Yadda, yadda, yadda, not mine, yadda, yadda, yadda. Reviews would be nice. Archive it, if you want, but tell me where.

Yes, there's more, and I am not vain enough to demand reviews first, but be patient with me and my lack of consistent internet access.

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One For Sorrow

One for sorrow,
two for joy,
three for a girl,
four for a bo,y
five for silve,r
six for gold,
seven for a secret,
never to be told
-nursery rhyme

Jubilation Lee was a Survivor. It was not so much a trait instilled in her as a state of being, a title truly earned by few and recognized even less often. To those select few, it was as integral as the Doctor, Judge, King, or Esquire on a business card. She had come into it much sooner than most people did, earning the unspoken right only ten years into her life. It had been brutally thrust upon her the day she had come home to see her parents lying in a pool of their own blood, their entrails adorning them in a macabre bow topping a special gift.

In the years that followed, as she travelled through the usual route of foster homes (her parents had been only children with parents long since dead), she had begun to discover what it meant to belong to that elite club. Once she had exhausted the foster homes, ("Unsuitable for adoption due to behavioral issues", the report had declared.) the next stop was a series of group homes, each one worse than the previous. She was shuffled into and out of them quickly. Those, too, furthur refined her title.

It was after she had run away from the last of those so-called "homes" that she fully claimed her title. That she adapted quickly and even thrived in her new life on the streets should come as no suprise. Very soon after, she had a nice, comfy set-up in the mall. Granted, that came with its own difficulties, but the occasional pursuit from security personel was merely an annoyance to someone with abilities as finely honed as hers. Life had been, if not good, at least tolerable right up to the day she had been convinced, in the form of Charles Xavier himself, to come to the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters.

You might say Jubilee had been doubly blessed, for she also carried the dubious honor of being a mutant. That had been bestowed on her days after her thirteenth birthday, when her latest (and last) foster-father had tried to do more than cop his usual feel. The streams of brightly-colored lights that erupted from her fingertips had the double effect of sending him screaming and sending her, burned hands already blistering, to the first of many institutions. She had since gained some measure of control over her powers, although they erupted easily if she was particularily angry or afraid. The pain had faded, too, with time.

Life at Xavier's was different. There were rules about everything, procedures, homework. She liked the classes, though her schoolwork was never more than adequate. It wasn't that the work was too demanding for her, she just had a hard time taking the American Revolution that seriously when she had learned life's real lessons already. When one was in a life-or-death situation, one had better know something more than the square root of 144.

Her new existence at Xavier's had its own price. Jubilee the loud-mouthed SoCal mallrat had been born out of necessity. She had instinctively known that showing the Jubilation forged from her parents' murder and the life that followed would not be allowed to exist in that place of laughing children and morality. So she had altered her personality, knowing that ebullient vivacity would raise far fewer second glances than her quieter, deadlier self. It wasn't a hard change for her; she had laughed and smiled before, just not as often. She had learned to shield the things she was far too young to know, to dampen the cynicism that came her from her past. At Xavier's she quickly came to be known as "witty". The change didn't hurt her too much, except sometimes when she woke up in the middle of the night and wondered what the catch was.

Her transformation went unnoticed by the adults. Even Xavier himself was convinced, and the fact that she had the "shields of a telepath" didn't hurt. But then, none of them had ever truly known the real Jubilation to begin with. Her teachers shook their heads in amused exasperation when she provided some trite excuse for missing homework. She had only to pop her gum loudly when somebody got too close to the truth. Play up the SoCal accent, throw in a few "likes", call it a day.

And yet for all her effort, a reflection of a shadow of her former self still peeked through. It was flashing in her eyes that first day when some other kids decided she needed an "initiation". It was the steel in her voice the time Bobby Drake had frozen her feet to the floor. And it was the bruises on John's face, the black eyes and split lip that were the result of her finding him on the far edge of the grounds hanging a feral cat from a stick and dipping it in and out of the lake. It was the set of her chin as they both stood in front of Mr. Summer's desk, her silence as stark a contrast to John's angry accusations as the blackening ring around his eye to his pale face.

It was then that she solidified her reputation at the School. Mr. Summers, for all his love of the rules and stern dissapproval, could only ground her for a week. She hadn't, after all, broken the School's cardinal rule and used her powers on one of her fellow students. And allthough he got out of it with no punishment at all, John was far from smirking. After all, he had been beaten by a girl. Thus Jubilee hid by standing out, concealed by intentionally drawing attention to herself. It was a technique only a Survivor could have mastered.

In the end, though, not even that really mattered. Life wasn't quite through with Jubilation Lee.

It was how she came to be huddled shivering in a stark concrete pit. Because she had forgotten the most basic tenent of a survivor - selfishness. Because, in the end, if the only person you could be counting on was yourself, then your first priority had to be you. It was a harsh reminder. She knew that, welcomed it, embraced the truth even as she cursed it.

It was luck, the capricious Survivor's god, that then stepped in. Luck that sent her running up a snow-covered slope barefoot through the snow. Here, Luck said, I'm feeling generous today. You will Survive this, too.

She didn't want to. Resentment twinged inside her. Huddled in a seat on the Blackbird under an agonizingly soft blanket, she could only rail silently at the gift while around her another drama was playing out. She noted distantly when Miss Grey diverted the water from the plane. She heard Mr. Summer's agonizing plea, saw the way the Professor's eyes glazed over as he became a human speakerphone. Her mind registered the events unfolding even as her soul retreated farther away. It was how she could feign sleep on the trip back, not that anyone noticed her in the wake of Jean Grey's death.

It was how she could smile at the Professor the next day and nod in all the right places when he paused for breath, as if T.H. White were the answer for anything and everything.

As if there were any answers at all.