Title: Who am I?
Author: Cassandra West
Rating: PG-13 for language
Fandom: X-men
Pairing: Jono/Remy (slightly)
Word Count: 1341
Dates: Originally written January 2002, edited and cleaned up 12 August, 2004
Notes: Part of a series called Insights that looks at particular moments in the character's lives. Originally written as part of an X-men slash RPG
Main character listing: Jono
Summary: Jono reflects on his past after a change as potentially devastating to him as his manifestation was.
Author Notes:On a whim, I gave Jono back his face in a role playing game, this is about the impact that such an event would have on him. He's a full-fledged X-man and involved in a relationship with Remy, though the relationship doesn't really matter to the story. In keeping with the mentions of Les Miserables, the title comes from Jean Valjean's solo when another man is arrested in his place, causing him to question everything he has built his new life on.
Acknowledgements: Thank you to my dear friend and adoptive brother, Star for the advice and corrections on punctuation and grammar.
Disclaimer:Jono, Hank, Remy, Gayle, and all things X-men belong to Marvel, but the story herein is mine alone. I make no money from this.

Jono headed out of the medlab and up to his room. Once there, he searched his nightstand for the packet of cigarettes and ashtray he knew were still lurking somewhere in the bottom of the drawer, a relic of Angelo's nicotine addiction. They'd be stale and taste like shite, but it would be so good to smoke again. He lit up with a sigh, not nearly as good as curling up with Remy, but better than sitting around all tense, while he waited for the test results and for Hank and the Professor to have the time to devote to this new wrinkle in his mutation.

Hank contacted him to tell him to come down in an hour; and Jono stubbed out his cigarette and automatically lit another one. Some comfort to be found in chain smoking, at least. He wondered if anyone could possibly understand what he was going through. He wondered if he even understood, since he doubted he could articulate it. He hardly even knew who Jonothan Starsmore was without Chamber. His mutation had taken away every single plan he'd ever made for his future, as well as all of his hopes and dreams; his entire identity, really, and he'd had to forge someone new out of the debris. Everything, every hope of getting out of Muswell Hill and becoming something other than the next in a long line of occasionally working, usually dole-bludging Starsmore men, it had all ridden on his voice. His voice had given him every opportunity he'd ever had, and frighteningly enough, had given him his father's approval for the first and only time in his life.

His Nan was staunch Church of England, not just Anglican, but high church Anglican, as close to Catholic as you could get and still be Protestant. For some reason his Nan had found some comfort in the church, even though she only selectively followed its teachings. And she'd always wanted something better for him, than becoming a wastrel like her son and husband. She'd thought being a choirboy would be good for him, so he'd done it to please her. His old man had approved, because it got him out from underfoot for a couple of hours every Sunday, and a few more during the week for practice. Then someone had suggested that he would have a good shot at one of the spaces in the chorus in 'Les Miserables', if he auditioned. Forget chorus, at the age of eleven Jonothan Starsmore got his first paycheque for singing, he landed the role of Gavroche. And had entered an entirely different world. For the first time he had a teacher who could actually take the time to answer questions, who didn't feel his entire function was to keep students quiet and supervised until they could get the same dead-end jobs their fathers had, who encouraged him to read, who actually discussed his half-formed ideas about the plots of what he read. That same teacher had provided some interesting theories on the relationship of the Montague boys and their friends in Romeo and Juliet, and inspired some of Jono's more interesting ideas about some of Marius' solos in 'Les Miserables'. Suddenly, Jonothan Evan Starsmore mattered.

Sometime near the end of his run as Gavroche, knowing he wanted to continue to get paid to sing, he realised something very important. There were very few roles for pre- and adolescent males in musical theatre, and even fewer that were almost exclusively singing. Most roles required some speech. And, of course, there was the associated problem that only a handful of named roles were suitable for a kid with a Cockney accent so thick you could cut it with a knife. Purely musical roles were no problem, most people actually learned to sing with a different accent to the one they spoke with, and you certainly learned that when you were singing in Latin, like he'd done at first; but the speech intensive roles were a different story. So he paid for diction lessons out of his paycheck. 'Les Miserables' was followed by 'Oliver' and when he outgrew the title role in that, he'd moved up to the Artful Dodger.

By the time his run as the Dodger had ended, he'd been able to drop his accent for stage work- well enough to land the role of Friedrich in 'The Sound of Music', not that he'd been terribly keen on admitting to that stint later. No one on that set had realised he was a Cockney lad from Muswell Hill until he'd cut his hand one day and sworn a blue streak. Accent, intonation, and word choice had been pure Cockney.

Shortly before his sixteenth birthday, when he'd gotten just a little too old to be accepted as a fourteen-year-old on stage, he'd discovered that he suddenly didn't have another role to move into and had started busking for money to cover him until the next successful audition. He did fairly well off of it, too. Well enough to move out of his parents' house (thank all that's holy) absolutely as soon as he was old enough to convince some shonky landlord to rent him a scrungy little bedsit.

Then a succession of flats, each just a fraction better than the last, the band, and then moving in with Gayle. And opportunity just kept coming. When he'd manifested, he'd been trying to decide between taking his chances with a record company offer or taking the reasonably secure payhcheck for another run of 'Les Miserables', this time as Marius, the single best young male role going. It had never been a choice, really, and that's what he and Gayle had been fighting about. He was going to take the record company deal, it was a foregone conclusion; no way in hell could he have told the band hey guys, I'm scared we'll fail and if I take the role of Marius I'll have the chance to get more exposure and try again with more assurance of success in a couple of years.

So they would have been headed off to do the publicity thing, playing where the record company told them to try and drum up interest in the album. And Gayle had hated it, couldn't stand the fact that he wouldn't need her money anymore, that he'd be away from her with the opportunity to stray. Fucked up relationship that it was, he'd gone the easy route and let her think that all he saw it as was being her pet musician, that he was being kept. That's what everyone assumed it was, that was the explanation that caused the least strife with his friends and her family. Her parents could tolerate it, if she was just having a lower class fling, Lord knows everyone else did the same thing, as long as they kept it discreet, it was okay. Though he'd never quite figured out why living with her was discreet. His mates didn't bitch so much about him thinking he was better than his given place in society (but damn it, he was better than that) if he was just using her money. So they'd fought, and nothing could reassure her, not even the reminder that he was in a fucking band for Christ's sakes, he'd had the chance to cheat on her and never had. And then in a flash of heat and light, every chance he'd ever had, every dream he'd ever dared, had been destroyed.

Then the hospital, wondering what in the world he could possibly do now, the offer to go to the Academy, Generation X, finding a family, a better one than his own certainly, and the X-men. And here he was come full circle: once again trying to figure out who he was with a huge part of his identity gone. It wasn't as if he could just go back to being Jon Starsmore, actor and musician, but Jono was who Chamber was when he was at home, and he wasn't Chamber anymore, either.