A/N: This is just a one-shot that's been rolling around in my mind for a while. I finally decided to type it up.
I wonder when the breakdown became inevitable. Perhaps it was when the "cure" failed. It came back slower than it had begun the first time, I'm still not sure if that was a blessing or a curse. I started picking up surface thoughts first, and instead of making people pass out, I was only causing dizzy spells. Two weeks later, I was just as lethal and solitary as I had been before. Only this time, I didn't have an entire community behind me. Most of the others at the Institute were still angry at me for taking the cure, and others pitied me for having such a short reprieve from my power. I learned who my real friends were, then. I suppose it may have been when I graduated from high school, and realized that there was no place on earth that I could live normally, except maybe the Arctic Circle. I ended up staying at the Institute, and taking classes at the local community college.
Maybe it was when Bobby decided that he was done being patient with me. He couldn't take the fact that it might take me decades to gain control over my power, if I got it at all. He told us all that being an X-man was something that he just wasn't cut out for. He moved to Chicago three days later. Kitty went with him. I wasn't invited to the wedding, and Jubilee refused to go out of loyalty to me, but I overheard Ororo telling Logan about it, and guess it was a beautiful ceremony. Last I heard they were expecting their third child.
I hit a new low later that year, when someone bought me a cat for Christmas, despite the "no animals" rule at the Institute. They made an exception for me, since with animals I can play and cuddle, and not have to worry about someone getting their life force sucked out. I broke down in hysterical laughter one day when Jubes and I were playing keep away with her. I suddenly had a vision of my future. I was going to be a crazy cat lady.
Who am I kidding? I know the exact instant I gave up. It was after a rescue mission in Chicago. There had been a hostile mutant holding humans hostage during a bank job. Gambit, that was the adversary, had some sort of blasting powers, and when we moved in to take him out I got caught underneath a collapsing column. Let me just say that although super-heroes on television seem to just be able to take such a hit in stride, getting crush HURTS, and I didn't even get a full blow, part of the column landed the teller's ledge, so that it was partially supported and fell diagonally across me. Still, the pain caused me to black out, and when I came too I was laying in the Institutes' medical bay.
Dr. McCoy was there, and informed me that he had bad news. The column hadn't caused any internal bleeding, but when they took an MRI, they had discovered some irregularities. What followed was a bunch of medical jargon, but what it amounted to was this: my body would never be able to carry a child to term. Apparently organisms that have poisonous touch are not conducive to evolution, so nature has ways of making sure that unwanted traits are left out of the gene pool. Physical and chemical changes in my body would stimulate a natural abortion. I had a tubal ligation a month later, just so I would never have to worry about becoming pregnant.
No one thought I would be too upset about being unable to have kids, they figured I have given up that idea a long time before. They were wrong. I used to day-dream about invetro and c-sections, about children who would have natural immunities to my ability. When I lost those day-dreams, I lost what hope I was holding on to.
Something in me shut down that day. I went on with my life, living one day at a time. I graduated from college, and became the Institute's History and German teachers, Eric's memories helped with both. I watched new students find sanctuary at the Institute, and marveled at how young and innocent they seemed. My own classmates made their separate ways in the world, although they all came home for the annual alumni dinner in June. I spent every day in a kind of haze, nothing seemed to really matter anymore. Jubes, Logan, and Ororo tried to snap me out of it, but I would have spent my entire life in that miasma if it hadn't been for a very old friend.
I found the note on my bed on a Thursday night: "Come to the park tomorrow at 1 p.m., alone. Make sure no one watches you. Please, Marie, it's important." There was a beat-up shark Zippo lighter next to the note, a fire-manipulator's version of the white flag. I hadn't heard from John in years, since the announcement that the Cure was failing, in fact. I'd gone into my room that night to find another note: "You can survive this, you're the strongest person I know.- John." Since then I'd seen some stuff on t.v. about Pyro and Magneto, but he had mostly been keeping a low profile.
I showed up at the park at exactly one the next day, my curiosity perked for the first time in months. I found John sitting by the merry-go-round, looking more weary and mature than I remembered. He was disheveled, and there was an air of panic around him.
