Title: Ignorance Is Bliss
Author: The Duchess Of The Dark
Teaser: Companion piece set after 'Lucidity: Renescence'. First person monolgue.
Rating: PG 13 for language.
Disclaimer: All recognisable characters belong to Marvel Comics Inc. Helena Draven is mine.
Genre: General. For more fiction (not fanfic) visit my page at Illona's Place Vampires
Archive: Yes, but ask me first, please.
Notes: This is a companion piece to the X-Men trilogy comprising of 'Prelude: A Canadian Tale', 'Fugue: X-Men' & 'Lucidity: Renescence'. Read those, or you won't know who Helena Draven is, or the relationships between various characters!
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Let me tell you a little something. I'm not a lady. I'm not regal and exotic like Storm, or a beautiful come-hither eyed scientific genius like Jean Grey. I don't have shocking white hair or a propensity to be so perfect it sets my teeth on edge. Don't misunderstand me, I like and respect 'Ro and Jean, but they're in a different league to me. Storm was worshipped as a goddess back in Africa, while Jean was a cheerleader, which is almost a minor deity in its own right. I was a thin, freckled, bullied kid whose only distinguishing feature was to be classed as 'weird'. At least, I think that's what I was. The thing is, I don't really know… My memories aren't exactly gospel reliable, if you catch my drift.
I'm a mutant. And not just any mutant, as you know. This school is full of kids, and adults, who can do amazing things. Cyke shoots concussive beams from his eyes, Remy makes things explode, though I think his real gift is to get into the knickers of anything vaguely female. He still tries it on with me, when he knows Logan is out the way. Logan would rip his arms off and beat him over the head with the soggy end if he caught the Cajun so much as winking at me, which is quite funny, really. Well, I think it's funny, anyway. Marie doesn't, and one of these days I'm afraid I'm going to have to beat the living shit out of Gambit, when he hurts her.
It's an inevitability he will, he's just that kind of lad. Remy and I have an understanding; I told him when he started seeing Marie that if he hurt her, I'd kill him. Just to emphasise the point, pun intended, I popped one of my claws and stroked the tip of my nose with it. D'you know how many shades of white a person can turn? A lot, believe me. As I said before – I'm not a lady. I dress like a cross between something from those nineteen nineties films 'The Matrix' and 'The Crow'. I swear too much, drink far more than is healthy and have an annoying tendency towards unpredictable temper outbursts. I'd like to say the drinking is something I picked up from Wolvie, bless his cotton socks, but I've a feeling I've always liked my vodka. Oh… don't let him hear me refer to him as Wolvie – he'll get in a pet and I'll have to drag him off to the Danger Room for a damn good thrashing. Well, on second thoughts, mention it. He could do with reminding he's not the only one with an attitude and claws around here. Besides, he always gets… how do I put this politely… affectionate right after a good fight session.
The claws. Hmmmmmm. You see these? Quite beautiful, in a certain kinda light, aren't they? I think it's the metal. They're bone under there, y'know. I absorbed the adamantium from Wolverine… but that's another story. We're alike, me and him. Both got the old healing factor, enhanced senses and the integral set of cutlery. Unfortunately, we've both got the feral temper and instincts that goes with it, only I'm not quite so short-fused as he is. He gets into rages, goes off like a popped cork and reverts into this snarling, berzerk thing. It's scary. Oddly enough, when he does get like that, I'm the only one who he listens to. Maybe it's the whole alpha male and female gig, some part of him recognises my scent, knows I'm the only one he can really trust. I don't know. Psychology is the Prof's forte, not mine.
The feral rage is all to do with control. Saying Logan has a temper problem is like saying Hiroshima was a firework display. Not only have I got gifts like his, I'm TP, TK too…. plus several nasty surprises courtesy of the British government. Don't think I'm boasting, 'cos I'm not – I'd much rather have not had my mutancy tampered with, thank you very much. How powerful am I? Interesting question. Let's just say I'm more powerful than Jean and less powerful than Xavier when it comes to telepathy. As for my telekinesis, I'm not sure. The heaviest thing I've lifted to date was the Blackbird jet, but that was under extreme circumstances. Had my head messed with a while back, along with my X-gene. My memories are fucked up good style, though not to the same extent as Logan's – he can only remember back about eighteen years.
But I'm flying off at a tangent, as I'm prone to do. I was talking about control. People think it would be fantastic to be able to read people's minds, to move things without touching them. It's no barrel of laughs. You have to be in total control twenty four seven. Let your guard slip and you can hear the thoughts of everyone within the range of your gift – imagine a stadium full of people all talking, laughing, crying, arguing and singing all at once. God knows what it's like for the Prof – his natural radius is almost a hundred miles, and with Cerebro, the sky's the limit. You wanna know what uncontrolled TP or TK can do? Ask Rogue. She's aborbed my gifts on a few occasions. Each time she's said "Hels, ah love ya like a sister, but ah don't evah wanna get what's inside ya head again.". But I think that may have as much to do with memories I can't access as anything else.
Memory is a touchy subject with me and Wolvie. We've both got dogtags from some damned army installation up in the Canadian Rockies. What they did to mutants there doesn't bear thinking about. They surgically bolted adamantium to Logan's skeleton and completely fucked up his memory in the process, apart from the nightmares. We both get the nightmares. I don't know what they did to me. In fact, I don't know who did what, except somebody somewhere increased my physical strength and messed with my memories. I used to belong to a covert MI5 division that modified mutants' powers and used them for all the dirtiest jobs going – that's how I ended up strapped to a surgical table at Alkali Lake.
That particular nightmare is a favourite with the audience – the whole bloody mansion knows when I'm having it, not to mention Logan, who invariably ends up with an elbow in his gut, or worse. We're active bedfellows, the pair of us, and it's probably just as well we're together, as nobody else would put up with having their sleep disturbed so often. So I was an MI5 kite, or so the evidence would have us believe. Microdisks, implants, cryptic mutterings from government agents who owe Xavier favours, that kind of thing.
Truth is, I don't really want to know. Yeah, in principle I'd love to know how many years I spent playing the good, patriotic little mutie bint, running errands for the British government. I'd also like to know who did what to Logan and I at Alkali Lake, if only so we can hunt the bastards down and kill them slowly. But I've this horrible feeling, no more than a feeling, a certainty that we've done terrible things. Unforgivable things. These claws, as Logan says, weren't made for pruning hedges. The only inkling I've got of my real past is a five minute section of shitty video tape showing me breaking into a secure facility.
I gutted every last black ops soldier in the place, running about covered in blood and camouflage paint like Xena on speed. I'm no coward, and much as I hate to admit it, I've got the killer instinct, but there's justifiable killing and there's murder. The whole mess is a web of deceit, false memories, shadowy conspiracies and a blatant disregard for precious life. It gives me stomach ache just thinking about it. So excuse me if I'm not a lovely techno-wizard like Jean who gets to address Congress, or an earth mother like Storm.
I can do a lot of stuff, from teaching English lit to rowdy teenagers, to tracking an enemy over rough terrain for fifty miles via a week old scent trail. But I can't trust my own memories. I've made a lot of new ones these past few years, with Logan and then the X-Men, but sometimes I'd rather not know what happened before that. I suppose I'm scared – though if you repeat that, you and I will have words, sunshine. I'm scared if I remember, or if Logan remembers, everything we have will be destroyed. I won't ever stop any investigations – the Prof probes our minds as often as we allow him, but as far as the past goes, ignorance is bliss.