A/N: Okay, here's chapter 6! I've been working like a fiend on this story--though I'm sorry to say that this will probably be the pace I will be reduced to with updating. I've been working 5 days a week and I started school again (senior, baby!) so most of my time is lost! So enjoy this chapter while I get it out!
Seeking Solace
Chapter 6
Dear Mom,
I wish that I could tell you that you had a daughter to be proud of.
I wish I could tell you that it wasn't a mistake taking me into your home and into your family.
I wish, more than anything, that I could tell you that I have honored your memory enough to take the proper steps to ensure that what I did to you would never be done to anyone else.
But I can't. I can't tell you any of it because none of it's true. I am not a daughter to be proud of. It was a mistake for you to take care of me, considering that I brought you nothing but pain and anguish and misfortune. I can't even tell you that I've kept people at a distance so they wouldn't be sucked into my painful black hole existence. None of it is true.
Maybe I'm not strong enough, or not smart enough. Maybe it's some kind of flaw in my character. Or, it could be another scar, like the ones all over my body. Just another reminder of Hell and the Devil.
God, Mom! What would I give to make this all go away, for everything to go back to the way it used to be. I just...I don't know. It makes me feel ten inches tall and like I'm towering over everyone at the same time.
When I look at the people here, I know that none of them have any clue. They all look at me so openly and honestly. Yes, they are mistrustful of some people, but that's the hazard of being a mutant. Jubilee told me once about how she lived in a mall for a while--she's an orphan too. But she was never forced to do anything, or have anything done to her. She was just...alone.
Or should I talk about Scott? His parents were killed too, though he still has a little brother whom he loves a great deal out in Hawaii or something. Little Jamie has a single mother whom he adores. Then there's Rogue, who was raised by a foster mother like I was, though her fake mother was more fake and less mother.
Which brings me to Kurt. Abandoned and taken in by a family or norms who raised him and loved him despite his differences, and helped him become the person he is. I wonder if one day, if only in my dreams, I would ever get the chance to thank them for it, for making him into such a wonderful person.
But, oh God, Mom! This is just too hard! It's just too wrong. Everything is getting so out of control and so...so...
I don't even know anymore. It's going to be the death of me. It's going to drive me insane one of these days. All this running, all this hiding. I can't tell the people I care about anything that might endanger them. I can't tell them what happened to me. I have to hide and it's ripping me apart. I just want to have them see me and look at me the same way, even knowing the truth. But I know that they won't. They can't.
I am a plague upon their house, and it will all come crashing down if I don't leave. So I still keep that infernal pledge to one day leave this place and never darken their doorways again. No matter the pain I leave in my wake. I will hurt them, I know it will hurt them.
But I can tell no one when I leave. They might try to stop me and I know now that if they did, I wouldn't have the strength to say no. And that, Mom, would be the worst sin I could ever commit in my life.
So I will continue trying to make you proud. I will keep pressing forward, despite the lapses in my resolve. Despite my selfishness. Despite the truth that dwells in my heart, and the anger and hurt and pain in causes me. I will keep looking for my brother, I will endure this torment of a happy life for as long as I can, to the very day if I have to!
And then I will leave like a shadow in the night.
Running away is the only thing I'm good at... Did you know I said that to him? Granted it's true and all, but the only person I have ever actually said that to before is you, Mom. But when I cracked, and it all poured from me like water, I told him my greatest secret. Running away is the only thing I'm good at.
Let me start from the beginning, or else you might end up getting lost...
Friday night. It's supposed to be one of those fun-fun nights where teens go out with their friends or significant others. I guess normal kids do that every Friday, or close to it anyway, but not this Friday. And not us.
This Friday was a night to stay in. If the pounding rain outside, along with the chorus of thunder and lightning, wasn't enough, then a very angry Wolverine was. It turns out, some genius tried to hack into the Danger room mainframe to alter one of the simulations. It was weakening a program for the second team, so they could get through it faster but looks as though they used the same effort. Wolverine found the glitch in the computer, but not the culprit.
So the entire household was grounded until the guilty party came forward.
I wasn't really upset over it, considering I had no where to be, no one to be with, or any money to spend. After dinner, the X-Men kind of floated in all their usual directions, scattering to the four winds.
