Rating: K+ for language and some heavy stuff
Summary: Mortimer Toynbee deals with a disabled life at the Xavier Institute after Liberty Island.
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They found me without a coat. I wish, how I wish I'd had a coat that day. It was all so cold, and the wind hurt my skin. There wasn't much left of my skin then. Everything hurt, though, so I can't blame the wind. So I didn't have a coat and everything hurt, especially the wind (so I think it's safe to blame it maybe), and I was in this lot, this empty lot in the Bronx, hiding under newspapers that rubbed open the burns more.
There was a blanket. I found it in the trash bin. It had holes and it smelled like piss, but it looked warm. I had tried to get in the blanket, but there was a spider. I didn't see it but I know it was there. I knew it. That's how they found Mortimer Toynbee, the Toad. Hiding under newspapers in an empty lot, screaming for that spider to get out. "I'M SO COLD! JESUS I'M COLD GIVE ME THE FECKING BLANKET YOU SHIT!"
I might have been crying but I tell them all I wasn't. It's bad enough I had no coat.
Every morning I wake up in Xavier's school for the gifted, utterly ungifted. They keep me in a small room. There were Things in the first one. It was big and dark and at night there were Things that tried to steal my shoes and eat my fingers off. I told Jean, and she looked at me kinda sad, and moved me to a small room. There aren't any Things in this one. She gave me a light to keep by my bed. Things can't come in the light.
The One I Won't Look At tried to stop by my room and give me some pictures for the walls, but I told her no thanks. "GET AWAY I LIKE THEM YELLOW!" Jean says she feels bad for the lightning, but I don't think so. I don't think so at all.
I don't remember a lot before the empty lot (I called it Home and Hell and The Place Evil People Go). I remember being at the Statue of Liberty. I remember The One I Won't Look At talking to me, and I remember being so scared, and I remember begging her, begging her with my eyes that she wouldn't, please no. She did. Then there was water and pain, and a kind of foggy time. Then there was Hell.
Jean told me they don't know how I got out of the water. She said there was a concussion that hurt my brain. She told me that the pain and burns put me in shock, and nothing fixed it, so I lost some of Me. I didn't know what 'regressed' meant, but she used it, and I didn't like it. I pretended that I couldn't hear her and didn't understand. I put my hands on my ears tight, and rocked back and forth, humming one of Old Boss Magneto's Hebrew songs. He sang them to me when I was little.
Thirty-five years bad luck. Scott Summers helped me figure it out on paper and with pennies. (He tries to help me learn again sometimes, but I don't think I knew a lot before anyways.) You get seven years of bad luck for every mirror you break, and I broke five. Five piles of seven pennies made thirty-five pennies. I didn't tell him what I was trying to figure out. We don't talk about the mirrors a lot. I broke one in my bathroom, two in my room, one in the Room With Medicine, and one in Xavier's office. They had to bandage up my hands every time.
My face was ugly before. Toad had an ugly face, but new me, Mortimer me, is so ugly I can't look at him. Jean says we could have saved most of the skin if it hadn't been infected. She did things called grafts on my chest and shoulders and arms. My face was worst, and now it has wrinkles and scars all over. I hate it. I hate that everyone has to look at it when they look at me. And they all stare. All the little Gifted kids in the halls stare at it.
I've been using the bathroom all by myself for a month now. Scott Summers used to help me- first because I couldn't stand up right, and second because I forgot how a bit. I still make Accidents sometimes, but I haven't all week. Jean says I'm doing really good. After I use the bathroom in the morning, Scott Summers comes in and helps me get dressed. I do it mostly by myself now, but I still have trouble with buttons and zippers. My fingers don't work right anymore.
After that, we go downstairs, and one of the Gifted kids makes breakfast. I can't use a fork or spoon- I tried, but I kept dropping them, so I just use my tongue. Some of the Gifted kids make faces when I do, so I wait until they're not looking.
Sometimes I go in the Box. I hate the Box. Jean says that she hates it, too, but we have to put me in it or I might hurt the kids. When I get angry I go in the box. They put me in there after the mirrors, and when I hit Scott Summers. She says that she knows I don't mean to, but my brain still thinks I like to hurt people sometimes. I'm not safe when I get angry. I'm not safe.
There was one time (and you can't tell them I remember because I tell them I don't) that I got angry, and they tried to tie me up with Chains. Jean told me regression means going back to how you were, and that's what I did. I went all the way back to eight years old, tied up in a basement. And everyone around me wanted to hurt me, touch me, humiliate me. I knew they did because that's what they did every time. I cried (I told them I didn't) and I screamed for them to get away, please don't touch me, I don't want to get hurt, I'd be good, I'd be quiet, please just "STAY AWAY!"
That made Jean cry. I didn't' want to make her cry. I like Jean, she's my friend. The next time I got angry, they put me in a clear plastic Box. I hate the Box, but not as much as the Chains. Jean tried to talk to me about the Chains, but I couldn't. It hurt to think about them, so I told her I didn't remember. She thinks I black out sometimes, but I remember everything. Every single thing.
Sometimes I remember things like the Chains all on my own. I get nightmares a lot (and sometimes make Accidents in the bed, but Jean says it's okay), and it hurts, but I think about them. Sometimes after I have a nightmare, after I help her change the sheets, Jean takes me downstairs into the Rec Room, and we have ice cream, and she pets my hair, and tells me that I'm safe. I like that. Usually, we just sit there, and I tell her what scared me, and she nods and says that it isn't fair. She says I was born into a cruel world. Sometimes she cries when I tell her. Jean says it's not me making her cry, it's them: The bad people.
When the thoughts come when I'm awake, or when the nightmares don't wake anyone up, I hurt myself when they happen. They all tell me not to, but I do because I have to. It helps me. Scott Summers and Wolverine went through my room to take out all the sharp things after the first time, but I use the screws in the bed, then put them back and cover my ears when they ask what I used to hurt myself. Jean says that it hurts her when I do that, and I don't want to do that, but the cuts feel better than thinking about what's in my head. Sorry Jean.
Every so often I wonder what my life would be like if The One I Won't Look At hadn't hit me with the lightning. I would still be smart, and I'd be able to get dressed by myself. I'd still be with Old Boss Magneto and Raven and Sabertooth. I'd still kill things for work and fun. I wouldn't have regressed. I wouldn't know Jean. Not like I do now. Sometimes I wish that it never happened. Sometimes I don't.