Kid of gold heart of steel, Kid of steel heart of gold (A homewrecker with a heart of gold)

By Kelly Greyer

Disclaimer: I own nothing, but this story I guess

Jean almost crashed the car that me, her, and, Tabitha were in. We were coming back from the mall and she just kind of got this funny look on her face and she tried to shake it. I looked over at her and she kept her eyes on the road but then she just screamed in pain and turned the wheel causing the car to go off of the road. Luckily I grabbed the wheel and guided the car back to the road until she gathered her shields again. My guess is that's when the worse part the blows came to Samantha. Jean was linked to her, I don't know why but she was, The Professor has told us about this, what happens to a telepath when they're linked to a person experiencing extreme trauma, they get all messed up basically all depressed because they live in that one moment replaying in their heads all the time. There's another reason I'm glad I'm not a telepath.

Once she could focus again she sped over driving somewhere, Tabitha and I were confused and a little skeptical about still being in the car with Jean after that. But ten minutes later we got there and she jumped out of the car not even bothering to close the door and ran into an alley so Tabitha and I followed. At first we didn't know what we were looking at, when we came around the corner Jean was on her knees beside something and then we started to realize that is was a girl but only when we walked up we saw it was Samantha. She was laying there eyes closed blood everywhere. Tabitha stepped back horrified and turned around emptying the contents of her stomach on the alley ground, she gets really woozy and weird around blood. But you be too if you just saw your best friend bleeding, life practically beaten out of them.

I stood there though, looking at one of my closes friends battered form. There was blood in her hair and all over the front of her t-shirt, all over her body. And there was a wooden stick impaled halfway into her side, that's probably when Jean started freaking out. I thought she was dead. The way Jean just sat there kneeling beside her not even blinking really got me worried. She was a doctor who loved to play doctor. And she didn't do any thing she just kneeled there. There goes that telepathic thing.

I was shocked, she couldn't defend herself. She's one of the most fiercest people I know, and wood? I could see if it was a wood bat but who uses wooden sticks to attack someone? It's either aluminum or metal, but I'll tell you who does. A person that knows about Sammy's mutation a person that knew exactly what and who she was and knew she'd be at this spot.

I turned back to see Tabitha sitting on the ground, she was on the phone contacting somebody. Probably Scott and Ororo, even in the still of the night I could tell her face was as pale as the moon. But I turned my attention back to Samantha and my gloved hands open and closed into fist. There was a small, shallow rise and fall of her chest and I knew she wasn't dead. But this didn't relieve me, she'd have to live with this pain I know and at that moment I hadn't known who could do this to her. Why? I knew Stryker and O'Neil were back but they wouldn't have done it like this. They've even got some code of honor among the vicious creeps, they wouldn't have beat her up using her weakness against her, well maybe they would have but they for surely wouldn't have let her live.

Why were we there so long I couldn't tell you, just all staring in any direction but Ororo and Scott came soon. After taking in the scene Scott lifted Samantha and the way she just fell limp as he picked her up made me sick. My hands tightened into fist as Scott carefully put her in the back of the SUV. Ororo had taken Jean and when she rose, she had blood on her knees and hands. She was dazed. Her eyes were spaced and her body was tense. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

"Rouge?" Tabitha touched my shoulder. Of course I couldn't actually touch her skin with my own but something told me she'd have an icy cold touch to go along with her pale face. I turned around taking another deep breath and we went to the car we came in, telling Scott and Ororo and then leaving.

I drove, Tabitha looked way to sick to get behind the wheel of a car, we drove in silence all the while both of us wanting to say something but not wanting to disturb the silence. We needed it so we let it be.