Like usual, I hung with Rogue. We hijacked the television from Jamie--though we ended up watching cartoons anyway. I suppose this is what it's like to be a normal teenager. You get grounded. You sit around watching television when you should be doing your homework. It was some kind of unwritten code.
I think it was around eight o'clock, still early in the evening, when Rogue mentioned to me that see saw a lot of the others gravitating toward the library. I watched and she was right. Every few minutes, Bobby or Jubilee or Evan was exiting and entering the library--usually dragging another person with them.
"Should we investigate?" I asked her with a raised brow.
Rogue shrugged. "What else we got ta do?" she responded, rising from the couch.
Jamie, so immersed in his cartoons, didn't even look up as we passed by him. I smirked a little, placing the remote down next to his hand. Then we strolled toward the library.
Rahne was hanging outside the door, hovering. My guess was that she was playing look-out for any adults. That meant what they were doing was either stupid, dangerous, illegal, or all of the above. I was already intrigued.
"So tell me Rahne," I said subtly to her. "What are we doing behind closed doors?"
"We're playing The King Game," she replied without any hesitation. I wondered who's brilliant idea it was to make her guard... "Wanna play?" she offered.
"Sure," I said. I knew the game, and it was always a hoot. I mean, what else was I to do? Frankly, I was tired of wallowing in misery.
"Ah guess," Rogue responded, following me inside.
All the lights were off in the room. Instead, illumination came from small candles scattered around the tables and on the floor. Mentally, I was leery of such an idea, considering we were in a room full of paper books. A fire hazard is I ever saw one. But Bobby was there, so if a fire erupted, he could always put it out. It made me feel a little better.
"What's this?!" I demanded in mock severity. "Someone forgot to invite us to the party!"
There were a few laughs. "Don't worry," Jean said in that smooth way of hers. "We would have come and gotten you."
"A likely story," Rogue quipped. I was so proud.
I did a quick scan of the room out of habit, noticing who was there, who was not, and marking all the exits in my mind. It seemed that everyone was there accept for Jamie and the instructors. I noticed with a flinch that Kurt was there, avoiding my eyes, trying to pay attention to something Scott was talking to him about.
Evan sat in the middle of the semi-circle that everyone had made around the library floor, a small cup with Popsicle sticks sticking out of it in his hands and a devilish grin on his face. "Greetings ladies," he said to us like the leader of a cult. "Grab a piece of rug, gather 'round, and we'll begin!"
"Part of me is regretting coming in here," I whispered to Rogue. She nodded.
Still, we joined the ranks. I sat Indian-style next to Kitty, Rogue on my other side. Evan called the attention to himself by coughing loudly. He was successful in stopping the chatter, but only forced the annoyed glances of many mutants to fall upon him. "Well, since we'll all here, I say we begin!" he announced.
"Evan, skip to the point," Scott commented.
Evan looked like Scott had stolen his thunder and frowned. "Fine, dude." Then he perked slightly. "Since a few of you may not know the rules of The King Game, I'll go through them." He held up the cup with the Popsicle sticks. "Each stick has a number on it, or a little K. If you have the K stick, then you're the king. The king can tell a numbered stick to do anything he or she wants them to do or say. No more than two numbers can go in one turn. Once the king's decree is done, the sticks go back in the jar and we start again."
"Sounds easy enough," Jubilee commented.
"It gets tricky, especially when someone tells you something retarded," Evan responded.
"Let's get this show on the road!" I cheered. Evan nodded and handed the cup around the room. Everyone drew a stick from the cup.
"What number did you get?" I asked Rogue, leaning toward her.
"Seven," she whispered back. "What did ya get?"
"I got ten," I whispered back.
"Ah hope they don't pick us ta do anythin' stupid," she wished. I nodded.
"Wo-hoo!" Bobby hooted. "I'm the King!"
"Oh Lord," Rogue muttered under her breath just loud enough so that I could hear. I snickered a little, then waited for the 'King' to make his move.
"As King," Bobby gloated with a grin. I watched as some of the younger classmen flinched when his blue eyes scanned over them, looking for a willing target. "I command number eight to tell Logan he looks good in yellow spandex!"
There was a moment of hushed silence as we all glanced around, trying to see who had the cursed number. I could tell right away that it was, in fact, Evan. His face has turned ashen as all the blood drained from him. His eyes were riveted to his stick, as if by sheer force of will he could change the number written there.
