Title: No Limits
Author: The Xylia
Genre: Drama/Angst
Summary: Oneshot. A mutant with powers similar to Rogue's, except she never looses the abilities she takes, struggles to cope with their consequences. (And no, she's not a Mary-Sue.)
If you'd like to archive, just ask first. I'll almost definitely agree. Reviews are loved, especially critical ones.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own X-Men or anything related to it, with the exception of the unnamed mutant in this story.
So I felt like writing something and I just saw X3, so X-Men came to mind first. This is sort of a stab at all the horrible Mary-Sues running around trying to upgrade canon powers; people who try this with Rogue get to me in particular.
If you're one of my older readers, yes, I know you must all think I'm dead, but at least with this sort of thing there's no danger of me abandoning it, right?
It wasn't always this complicated. At first, before I realized the possibilities, all the possibilities I had, I didn't even know there was any disadvantage. A lot of that was pure idiocy, an unwillingness to pay attention to unimportant details such as what the latest voice in my head was muttering about. I can blame a little on inexperience; it was simply too early for me to realize the implications.
The problem wasn't the new powers. That was the advantage, obviously. I could do whatever I wanted: be anything, do anything, accomplish anything. All I had to do was find some vulnerable mutant who could do some part of what I wanted. All it took was a few seconds of touching and then their powers were mine. I preyed on the physically weak, the emotionally broken. The drawback was that I ended up with some memories and even a bit of their personality, but it wasn't enough of an annoyance to discourage me. And if I left a wake of amnesiac ex-mutants - well, what can I say? I regret it now, but back then it was nothing more than a twinge to my conscience.
It took me about a year to find that the powers weren't really that much of an advantage after all. By then it wasn't the most important thing on my mind, but the problem still called attention to itself (very loudly, I might add) at certain times. See, I had absorbed dozens of completely different powers, all of which had different triggers, so to speak, different things that would release them, from general emotional states to certain thoughts to just seeing something that sparked some memory buried deep inside my head. With that many, just remembering what not to do is hard, and actually keeping the powers in check is far worse. I'm not even sure it's possible. It wasn't for me, and I've yet to meet someone I think could do it. I don't know exactly when I crossed the threshold - like I said, it wasn't the biggest thing on my mind at the time - but I did notice when I began levitating myself without warning, or causing things to burst into flame or simply disappear.
I wish that was it. I truly wish all I had to deal with was runaway mutant powers. Maybe I could have controlled them. Maybe if I had been able to focus everything on it, maybe I could have lived out my life in perfect self-discipline and never had any problems. I don't really think so, but maybe. But I couldn't focus on them like I needed to, because it wasn't the only thing I had to deal with. Unless I became so out-of-control that I accidentally set myself on fire, it wasn't even the most dangerous of my problems.
I was going insane. For every power that would spin out of control, there was one personality (occasionally more) and maybe fifty snippets of memory that went along with it. I've heard a little about people with powers similar to mine, who just have temporary absorption from whomever they touched. I'm different from them, very different. Those people might not realize it for a while, but the personalities they took slowly fade. They'll never go away completely, but they'll become so quiet and sink so deep that they might as well not be there. The memories - the memories will all but disappear in a flash. The true vividness of memory is gone within a few hours of absorption. Not so for me. I keep the memories, every single one I've ever touched. They never fade, and neither do the personalities. For every person I've touched, even the non-mutants, I will forever have a little duplicate personality and a big stash of memories, as real-seeming as if they were originally mine. No, even more so, because these memories stayed with me even when I forgot my memories.
After maybe a dozen of these, especially with so many conflicting, could any sanity remain? I have the personalities and memories of police officers and criminals, former members of hate-crime gangs and their victims, even one person whose grandmother was killed in the Holocaust and another whose grandfather was a Nazi. All of them are aware of each other (and of me, although they care far less about me than anything else), and all of them argue. At first it was just bickering, until they realized who they all were. Then they had feuds. The personalities would take sides, even some of those who had nothing to do with the argument, and they would scream and plead and reason with each other until I was ready to scream at all of them, until I did shout myself hoarse, until I collapsed of exhaustion after they argued through three days and nights in a row. For all I know they kept at it after that, but if so, I was blissfully unaware. And throughout the arguments they'd draw on old memories, or the memories would just float up unsummoned, and I would have dramatic and completely opposing evidence for both sides running through my head.
After about six months of devouring of all the mutant powers I could find, I was beginning to not just hear the arguments, but feel them. I would know and understand exactly how each personality felt about each subject, and worse, their views would begin to merge with my own. All of them would slowly enter my subconscious at once, until I would hear their arguments and fully agree with each side. I didn't realize this until I found myself trying to both defend and attack both sides of one of the more heated debates. From then on, all of the personalities were a part of me - and if I had a problem with this, as far as they were concerned I could just cope.
And I tried. I didn't touch anyone at all, more than content to try to sort through the mess I had already made of my mind. It didn't work. I tried as hard as I could to distance myself, to ignore it, to accept it and talk with them...I tried everything I could think of, and none of it worked. I tried for months, and then as I slowly lost my grip on sanity and the personalities became more and more prominent, the powers I'd so proudly acquired began to pull out of control.
I lived like this, fighting other mutants' powers, personalities, and memories, for almost a year.
I finally broke then. There was no dramatic incident, no push over the edge; I wasn't even given the excuse of a good reason. I just broke. I had had enough and I was done. And then I was standing in a ring of fire and ice and plants sprouting at a miraculous rate, with a storm gathering above me and the ground trembling and the pond heaving in an imitation of ocean waves, all the while with every last personality screaming at me. And now the screams are dying down and the powers are fading, I think, it's a little hard to see, but I think that if I'm careful I'll be able to make it all stop and go away and then I can go back to my normal life, my life when I would play the piano with my little sister trying to sing along and both of us always hitting more wrong notes than right, but still trying over and over again, and occasionally making something truly beautiful...