The water runs in an increasingly tepid stream as I stand under the shower head. My forehead leans against the wall with an expression that likely everyone except Him would say was peaceful. But never Him. He alwasy knew when I was lying.
I can't think about it. I won't think about it. I. Will. Not.
The voices in my head clamor for me to listen, but I can suppress even Them these days. When you've lived with others wandering in your mind for ten years, you get used to it. They know who's in charge now, and Carol's screams of rage can no longer affect me. Not even His growls will move me from my path.
People say that they can look back and see their life stretching back behind them. Perhaps it has something to do with Them, but when I glance over my shoulder all I see are hairpin turns and unmarked intersections. I think of the story of god - and I cannot in conscience give him a proper noun status, not even with my upbringing - with footprints in the sand. In my life, His feet are so strong when they make prints next to mine, but unlike the story, they leave when I needed them the most.
No doubt Jubilee would say, Isn't that just like a man?
But He is not exactly a man, now is He?
Neither am I precisely a woman. We live in limbo, we two outcasts. He hides in His temper, his moods. I hide in beauty and sarcasm.
Remy once told me that my eyes gave a come-hither aspect to my face with their emerald fire. I have always thought of that as my chief protection, I suppose. A siren in a sea of poisen, with the freedom that only comes from calling all to you and watching them perish in the attempt. Bobby, St. John, Remy, even Scott - they all tried and failed, one by one. Only He ever succeeded, and I was too proud to hand him the key to the final door.
You see, if I am a siren in a poisenous ocean, then He made the tunnels beneath that sea. He was only balked by the final barrier of my indifference, and my insufferably stiff neck prevented me from even passing a note through the hinge.
Sirens don't have happy endings, did you ever notice that? They might have gotten their man onto that rock with them, but then how do they swim home together? Tell me, how do they do that?
The truth is that, for one of the first times in my life, I was being completely and absolutely unselfish. I wasn't worthy of him.
And yet I was being selfish too, saying he wasn't worthy of me.
Nothing is black and white. Not even death, as I should know. How many have I cheated out of their own death, suspending their voice, their mind, inside my own. I often wonder if I have become an Angel of Death, collecting souls. Only, I won't release them to their place until my own soul departs.
Funny, I won't capitalize god, but I believe in souls, prayer, and the afterlife. Kurt would be thoroughly perplexed, if he ever managed to finagle me into that black hell he calls a confession box. Never did get over His fear of small spaces.
The water is cold now, running down my back. Droplets cling to my pale skin, deadly skin. Freak. Demon. Not our daughter.
I can feel a laugh burbling up as I shake my head side to side, wobbling crazily as water coat the walls. I was never their daughter, was I? Just an adopted Freak, cast off of another Freak. At least He doesn't have those memories I have, of betrayal and hate. Fear too, so strong I could smell it. Just like Him.
We really thought we had it made, Him and me. He could give me eternal youth, and I could give Him everlasting companionship and love. All we had to do was tranfer enough of his mutation to me, and Bingo! we had our partnership sealed.
But it didn't work. Each time, the effects wore off, and I kept aging. He laughed at first, shrugging it off as a joke. Now He wouldn't be taken as a cradle-robber, that was a comfort for sure! He would say, ruffling my hair. But it kept slowly leaving me, the youth and invulnerability. And He became less and less sure of It, what had initially been a love of the ages.
Because, self-sufficient as He is, the only things He fears are loneliness and understanding. He said He had never been able to live with either, until He met me. He handed me the tools to pick the lock to those most intimate parts of Him, and in return I kept Him at arms length.
Wolverine and the Rogue. Don't We sound like the perfect couple?
Perhaps perfection is in the eye of beholder, and we are merely going blind.