Woo! First story! Yeah! Just a weird, angsty drabble I cooked up at two in the morning while I couldn't sleep. X-23 muses on the life she's built at the Mansion and so forth. Feel free to lynch me after reading it- this is just proof you shouldn't write so early in the morning. Oh and the songI used is"Had Enough" by Breaking Benjamin.
Disclaimer: Hello this is Evil Angel's refrigerator Marvin. Evil Angel's disclaimer is sick and I'm filling in for him, but he left me instructions to tell you that Evil Angel owns neither X-Men Evolution or Breaking Benjamin.
Lies of a Septic Mind
Milk it for all its worth
Make sure you get there first
Green eyes stared through the darkness. They shone with inner pain, deep reflecting pools glimmering with years of unending suffering, witnesses to unspeakable horrors.
It was two in the morning at Xavier's Institute and while everyone else was asleep X-23 was wide awake sitting on the floor legs stretched out in front of her, leaning on the bed. She was doing what she always did at this time at night.
She was thinking.
She couldn't help it. Always her nights were disturbed, she would lie awake for hours demonic images that slept during her waking hours came to haunt her until she fell into a disturbed and fitful sleep where fourteen years worth of terrible memories would play out as vivid and terrifying as the day they were burned into her mind forever.
Her inner demon itched. A snide little voice in her head goaded her, whispered to her to do it…just once more…and then the pain would go away for one more night.
The problem with that was…it wasn't so easy to hide her little habit anymore. Not since she'd come to live here. Not since Logan, the Wolverine had legally adopted her as his daughter.
The apple of your eye,
He could smell it on her every time she did it. His lectures, his disappointed, angry and sorrowful lectures had worn her down, and she'd promised she'd never do it again. She'd promised she'd come to him if she ever had the urge to do it again. And she'd been true to her word, she had gone to him. But after a while she hadn't bothered. Pride and stubbornness had gotten the better of her. She could face this.
Except that she couldn't face it. Logan had taken the fact she didn't come to him any more as a sign she was getting better. She wasn't.
The rotten core inside,
She felt her mind turning septic more and more each day. She watched the other in the Mansion with distain. When she first came here, she was afraid of them, her life revolved around people using and abusing her, it was really no wonder she'd thought the same about them. But now another feeling was boiling inside her. Hatred. She found more and more that she hated every single one of them.
We are all prisoners,
She hated how cheerful Kitty always was, hated her dreadful cooking. She hated how perfect Jean was, the darling child who could never do any wrong. She hated Scott for his "stick-up-the-arse" attitude, how he was supposed to lead everyone. She hated being led.
She hated how Rogue was forever miserable, it was a perpetual mood for her, always moaning on and on and on about how her life was so bad. The southerner didn't know the meaning of the word.
Things couldn't get much worse
She hated Nightcrawler for his gentleness and for his faith. Life had kicked him in the teeth worse than most of the students here, and still he was jovial and gentle to everyone. And his faith, she couldn't stand the thought of anyone believing in some higher power that had made all living things. It was His fault then, her existence. He had made the monsters in her dreams, and He had made her.
I've had it up to here
She couldn't bear the new recruits. They were all so…so…God there wasn't even a word for them! There was Bobby with his pranking, womanising ways! Tabitha who was loud and obnoxious and felt the need to blow upeverything she saw! Amara who was so spoilt and prissy X-23 found it a wonder anyone could stand her.
She stood up abruptly fuelled by the adrenaline her hate had sent coursing through her veins. She shivered in the morning air though the heating in the mansion was blazing. She turned her head to the left.
And saw the thing she hated the most.
She took slow steps towards it. The ugly thing with a curtain of long, raven hair, the palest skin and piercing green eyes stared back at her a vicious scowl painted on her lips.
X-23 leant on her vanity table and stared at her reflection. All around it, stuck in the mirror's frame were pictures of her and her "friends" her and Kitty pulling faces at the camera. Her and Rogue dressed as vampires for that unbearable night called Halloween, and so many other, in all of which she was smiling. When she did that, she supposed, she looked quite pretty. Not that ugly thing in the mirror who listed the reasons why she burned with hate for all of the others in those happy photos.
You know your end is near
Rage simmered beneath her skin. An old and familiar feeling that stayed with her always. But at what? So many times she'd asked this question. To herself, to Logan and to the Professor. What? What am I so angry about?
Was she angry for her past? Angry because she'd been stripped of that which was rightfully hers, her innocence? Angry for the fact that she couldn't shake the years gone past and move onto the ones that were coming?
And each time, one man, one face floated to the surface. Him. Rice.
You had to have it all,
But have you had enough,
He was the one who haunted her dreams. He was the one who had hurt her, abused her, and called her an animal. He was the one who when she was just seven years old had put her in the horrifying radiation machine, and had killed her. She remembered it so vividly. Red blinking lights, then high pitched noises. Then pain. And such pain. Her skin melting – hair burning – blood boiling – eyes bulging – consuming every inch of her searing, white hot agony. And she screamed – screamed for it to stop – screamed to die – for all to go black again – screamed for someone to help…just screamed………
And all to make her mutation emerge a few years earlier.
You greedy little bastard
He was who scared her. He had ripped away all hope she ever had of trusting another human being fully. How could she be expected to do that now?
