Title: Lost Causes

Author: the laws of transitivity

Rating: PG-13 (For now, at least)

Summary: Toad thought that he could put his torturous childhood behind him, but someone appears from his past and brings it all screaming back.

Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men.

Please Read and Review.

Chapter Two

Present day Manhattan

Tonight was the night and all Michael had to do for the next few hours was to lay in the bed of the pick-up truck and think. About what? Well, the only thing he ever did think about.

(York, England)

He watched Mort go, leave him. The priest came running down the stairs, and upon seeing that the oldest demon had run off, he hurried back upstairs. He could hear them outside, searching, but after an hour, they gave up. And he knew that someone would come down for him.

The priest was seething mad. He walked right over to the fearful toddler and backhanded him across the face. The child fell backwards, crying out in pain. The old man certainly didn't stop there, though. It was the first time Michael had ever been raped, but it wouldn't be the last by a long shot. They were done going easy.

The next eight years were a haze of pain, humiliation, fear, and a mounting hate for the one person he blamed most for what happened to him. Mortimer. It may have been irrational, but in his mind, Mort was the one person that could have ended his suffering, and he chose not to. He left him to die in that Godforsaken basement. While one of the older boys would be trying out his new knife on Michael, he would drift away from the pain, and see his face as it was that night: Golden eyes glinting in the dark, only a hint of hesitation before he took off. He dreamed of the day that he'd be free to find him and kill him…

It was spring and he was eleven years old when things changed. The priest was down in the basement, hissing obscenities at him and telling him what filth he was. He'd never noticed the brick before- the one that jutted out of the wall. His eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Wha's tha'?" he demanded.

The boy trembled slightly, but responded, "A brick, Father."

He was slapped, then the man moved to jerk the brick out of the wall, revealing the saintly figuring behind it. "Who gave this t'you!?" he roared. The child shrank back in fear, but did not respond. "WHO GAVE YOU THIS RUDDY STATUE?!" His hand raised up and he threw the saint's figurine at Michael, striking him in the side of the head. She fell to the floor, her head falling off as it did. He grabbed it up, holding back tears. "Doreen," the priest said slowly in realization, "It was her, wasn't it?" The boy didn't respond.

Michael stared after the priest's retreating figure, coddling the wax Saint Rita of Casca in his hands. As the fear fell away, anger boiled up and he felt something rushing through him: Heat, power, energy. The shackles felt strange around his wrists. Looking down, he saw that they were… melting. First they went white hot, then they dripped down, scalding away spots on his pants, but not burning his skin. It felt hot, but didn't hurt in the least.

Maybe his head had been hit harder than he thought. Maybe he was hallucinating all of this. Or maybe he was free. Deciding to err on the side of freedom, the boy sprang to his feet, a wild fear and power running through his veins. The brick in the walls of the basements were melting. He ran for the window frantically, still clutching the statue to his chest. The window frame was white hot and melting, dropping the glass to shatter on the sloppy and lava-like concrete floor. He didn't care that it cut his feet when he ran over it. The only thing he cared about was getting out that window. He fell onto the grass outside, looking up at the building. The entire thing was sinking on its foundation, lopsided.

Vaguely, Michael knew he could stop it if he wanted. The thing was that he didn't. He wanted them to pay, to suffer. He sped up the melting, pouring his energy into liquefying the entire orphanage. By the end, he was whimpering in pain and exhaustion, but he'd finished it. That was what mattered. There was only one person left in the world to get back at.

(Manhattan, NY)

When he was young, his skin had been, while ashen and strange looking, smooth and soft to the touch. With years of abuse, though, it had become creased with scars that puckered out like hundreds of little and big seams- as if, were he to wear his skin right-side-out, they would be barely noticeable. His black hair was cut short, unlike the shaggy mess it had been when he was younger. He was sixteen now. His eyes hadn't changed a bit.

Glancing down at his wristwatch, Michael grinned to himself. It was time. Pushing back the tarp he'd been hiding himself in, he slipped out of the truck and stalked toward the motel. It really was a power trip- scaring the great Toad. He didn't care about the illegal activity, the mutant activism, any of it. All he knew was that if Mort really cared about mutants, he wouldn't be in the habit of ruining their lives.

The idiot was asleep in bed, a gun tucked conspicuously under the edge of his pillow. The stalker walked straight to the door of his room and placed a hand over the crease where the door met the wall beside the knob. Concentrating on heat, on the metal he knew was just a short ways in from his hand, he melted the bolt, and the door swung open with a mere tap.

First order of business: disarm him. The gun must have shifted further out from under the pillow while Mort was sleeping, so it wouldn't be too hard to grab. Michael went around to the opposite side of the bed and reached forward to get it…

"Please." It was mumbled by the sleeping mutant, quiet, but quite clear. "Please I'll be quiet." This full-grown man was whimpering.

Nightmares were hardly a foreign concept to the younger man. He still dreamed about the days at the orphanage, woke up screaming and in a cold sweat. Freezing as he watched the familiar expression, heard the words he still remembered so clearly from that first year in the basement.

There was a choking as if to hold back tears. "God, don' hurt me. Please don'…"

His hand was around the gun now, but his attention still on the face that had certainly aged since thirteen years previous. Mort still looked young, though, when he was like this.

He recalled the words he'd heard shrieked at Mort years ago: "You worthless, disgusting scum! You make me sick! You're nothing but a disgusting little toad boy! Stop crying, freak!"

Michael realized too late that he was reaching out to touch his face, to comfort him. The golden eyes snapped open to meet his red ones. "Oh, God, it's you," Mort gasped. He knew those eyes instantly.

Suddenly feeling very young, very weak, very in over his head, the boy grabbed the gun and took a step backward, aiming it at the other mutant's head.

"You came all this way to kill me?" he asked, amazed. It was like seeing a ghost.

The metal that held in the window behind him was melting slowly as he tried to get his hands to stop shaking around the gun. "You ruined my life," Michael accused in a raspy voice.

The older man stood up slowly, only in boxer shorts. There scars across his chest as well. "No, Michael. I didn' ruin it. I jus' didn' save it."

"I hate you!" was all he could think to shout. Every nerve in his body was screaming for him to run, to get out. Finish him later. So when the window dropped, scattering glass across the balcony of the motel, Michael took two large steps back and turned quickly to leap out through the escape he'd made.