"Uh-oh," I said to Rogue. "Looks like Evan is our first sacrifice."
"I demand a re-do!" Evan dried, leaping to his feet. "This is insane!"
"Sorry pal," Bobby said, patting him on the shoulder. "If you recall, you were the one who came up with the game."
"And laid down all the rules," Sam added.
"And told us to take it seriously," Roberto finished.
"Face it dude," Ray said with a smirk. "You're fucked!"
"That's one way to put it," Evan mumbled.
"Like, don't just stand there!" Kitty chirped. "Go find Logan!"
We all gathered around the doorway as Evan took the first few steps out the door and in search of our humorless instructor. I was in awe of Evan really, for having the guts to actually go through with the game's dare and tell the Wolverine his attractiveness in yellow spandex.
We followed Evan down the hallway and around the corner. Logan was just getting off the elevator from leaving the Danger room and he didn't look happy. He looked even less so when he saw the group of us, led by Evan, like our lamb to the slaughter. He glared at Evan as he took a few steps forward.
"Hey Logan," said boy tried casually. Logan only grunted, looking to the rest of us gathering around before meeting Evan's gaze again. Evan panicked for a minute, then fulfilled his mission. "Didja know that...uh...you look really...spiffy...in yellow spandex?"
Logan, for a long moment, looked like he was just slapped across the face with a frozen fish. Stunned is a word highly overrated. "What!?" was all he could manage when air returned to him.
"Gotta go!" Evan said, turning on his heel and dashing toward us. The group of X-Men behind him--me included--parted to let him race by, back toward the library. We followed, half of us laughing so hard we were in tears. Logan watched us all, a look of sheer confusion and outrage on his features.
When I got back to the library, Evan was once more in the center of the room, hands on his knees, panting loudly. "I...seriously...hate...you...all," he wheezed between gulps of air.
"On with the game!" Jean said cheerily, gathering the sticks back into a cup and dispensing them as Evan had done. This time, he opted out of the game. He much preferred to watch from one of the cushiony chairs where he could regain his breath and glare at us all.
"Huh, look at that. Lucky seven," Scott said to himself from his seat across from me. I looked down at my stick; number three. Rogue, however, had landed herself the King stick.
"Aw, crud," Rogue whined to me. She didn't want the attention.
"Rogue's King?" Rahne asked.
"Queen," I corrected with a grin. I was met with a few chuckles.
"Parker," she said, turning to me with a defeated look. "Help me think up somethin' good?"
I thought for a minute, looking around the room for a victim worthy of humiliation. My eyes fell upon Scott and I smiled. Lucky seven, indeed. I leaned toward Rogue and whispered into her ear. Soon, her grin mirrored my own.
"Numba seven," she said sweetly, sitting tall with her chin high like a true southern woman. "Answa a question honestly."
Scott perked up, looking over at Rogue calmly. "What question?" he asked.
"Do ya like guys?" Rogue said with a wicked smile.
Scott balked. "Do I like...What the hell!?" There was a chorus of laughter from around the room, snickers under their breath and curious glances from under lowered lashes.
"Answa the question," Rogue pestered.
"No I don't like guys!" Scott huffed, as if insulted we even asked.
"Oh come on Scott," I laughed. "Even you have to admit to your lack of enthusiasm in the opposite sex."
He blushed dully, more angry than embarrassed. "My opinions are my own," he said firmly.
"Then prove it ta us," Rogue suggested.
"Excuse me," Scott choked. "Prove my sexual orientation?"
"Kiss one a tha girls," she said simply. "'cept me, cuz I'll kill ya."
"Ha ha," Scott commented with a scowl. "And just who am I supposed to kill, Queen Rogue?"
"Kiss Jean!" I said with a laugh. "As the Queen's advisor, I nominate Jean as our sacrifice toward this experiment."
Jean and Scott were both glaring at me and Rogue, but we only laughed, holding on to each other's arms so we wouldn't fall over in our fit. The others also laughed under the breath, though not as loudly as to invoke the notice of the two senior classmen.
Finally, Scott rolled his eyes and stalked to our side of the circle. He shot us another scowl before leaning over Jean and kissing her quickly on the mouth. It was barely a breath, hardly a kiss, but he did it.