You will get what you deserve
When all is said and done,
I will be the one,
To leave you in your misery,
And hate what you've become.
But expect that they did. They expected her to adjust, to settle down, to rid herself of these nightmares and to become a normal fifteen year old. And she'd tried. She'd tried so hard, she'd watched and learned from the people she lived with. She'd allowed them to change the way she dressed, change how she did her hair, change how she acted. But this change to her façade only fuelled the rebellion going on in her head.
But she was in no position to let anyone in on that fact. She was a dangerous weapon, if they found out she was having such hateful thoughts about them she'd probably find herself out on her ear. Or worse, she'd have to suffer through the Professor and Hank prodding around in her head or sitting her down and making her talk through the years of her pathetic childhood. And she'd have to see Logan disappointed again. She shuddered at those thoughts. She couldn't bear them.
Intoxicated eyes,
No longer live that life
She refused to be a weapon again. She would rather die than go back to that. If she had to compare herself to anything, she would say she was an actress. And her recent performances were Oscar worthy. She hid her hateful thoughts from the world. She smiled and laughed with her "friends" at school or just around the mansion. She fought the Brotherhood and the Acolytes; she played the agony aunt to Rogue and Kitty when they wanted a moan about Gambit or Avalanche.
She played the dutiful daughter, listening and learning from Logan whether it was anger management in the Danger Room or learning the inner workings of a Harley.
She found it incredibly easy in the morning to slip into the skin of her new alter ego, the one that disguised the beast inside. She could go out all smiles and light but then as the day wore on and she was forced to spend more and more time around the others and their suffocating normality she found herself allowing those hateful thoughts to swill around her brain again.
You should have learned by now,
I'll tear the whole world down.
And that hate she saw in her reflection. That was what made her so ugly. She despised herself for feeling such things for people that had done nothing wrong. Who had taken her in and given her the only home she'd ever know, given her a family and instilled a sense of stability and security that she'd never had before.
I need some peace of mind,
No fear of what's behind
So she hid it. Because she was afraid of the consequences. And because she thought she may well die of shame.
Her hands clenched, her nails dug hard into her pale palms. Rage and fear and shame boiled in her blood and she seethed at her disgusting reflection.
You think you've won this fight.
Fuck it, she thought and unleashed the claws on her left hand. She dragged them across her right wrist…once…twice…three times. Her claws dripped rubies, and the pain was deliciously sharp but still this was not enough. Her little habit was never enough.
You've only lost your mind!
Angry, hot tears fell from her reddening eyes as she tore at her flesh. Her rights claws joined in as she plunged her claws into her arms and her legs and dragged them across her stomach, blood cascading onto the floor.
Hold me down,
I will live again,
Pull me out,
I will break it in,
Hold me down,
Better in the end,
Hold me down.
She sank to the floor; she retracted her claws and buried her head in her hands as her wounds healed up. That was her great irony. All her surface wounds would always heal until the day she died, leaving her skin forever unblemished a vision of perfection, but on the inside there were scars that would never fade. And that could never be seen.
She thought briefly that Logan would be able to smell the adamantium tint in her blood in the morning. She knew that people would be able to see the blood stains on the carpet. Slight panic rose in her chest. Maybe she could cover up the stains…dump some clothes on top or something until she could get rid of them. But there was no way she could hide that smell. She'd have to avoid him, but that was no mean feat in a household where Logan seemed to be everywhere at once. But she had to try. She wasn't ready to come clean. She'd gone so long with this charade, wearing this mask to protect herself and everyone around her that it was nigh on impossible to go back now.
You had to have it all,
But have you had enough?
But she was so tired, so exhausted trying to keep it up. It was easy at first, but worse as time wore on. There was a part of her deep down that screamed at her to run to Logan, to break down and cry on his shoulder and tell him what had happened. But there was an overpowering voice that sounded just like Rice telling her to suck it up and suffer in silence. Just as she always had done.
You greedy little bastard
You will get what you deserve
When all is said and done,
I will be the one,
To leave you in your misery,
And hate what you've become.
That voice won as she stood up dried her eyes and pulled off her torn and bloodied pyjamas and used whatever clean bit she could find of them to wipe the blood from her healed body. She pulled on a clean pair and crawled back into bed, trying desperately to shut out the images her septic mind spewed out in the dark and the quiet, praying that the adamantium tint would have gone out of her blood by the morning. She prayed she could have one more day just to act normal, even if it was all just a lie.
In the morning she slept in late. A loud bang on the door calling for Laura woke her finally. Her head shot up and she dragged herself out of bed and got ready to face the day. Another day of lies, another day of wearing a mask and another day of rage and shame simmering beneath the surface. She pulled on clothes dropping her pyjamas to cover the blood on the carpet, stuffing the torn ones under the bed until she could dispose of them. She straightened her clothes, fixed her hair and her makeup and spritzed on a liberal dose of the strongest perfume she owned in a bid to cover the smell of last night.
Her mask was complete. The hateful thoughts were banished for now; the monsters had retreated under the bed until tonight. X-23 heard her mask's name called again. And with one last glare at her ugly reflection she went to lie again.
Heaven help you.
Heaven help you.