Hi, there. So I'm officially back from my hiatus. I feel as if my summer was a hundred times busier than my regular school year. Point is, I had no time to breathe, let alone write during the summer. But anyways, my older brother mentioned this thing called NaNo WriMo, and told me I should 'try my hand at writing again' (he still thinks I haven't written anything in years). I'm not sure I will join this year, but I really like the concept. I am going to make a resolution to write at least a little bit of this story every day in the month of Nov. and see how it turns out. Enjoy the chapter!
19.
Lillian expertly weaved through the various obstacles in the danger room. Instead of mechanical arms and guns, the danger room contained padded beams and walls, which moved quickly across the floor or levitated a few feet above the ground. She closely avoided a high beam by dropping to the ground. In the distance was her target destination, a large backpack.
A red light, attached to a moving wall, blinked. Lily deftly drew her gun, expertly aimed it with one hand, and shot the target. The red light promptly went dark.
"Very good, Ravyn," the professor's voice sounded from her earpiece.
She smiled as she heard the compliment and stepped between two walls. Immediately, she was blindsided by a beam. Its force threw her off course, sliding her across the slippery floor. She wasn't completely healed when she shot up to continue the course. She pushed the beam away from her and continued to dodge oncoming walls and poles.
Up in the booth, the Professor watched intently. He was proud of how much she had learned, three weeks after coming back to the institute. Together they had discovered the extent of her powers and trained on the responsible usage of them. They found that she could not only take wounds off someone's body, but could transfer them to another's. She could also transfer wounds to inanimate objects, but they soon discovered that it drained her energy to do so.
Lily had reached the backpack and slung it over her shoulder, stooping slightly under the weight. Scott, who sat beside the professor, pressed a few buttons.
"I'm turning on a light. Jean, activate beam 5."
Jean was sitting on the other side of the professor. She obediently pulled a lever and, used her mind levitate it and move it towards Lily.
Scott turned to Kurt. "Your girlfriend is really good at this course."
Kurt smiled and craned his neck to get a better view of the danger room. He was seated on a desk behind Jean, Scott, and the Professor. In the room below, he saw Lily draw, aim, and shoot her gun in one, fluid movement. The moving light simultaneously turned off.
Kurt turned to look at Evan, who was casually leaning against the wall across from him. His friend was looking observingly down into the danger room, a stoic expression on his face. Ever since he and Lily got together, Evan's expression more or less remained the same.
"Evan?"
Evan quickly looked at him, his mouth twitching into a practiced smirk. "Yeah," he said, pointing down at Lily, "she's just really good. I don't want to do the course after her." Once Kurt looked away, his face returned to its emotionless expression.
"She made it," the professor announced, before moving out of the room.
As soon as Lily crossed the finish line, she fell over, exhausted. She moved the ridiculously full backpack away from her and focused on slow breathing. She lay flat on the floor, concentrating on the illuminated ceiling.
A muted gunshot sounded in the danger room, and Lily opened her eyes to find a pair of gold ones staring down at her. She smiled and allowed herself to be pulled up.
"Did you see the hit I took?" she asked, rubbing her side.
"Yeah, it looked painful."
"It was-," Lily averted her eyes and thought back. "Actually, it didn't hurt," she paused, the corners of her mouth pulling down, thoughtfully, "At all."
Kurt, oblivious to the thoughts in her head, chuckled and pulled her into his arms. He kissed the top of her head affectionately. It had taken him close to four months to get to know Lily, not Ravyn, and he was still discovering new things about her daily. He slowly realized the small things she did that gave away her emotions. He knew that she would cock her head to one side slightly when she was annoyed or confused. He noticed that she would clench her hands whenever she was even the slightest bit angry. Finally, though it wasn't until weeks into their relationship, he noticed that instead of saying the traditional 'I love you', she would suddenly get silent, smile, then wink at him.
They broke apart when Logan strode through the door, followed by the Professor.
"How did I do?"
"Very well," the Professor said, sharing a look with Logan, "but, you were distracted when the pole hit you. You cannot allow anything to distract you and you must be prepared for surprises."
"Fine," Lily said, her hands clenching slightly before relaxing.
"Good," Logan grunted before lunging towards her.
Lily stumbled backwards, avoiding Logan's teasing claws. Kurt quickly got into the middle of the attack and grabbed both of Logan's wrists. "Logan, what're you doing?"