"Happy now?" he growled.
We both nodded. Jean blushed and just rolled her eyes at the few 'oooo's that went around the room. The sticks were collected and we started again.
After Rogue, Kitty got the King stick. "Ok!" she clapped. "This is for everyone. We'll go around the circle and, like, tell our most embarrassing memory." There was a loud groan from everyone, but I actually smiled. I was never easily embarrassed, so the indication didn't bother me. "I'll go first," Kitty offered. She thought for a moment, then blushed as she smiled. "My most embarrassing situation is when Rogue overhears my private conversations on the phone."
"Well," Rogue commented. "When yer up 'til two in tha mornin' yammerin' on, I'm bound to hear some of it."
That broke the ice, and the circle continued. Rahne recalled an incident before she learned how to transform with her clothes on. Jubilee told us a story about her video game obsession in her mall days. Sam recalled a memory with a far tool. Roberto spoke of setting his kitchen on fire. Ray talked about static electricity causing anyone to touch him to get shocked--including his middle school crush. Scott spoke of a time when, on a trip to the mall, he was forced to stand in the women's undergarment department for forty-five minutes while waiting for Kitty and Jean. Jean, in turn, spoke of a time she accidentally used her mind-reading power to listen in on a conversation about her. Kurt talked about an incident where his hologram failed in school and he had to hide in a bathroom stall so no one would see him. Evan, who had rejoined us then, spoke of an event in a locker room where he sneezed and spikes flew everywhere.
Then came Rogue's turn. "Most embarrasin'..." she thought allowed. "That would definitely be when Kurt poofed himself inta the bathroom while Ah was in tha shower."
Then is was my turn and I bent my head in thought. There was an abundance of stupid mishaps that happened when I was a kid and involved my brother, but that wouldn't be honest. That wasn't the truth. My most embarrassing moment occurred while I was living in Hell with DeVero.
"My most embarrassing moment," I said with a wan smile. "Probably when I thought I was pregnant for about a week."
I was met with a wall of silence, eyes wide and staring at me. "You thought you were...what?" someone asked. I think it was Ray.
"I thought I was pregnant," I said again. "I wasn't, of course. And I felt stupid for it afterwards. That's probably my most embarrassing moment."
"When was that?" Rogue asked me, looking at me intently.
"I was fourteen," I said flatly. I didn't want to invite anymore questions upon myself. "Let's start a new round!" I said as brightly as I could as I gathered the sticks together. There was silence still, even as we passed the cup around again.
When Jean was Queen, she made Rogue and me sing the Teen Titans theme song aloud. It was payback for making Scott kiss her, I thought. It was also meant to humiliate us because we both knew the entire song by heart. In the end, everyone was laughing agian, and that's what counted.
Ray and Roberto and Sam forced random numbers to do random things. Rahne had to wear a cowbell the rest of the night, in her wolf form too. Jubilee had to divulge her super secret code for Soul Caliber II, something she would have killed to keep a secret. Bobby was forced to massage Ray's feet. Little, simple things.
During the last round of the game, I was surprised when I drew the King stick for myself. Imagine that, Queen Parker! I knew just what I was going to do, too. I leaned over and checked out Rogue's stick number--six.
"Who's king?" Scott asked, covering a yawn. It was getting late for most of the others.
"I am!" I announced, waving around the stick.
"What are ya gonna do, Queen Parker?" Rogue asked. I could tell by her voice she knew what I had in mind. I turned on her, like a true best friend.
"Number six!" I said in a sing-song voice. "You will talk to the boy of my choosing, come Monday, before school. For five, full minutes. Breaking such a decree will result in...bad things!" I wriggled my finger at her for drama's sake.
She glared at me and crossed her arms. "Fine," Rogue said, as if she could care less.
I could hear some curious whispering from the others. I just smiled. "It's little inside thing," I told them. "I've been trying to get Rogue to talk to this guy, but she never will. Now she has to!" There were a few smiles.
It wasn't a lie. I didn't tell them that the guy was an enemy, a bad-guy. They didn't need to know that. All they needed to know was that he was a nice guy who liked Rogue. And who Rogue liked back! Cut and dry, end of story. Period.
"I say we head in," Kitty suggested, arching her back in a yawning stretch. "It's getting late."