We got back to the mansion first. And we climbed out, not expecting to find anything but just expecting to crawl into our beds and live possible scenarios of what happened out in our nightmares. But no, not now, not tonight. I climbed up the stairs slowly heading to my room but as I walked past Shaiesha, the new student's room, I saw something. It was blood, dried blood stained on her doorknob and a little by the edge of the door. It could've come from anywhere. A danger room session, a fall around the mansion, a knife cut while slicing. But I had to see. I pushed open her door and looked around her room and I saw them there, they were in her closet half way poking out, her boots, the bottom stained with blood. Walking into her bathroom I saw more, bloody soap where she washed her hands clean of her horrific crime, and the clothes in her dirty clothes hamper, the blood that splashed onto her clothes. And even worse, hanging on her bathroom mirror I saw the necklace, the silver with blue diamond necklace that was given to Samantha on her seventeenth birthday here at the Institute. It was hanging there like her trophy covered in blood like the rest of her things, and as I touched it, it was interesting. I wasn't a telepath but when I touched that necklace, it was like I saw something, a flash of what happened. I saw Shaiesha standing with four other men, hovering over Samantha. I saw two of the men pick her up and hold her so that Shaiesha could get her sucker punches in. She had a wooden 2x4 in her hand and she took that to Samantha's face and abdomen many times. She was bleeding, head down still being held by the smiling men, and then Shaiesha broke the 2x4 in half and jammed one side of it into Samantha, but she was two weak to scream. Shaiesha held her head up and smiled in her bleeding face and then she grabbed the necklace and snatched it off of her neck, covering it in Samantha's blood that covered her hands and arms. Smiling at the bloody necklace in her bloody hand Shaiesha took the other 2x4 half and struck Samantha directly under the jaw and her head snapped back and the men dropped her. Shaiesha was walking away and so were the men but one turned and kicked her on the ground. I turned and looked at an even paler Tabitha with the necklace in my hand

She did it, she bloodied Samantha and walked right into the front door of the institute when she was finished and simply washed her pain away. I ran out of the room, down the stairs and to the elevator. Going to the danger room where I knew she would be I pulled a glove off and calmly walked in. They were looking at me now smiling, and I walked past them towards the back of the room, never have I felt so much hate for one person.

Shaiesha had her back towards me and I grabbed her, my bare skin against her bare skin and she screamed. Somebody had came from behind me and grabbed my arm and pulled me back, careful not to touch me though. Shaiesha sat on the floor in pain and shocked but not unconscious, fully from it.

"You did it! You attacked her!" I screamed at her fighting the hold of John who had grabbed me. "You almost killed her, and for what, just because she was better than you!" I wanted her to scream the way Samantha did, I wanted her to bleed the way she made Samantha, and I wanted her to suffer, I wanted her to suffer more than anybody has ever suffered. And I wanted her to die. And if it was by the last breath in my body she would. She would scream, she would bleed, she would suffer, and then she would die.

"Rouge, calm down, what are you talking about?" Bobby asked me, and Shaiesha only stood there like she didn't know a thing.

"She tried to kill Samantha, and she damn near succeeded!" I screamed at her but I was talking to Bobby. And it was becoming more clear, her memory started to fade into mine after our encounter. "We found her, inches away from death, beaten by the hand of her!" I pulled harder against John. "You won't get away from this!" I pulled out the necklace from my pocket and held it up, everyone saw the dried blood. I threw the necklace at Shaiesha and it hit her in the face. But not as nearly as hard as I was going to hit her. Nobody knew what to do or how to respond.

"Hey what's going on in here?" Lexa and Logan came into the danger room at the sound of all the screaming.

"We've got a situation on our hands." Piotr said to Lexa. They looked at me, still fighting the hold of John and then at Shaiesha who was clutching the necklace in her hands just staring at it.

"You two, come with us." Logan said. I wasn't moving but John pulled me towards Logan who grabbed me with a stronger hold. Shaiesha got up willingly and walked on the other side of Lexa and they took us out. As we walked out of the danger room I glanced at Shaiesha who was looking at the necklace, almost as if examining it, and then she smiled. A half a second of a smile and then her face returned to it's expressionless state. Tears burned at my eyes as I walked, strands of white falling in my face as my tears ran down my face like a sheild to hide the pain.