"Kurt, it's fine. She won't get hurt," the Professor said. Kurt backed off, still glaring at Logan.
Logan extended his hand to Lily. "Get up, kid. Let's dance."
Lily bit her lip and a shadow fell upon her face as she smirked up at him. Without hesitation, she jumped to her feet and whipped out her gun. Logan calmly stepped forward and knocked the gun out of her hands with his claw. "Is that all?"
Lily's hands were clenched tightly into fists. The next time Logan attacked, she leaned to the side and grabbed his arm. She brought her other hand down on his exposed shoulder. Logan felt pain radiate down his arm, and watched it fall to his side, temporarily useless. With his uninjured arm, he swung at Lily, who caught the punch and fell to the floor. As she dropped to the floor, she swept his unprotected legs. Instead of falling, the heavy set man was forced onto one knee.
Lily wriggled out of his grasp and staggered to her feet. "Come on, Logan, use your claws! Scared you're gonna hurt me?"
Logan's promise to the Professor went out the window when he drew both his claws. "Logan," the Professor warned, but his friend didn't listen. He charged at the girl, who, instead of going on the defensive, ran towards him.
It happened to fast to register in Logan's mind. He heard the horrible sound of impaling and suddenly felt a heavy weight on his claws. He stared in complete shock at Lily, suspended above the ground. The only things holding her up were his claws, which stuck grotesquely in her chest. Her cold hand lay softly on his cheek.
Logan crumpled to the ground, three puncture holes in his chest. Lily landed on her feet and her eyes glazed over as she stared blankly past him.
Kurt got over his shock and raced to the scene. He pushed Lily away from Logan, before kneeling by the large man, who lay as motionless as Lily. Slowly, the three puncture holes on Logan's body closed up, and Logan sprang up. He collided with Kurt, who held his own against Logan's rage.
Logan was furious. His anger only grew when he realized that he had trained Kurt so well, the teacher couldn't even get passed his student.
"Logan, Ravyn." The Professor's voice sounded in their heads. Logan reluctantly dropped his arms. "Ravyn, come with me."
The Professor and Lily left the danger room. They met Evan outside, waiting for his turn to go in. He mumbled a hello to the Professor, before his gaze landed on Lily. Her mouth was clenched in a tight, straight line; her eyes scrunched down into a frown. Her hands were clenched by her side.
He grabbed her arm as she walked past, but she coldly rejected his gesture. She followed the Professor away from the danger room to the foyer of the mansion.
Lily opened the door to the professor's study, and, as soon as they were both inside, slammed it. "I can't feel it. Why can't I feel it, anymore?"
Her voice filled the small room; pure frustration laced her words.
"What can't you feel?" The Professor's voice was as calm as always.
"Pain."
The elderly man folded his hands in front of him and leaned into them, an interested, but concerned expression on his face. "Pain? Ravyn, why do you want to feel pain?"
Lily stayed silent, and sat dejectedly in one of the comfy chairs in the room. She smiled grimly at the wall and shook her head, looking everywhere but her mentor. The Professor had seen the action done as a way of fighting back anger and tears.
He pressed, "Why do you want pain, Ravyn?"
"Because," she exploded, "It's the only thing that convinces me I'm not a mutant. Pain makes me feel like I have a connection with normal people." She didn't cry, but the desperation in her voice moved him.
"I thought you had changed your view on mutants since you came back."
Lily sank deeper into the cushions of her chair. She would never admit it herself, but the Professor's words of disappointment stung her.
It was a while before she spoke. "Professor, please, why?"
Her mentor controlled his wheelchair to his side of the desk. "I can't know that."
"Guess."
The Professor sighed. "It's most likely an evolution of your power. You're powers have developed so much that… that you can get rid of wounds so quickly, you don't feel any of its effects. This is nothing to be angry about, Ravyn. You are getting stronger."
Lily took deep breath and ran her fingers through her brown hair, clearing her mind. The Professor waited patiently to remove her hands from her face. After she did so, she spoke, "Am I done?"
"That's all up to you. Do you have anything you want to talk to me about?"
She shook her head and got up. When she was outside his office, she noticed Kurt leaning casually against the center table of the foyer. As soon as he noticed her, he straightened up.
