To be outcasted wasn't new. To have friends while outcasted was new.
Ray knew what it was to be hated for something that you were born with. Before it had been trash parents, now it was superpowers.
It was harder on his friends, he could tell. In a place of beginnings like the Institute, delving into the past wasn't really something you did outside of the confines of the Professor's office. There wasn't any point. They knew bits and pieces because it's impossible to keep a whole secret in the Mansion, but no one really asked. Still, he knew enough to know that he had more experience with the hatred than his friends.
Bobby was a suburbs boy, Ray had known that the moment they met. He wasn't one to make assumptions, but he was of a breed that Ray dealt with a lot. They were moderately privileged and took a lot of things for granted. They laughed easily, but smiles came harder. Bobby was nice, probably Ray's best friend in the Mansion, but every struggle Bobby faced before he became an X-Man happened on the inside. He wasn't used to the hatred and he stumbled through school in a shell-shocked stupor. No one ever disliked the class clown.
Ray didn't know a single thing about Rahne's past other than that she was from Scotland and very Catholic. Still, he could tell the looks were getting to her. She didn't smile at school anymore and she avoided eye contact with everyone. The normally bright girl had shriveled into herself in a way that Ray had never seen before.
Roberto took it in stride. He was popular and pretty, so he walked through the halls with his chin held high and he grinned at everyone he passed. He had practice with adversity, but Ray had found him once crying in the locker room. They don't talk about it.
Amara kept her graces, too, holding the poise of a princess even as she was shunned and belittled. Ray had gleaned enough of her past to know that she came from a place where her powers were normal, where they were okay. She smiled just as tightly as a princess, but he could see the disorientation in her eyes every time someone spat her name.
About three months after she had come to the Institute, Jubilee came to his room in the middle of the night crying. She blubbered and sobbed on the foot of his bed as she told him what it was like, growing up the way she did. She just needed someone to listen to her who wouldn't make it about her amazing mutant abilities. Why she chose him he didn't know but she must have sensed that they had come from pretty similar places. After the Institute was exposed, she started picking fights with girls at school, an instinct Ray used to fall back on when he felt alone.
Sam, ray of sunshine that he was, tried his hardest to keep spirits up. He was the overall best at keeping his cool. Ray knew that the boy knew struggle from what he heard of his home life, but he lived by the Golden Rule. It wasn't working. He was running out of ideas.
Poor Jamie was a mess. The school politely requested he retire as a Student Ambassador and his fellow Party Planning Committee members suggested he take a break from party planning. The friendly boy came home immediately after school and avoided going to anything involving the school outside of his required eight hours of education. He took to only leaving the Mansion to go to school and nowhere else.
For Ray, it sucked watching his friends- his family- fall apart as the world hated them. He was angry, too, because the world, as it always does, was shying back from the unknown and building walls to protect themselves from the most wonderful people he had ever met. It wasn't a feeling he was new to. If any of this was familiar, it was the anger. It followed him everywhere: into battle, locker rooms, alleyways, sometimes even home. It was a struggle to keep it in check sometimes, but he had a lot of practice.
They didn't and it was eating them alive.
Some more New Mutants stuff because I'm moderately obsessed with it. It's been a while and I don't write much anymore, but I found this in my files. I thought I'd post it just to let y'all know that I'm still alive. I hope you enjoy it. Please review. If you want to read any more of my New Mutants stuff, check out Public Displays, It Was Never the Dark, or Angel.
Anyway, it's been real, guys. 'Till next time.
Basically, Lissy