Hello, I'm someone you won't care about. I'm no hero. I'm no brave girl fighting for justice. I'm not even a mutant trying to survive in the harsh, cold world we call home.
Don't worry, it's not my story I'm trying to tell anyway. This is my sister's story. She was the strong one, and she was unlucky enough to be the mutant as well.
"Hey, sis?" I looked up from my book to see my younger sister standing before me. Well, to be accurate, I looked up to see her denim clad legs standing before me.
"What are you doing here?" I craned my neck up to see her face. "Not afraid to be seen with your geeky older sister?"
"Nah," She sat down on the grass in front of me, "No one but you comes to this park." I relaxed against the tree at my back. "Besides, I figure my charm and good looks will keep me popular."
I snorted. "And your modesty."
She grinned at me. "That's right!"
I put my book down. For all her cheerfulness, there was an unusual tenseness in her.
"What's up?"
My sister's hazel eyes, so very like my own, bore into me.
"I'm a mutant." She rushed the words out so quickly they were barely intelligible. Her chin jutted out defiantly, but her expression was a heart breaking mix of hope and low expectations. I couldn't think of what to say, at first. But then I saw the hope turn to hurt. I scooted forward, so I could put my arms around her. She nestled her head against my neck, as she had done so many times before, when she woke up at night screaming for our dead mother.
"I don't care. You're my sister, and I love you."
She started to cry, and I cried with her.
Bet this stories boring so far. Bet you already know what will happen. My naive sister will reveal this to our parents, who are really mutant haters, and get kicked out of the house or something? No, don't worry. Our mother is long dead, and our father is openly anti-mutant. No, my naive sister, she told someone different.
"Hey, sis?" I looked away from my window to see my little sister standing in my doorway.
"Yeah?" My sister sat tensely on my bed next to me.
"I have a problem."
"Oh my god, you're not pregnant are you?" My exaggeratedly serious tone startled a bark of laughter out of her.
"No," she sighed, "You know Simon?"
I nodded, though I cringed inwardly. I knew she was too good for that bastard.
"You could do so much better then him." I told her, keeping my tone light, for what must have been the hundredth time since she had started dating him a month ago.
Something flickered in her eyes, but I couldn't tell what.
"Well, he thinks he's too good for me now."
That should have warned me. Simon and his father were very anti-mutant. His father and ours often went and got drunk together, complaining about the dangerous mutants.
But my sister didn't know this. She thought Simon was a good person and he could see through his father's evil; understand that mutants were people too.
"I told him that I can heal people. He... didn't like it." She bit her bottom lip, unintentionally telling me how close to tears she was. "His dad heard him yelling at me.
I slipped her hand into mine, silently trying to tell her that I would be there for her.
"I need to get out of here," she whispered, tightening her grasp on my hand. "Simon might not come after me, but chances are his father and his friends will."
That was when the first little part of me started to break, my heart, my soul, my spirit, whatever you think it is. I stated to shatter when I realized my little sister was right.
But I didn't tell her that. I didn't tell her how furious it made me to see how fast she had to grow up. I didn't tell her how I wanted to take her and hide her from all the pain and suffering being forced on her.
I just told her, "I know," and felt myself beak a little more.
Unoriginal story, right? Like so many others. You don't want to hear about the pain, the loss, the suffering do you? You want to get to the exciting bit, where the X-Men swoop in and save the day. Sorry, they didn't come for my sister.
"Hey, sis." I looked down at my baby sister, lying battered in my arms. I could see a dark liquid trickle down her chin. I knew if it hadn't been night I could see it was blood.
Lying dying in my arms. My sister was dying and all I could think was that it was a stupid rhyme.
"Hey." A tear splattered onto my sister's cheek. She tried to smile at me.
"You believe me... If I said... that I was okay?" I didn't sob when she tried to joke as she lay there dying. I wanted to, but that would hurt her even more.
"You know... I love you... right?" I could barely hear her now. I wanted to kill those bastards, for what they did to her. She could heal people, help them. Everyone but herself.
That was the problem with my baby sister; she wanted to heal the world, not caring that she would die because of it. She was going to go try to become a hero, when those bastards tracked her to the train station. I got there long after they had left, and I held her hand as she died while they went and got pissed, congratulating themselves on killing a muite whore.
People don't really care about the ones that don't make it. The nameless bodies in that mass grave. Those that are simply part of a number, or one of the many names on a slab of rock, if they're lucky. They care even less about the mutants. When they find my sister's body, if they find out she's a mutant, they won't care. Not even the X-Men care. They'll come swooping in to save the day if it's a powerful mutant that Magneto's after. They'll save the day if it's a scientist experimenting on hundreds of mutants.
But my baby sister was just one of the many. She wanted to help everyone, but because it was only a group of drunken bigots after her, I was the only one that wanted to help her.
My baby sister's last words were:
"Promise me you'll try to stop this happening to anyone else."
And the last thing she heard was the sound of the train that was supposed to take her somewhere safe, covering up my promise.
So that's my sister's story. I suppose you want me to be inspired to save the world now. Maybe I'd write long, heart-wrenching speeches to make people understand the pain mutants have to go through. And maybe I would have.
But she wanted me to help mutants, not stand around talking.
What I did was steal anything, and sell anything, including myself, to get money for runaway mutants.
What I did was squash my soul and morals away and save them for a time where I could survive with them.
What I did was ruin myself for a world that didn't want my help, and hoped that my sister would be proud.
