This story was created in the context that X3 never existed. Everyone who died is still alive, respectively. Warren Worthington also didn't exist until years later. You'll see why I made him so young in a few words.
Pain
noun / pān /
1. the physical feeling caused by disease, injury or something that hurts the body
2. mental or emotional suffering
3. sadness caused by some emotional or mental problem
4. someone or something that causes trouble or makes you feel annoyed or angry
[as defined by the Merriam-Webster online dictionary]
Pain is a vulgar word.
The word pain is used just like the word love. It's a generalization. It covers all the bases.
Most people are taught at some point of their lives that the word love hits a lot of things. You can love your family, friends, and significant others. However, you can also love tacos, the color teal, the smell of fresh cut grass, silent films, and climbing into a clean bed.
It's not the word's fault, if words could have faults, and it's not like the person saying it was meaning to annoy the everloving shit out of me, but it does just the same. However, I find myself forgiving that one just because of how often it is used, and the fact that it's generally understood to be a lazy word.
'Pain' just tends to piss me off because people don't understand it. It makes me so angry I see red, not that I don't always, and my hands clench.
I should probably be more forgiving. I never understood it either until I felt real pain, and I think that's what really stops people from understanding. They can't know until it happens to them.
My students will often say that they are in pain or they are hurting. I am expected to either help them or laugh depending on the social context of the situation, but on the inside I am seething. How dare they? I know one of these days I'm going to blow up at them, and the poor soul whom I blow up at will have done nothing more wrong than any of the rest of them, but I can no more stop that than I can change the way they see the word.
My students are mostly teenagers, some younger. They have the same melodramatic view of their lives just as the majority of the teenage populace does. Us being mutants doesn't stop that process of puberty, unfortunately. They also don't think before they speak, but I'm coming to learn that it's more of a human nature quality than strictly a teenage one.
Our school has raised many a person to come of age, but it isn't easy and it isn't always safe. Our school has been attacked more times than I think any of us can count. There have been casualties. There have been losses. There has been pain. Lots of it.
When most of the students come back, they'll find whatever is left of the school. It doesn't take long before the complaining starts.
It grates on my nerves like nothing else. I have been doing this X-men thing for a long time and many would have thought I would have gotten used to the complaining and general self-centeredness that engulfs us all in its clutches, but I haven't. I'm also not arrogant enough to think that I'm completely immune. Why else would I be ranting here today?
It's the things they complain about that make me angry.
The last time the school was attacked, one of our students, Laurie, threw a sort of tantrum because her blanket she had spent over a hundred dollars on was singed and smelled of smoke. It would never be the same. She was so loud about it, you would have thought her life was torn to shreds.
I had to walk away.
In an infirmary filled with injured bodies, most were there for scrapes that needed little more than a Band-Aid. They threw up such a fuss you would have thought they would have lost their left leg and all their common sense.
I clenched my jaw and turned my head.
They think they know what real pain is?
People who have experienced real pain wouldn't use such an elementary word to describe it.
I've known a lot of people and loved many. I've had many friends, so close they've become my family. I've had my very own family. A brilliant, beautiful wife. A wonderful daughter who inherited most of the best traits of both of her parents, putting us to shame.
These kids think they know pain?
True pain is being in the middle of a battle, hearing your wife scream and crumble to your left, being scared to death that she's hurt, but knowing because of your mental link with her that she's fine. True pain is having her look into your face and say the one name other than her own that upon hearing would make your blood run cold and your heart skip a beat.
"Rachel."
Agony is finding her lover, a strong and solid man, crushed and howling while holding the broken body of your daughter. Watching as it takes him the better part of an hour to stand and carry her inside the jet after the battle is over. Watching as he clutches her lifeless body to his chest as if he's holding the last of her he has.
Misery is holding your wife later that night when you mourn the loss of your only child. Trying to murmur words of comfort that sound hollow even to you. Knowing that your may have just sent your daughter's fiancé to his own death by sending him home alone, home to plan a funeral to replace their wedding.
Anguish is your crying wife's hand in yours as you watch the coffin lid close. Seeing your almost son-in-law's face everytime he sees something that reminds him of her, your baby girl. Knowing that his whole world has just fallen apart.
Feeling guilty that it hasn't because you still had one of your girls. Knowing that yours would do the same if it had been your wife.
I dread that day. The day I'll have to bury Jean next to Rachel. Jean's only worried because she thinks she'll be the one burying me.
We're all waiting for him to go first, though. For Warren. Jean and I never really approved of Rachel and Warren as a couple, but after seeing his face as he looked down at my baby girl's body… I can't believe I ever disapproved. None of us think he'll make it one more Christmas. He's surprised us with two already, two years since my baby breathed her last, but imagining just how much torment he is going through, I'm not sure that this year won't be his last.
The next time the kids say they're in pain or that they know what pain is, I may just have to send them to Worthington Tower and show them. I'll send them to Rachel's grave and point. I'll send them to Jean and have her scream it at them. I know she's just as annoyed as I am. I'll buy them a damn dictionary, or at least a thesaurus.
Pain is a vile word.
It isn't even close.