"John?" I asked softly. He spun around with hands outstretched and I noticed the wrist-igniters he wore. "Calm down, It's just me."
"Marie? Thank God, I thought you weren't coming." He gestured for me to take a seat, and I slid onto the bench next to him.
"You said it was important." He nodded sharply, and then floundered for a way to start.
"I need you to do something for me. It's important, and I don't want to ask it of you, but you're the only one I trust. I- I need you to raise my little girl for me." I inhaled sharply and stared shocked at the children on the merry-go-round.
"I don't understand, which one is she? Why can't you raise her yourself? How can you trust me? I'm dangerous, John, I can't be trusted with a child."
"You're dangerous, Marie? Ha. I can't have any contact with Amber, I'm a walking death sentence for her. She's none of those," John gestured to the kids playing nearby. "She's only three months old, and I've only seen her once. Her mother's a non-mutant from L.A. I met her a year and a half ago and we had this world-wind affair. She didn't know who I was, and I didn't bother to tell her. It wasn't until Katy found out she was pregnant that I even told her I was a mutant." He grinned ruefully. "Katy was angry that I didn't tell her, but she said it didn't matter, that she would love us both just the same. She didn't know I was one of the bad guys…She learned. A week or so after Amber was born, we were on our way to the store, Amber was with her grandmother. Some guys from the Brotherhood caught up with us and started tormenting Katy. I realized then that if they ever found out about Amber she would never be safe. I was trying to convince Katy to run away with me, but when she realized who I was, she had nothing but revulsion. Still, she knows that she can't protect Amber, and neither can I, so I told her about Xavier's, and about you." John turned to look me in the eyes. "You'll raise her like she's your own, Marie. And I know that as long as she's with you, she's safe. You'll protect her. So, what do you say?"
"What do I say? You want me to raise your child for you! Do you know how crazy you sound?!"
"Look Marie," John caught her wildly gesturing arms, and held them still. "I don't have a lot of time, Eric's going to be wondering where I am. Just, please do this. Not for me, but for an innocent baby who's caught up in something." My breath caught as I thought about possible futures that Amber could have. Certainly, a life with me was safer than a life hiding from Magneto.
"I'll do it."
"I knew you would," John smiled and then dialed a number into a cell phone I hadn't even known he had. "It's okay, bring her over." A dark-hair woman strolled over from the swings, carrying a baby-carrier and a diaper bag.
"This is Amber," The woman said, passing the baby-carrier over. "She-She likes playing peek-a-boo, and she starts crying when she wants to be held. She just started sleeping through the nights, but she still wakes up sometimes at three-o-clock or so. Half a bottle and a lullaby put her right out. I packed some essentials, and her favorite toys. John said I had to pack light so no one would suspect. And- And"
"Kates," John interjected soothingly.
"Not word out of you, John!!! NOT A WORD! This is all your fault!" She turned back towards me. "Just tell her I love her SOO much, okay?" Katy reached down and laid a caressing finger on Amber's cheek. "Bye, Bye, Love." Then she turned away, back straight, and marched off down the sidewalk.
"You'll be alright, Rou-Marie, right?" John queried. I looked down at Amber's little face.
"Yeah, I think we'll be alright." He nodded once, and then stood up and started walking away in the opposite direction. He turned back suddenly. "Keep my lighter for her when she's older, okay?" Then he continued on.
I picked up the diaper bag and baby carrier, and slowly made my way back to my car.
When I got back to the mansion that night, I had a truck full of baby stuff, and quietly sleeping infant. Logan and Ororo were noticed her almost immediately after I entered the building.
"Marie?" Ororo asked.
"She's staying with us now. She'll need a new identity, her parents were worried that someone might come looking for her."
"And her old identity?" Logan said, with a cocked eyebrow.
"That's not important. She's our's now. She's mine now." And I carried Amber up to my room, feeling a sense of hope and expectation that I hadn't felt in years.
A/N: So what do you think? I didn't expect it to be this long, the story just kind of wrote itself.