••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
"Go away...I'm alright."
-H.G. Wells, dying words
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Chapter Twenty: Reflections in a Murky Mirror
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Mein Gott, there's so much I want to say to her, if only she would listen to me. I've never seen her like this, so withdrawn and tired, her eyes dim and weary. I wish that she would come to me, and tell me what is wrong, but her silence and my thoughts are all I have to ponder when it comes to Natalie Fairbanks.
As if I didn't know what's bothering her. It started that day at the amusement park, when my inducer cut out on me and exposed me to the whole world. I saw her face then, just before I 'ported out. She was terrified. I know it wasn't me that frightened her. She's been around me to much for that to be the problem now, at least I hope so. I really hope so.
It was being discovered that scared her, I think. And why shouldn't it? It scares me to no end to know how others will react at the sight of me as I truly am, so why should I expect her to feel any differently? Why would anyone not be afraid of being alongside me when I am exposed?
But, honestly, selfishly, plainly, I do. I do expect her to feel differently.
So now, she won't speak to me, and when she looks at me I can see pain in her eyes that reflects so deeply that it hurts me in return. I tried to speak to her in the car on the way home that evening, but it was as if she couldn't hear me, or as if I were speaking to someone who couldn't respond in any way but to breathe, softly and slowly like a person asleep. When we got home, she went up to her room and disappeared for the night. Later, I 'ported in to see if she was alright, and she was so blunt and harsh with me that I thought she was angry. I left like she told me to, not wanting to upset her further, but I was sure that I saw tears in her eyes. I wanted so badly to hold her until they went away.
I really thought that there was something good between us. We are friends, there is no doubt of that. At least we were, and I hope we are now. But her friendship wasn't all I felt, and I was rigorously hoping that she had the same ideas that I did. Now, I'm quite sure that I was imagining it, that she was simply being pleasant and now she's offended in some way, and it won't ever be the same again.
It has been almost a week now, a week of agonizing silence and awkward moments and a burning aspiration to know what she is thinking. What I wouldn't give to have the powers of Professor Xavier, or Jean, for just a day, an hour, a minute, so I could see into her head and pick apart all the little walls and barriers. She has secrets, we all do, and I don't blame her for that. What I want, what I can't seem to stop thinking about, is what she thinks of me, of what happened that night at the park. Is she angry at me for getting caught? Or just worried about the way I look, about the fact that she and I will never be able to do anything in public without having to put on this little charade of mine? I don't know, but I can't stop wondering.
Sometimes, now, I dream about her. She's laughing, her green eyes happy and bright, and I'm laying in her arms as I did after I'd been hurt, only this time I'm awake and I can feel her warm skin. Then, she turns down to me and sees the mottled bruises on my face. She begins to cry, and I can't reach her through this strange glass wall that springs up from the ground between us. Her tears and her pale face are excruciatingly lucid, but I can't hear her voice or reach out through the glass to pull her to me.
And then I wake up, feeling cold, and I wonder how she is sleeping.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I'm not sure why it happened the way that it did. It could have been so simple, a ride on the bumper cars, a piece of birthday cake, and we would have come home and watched movies or collapsed in bed after a long day of fun. That's not what went on, of course, and now there is so much left over to be dealt with before I explode from within.
Every time I close my eyes, all I see is Kurt, lying on the asphalt with blood pouring along his temples, and swollen lips, ashen gray. And when I look at him, when I see him alive and healing, all I want to do is take his face between my hands and kiss his wounds until they fade from his skin and vanish from memory.
There's a part of me that blames myself. It was my idea to go on the bumper cars, not even thinking about the possible consequences. Still, that's not the thing that has been lingering so heavily on my mind these past few days.
I can't stop thinking about Pietro and his offer. Sometimes, especially at night when I am most exhausted, it's all that my mind can stand to think about. What if he's right? Clearly, I showed myself and all the others that I'm not capable of fighting alongside them, and if I had I don't think I could have just left those horrible men unconscious on the ground. They hurt my best friend, they hate mutants and therefore me for nothing that I have ever done, and they are nothing but bigots with an anger control problem. Most of all, I seem to boil inside at the thought that they attacked Kurt, probably the kindest, gentlest person I've ever met in my entire life, and beat him so badly that he's still only beginning to heal. Why do these men deserve his protection? Why should he have to aid them, when all they will do is turn around and attempt to slaughter him with their misplaced revulsion and angry hands?
Every night I lay on my back in bed, the covers neatly unrumpled beneath me. When I'm sleeping, all I see is Kurt, his poor battered face, and my own weak arms that could do nothing more than lift his head off the pavement. So I don't sleep. When I sometimes drift off, there's either nightmares or, sometimes, nothingness, on those few nights that I'm too tired to even imagine an alternate existence in my head.
I can tell that the others know something is wrong. Jean and Kitty have been so gentle, and Rogue seems to want to avoid me for lack of conversational topics. Scott watches me wearily, and Evan takes Rogue's way out. Professor Xavier tries almost every day to get me to speak to him, but I won't, I can't. How could I let him discover what Pietro told me, and that I've actually been thinking about it, as if I want to take him up on his offer? I can't let anyone know. It will have to be yet another secret, locked away inside, the key thrown away in the recesses of my mind.
Kurt wants to help me, to know what's wrong. I can tell.
But once again, how can I reveal to him what I'm thinking? I can't let him know that I've realized my own inability to be one of them, a full-fledged hero, an X-Man. I can't let him know that, as much as I love it here and love him...them...I haven't yet been able to decipher my own future and my own desires. I want to be here, I know that...but I also want to hate those men. I want to hate them with all my heart, and there doesn't seem to be enough room inside me for both that abhorrence and these other raging emotions that I can't seem to place or to name.
There's also fear, a terrible, aching fear in my stomach. It's a fear of acknowledgement, of discovery, the fear that anyone who has lived so long in hiding feels when they know that the world may soon learn their secret. I'm a mutant, the world's ultimate minority, and I know that fear.
So I lie there, thinking about everything, and nothing at the same time, until I'm utterly exhausted.
And then I drift off, feeling cold, and I wonder how he is sleeping.