"Are you okay?"
Lily wanted to be alone, and let out a grim smile. "Yeah."
"What happened?"
Lily wished that she could tell him the whole truth, but she found herself habitually lying through her smile. "Nothing," she began, "the Professor just told me my ability's getting stronger… so, hey! That's good, right?" She tried in vain to convince herself.
When Kurt didn't look convinced, she continued, "Listen, I'll see you at dinner. Rogue wanted to see me after my session in the danger room."
She gave Kurt a quick peck on the cheek, and, before he could offer to walk her to Rogue, she hurried up the stairs. Once turning the corner, she breathed a sigh of relief. She quickly walked into the upstairs bathroom and locked the door.
She was breathing heavily as she slid to the floor, her speeding heart rate ringing in her ears. She wrapped her arms around her body and looked up at the ceiling, trying to stay sane. Her mind kept reminding her of what she told Kurt only three months ago. Pain is the only thing that makes me feel like a human. The pain was gone; her humanity was gone. Because of her mutant power everything changed: her life, her job, her looks. The only thing she had held onto from her previous life was stripped from her.
Her eyes caught sight of an object to the side of the double sinks across from her: Scott's razor. She let out her breath slowly and stood in front of the mirror. The reflection that stared back was flawless. Her skin held no blemishes or inconsistencies. Her eyes and hair were bright and healthy, yet across her figure all she could think of was the word 'mutant'. She was as much a mutant as Kurt was. She couldn't even mentally call herself a human, anymore. She was a freak, and technically, the government considered her illegal and open to experiment.
She had made a promise to herself that she would not test her powers using unorthodox methods after hte drug incident, yet, when her hands closed upon the razor, her heart rate slowed to a calming, normal beat.
Lightly, she broke the skin and dragged the razor down the length of her arm. A drop of blood seeped through the crack, but the skin closed and returned to its perfect state. Instead of feeling the tickling sensation of skin breaking, she felt numb waves close her wound.
She tried again, this time adding a little more pressure. She gained the same results, the numbness only becoming more intense in her arm. In a sudden fit of frustration, Lily banged both her fists on the counter, knocking down bottles of products.
"C'mon," she prayed, not knowing whether she was talking to God or herself. "Please, give me something."
She broke skin again, this time allowing blood to flow freely from the wound. The wound closed up faster than the past two times. She no longer felt the familiar tingling of her healing ability acting up.
Lily lost it. Her mind and senses seemed far away; she lived in the moment, where only one thing mattered: pain. She slashed her arm again and again, blood splattering onto the mirror from the sheer force she brought the razor down into the bloody mess she once called her arm.
The numb feeling encased her entire arm and she saw the red lines she created quickly disappear. Hot tears coursed freely down her face as she began slashing everywhere she had exposed skin: her face, her neck, her arms.
Her entire body had erupted with the numbing tingle of painless suffering when her mind finally decided to come back to her. "Drop it." Her voice came out unsteadily as she echoed the words reverberating in her head. The razor clattered uselessly to the ground and she took a step back, inspecting the mess that was the bathroom.
Blood. Her blood was everywhere. On the walls, the counter, and the floor were stained with an ugly, deep red color. Through the red-splattered mirror she saw glimpses of herself, covered in the same reddish hue. Her tears had created streaks of her skin color down her face. The room started spinning, due to the extreme blood loss she caused.
"Oh, god," she gasped out, the stench finally reaching her senses. She turned on the faucets and watched as the water washed a small percentage of the red down the drain. She turned away from the mess, averting her mind from thinking of what she had done. She stepped into the shower and, while still wearing her clothes, turned on the water.
She tried to convince herself that she didn't actually do what she had done, like the first time she killed a person, but, like that first time, she failed. She was scared of the act she had commited; what lay behind the curtain. She still felt numb, as if her body was swollen and her ears were hearing through cotton.
She finally emerged, dripping wet, from the shower, and hurried to the nearby shelf, the only thing untouched by the blood, to find a towel. In a dazed state, she pulled a towel from the shelf at an awkward angle, and an object fell to the floor. She immediately recognized it as something she had handled many times before.
