Unfeeling Thing
Gillian Blekkenhorst/Crimson

This will eventually be a Rouge/Logan fic, but for now it's sort of Rouge/Ophelia thing, in a non-romantic way. This gets better, I hope. :) My first X-Men fic, so be gentle. Beware of some language and mature themes, i don't own X-Men, for Jenn and Kris because they asked and they're sweet and I love 'em to bits. Also, the tense changes from prolouge to chapter.

Prolouge

She lies there, quiet. She's not asleep but she's dreaming, dreaming of a simple person in a simple life, where everything is normal , with high school and friends and road trip for before collage.

She sleeps in a large room with other girls on diffrent, small beds. One girl floats inches about her copper-clored sheets, suspended by by glittert silver strings, as another slowly sinks through her matress, clutching a tiny orange bear.

She's terrified - not terrified of them, of the girls with their gifts, but terrified of herself. Terrified of being so close.

This girl sleeps with the sheets around her ankles. Her white nightgown covers her from chin to ankles, she doesn't want another accindent. She wears gloves to her shoulders and socks to her knees, even while she sleeps.

She's suffocating, but not because of the clothing that leaves only her face uncovered, but because of the people around her. Girls who can turn a man to stone and drown the world with their hair, all of them like victims in waiting, so vunderble. She feels like maybe she might suck them dry just by breathing in their breathe in the air...

So much power and she's still so fragile.

But still, the thought is in her head. It nags at her like a tack in the back of her brain, a tack she steps on at the worst moments. This disgusting, disturbing thought that always makes her want to start screaming and crying and kicking things in...

They're all so nice. Everyone seems so sympathetic, for this girl with this wondeful, terrible gift. Everyone wants her to know they understand.

But they don't, they can't. Sure, she would always have to worry, they understand that. They understand she has to keep her space and hope that no accidents will happen, that she won't bump into someone in the halls, and she won't have tosee their skin shrivel and their breath shorten and their body collapse, and then feel her own bones melt into liquid because she can't control it... and then have all their fears and nightmares and tragities lurking in her brain, waiting for her to fall asleep and mix with her own nightmares to make them worse. Amazingly enough, they understand all that. They understand being hated and envied for something they can't help. They understand they pain that comes with being different, they understand fear.

But they can never understand that she'll never be held, ever again. If she gets hurt, with exceptions, she can never be helped. No one will ever hold her hand without a glove, no one would wipe away her tears. Friends will never brush her hair or write on her back. She will die a virgin, whether she dies tomorrow or fifty years from now.

But still... there's this thought.

She fantasiesed as a child what it would be like to grow wings and fly away. Or read entire books just by touching their covers. Or read minds. She sometimes wonders what it would be like to walk through walls, or draw pictures in the air with her mind. She wonders what with would be like to feel her skin turn to metal to blend in with the walls.

And she can do it. She has the ability.

She remebers a few days ago, her and Bobby and Kitty had been joking around, And Bobby jokingly froze her friends's feet to the floor, and te girls walked right through. Then he froze her from the legs down.

He realized he had gone to far and released her, but she was furious. She thought of ripping off her glove and grabbing his face in her fingers, and watching his face contort as she sucked the life out of him, and watched him crumble, and then freezing /him/.. she had realized what she was thiking and choked.l She could never...

But she can.

She feels so much, too much. She feels so much she sucks it dry.

So she chooses to feel nothing at all.