Gregor, post-war. Going backwards is hard. He is twenty-five on the day he wakes up to find that he cannot recall her face.

Gregor doesn't return to the Underland.

He thinks about it, makes plans that will get him down there and back before his mother even notices he's gone, let alone has time to worry. He's not scared and he doesn't chicken out. But every time, things come up, until he learns to stop trying. He stops staring into empty space, thinking of Luxa and Ripred and his friends. He stops looking at people and through them, stops searching for pale skin and silvery hair. His mother never relaxes her guard, but he's so used to it that it doesn't even register.

He's far behind in school, and works hard to catch up. By the time he's finally level with the rest of his class, study has become a habit he doesn't want to break. He doesn't think about the Underland when he's focused on numbers and words. His family notices, but they don't say anything.

He occasionally has trouble with his rager side--it means he never has to worry about bullies, except maybe that he might kill them will a well-placed overpowered punch. It also means that Lizzie is protected.

When she is older, Boots thinks the language of clicks and hisses she speaks like English is one she made up on her own. She doesn't remember the Underland, and the scars her family bears are too deep. They don't tell her why she sometimes hears tiny voices and scratching in the walls. Eventually the crawler's tongue will fade from her mind, but she likes to curse in it, because no one knows what she's saying.

Lizzie is a genius, and moves up to Gregor's year in school because of it. They are each others best friends, brought together by the hardships of a secret war. They don't make any other real friends. The lies are just a bit too thick.

Gregor goes on through school. His father recovers enough to hold a job. His mother starts working when Boots starts kindergarten. Together, the three of them work to send Lizzie to college, and then Boots after her. Lizzie has decided to stop looking down at the streets of New York--and past it to the secret world underneath where man's greatest fears are found--and now looks to the stars, determined to make it up there. Gregor never finds the heart to tell her it won't make up for anything, not even a little. Boots never truly loses her nickname. She goes into the study of insects, something which makes Gregor laugh and cry, and sends their mother into fits of worry--doessheknow ohgoddidsheremember pleasedon'ttakemybabyfrommeagain. Gregor finds a good job and a woman who looks nothing like Luxa, who is nothing like the Queen. Her name is Terra, and she is the first to not ask about the five long-healed scars across his chest. He loves her, though it is nothing like his first.

He is twenty-five on the day he wakes up to find that he cannot recall her face, he can't remember the smell of her hair, the way her eyes sparkled pale purple, her face lit up in laughter from the back of a bat, her mouth twisted into determination as she strikes down foe after foe. He leaves Terra a note--don't wait for me.

He wishes Luxa could have done the same for him. Maybe he could have let go. Maybe not.

He takes nothing with him but a flashlight and the crowbar he uses to pry up the stone in Central Park.

He leaves a note for his parents, too, scratched into the rock.

I'm going home.

Gregor doesn't sign it. He doesn't need to.

I like this one. The beginning feels a bit choppy to me, but it even out nicely enough that I'm not going to fix it. Been trying to write for a week, but nothing came to me (which is odd because I usually have so many ideas that I can't write fast enough before I lose my train of thought).