Disclaimer: They ain't mine. Which doesn't really bother me, except for the fact that I would really really love to own Logan. Hell, I'd be content to just borrow him for the night…
Author's Note: * hangs her head in defeat* I'm breaking my number one cardinal rule, and writing this when I'm in the middle of another story, but then again I've never had a story bug me this bad before either. This is one of those dreaded plot bunnies that just lurks in the corner of your mind and waits until you're doing something perfectly ordinary and then swoops in for the kill. This one won't leave me alone, not even my muse had anything to do with this one, which sucks, 'cause then she'd be able to help me put it on hold, like the rest of my tormentors, but she can't. So I'm stuck writing this thing when I should be doing make-up work, or at the very least working on chapter 12 of 'TIOIA.' But I'm not so I might as well go ahead and shut-up. After all the sooner I shut-up the sooner I'm through and can go back to my normal routine………..
"Pity the Butterflies"
I don't know how to feel. Trying to analyze this is more than difficult. In fact there's a problem with trying to analyze how I'm feeling.
Right now I don't feel anything but numb.
What does it mean when you don't feel anything?
Does it make me less than human? More than a mutant?
I'm numb, and the only thing I feel right now is an icy cold creeping into my bones. Everyone is here, looking at me with so much pity in their eyes that I want to scream. Hate me, love me, try to hurt me. But don't pity me. I've have had more than enough pity to suit me for one lifetime.
I saw pity and hate in the preacher's eyes when I confessed the last time to a God that I'm not sure I believe in any more. I remember the pity and fear in the eyes of the friends I grew up with, when they saw me after I nearly killed Cody.
I saw the pity, fear and the hate of my so-called parents when they realized that their darling baby girl was a mutant. All in all?
I'd have preferred to see nothing but hate. No…I've quite definitely had enough of pity.
The only person who isn't here right now is the one who would look at me with something other than pity. Oh don't get me wrong. The other's all have on their very best faces; the warm, serene smile of Storm, or Miss. Munroe, the endearing 'I-want-to-be-your-big-brother-look' From Mr. Summers, Jean's nurturing look of acceptance, and Professor Xavier's calm, look of understanding. But under it all is the flash of pity that not even they can hide.
I'm sick of pity. Pity is vulnerability that implies your small, or weak, or at the worst pathetic. I don't want pity.
Logan doesn't pity me.
Logan's here, in my head, behind me, helping me, empathizing with me. But he doesn't pity me. He wouldn't allow the others to pity me.
Pity is the worst thing you can do to a person who's alone. Pity isolates you, makes you an object of sympathy, and while others can lead relatively normal lives, the one who's pitied is always outside. The watcher who knows that the reason behind loneliness is because others can't stand you pain. They're not strong enough. And they never will be.
But he is.
It takes someone as strong as he is to take on the pain that other's can't, though there's a reason for that to. With people like him, added pain doesn't matter.
They're already in their own personal Hell.
They've already lost hope in light and life.
So has he.
So have I.
That's why he doesn't pity me. He hates to see me in pain because he won't ever be able to take all of it away no matter how long he holds me or my deadly skin. And pity to a person like me only hurts more. I know he wishes he could see me the way I used to believe myself to be. The southern belle who could love and laugh, and actually live. And sometimes I wish I could, if only for a moment, and if only for him.
It's ironic. The very virtues we prize in people are what make me so painfully pitied. Chastity, purity, and innocence, all wrapped up in one flawless and irreparably damaged in one little package. That's me. And that's the reason for my pain. I'm forever innocent, save in soul.
A pretty little glass butterfly trapped under a veil of gossamer innocence that's stronger than a steel cage. Always admired, never touched for fear of being broken. Not breaking me, I'm forever flawed and flawless all at once, but bone-deep fear of being broken by me. Becoming part of the cage that's admired, pitied and feared. Because if you ever wanted to touch, behold or caress eternal innocence, you'd die. You'd die and become part of my head, part of me, and part of the pretty little glass butterfly. You'd be pitied to. Sometimes I imagine its part of God's revenge for man always wanting the unattainable. Yearning for the forever spring, but never allowed to move beyond it. Wistfully gazing at incorruptible purity, but terrified to do anything more than gaze lest you become part of that incorruptible purity.
Sometimes I long for corruption. Anything would be better than this deadly impasse of fatal perfection. It's sometimes, almost, too much, and I can't look in the mirror for fear of not being able to stop myself from breaking it and dragging one of the reflecting shards across my lily-white skin. But that's only sometimes. The rest of the time I have Logan in my head to talk to me. You'd be amazed at all the range of two-way conversations you can have when you're the only one in the room. He talks to me and tells me that my skin doesn't matter. I tell him that his history doesn't make a damn. That we'll figure out away around every obstacle and actually get to live. And then he tells me that one day I'll get to be something other than a glass butterfly. It's during conversations like this that I start to believe that one day, I'll be able to overcome my twisted flawlessness.
Perfection is a horrible thing. Never long for perfection, because your flaws are what keep you sane.
Remember not to feel to bad about pitying the butterflies who will hate you for it, because your pity is what will keep you safe from becoming part of those butterflies, and keeps you out of those gossamer steel menageries.
So pity me even though I hate it, and may end up hating you, because your pity keeps you wary of my torturous perfection, and that is what keeps you safe from glass butterflies like me.
Who will keep me safe from myself, you ask? Don't worry. Logan keeps me safe from everything and I keep him safe from losing hope in the light that neither of us believe in anymore, even though we know it's still there.
And to all glass butterflies, dream of this; One day, when your dreams are old and almost forgotten, try, one last time to break when the wind blows instead of bending, and maybe, just maybe, you'll no longer be a glass butterfly that people need to pity.