Disclaimer: Ororo Munroe and all X-Men characters belong to Marvel. I'm just playing in their sandbox.

This was originally written for Northlight's aging challenge, but it doesn't seem to fit anymore. And if it seems that the story has more than a few parallels to my life, well... that was the initial inspiration. :)

This will be my last new comics fanfic until 2000. I'll still be working on "Once Upon an Avalon", but that's about it.

When a bird first learns that she is old enough to leave the nest, she does not merely spread her wings to fly.

No, she struggles and falls, stumbling through many a false start. Sometimes, she does not want to go. It is far easier for her to retreat to the nest, though the warmth had faded in the night and the security only a temporary haven.

I should have flown away a long time ago.

Too many times have I longed for the unknown beyond the gaps in the sheltering leaves, only to look back at the familiar nest and pause in fear. Fear of not being able to truly live, and of letting down my loved ones again if I did.

Too many times have I struggled with my immature wings, longing to let the breeze carry me far away from the earth to which I am bound. Desperate, even, to reach the wide sky that I have known but never truly explored.

Too many times have I gone back to the flimsy nest of hopes and ideals, even as it changed around me. I told myself my family needed me -- and I needed them. Thus I grew old and gray within the dreams I have adopted as my own, while my wings slept and did not dream.

Outside the nest the world marched on without me and changed its plumage, while I danced to the songs of war -- never knowing all the while whether I was truly moving, or rooted to the same spot. A planet spinning on its axis, a cycle of never-ending battles and funerals.

I am old now, and tired.

Please, let me go.

I am no Achilles, the warrior who abandoned his soldiers for a mere whim of wounded pride. If you must accuse me of something, then accuse me of being an old woman who, knowing her time has passed, left her family for the snowy wastelands to die.

I no longer have a place here. The people closest to my heart -- Remy, Kitty, Logan, Piotr, Yukio, poor Jean -- they are either dead or lost to me. The others too have moved on, leaving me behind to carry on the best I could. Save for you, the last of my ties to the X-Men has been severed.

I love you, my students. But you have grown, no longer needing me to look over your shoulders and point towards the road you must take. I do not blame you for needing me as your mentor, but you are no longer children. I only blame myself for not seeing it, for unconsciously encouraging your dependency on me.

Please, let me find something beyond this niche I have carved for myself out of need. Let me learn who I am once again, so I can make my final journey to the Goddess with peace in my soul.

Let me go before my wings drift from sleep to death.

THE END