A/N: Back story time! Be prepared for some secrets, angst, and politicized discourse. You've been warned.
Lina walked into the room Amira had pointed out to her. There were two beds, one of them looking noticeably lived in. "Definitely Amira's." Lina reasoned and went to the other one. On it was a nightshirt with the back torn halfway down. "For my wings, I suppose." Lina guessed as she started changing. It was late and she was really feeling tired.
She had just finished changing when Amira walked in. "All settled in?" She asked. Lina gave a weak nod. Somehow it was more disturbing that she was being treated as a sleepover guest than as a regular prisoner.
Amira walked into the bathroom, changed, and walked out again. "You ready to turn in too?" She asked.
"I guess so." Lina said as she crawled into her bed. "Not that I'm complaining, but why aren't I in a cell or something?"
"Well for one thing, my room has a spare bed for when Naomi's not feeling well or when she doesn't want to spend the night alone. But mostly, you're not in a cell because we don't want you to be." Amira said as she got into her own bed. "You're already in one back with the Joes. Why put you in another one here?"
"I'm not in a cell!" Lina protested. "The Joes are my family! I want to be there, can't you understand that? I chose to go to them!"
"Did you?"Amira asked softly. "Would you have gone to the Joes if it weren't for the fact that you had nowhere else to go?" Lina had a hard time not flinching. Where would she be now if her family hadn't thrown her out? At home? At the Xavier Institute? It certainly wouldn't have occurred to her to seek out the army on her own…but she was happy now. That's what counted, wasn't it?
"And what about Shane and the ex-Brotherhood members?" Amira asked. "For them it was a choice between the Joes or jail. Not exactly a free choice."
"Did you choose the Massachusetts Academy of your own free will?" Lina asked.
"Mostly." Amira sighed. "It's a long story."
"I've got time," Lina said, sitting up in bed. "I'm not exactly going anywhere." She said wryly.
"Heh." Amira gave a weak laugh before returning to her own thoughts. "Well, I suppose I have to tell you a few things about myself. I'm from Gaza City…you know of it?"
"I've heard it mentioned in the news." Lina admitted, tactfully neglecting to mention that it was almost never mentioned in a good way. Amira probably knew as much, but didn't say anything.
"I was born in the Gaza Strip. My parents were refugees from the 1967 war…I grew up in one of the refugee camps along with my parents, older brother, younger sister, and a couple of cousins and extended relations."
"Life was…well being a refugee says it all doesn't it? After the violence broke out again a couple of years back, things became even worse. Bombs falling, electricity and water cut off, unemployment, less food came in…and then there were other problems." Amira said. "I don't buy into a lot of—or even most—of the Marxist stuff Vlad spouts, but I've seen one thing Marx said in action." She closed her eyes and quoted from memory.
" 'Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and also the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people.' " Amira finished, shaking her head. "I've been hanging around Vlad too long. Anyway, the worse things got in Gaza, the more powerful religion and tradition became—and that also went for movements like Hamas."
"I think I see where this is going…" Lina said.
"I doubt it." Amira said sadly. "You have to understand, my people as a whole are not—or weren't at any rate—that religious compared to other Arab and Muslim peoples. Our religious leaders complained that we were wine bibbers and pork eaters! We were considered one of the most cosmopolitan peoples in the Middle East! Largely secular, our leaders included leftits, Christians, and women that participated in politics and didn't wear the veil! But when things got bad, and I mean real bad…" Amira trailed off.
"It was a problem when everyone started getting up in arms about religion and traditional values?" Lina suggested. Amira gave a tight smile.
"Well traditional values don't look too kindly on being…" she mumbled something incoherently. Lina blinked.
"I'm sorry, what did you say?"
"I said that the traditional, religious types didn't look kindly on being…on being…I'm bisexual, all right?" Amira said in exasperation. Lina winced. Now things were starting to become clear.
"And you were afraid of being caught and outed…" Lina said sympathetically. Amira nodded.
"When you're in a community where tradition and honor is extolled above virtually everything else it can be dangerous to transgress tradition. Ever hear of 'Honor Killings'?" Amira asked. Lina, eyes widening, nodded.
"Does your family know that you're…?" Lina started to ask.
"My family is dead." Amira said flatly.
