Mercy takes a step back toward the trailer, gun still raised. Testing if I'll follow. Testing if I'm real, maybe. I don't move. Let her set the pace. Let her decide if I'm worth trusting again.
"I'm stayin’," I say again. “Ya can’t get rid of me that easy.”
Her eyes never leave mine. No words. No welcome. Just a child who's forgotten how to be a child, standing guard over a kingdom of dust and broken promises.
I head towards the steps, feelin’ the need to get this shit over with. To see what I’m comin’ back to. To see what’s left of this piece-of-shit broken place.
Inside, the trailer smells like… something I can't place at first. Not rot or mold. Not exactly clean either. Just... lived in.
Different than I remember.
Mercy comes in behind me, edging past the kitchen counter, keeping her back to the wall, eyes never leaving mine. Smart girl. Never turn your back on what you don't trust.
I glance around, cataloging what's changed and what hasn't. The couch still sags in the middle, threadbare arms worn to the foam. Coffee table's got new scratches. Kitchen sink has dishes in it—not many, but enough to show someone's been eating here.
But there are fresh groceries on the counter. Not much. A loaf of bread that isn't moldy, milk that's still cold, peanut butter, and some apples.
I look over at the corner that acts like a dining room and spot some clean clothes. Folded neatly in stacks of t-shirts and pants. Mercy-sized. Too neat for this nine-year-old to have done herself.
"Where's Destiny?" I ask, turning back to Mercy.
Mercy shakes her head once, quick and definite.
"She here?" I press.
Mercy just stares, her face a blank wall.
I move past her toward the hallway. "I'm gonna check the rooms."
Every door you open in your childhood home shows you who you used to be, and these doors are no different.
The trailer has three bedrooms—if you can call them that. More like closets with doors. I check Destiny's room first. Door's unlocked. I push it open to find... nothing much. Bed's still there, dresser too. But the walls are bare. No clothes in the closet. No sign anyone's slept here in months.
"When did she leave?" I ask over my shoulder.
No answer from Mercy, who's hovering in the hallway, watching me.
I push open the door to my room. It's exactly as I left it three years ago—bed still made with military corners, empty walls, nothing personal here. Not one damn thing because this old trailer was never ‘home’.
And in the center of the linoleum floor, a dead mouse, dried to leather.
It stares back at me, those blank, black, beady eyes, as if to say, welcome home, Legion.
Some homecomings are celebrations.
Others are funerals for the life you thought you'd return to.
I back out of my room, leaving the dead mouse as a memorial to what happens when you disappear for three years. Some things just shrivel up and die when you're not there to keep them breathing.
Not that I had any responsibility to the local rodents, but an omen is an omen.
Back out in the hallway the walls press in and the whole place just feels small and completely insignificant. Mercy trails behind me, her bare feet silent on the linoleum. That BB gun's still in her hands, but pointed down now.
Progress, I guess.
“Who’s been feeding you?” I ask.
Mercy just stares at me.
