Little out of touch, little insane

Just easier than dealing with the pain

-- Soul Asylum, "Runaway Train"

Sometime after that I got stuck in what Jubilee called Psychic Rehab, and she was right. It was some quack therapy group with me, Emma, and Monet, and we were supposed to talk through our problems. Bloody joke that was. I went to two meetings, neither of which I participated in. I'd talked to every psychiatrist in England in a two year span. I didn't need Sean playing shrink, too.

When that failed, I retreated into my cave. It's dark and black and cold, everything about me reflected in it, and it's mercifully undisturbed save for a few various appearances by my teammates trying to get me to join them on some adventure. As I said earlier, that ended when I nearly decapitated Ev. No thanks, I'd rather stay here and be poetic and contemplate the giant hole in my body. I never thought it was possible, but it repulses me now more than ever. It's so dark and . . . empty. A bit too close to my life, really.

The therapy sessions backfired, because I'm just not the type to be able to work successfully through problems. Dad dragged me to therapy sessions every Tuesday afternoon after school right after I turned seventeen. Wanted to know why I was cutting myself, putting cigarettes out in my skin, trying to drink myself into oblivion. Hell if I know why I did it. Gave me something to do, I guess. As with every other person in my life, it wasn't long before he gave up and let me try to tear myself into pieces, but the therapy started again as soon as I got out of the hospital. Cut myself once, nicked a vein on accident. All those degrees on Carol Brooke's wall made her conclude it was a botched suicide attempt, subconsciously made, of course. My . . . relationship with the good doctor ended when I made it clear that if I'd been trying to kill myself, I wouldn't have botched it. That didn't bother her so much as me then going into great detail about how exactly I would have done it.

Because Mr. Cassidy is a nice bloke and generally well meaning, I agreed to go to his bloody stupid therapy deals. All they managed to do was make me remember how miserable my powers had made me and how much more miserable I was once they were taken. If anything else, the therapy made me feel worse than my darkest thoughts ever could.

I guess you can say I reverted back to my old self, before my powers showed up and made me that much more of a freak. I've lost track of how many times I've stretched out on my bed, taking burning incense and poking, prodding, trying to find some part of my body that can still feel pain. Just burnt flesh and dead nerves and a big nose, that's all I am now. That didn't stop me, though, so I kept poking. I left marks, countless marks, burning even more scars into pale skin, and felt nothing. That proving unsuccessful, I went back to cutting. The cuts from when I was sixteen, seventeen, however old I was, had already healed up, so I traced the little pocket knife along the scars. Opened them up. Wanted to bleed. Wanted to . . . feel. Anything. Pain would have been nice, fear at what I was doing to myself would have been better, but I would have taken anything. I got nothing.

So many nights I just sat on the mattress, blood that was far too sluggish and dark to be of much use welling in wounds deep enough to kill me if I'd been normal. Then the blood just stopped and the cut healed over of its own doing. Figures that my powers would be making life hell for me even after they're gone.

One night I got desperate, would have given my soul just to feel honest to God pain again or even anything that would have let me know underneath it all I was still human, and I went off in search of something. I knew Emma kept a handgun in her room, but I also knew she kept it locked away in a box beneath her bed. I think she was scared I'd flip out one day and become another statistic.



Besides, I wasn't willing to inflict that sort of pain on myself. I was insane, probably, but after everything I'd been through, I couldn't bring myself to off myself the only way I knew how. Take the head and the body will fall, I read once. Well, that wasn't happening, not when it meant just doing even more visible damage to an already destroyed body.

One night, I just decided to go dance with death and see how close I could come.

I put all thoughts of Emma's gun out of my mind and headed to the biosphere, an apple in either hand. Of anyone in the entire school who might know how I feel, it's Penny. The poor girl's been trapped inside that diamond prison for who knows how long, and she can't scream for help, not in a conventional way. She does, though, but it seems like I'm the only one who hears.

