A/N: First, I want to thank everyone whose read this story for giving it a chance. Then, I want to thank my one viewer, an anon, for letting me know that they're enjoying reading this. That review's what gave me the energy to write this today, despite the fact that I should be off doing other things.
As always, I love to hear from my readers so, please, drop off a review!
There are some things that hurt deeper then skin, then muscle, then bone. Things that scar, not just the body, but the mind; leaving permenant grooves in ones brain, where nothing but hate and fear travle. Where it can never be mended, because it's out of everyones reach.
Todd happened to have a lot of these grooves, all criss-crossing with each other and forming a tangled mass of hopelessness inside of him. Creating nothing but confusion and altering an already damaged mind, bringing the insanity to the forefront and leaving common sense in the dust.
At the moment, it was those grooves that he was listening too.
They told him to take flight, because something had touched them. And it hurt so badly to be touched like that; felt like hot ash had been poured into his skull; like someone had taken a hammer to him, over and over and over, until his face was nothing more than a smear on the already ruined concrete.
Todd listened to them, because they were always right. Not the grooves, per say, but the voices that lived in them. They always knew what was going on, so he followed them like he followed Magneto once-upon-a-time.
His lanky frame had an akward gait. A too-flexible spine folded into an inhuman curve - and even that position, which had once been so natural too him, second nature really, even that sent jolts of pain through him. Todd's left leg was twisted slightly, from a break that had never been treated, and stuck just a tad to the side, which made his bounce filled steps seem even more off-kilter. The thick fabric of his shirt kept his palms safe from the grit of the cement, but the glass shards just pierced straight through.
Todd didn't even register it. Just kept moving like a man possesed, because he had to get away from these people with their invasive powers. These mutants that invaded the mind and left it tattered.
He had to warn Lace that it wasn't safe here any more, in the streets of New York.
"Todd!" called the woman, and he was so surpised by the word that he glanced backwards. Saw her swinging open the door to the car, and then both she and the man were running towards him. Saw it, but didn't register the fact, because his mind was still stuck on what she had called him.
People didn't call him Todd, anymore. Hadn't in a long time. Not since he was actually considered a human, however much a freak of one that he'd been.
He was tired and hungry and sore, and he wasn't paying attention to where he was placing his hands either. A fatal mistake because suddenly his limbs were flailing every which way as he tried to regain his balance, blood-slick hands unable to get a grip even on the rough surface of the concrete. Todd's bent leg buckled; and fire laced from that knee up into the base of his spine, then further and further, spiraling up and deeper, into his veins.
Todd yelped, but the noise was muffled when his face came in contact with the ground. Skin tore and he could feel the cartilage of his nose buckle - but it was all a blurr to the young mutant, all blending together and forming a cacophony of pain and copper and darkness.
Suddenly, he found that, even though he was still conscious, or at least thought he was conscious, he could no longer see.