"I'm so sorry. How, I mean what—" Lina trailed off under Amira's suddenly furious glare.
"I'm a Palestinian. What do you think happened to them?" Amira demanded hotly. "Israel raided the Gaza strip one day with an Apache helicopter—courtesy of the American military—" She added bitterly, hot tears starting to shed. "They fired their rockets and the next thing I knew…" Amira choked. "The next thing I knew." She continued softly, choked with an occasional sob. "I was alone. If I hadn't been at the marketplace at the time…" She looked away so Lina wouldn't see her wipe her eyes.
"Amira?" Lina said, starting towards her. "I'm really sorry." Amira gave a quiet gulp and turned back to her.
"Thank you. My mutation manifested itself a short while later. Then things became even worse. Some Israeli soldiers were having a gun battle in the strip again and I started to run away. The next thing I knew I was running faster than I ever had before. When I heard bullets being fired near me I just started—leaping and jumping and twisting out of the way. It was incredible." Amira said, smiling slightly. "But no one else saw it that way."
Here Lina was on familiar ground. "You ran into anti-mutant bigotry."
"Yeah. Everyone was after me, and I mean, everyone. If I thought it was hard being a closet bisexual it was nothing compared to being an exposed mutant! The Israelis were afraid that with my skills at evasion, speed, reflexes, and dexterity I could become a dangerous terrorist and sneak into Israel to blow people up. They had their troops put out an order for my arrest…or death. Ironically the groups that Israel was afraid I would join—like Islamic Jihad—wanted me dead too. Their attitude towards mutants wasn't any really different than Stryker's. The Israelis caught me first. I was arrested, labeled a 'security risk, and locked up."
Lina stirred, sitting in rapt attention. The entire story sounded like one of those "There but for the grace of god go I…" sort of narrative.
"One of the recruiters for the Massachusetts Academy found out about me and somehow managed to influence the decision to not leave me rotting in jail for the rest of my life. Instead, I was deported which was almost as bad." Amira said.
"How'd you meet Naomi?" Lina asked. She didn't want to say that she found it surprising for a Palestinian to be able to bond with a Jewish Israeli—even if they were both mutants—but there was really no other way to put it. Amira explained.
"Naomi I met before the Israelis arrested me. I think her family, were either Jewish settlers living in the Gaza or maybe from Israel itself. In either case, they kicked her out when her mutation manifested itself early. Turned into a dolphin at a public swimming pool. Caused something of a big flap."
"I can imagine." Lina nodded.
"When the recruiter offered me something besides life imprisonment in an Israeli jail, I convinced him to take Naomi too. I didn't want her to end up in jail, or a secret agent, or lab specimen somewhere. And that's how we ended up at the Massachusetts Academy."
Lina suddenly felt that, as bad as her experiences were, Amira had it worse. She grew up having to deal with pressure from all sides; being occupied by a foreign country, religious extremists in your own communities, corrupt governments, being bisexual AND a mutant…
"I can't imagine what it was like for you." Lina said honestly. "I'm…I'm so sorry." Amira bit her lip and turned away.
"You want to know what the worst thing is?" Amira said bitterly. "It's that…on some level I don't want to admit to myself…I think that I'm almost grateful my family died before they found out about me—Oh Allah that sounds horrible! It's just that…" Amira sniffed as she started to cry. Lina walked over and put her hand on the older girl's shoulder as Amira cried.
"When they died…they died loving me. They didn't know I was bisexual or a mutant…they loved me. But if they lived long enough to see me exposed…would they have still loved me? Would they have rejected me or even…" She couldn't finish; she just buried her face in her hads and cried. "What kind of person does that make me?" Amira wailed. "A person who feels gratitude to her family's murderers for protecting her secrets from them? A person who'd rather have her family's love from the grave rather than a family at all? Oh Allah, I'm horrid…What kind of person am I?"
"You're a person," Lina said, as she held the other girl in her arms. "Who wants—needs—to feel loved. My family rejected me when I became a mutant. Sometimes I feel the way you do now. But the important thing is that I've a place where I'm loved. If you can say the same, you're in good hands."
Neither one of them said another word that night. Amira cried herself to sleep and Lina sat there wondering about how many other mutants were out there going through what Amira did?
Above all, she wondered just what was she going to do next.