The others nodded and made their way out of the room. I lingered a little, blowing out the candles and putting things away, before I followed the herd upstairs for the night. Not that I was really tired. I was more weary. I walked into my room without turning on the light and poked around.
"Hello Selene," I address my plant, checking her in case of watering. She was still moist so I could get away with watering her in the morning. "Today was so long, I didn't think I'd make it through!"
I think she laughed at me, but I smiled as if she had and hopped on to my bed, stretching out with my hands cradling my head. I was only planning on resting my eyes seeing as how I was still fully clothed, minus my shoes, and still wide awake. But before I knew it, I was asleep. And before I knew it, I was dreaming.
I was sitting in a dark room, a book in my hands as I read. I heard a noise behind me and whirled. The window on the kitchen door had been broken.
I was back in my old house, the one I was raised in. My mother's house. I was in the living room, where I always went to read at night when I didn't want to bother my brother. He was sound asleep in his bed. Mom was sound asleep in her own. I was the only one awake.
A black gloved hand reached through the broken window and turned the lock on the kitchen door, then pushed it open. My novel was forgotten as I bolted to my feet and scrambled to the stairs. I was screaming by then at the top of my voice. "Mom! Mom!"
It never occurred to me that in the dream I was eleven years old again. That I had read the same novel hundreds of times. That the old house I lived in with my mother and brother had since been bought and totally remodeled by a new family. All I knew was that this was the night I hated more than any other. This was the night when my world fell apart.
The night my mother was murdered.
"Mom!" I screamed again, and she was there. Dressed in a pair of flannel pants and a baggy old tee-shirt, her long hair disheveled, looking as beautiful as ever. Selene Watson.
"Parker, what's wrong?" she asked, her cool hands on my face.
"Someone's breaking into the house!" I cried.
Her face harden. Peter erupted from our room then in a flurry of clothes, dressing as fast as he could. "What's going on!?" he demanded.
"There's a break-in," Mom told him, her eyes already locked on the stairs. "You kids stay here."
"No Mom, we can--" I was cut off by her hand over my mouth,
"Shush," she said firmly. "Stay with your brother." Then she leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. "Be brave, my girl," she said, then she left us in the hallway. That was the last time I ever saw my mother alive, because when she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was killed.
The murderer never came up the stairs after Peter and me, he just ran away.
The police told us he was probably an amateur, and panicked when Mom came in on him. Her death was an accident. But I knew differently. I knew that the thief was no thief at all, considering nothing was taken from our house, nothing was rummaged through. He had been waiting at the stairs for my mother.
I knew how the truth went. I know that when Mom died, I was upstairs, holding Peter in my arms as I cried and he strained against me to protect our mother. But this was a dream and it wasn't real.
So when dream-Parker followed my mother down the stairs, I wasn't surprised. I was afraid.
I didn't want to see the blow that sent Selene Watson to her knees, to bleed on the carpeted floor until all her life ebbed away. I didn't want to see the faceless masked man who took away everything dear in my life with one single act. But I did.
I saw the hidden man in black raise his knife and bring it down upon my mother. I saw the bloody wound, heard her scream, felt her pain as if it were my own. I saw the man in black run from the house the way he had come as dream-Parker caught the dying dream-Selene in her arms and lowered her to the floor.
I could smell the blood, taste the tears, feel the jerky pulse in her veins as the crimson stain on her shirt grew bigger and bigger. I cried, I screamed, I raged, but it didn't save her. Nor did it stop what happened next.
As I held her, eleven-year-old Parker aged into seventeen-year-old Parker. My old house shifted into the Institute. And Selene Watson faded into Rogue. I held her in my arms as her life flowed from her and her lashes fluttered closed over green eyes. I watched her die. I was as helpless to save my best friend as I was helpless to save my mother.
The pain was just as bad over the loss of Rogue as it was over the loss of Selene.
The dream shifted then. I was no longer holding Rogue, she was gone. I was the one laying now. Paralyzed in one position as the face of my brother, aged and mature and handsome to behold, swam before my eyes. It was the same nightmare I had been having for two weeks now. The same dream that had caused me to give up on Kurt.
And as it had been so many times, I watch DeVero kill my brother. I looked to see the bodies of the X-Men hung from the walls like war trophies. My eyes welled as I looked at them, especially when I looked at Kurt. He seemed the most broken of all. Why did it have to be this way? Isn't there anything that I can do?