A camera. It was a small device no bigger than her fingernail that was used to document a victim's movements around their house or workplace. The numbing feeling suddenly left her body, replaced with a cold sweat. Who would be sick enough to place something like this in a bathroom? Lily ruled out everyone who lived in the mansion. If not them, then who? She picked it up to examine it further. She felt, rather than saw, the focus of the camera change. In a moment of panicked shock, she threw it into the toilet and flushed it down. The room suddenly stopped spinning as her body made up for the lost blood.
The cold anxiety and confusion was still with her as endless questions haunted her mind. She realized that, since she got rid of the evidence, she would never find the perpetrator. She turned to face her other impossible task.
Meanwhile, Logan had been entertaining himself with his motorbike, the only thing that seemed to take his mind off his near-death experience with Ravyn. Upon entering the house, his enhanced sense of smell caught the scent of blood. He would normally disregard it as a stupid prank played on a student or a bad week for one of the girls. However, the smell was so strong and apparent he felt the need for fresh air.
Tensely, he climbed the stairs to the source of the smell: the upstairs bathroom. A light, barely visible, stream of red was seeping from under the door.
Instinct leading into panic, Logan banged on the door. "Who's in there? Open up."
Ravyn jumped at the unexpected sound of the knocks, causing her to drop the razor that she had been cleaning. She identified Logan's voice.
"Hello? Who's in there?" Logan said, and, by the tone of his voice, Lily knew that he was going to knock down the door in seconds.
Gently, placing the clean razor on the counter, Lily unlocked the door.
Logan immediately pushed the door wide open to find the blood-filled room. In its epicenter stood Ravyn, dripping wet, with a scarlet-stained towel in her hands. Her clothes were ripped and permanently colored brownish red.
"The hell… the hell did you do?" Logan asked, incredulously.
Lily rubbed the stainless counter she had just finished cleaning, unable to form an excuse. "I-I can't feel anything, Logan-"
"So you ruin a bathroom to prove a point?" Logan said angrily, through clenched teeth. He stood absolutely rigid.
Lily met his glare, her lip quivering slightly. She wiped her hands on her pants before reaching over with her towel to wash the mirror.
"Get out."
Lily ignored him and continued producing streaks on the mirror. Suddenly, Lily's feet were off the floor and she was swept up and out of the room in one fluid motion. Logan dropped her onto her feet, outside the bathroom. "Go to your room. Now."
Her brain was scattered from the sudden change of location that for a while, she could only stare at him and mumble. Her armpits tingled, feeling somewhat violated by Logan's method of getting her out of the room. "B-but I gotta, I got to-"
"I'll take care of this. Go away."
Realization dawned on her. Stepping away from her teacher, she stuck out her hand. "Thank you," she choked out, still shocked.
Logan looked at her hand, but didn't take it. "I'll shake your hand when you pay me back for all the pain you cause me, kid."
A smile spread on her face, and she sprinted away from Logan, eager to get to the safety of her room. Once there, she got into dry clothes and lay on her bed. With her previous problem gone, her mind returned to focus on the camera she had found.
Curiosity won her over. She picked up her phone and dialed one of the first numbers she had ever memorized. She heard the phone began to ring, and her breaths became shallow with anticipation.
The voice on the other line began. "Hello?" Oh, god, his voice. It had gotten deeper in four months; more drawled and dangerous sounding.
Every ounce of her being was telling her to hang up, but she only gripped the phone tighter.
"You know that you know someone well when you can identify them by their breathing. Hello, Elle. How are you, babe?"
Instead of following her instinct and hanging up, she let his name slip past tense lips. "Connor. You set foot near me, I swear on my mother's grave, I will kill you."
Connor's chuckle, which had once served to comfort her, mocked her. "Oh, don't worry, babe, you're well-hidden from me. Uh... where are you, by the way?" Sarcasm drenched his words.
"Far from you. And the happiest I've ever been."
"Really?" He laughed, almost hysterically, "I don't believe you. Do you know why? If you were oh-so-happy, you wouldn't be calling my personal phone, now would you? You miss me."
Lily froze, realization dawning upon her. She did miss him, to some extent. Despite all the things he did, all the things he put her through, she still held on to the image of Connor, her first true friend: the friend who would protect her.
"Goodbye, Con." Lily was about to slam the phone down on its receiver when Connor stopped her.
"No, wait! Elle, wait. I've gotta ask: How's your arm? No scars, huh?"
Lily slammed the phone down, her heartbeat racing.