When I walked inside, she, of course, was no where to be found, so I sat down on a rock and waited. She came out on my right side after a few minutes, and I wished for the first time in months that I could smile at her. She looked so innocent, even with the razors for claws. I held an apple out to her, and she didn't even hesitate, just reached out with hands made careful by practice and easily sliced the fruit. As she ate each piece one at a time, I found myself wondering how she put up with it, because I knew she wasn't deaf and dumb like everyone seemed to think. She had to see Monet's and Paige's beauty, Jubilee's obstinance, and she had to want that for herself. I watched her eat and felt a heart I no longer had break in sympathy for her. She was exactly like me, watching the world from a safe distance, all the while wishing she could be part of it, wanting the simple things everyone else had.

By the time she finished the second apple, I'd gathered the courage I needed to stand and hold out my hand to her. She stared at it curiously for quite some time, puzzled that I was holding it out and there was no apple in it. I put it closer to her, and she took the hint. She was scared of hurting me, and I was ashamed of taking unfair advantage of her that way, but in the long run it would help both of us, I think. She accepted my hand and I pulled her up, surprised momentarily by her height. I got over it quickly.

I wanted to talk to her, ask her for a dance, but I don't think any words were needed. Pain reflected pain in our eyes, and right then we were both very much aware that we were the only two people on earth who would ever know suffering like this, who would ever have a conceivable idea of how the other felt.

So we danced.

I don't know how long we twirled and moved together in the fancy greenhouse she called her home. I do know that deep gouges were forming everywhere on me. I ignored them for the most part, opting instead to take her hand and spin her around in a quick circle. She wavered uncertainly afterwards, teetering on unsteady feet, and my eyes smiled the smile my mouth couldn't.

For the first time since I'd joined that cursed school, I felt pain.

I imagine we must have been quite a sight when what seemed to be the entire team showed up, all in varying states of undress. I remember seeing Jubilee's mouth dropped wide open and hearing Paige's gasp. Angelo was simply staring in wide-eyed shock, and Monet . . . well, she was Monet. Ev, always the well adjusted one, decided to point out the obvious.

"Jono, um . . . you're bleeding."

I looked down, for some reason, and sure enough there were cuts and gouges crisscrossing everywhere, showing through torn clothes. It was worth it.

"I cannae believe this!" Sean bellowed in that authoritative tone of his that let me know I was in for it when he got the chance to yell properly. Penny jumped at the voice, knowing Sean had never yelled at her before, and I felt terribly guilty for dragging her into this. She started to run off when I grabbed her arm and pulled her back to me, the simple gesture causing more wounds to open in my palm. I ignored them. She stared at the ugly cuts everywhere on me, and I shrugged in response, wishing I could tell her not to worry about them, that they'd be healed up before the sun rose. I wanted to thank her for the lovely if not graceful dance, for letting me feel human for just a few brief minutes, but as always with us, I don't think words were required. She met my eyes, and I swear to this day I think she smiled at me.

But then she was off and into the bushes somewhere before I could blink.

"I cannae believe how-how stupid -" Sean continued sputtering in insane fury, and I decided I didn't want to hear it. He wouldn't understand even if I wanted to try to explain why I'd done it. I tried to walk past him, wincing at the absolutely searing pain shooting through me, and he stopped me with one large, strong hand on my shoulder. "How could ye do this, Jono?" He asked me quietly. I didn't answer, just pulled away from him and cast one last, longing glance to the biosphere before heading out.

I haven't seen Penance since.

I spent the next couple hours in the medlab, knowing that if I could I'd have been grinning like a lunatic. I was one, after all. Paige stayed there with me, taking care to dab antiseptic into the hundreds of cuts I'd earned just from one fleeting night of happiness. She was disapproving, that much was written on her face, and more than a little worried for my mental state, but for the most part she managed to keep her opinions to herself. Her conversation was limited to "hold still" and "stop squirming" and the occasional "God, Jono, I can't believe you did this to yourself." She shook her head a lot, once when she applied the last bandage. Her hands lingered on the gauze, fingers tapping thoughtfully against my shoulder, and shook her head in something that could have been amusement. It made her hair fall into her face, and I acted before I could stop to think of what I was doing. I reached up and brushed her hair back, tucking it behind her ear, and we stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity.

Then I got up and left.