Run away, a voice whispered to me on the wind. It's the only way. You must leave.
That was when my Earthly eyes shot open and I sat up in my bed, breathing heavily. God, how I hated my dreams sometimes, especially the nightmares. They always kept me awake in fear, made me tremble when it was time to sleep.
I did what I always did. I ran. Ran from my room and the memory of the dream and headed into the dark house once more. More importantly, I headed toward the kitchen. It was my hidden sanctuary, something I only shared with one person. The one person I had decided to push away.
Granted, it was just my luck that he was there when I entered the room.
I think he sensed me before he actually noticed I was there. Of course, I could see him as if it were the middle of the day, but darkness was my camouflage. It was where I felt the most safe.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly. "I didn't think you'd be here."
"I come here every night," he commented idly.
"I know," I said in a defeated tone. "I just didn't know you'd be here right now."
"I'll leave then."
And suddenly I was gripped with an extreme panic that if he left, I was be stuck in my lonely dark place forever, that the light would disappear and that I would die. Irrational fear threatened to drown me, so I took a few quick steps to the counter. "Don't go," I said a little too fast, a little too forcefully.
He looked at me strangely. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I lied, and it felt like lead on my tongue. He wasn't convinced, but he kept silent. Finally, I sighed in a rush, grasping my head in both my hands. "Everything!"
I heard Kurt shift, as if getting more comfortable in preparation for a long story. I was angered by that, and I was scared of it. Angry that he would assume I'd tell him and scared because I knew I was going to. And I did.
"I had this dream," I began. "It was a dream I've had before, of the night my mother died. Only after a while, it wasn't my mother anymore. It was Rogue who was dying. And then, it comes into this nightmare that I've been having for weeks. My brother is there, bending over me. I think I'm hurt or something, I can barely move. And then he's killed, and I look and all of you are killed to, and I don't know what to do. If there is anything I can do at all, being such a helpless ass as I am." I paused to slam a fist down on the counter. "Then a little voice is telling me to run away, that it's the only way I can save anyone."
I stopped, my anger draining. I just hugged myself. "The only thing I'm good at is running away. I've run away from everything in my life because I was never strong enough to fight for myself. I can fight for everyone else, but not me."
"That will never happen," Kurt said simply.
I whipped around, looking up at him. He watched me with a level expression. "Why?" I asked him. "How can you be so sure?"
"Because I have faith," he replied. "It will never happen."
"My dreams are almost never wrong."
"Almost never?" he countered.
"If I change something, then sometimes, they'll change," I explained.
"Then we'll just have to think of something to change," Kurt told me easily. "Then the dream with change. Simple."
"We?" I questioned hopefully.
"Ja, you and me."
I sighed, an ironic smile on my face. It figures that the one person I wanted to keep at a distance would be the one person to help me change what is almost written in stone. Life is funny like that.
We spoke on it for a while, then we went back to our prospective rooms. The weekend went like that, only now Kurt and I were openly friends. He spoke to me more than a simple hi in passing, and I actively sought him out during free moments in my time. We spoke more about what could be done, what could be changed.
By the time Monday came around, I had hope in my heart again.
It was just my luck that as soon as I felt some semblance of happiness, I would be thrown a curve ball.
...It began like any other Monday morning, Mom.
I forced Rogue to act out my decree from the King Game. She talked to Remy an entire five minutes, much to her extreme annoyance and his immense pleasure. I even wandered off a bit so that I wouldn't intrude on the conversation. From what I gathered after Rogue started speaking to me again, he had flirted with her. And even had the nerve to ask her out.
I was laughing the entire way to my locker. I opened the combination and reached to pull out a book when it caught my eye. A small white business card, no bigger than a post-it note. It was wedged between two of my text books, like someone had opened the locker and put it there as opposed to shoving it through the vents.
I pulled it free with trembling fingers and read the familiar heading. The name of the nightmares.
DeVero has found me, Mom. I don't know how. I don't know when. But he found me. His calling card greeted me at my locker this morning and I know that by tomorrow, I will be gone.
I can't stay in Bayville for another day.
To my shame, I have to run away. Again.
---All my love, Parker
A/N: Please R&R!
