!Warning – Language, bullying!
I go down the elevator for the second time. This time, though, I'm escorted by Jean Grey and, surprisingly, Wolverine. I stand on the opposite side of the elevator, occasionally looking in his direction. Every time he meet my gaze. In fact, I think he's staring at me.
I turn and look back at him and hold up my hand with a smirk. I snap my fingers. I move him to my side of the elevator and lift him off the ground a foot. Then I stand where he was and snap my fingers, letting the scene play without my influence.
He falls and the elevator chugs, dropping. I scream. How heavy is that man? Jean closes her eyes and holds up her hands and we slow to a stop.
"Lapse," She says in a terrifying voice, "You're trying my patience."
Wolverine carefully crosses the elevator and stands between Jean and me.
"Don't think about it, Jean," he says, "Just concentrate on getting us downstairs safely."
She doesn't say anything else. Her eyes stay shut tight for a few still minutes. Then the elevator starts to lower.
"I'm fine," she says.
"Jean?" Wolverine says quietly.
"I said I'm fine!"
I lean against the elevator wall and screw my eyes shut. When will I learn to filter some of my big ideas out?
Wolverine stays between Jean and I for the rest of the torturous, slow ride down.
He looks over his shoulder at me with a raised eyebrow. I'm tucked into the corner, trying not to make eye contact with either of them. Then the doors open. Jean exits and swiftly makes her way down the hall.
"You get to watch her for a while, Logan. Xavier's in cerebro."
I feel bad for her. I know it's completely my fault she's... whatever it is she's doing.
"I thought I was the only one who could get on her nerves like that," Wolverine says. I'm surprised to hear him speak.
"I was just being stupid," I say, "I've been doing that entirely too often lately."
He looks at me in a way I can't interpret.
"You have to be careful around Jean, kid." His voice is rough and low. "If I wasn't there to stand between you, she might not have been able to regain control."
I look straight ahead, trying not to think of the implications.
We reach the curious round door.
"He'll know we're out here." He tells me. I stand stiff, as if I'm being x-rayed at the airport. Then the door slides open, mechanic pieces sliding into each other until the doorway's empty. The Professor's chair sits at the end of an elevated aisle. The interior of the room is spherical, paneled with metal sheets and lit by bulbs along the sides of the platform.
Wolverine walks up to him, and I hesitantly follow. The Professor takes a metal apparatus from his head and places it on a computer console in front of him. He turns his chair to face us.
"Jean's fine, Logan," he says, answering a question that wasn't asked aloud.
We exit cerebro and go to a room lined with gleaming silver drawers and harboring a hospital-style bed.
Wolverine looks as if he's unsure whether he should stay or leave.
"You can go if you'd like, Logan." Xavier says. He stays, leaning against the wall.
"All right, Lapse," Xavier says. I lay down on the table, wishing there was some kind of pillow. "Try to relax."
I close my eyes and I can feel him moving in my thoughts. Memories come to mind that I haven't thought about in a long time. My dad teaching me to swim, paired with my memory of the hotel pool from my trip to the school. My ninth birthday party when the only person who came was Emily, who would become my best friend. The best friend who was there the day I discovered my powers. But, as the Professor reads me like a book, I feel like he's prying apart two pages that were stuck together. I think 'don't' just a second too late.
A memory I don't remember fills my head.
I was young. Thirteen, maybe. I was riding my bike down the street to the park. I had done this a hundred times before, but now I realize I hadn't for a long time. Something had almost compelled me not to. I'd look at my bike, consider the trip, then find something else to do.
Was this why that happened? I stopped at an oak tree, looking at the acorns crushed in the street. I didn't expect anyone would be around. School had just started up again. I, being homeschooled, should have been the only park visitor. A voice behind me startled me.
"What's up, lil' bitch?"
I hadn't ever heard language like that in real life. Only movies, and even then, not casually like this boy said it.
A group of teenagers stands behind me. A ragtag bunch with messy hair, heavy dark makeup, and saggy clothes. A girl with dreadlocks and dark red lipstick smiles freakishly while leaning against who I suspect was the speaker.
"I'm just... on my way home. From the park," I say. It's too quiet. They can sense my fear.
"Do we scare ya, baby?" The girl in front says, "You wanna run off? You weren't leavin' the park, baby. You was jus' comin' to it. We been there for hours. We'd a seen ya."
A dark girl in the back laughs. Her hair's pulled up so tight it stretches her skin. It's a sleek braid down over her shoulder and coiling at her feet. She cracks it like a whip.
I cringe at the sound.
