touch the opener, and he does so; the letter opener frozen solid in mid air. It's not until he lowers his hand and he's not thinking of how it's suspended in mid-air that it drops. This can't be right. This doesn't make sense. Everything he's known as a scientist is denying that this could be possible. He shakes his head, blinks a few times, trying to clear his mind of what happened. He's tired. He's been drinking a lot. He must have been seeing things. Though, he didn't believe he had been seeing things when he witnessed the unusual before, so why was he thinking that now? Was it because it was him? It was one thing to stay strong and be there for his children, his family. It was another thing to do that for himself.
With everthing that had happened with Wynne, he had already felt like he was hanging by a thread, wondering what else had been kept from him, what else he might have been lied to about. It wasn't a good place to be. Putting on a good front was easy when people expected a certain thing from you. He learned that early on.
As he walked out of his office and through his living room, Marcus started to notice other objects start lifting from the ground, some suspended in air above their normal resting ground, and others following him towards his kitchen. He found himself hoping that if he walked a little faster, these metal objects would stop coming towards him as if he was suddenly magnetic, but it only causes the objects to follow him faster.
Without thinking about it, he turns around and makes a motion with his hand as if he's pushing back everything that was following him, and to his surprise, they all fall back to the ground. Some objects go flying, due to the speed in which they were traveling, and he's surprised that that particular law of physics was working. Because of course it would be that one.
Marcus allowed himself to fall into the couch, sinking into it as he looked around his living room. He tried to get lost in thought, to think of what the letters and emails said, but instead he was hit with something else. Memories of a man fighting his way through people coming towards them, using anything metalic as a weapon without even touching it. Floating a coin around his hand, the coin never touching his fingers. His three children, the colors of scarlet, blue, and green flashing through as memories. The memory of a red and purple helmet, that looks so familar, and suddenly, a name:
Magneto.
The realization hits Marcus hard, as he drops the empty bourbon glass, and the crystal shatters to the ground. This can't possibly be real. There are too many consequences to this, he couldn't remember last week, but he suddenly was getting filled with memories of this other man, the man he supposedly was.
It takes a moment, but he sits up from the couch and finally allows himself to really look around the living room. Marcus looks around at the objects on the ground, the vase lodged deep into his wall, the other couch turned over on it's side, various objects resting around his living room. It looks like a hurricane came through. But it wasn't a hurricane. It was apparently him.
Then he sees it. A quarter, resting on the ground. He picks it up, turning it over in his hands, and returns to the only still standing couch in the room. Marcus swallows hard, remembering the memory of the coin, as if it was him. He sits down, and stares at the coin, studying it, before he finds himself willing the coin to rise from his hand and to float seamlessly around his fingers with precision he couldn't have even imagined having.
One coin becomes two, becomes other random objects floating around the room, and soon becomes him sitting cross legged, hovering in mid air, using the polarity of the metal objects around him to keep him up. As if it's the most natural thing in the world. Because it feels and is the most natural thing in the world. For a brief moment, he feels a moment of clarity that he hasn't felt in years.
It quickly disappears. He thinks of what he's lost in the past months, and what he's gained. What he's bound to lose. The last thing he wants is to push anyone else further away. He fears that is exactly what this will do.
So he keeps the knowledge between himself and his 'other side', and his destroyed apartment. Because at the moment, with no one else around to hear it, the metal crashing to the ground doesn't make a sound.
Hello...Max.
Or Erik.
Or whatever the hell you go by now.
I want to say that I'm writing you with a clear mind and knowing exactly what I want to say, but I'm not. I can't remember last week at all, all I can remember is just a feeling that I had. One of strange dread. Is that right? Is that what I should have been feeling? There was a weird sense of loneliness too, despite knowing that I have everything I could have possibly wanted and more -- is this something that is left over from you? Are you changing the way that I'm thinking, that I'm feeling?
Teddy came to me to show me his powers before last week, and they were a sight to behold, but I wasn't sure if I fully believed in them. Science tells us a lot of things, and it tells us that those things shouldn't be possible. But I woke up with not only your memories of your life, but with your powers too. I'm trying to learn how to control it, how to not do something accidentally that could harm myself or others, and I suppose I'm asking for your guidance. You seemed willing to offer it before, and I was stubborn to accept. I'm rather stubborn, but after having access to the memories of your life, I'm guessing you're rather stubborn too.
Part of me cannot believe that I am writing an email to another side of me that will read this later on. But, this is my only option. I'm not sure if I am going to tell Marina or Teddy about this yet; if whatever power of yours I have now can possibly harm them, I would never forgive myself. It also wouldn't help my current legal case against Wynne too much.
I suppose when you are around next, please respond. I wish there was a better way to communicate but this will have to do for now.
- Marcus