Work in Progress
Fandom: X-Men.
Author: Unanon
Character: Marrow
Rating: Low
Most upworlders have no clue what it means to be in mourning, to grieve so hard and so long that the ache remains with you for years, becoming as commonplace as eating, as breathing. My generation was born out of mourning, our very survival a lamentation.
My stint with the X-Men was inglorious, tainted by who I was, by what the circumstances of my childhood had forced me to become. The weather-witch held power, and she avoided me at all costs as if meeting my eyes would force her to relive the sensation of one of my hearts beating in her palm. I felt powerful and strong whenever she fled before me, pretending that my presence didn't chafe. Except for the Cajun the others followed suit, and he remained only out of guilt.
There was only one who knew what it was to eat sorrow, only one who stood at my side when my flesh transformed and contorted into something alien, something I was unable to accept. Colossus knew of my troubles, of the torments of my people. He even lived with the Morlocks for a time as a friend and lover to Calisto, the woman I call mother.
Now he's gone too. A suicide, an absolving penance for imagined weaknesses and failures. How fitting that he managed to transform one of the most selfish acts into the most selfless.
I slid up to his rooms after the funeral, before that Kitty girl could pass her hands through his things. There were drawings, sketches I'd allowed him to take of me during those days when the X-Men were nothing more than familiar strangers sharing a mercifully large house.
I'd posed for him wearing only my unfinished flesh, my bones. He had been fascinated by the jutting pain of them, of the bumps beneath my skin before they popped to the surface. I'd pull them out slowly for him, smiling through my gritted teeth. He'd shudder at the sound of my tearing flesh, at the squelching noise the wound made before it healed. He'd walk to me, gingerly touch the edges of my rapidly knitting flesh with charcoal-stained fingertips, and whisper that I was beautiful. I never believed him. My bones were my torment as guilt was his; both writhed unstoppably beneath the surface, a constant, penetrating itch.
The sketches I find are incomplete: the curve of my shoulder spiked with bone, the small of my back, an ossified thrust of hipbone. There is no full body picture, no identifying portrait of my face, just random segments: my torso, my thighs, my abdomen encircled in bony armor. Even unfinished the subject is unmistakable and, seeing myself as pieces, the parts and not the sum, I'm tempted to finally believe his words.
~~~~~
Character: Marrow
Rating: Low
Most upworlders have no clue what it means to be in mourning, to grieve so hard and so long that the ache remains with you for years, becoming as commonplace as eating, as breathing. My generation was born out of mourning, our very survival a lamentation.
My stint with the X-Men was inglorious, tainted by who I was, by what the circumstances of my childhood had forced me to become. The weather-witch held power, and she avoided me at all costs as if meeting my eyes would force her to relive the sensation of one of my hearts beating in her palm. I felt powerful and strong whenever she fled before me, pretending that my presence didn't chafe. Except for the Cajun the others followed suit, and he remained only out of guilt.
There was only one who knew what it was to eat sorrow, only one who stood at my side when my flesh transformed and contorted into something alien, something I was unable to accept. Colossus knew of my troubles, of the torments of my people. He even lived with the Morlocks for a time as a friend and lover to Calisto, the woman I call mother.
Now he's gone too. A suicide, an absolving penance for imagined weaknesses and failures. How fitting that he managed to transform one of the most selfish acts into the most selfless.
I slid up to his rooms after the funeral, before that Kitty girl could pass her hands through his things. There were drawings, sketches I'd allowed him to take of me during those days when the X-Men were nothing more than familiar strangers sharing a mercifully large house.
I'd posed for him wearing only my unfinished flesh, my bones. He had been fascinated by the jutting pain of them, of the bumps beneath my skin before they popped to the surface. I'd pull them out slowly for him, smiling through my gritted teeth. He'd shudder at the sound of my tearing flesh, at the squelching noise the wound made before it healed. He'd walk to me, gingerly touch the edges of my rapidly knitting flesh with charcoal-stained fingertips, and whisper that I was beautiful. I never believed him. My bones were my torment as guilt was his; both writhed unstoppably beneath the surface, a constant, penetrating itch.
The sketches I find are incomplete: the curve of my shoulder spiked with bone, the small of my back, an ossified thrust of hipbone. There is no full body picture, no identifying portrait of my face, just random segments: my torso, my thighs, my abdomen encircled in bony armor. Even unfinished the subject is unmistakable and, seeing myself as pieces, the parts and not the sum, I'm tempted to finally believe his words.
~~~~~