I climb onto my bike, trying, as with wild animals, not to make any sudden moves.
"No you don't," says someone behind the tree.
My heart starts to pound. I turn and see a skinny boy wearing all gray standing there with a slimy grin. I swear he was standing in the group before.
"So, kid." the 'ring leader' said, "you familiar at all with mutants?"
Now, this was before mutants in my school made my parents even think it would be an issue for me. I didn't know much about them at all.
I shook my head.
They looked suddenly like they were collectively angry with me.
"Nothin'?" asked the girl with whip hair, "You don't even know nothin'?"
I shook my head. My fight or flight reaction was in full gear.
They started getting closer, shooting smiles to each other. Then energy between them began boiling into something dangerous.
Suddenly someone lunged. "Come 'ere li'l monkey bitch," the thin kid in gray snarled, grabbing my shoulders while some girl took my feet out from under me. I tried to scream, but someone shushed me and my mouth physically glued itself shut. They carried me towards the park, peals of tainted laughter rising from them in intervals.
The hands holding my feet released me to someone else, whose fingers were cold like ice. My skin started to burn from the cold, and as I struggled, I looked down to see a boy with an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He snarled at me with blackened teeth and I screamed through my closed lips.
They took me up the playground equipment, a few of them climbing up the outside of the wooden structure. They hung me upside down from the top, my head at least a story from the ground. It was hard to breathe with my lips sealed. I thrashed, my feet stinging with the cold.
"Now," the leader said.
I looked towards the ground to see him standing there, a tilted smile on his face. His greasy hair looked thin from that angle, and his freakish girlfriend still dangled from his arm.
"Now," he repeated, "what to do with you?"
I struggled harder. A foot slipped free and I lurched towards the ground. The boy holding me swore and I felt hands pulling me up. They got a hold on my other foot again and the main boy sighed impatiently.
He twitched a hand and all my muscles tensed. I couldn't move without a tearing pain, and even the feeling of being dangled made me ache. My ears started to ring and I wouldn't have heard if he had said anything. Then he released me and my craned neck swung back and hit a beam.
"So," said the freakish girl. Her lipstick looked increasingly like blood in the steadily dimming light. "Don't know much about mutants, huh?" She tossed her head, making her dreadlocks pound against her skull. She reached up to touch my fingertips. I pulled back, but the boy tightened my muscles again.
She started to laugh. My muscles untense and I pull my arms away from her, shuddering at the touch of her cold skin. She laughed and laughed. After a few seconds the others laugh too.
"That's too funny," she says, "Little suburb baby's gonna be one of us someday."
The boy with cold hands dropped me. The fall winded me. I could still hear them laughing as I gasped for breath. There's the crack of a whip and I feel a sting on my back. As I tried to stand, I felt blow after cutting blow against my back.
The others fell silent. Now, only the girl hurting me was laughing. She pushed me onto my back with her foot. I could feel every cut in the sharp mulch. Looking up at the gathering group, I just closed my eyes. I couldn't. I was so scared. My shirt and the skin of my back were ripped to tattered shreds from the flogging I'd received.
I felt someone touching me, almost gently, trying to pick me up.
"Don't," I whispered, "Don't, please."
I find myself whispering this now. The memory fades away and I feel cold streaks where tears fell unbidden down my cheeks.
Xavier lets me catch my breath before speaking.
"Would you like to continue another day, Mallory?"
I shake my head. "No," I say, "No, we should do this now. But." I close my eyes, feeling the memory of that pain. "I think that one should stay buried. For now. Ok?"
The Professor nods. I lay back down and he sifts through my thoughts again.
"Now, lapse," he says, "I'd like you to freeze in a moment. Try to do it without indicating that you will, and try not to move. I'd like to see if there's any sort of change."
I close my eyes and try to remember the feeling of freezing without the snap. I breathe in deeply, then it freezes. I let the breath out, breathe in again and it loosens. Xavier stops reading me the instant I come back out of it. He asks me to do it again. I breathe in, I breathe out, I breathe in.
He starts to pull out a few medical instruments, instructing Wolverine to help him. Xavier attaches those awful stickers to my face and arms and I grimace as he has to pull one off and adjust it.
He cues me several times to lapse and come back, telling me once to do some jumping jacks inside the lapse and another time to create something inside one of the gleaming silver drawers. I make a tiny adamantium statue of Wolverine, which he pockets with a smirk.
Xavier looks very serious. He inspects the results of the tests with a growing intensity. Then he smiles and thanks me for my time. Wolverine takes me to the elevator and I go up alone.
