Author's Note: This is one of the first OC characters for X-men I ever created. She's basically my brain child. There's not much to this chapter, as it's a prologue, but this whole story is going to be pretty dark and depressing, until possibly the end. So hang on, it's a rollercoaster ride for those of you who like OC stories. Also, though Wisteria belongs to me, Dani Reynolds was created by Teen-Titan-Junkie, and Jamie Summers plus Ben LeBeau was created by StarStar16. This is what my friends and I like to call the second generation. Jean and the rest are grown, but we couldn't even think about killing off the Professor…where would we be without him? By the way, if you couldn't tell, Jamie is the daughter of Jean and Scott, and Ben the son of Remy and Rogue. Don't ask how Rogue even began to have a child, you'll have to ask StarStar16 on that one, because I'm confused as well.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Marvel will lay claim too! Mutants, the Xmen, the Brotherhood, blah blah blah. I only own Wisteria. And I don't own Jamie or Dani either. That belongs to my best friends, as mentioned above.
Xavier looked up at her with those piercing blue eyes as she walked through the mahogany door, frowning as if someone had just sentenced her to death. Xavier motioned for Wisteria to sit in a chair across from him. He shuffled through some papers on his desk in a fruitless, annoying manner for several seconds, his gaze directed at the wood of his desk, not at the eyes of his student that sat across from him.
Wisteria was the first to speak. Her black hair, highlighted by golds, reds, greens, purples, and blues falling between her eyes, her chin titled down. She held her arms tightly, the lightly tinted green skin almost appearing white from the strain, natural marks of ivy stretching. Xavier could tell she was trying incredibly hard to be polite.
"Dani said you…wanted to see me?"
He sighed and looked long and hard at her before speaking.
"Due to recent events—"
He watched her face go blank as stone, green eyes full of something close to spite.
"—the other teachers and I have decided it would be best if you went into counseling…once a week, for an hour. You do have a choice, of course."
Her answer was something he had expected from the beginning. "There's nothing I want to talk about." Wisteria's tone was cold and apathetic, her eyes now the one that avoided contact.
A few more moments of uncomfortable silence passed, the clock ticking loudly in the background, extremely annoying, before Xavier spoke again, feeling as though he was trying to lead an extremely proud and spooked horse to water. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to."
"I know." Her expression clearly told him that she wasn't going to tell him anything at all.
"Everything would be confidential."
She merely gave him that blank look again. There were a few moments of a staring competition before Xavier sighed once more and drew out a black notebook, often used in classrooms. He could feel Wisteria's emerald gaze on it, confused and calculating. He held it up in one hand, gazing back at her calmly.
"I'll make you a deal." He began, interpreting the confusion behind that forced apathetic expression. "If you talk to me once a week for an hour—you can talk about anything you want to—and write whatever you don't want to tell me in this notebook, then we'll stop when the notebook is full, and your restrictions will be lifted."
Suspicion was the first emotion to fill her gaze, something that he saw so often with her.
"Do I have to let you read it?"
"No. Not if you don't want to."
Several moments passed while the mutant girl thought it over, then finally she reached across the table, taking the notebook and flipping through the blank pages as if words would magically appear there.
"Can I write about anything?"
"Anything you want to. It's your notebook."
Her cynical eyes lifted again, studying him for clues of deception. "Fiction or true?"
"Either that you prefer."
"What's the catch?" She said it so coldly, so pronounced as if she knew there was a trap hidden somewhere in that notebook, something she hadn't yet foreseen. He smiled gently at this obvious sign of mistrust, a laugh in his voice, though he didn't mean for it to appear.
"No catch."
Wisteria nodded and stood. "Okay, deal. What day do you want me in here?"
"Your choice. Come whenever you feel like it."
She nodded again and exited, still thumbing through the notebook. Wisteria wasn't particularly paying attention as she climbed the stairs leading to the dormitories. There were three hundred pages in that notebook, college ruled. She could fill that many pages easily, a thousand times over, just by letting her thoughts spill out on the pages. There were so many things that had never seen the light of day, things she dreamed, things she never wanted anyone else to see, but somehow they still saw traces of it. It was like her scars were on her sleeves for the whole world to examine and doctor, no matter how much she struggled. Did she really want to write anything in this notebook? Did she want the chance of anyone reading what she had thought to herself during the past two and a half years?
No choice now. She had struck a deal.
She soundlessly entered the room she shared with Dani and flopped down on the bed. The framed picture of her parents that her best friend had framed and set on the nightstand—both of them smiling and happy, a younger normal version of herself between them—taunted her from its resting place.
Spill your guts. It might be good for you.
"A lot of things would be good for me." Wisteria growled into her pillow, sighing and turning away from the picture. She looked at her reflection in the mirror, dark circles under the eyes, angry and uncaring expression staring at her.
Her gaze was drawn down to her arms, to the one that was undamaged besides those scars she had either self inflicted or won in combat, and to the other where serial numbers were burned into her arm and into her memory. MP0013. The lucky one.
Her next object to stare at was that detested notebook. She glared at it for several seconds. Counseling? Did she really need it? Was she really as insane as everyone took her for?
Wisteria ran a lightly tinted hand through her hair, contemplating her situation. Would it kill her to talk to someone?
Quite possibly. It's hard enough just to even try to explain myself to Dani.
She picked up a pen from the nightstand she still refused to look at and tapped it absently against the pillow, eventually imprinting the mark of her teeth in the cap.
I guess I should start writing.
She owed that much to her parents.
