I would really recommend listening to the song Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd while reading this.
Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men or any affiliations.
Free Bird
She let a numbed hand run through her limp and thick hair. The slow melodic organ made her sway in the moonlight. It had been and hour since the heroin settled in. A stranger who had provided her the 'escape' was passed out on her bed, leaving her alone and contemplative. Free Bird was on repeat. What a coincidence. Everything in her life was on repeat. She shaked from withdrawl. The shakes came when she was on something. Some days she couldn't feel. Others, she was another person, looking at her sagging form from another perspective, shaking her head in shame. She shivered from the non-existant chill and closed her eyes.
The runway was below her feet. Her step was that of a goddess. Damn, was she gorgeous. But, her friends wanted more. Puff this, shoot up that, pop the other thing. She just wanted acceptance. She just wanted to be beautiful.
But, that never happened. She was never good enough. She wasn't that daring in the eyes of others. She didn't party enough or lose enough weight before the next show. She couldn't do enough. And she couldn't escape it. No matter how hard she tried to tell herself she was better, run down apartments and meager incomes weren't that attractive. So she stuck to the meth and the heroin.
"Lord, I can't change."
Oh yes. Take the words right out of my mouth! Gary Rossington's guitar solo picked up as one of the van Zant brothers sung into the microphone.
"Won't you fly high free bird? Yeah!"
She lip synced the words. She wanted to fly high. Fly far far away like Free Bird. She extended her arms to the moonlight, wanting to embrace everything it meant to her at that moment. She could feel herself being hoisted to the top of the railing. She gripped the Roof as she edged closer to the end of the balcony's railing. There was no space between her and the ground. No death fall lay ahead. She was the gap.
"Dear lord, let me be a bird. So I can fly far. Far away," He saw all of this from his little perch. He could watch no more. Her foot stretched out, trying to touch an invisible platform. "Won't you fly high free bird?"
She waited for the final crescendo of guitar. She let go of the ceiling. She leaned forward into the night air. She was flying one second. The next, she was falling. The music followed her, just as her life and dreams did; all descending into the darkness. A scream escaped her lips, not from terror, but from freedom. It was flying, liberation, whatever you may call it. It was freedom.
Muscular arms hooked themselves to her waist swinging her onto one of the balconies below. She dropped to the floor and curled up defensively. Shaking violently she looked up at the silouhette of a man. He was short, built and had thwarted her plan of finally escaping. Why?
He didn't know why he did it. She was just another human. A gaunt, drugged up, helpless human. He had been watching her from his hideout. He painfully dragged himself to that spot after the weather witch made a fried shish kabob out of him. He watched this woman tear her life apart as he nurtured his back to health.
It was a sickening sight.
This night was worse than most unfortunately. He had seen the drug dealer come up to her apartment with her. There were no lights save the flicker of the stove lighting the aluminum bowl. Moans and pants drifted from the balcony window. Then there she was. Clad in a night gown, hanging limply off her diminishing form, rhythmically undulating more than dancing to the same bloody song. Somehow he knew tonight would be the night she'd try to kill herself.
He wouldn't allow it.
"Why did you do that?" she snapped at him, not the least bit greatful for her rescue. "Why did you do that!?" she cried hysterically.
"Because you need to learn to value your life a little more," his words struck a chord in her and she sobbed silently. What would Magneto think if he'd seen this?
"Who are you?" she whispered.
He crouched down and cupped her chin with his hand. His hand had burn marks all over it. Looking closer as his face, she could see scars starting from his mouth and running down his throat and under his shirt. His eyes gleamed in the pale light, showing their black vastness. His appearance somehow made her realize her life wasn't so tough.
"I'm your bloody saviour luv," he stood back up and hopped onto the edge of the balcony. "Clean up yer act, or I might jus' do it for ya," and with that he leaped into the night air and latched onto the railings of another balcony across the street with his extended tongue. He then proceded to effortlessly crawl up the side of the building to a window on the top floor. She blinked to see if the drugs were making her trip. This was no hallucination.
She sat on a total stranger's balcony all night, reevaluating her life and future plans. She cringed at the thought of what she tried to do. There had to be a better option for her. She thought about the stranger savign her life. He was mutant. He wasn't one of those 'dangerous' mutants she heard about on the news. Thank you, she closed her eyes, exhausted from the night's events.
Rays of sunlight poked through the New York skyline giving the sky a flaming pink hue. A man inside the apartment looked out his window to find her curled up and asleep. It was the soundest of sleep she'd had in a long time.
A/N: Okay, I have no idea why I wrote this. It may have just been the song telling me to write something. Note, I may write a second chapter to this. If I don't, I hope you enjoyed.