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Chapter 10 – Tidal Wave

I was numb. I hadn't felt anything since we lost Darwin, and it was now early afternoon the next day. Waiting for an emotional response was like waiting for a tsunami to hit; I knew when it came it would immobilise me. Pain, suffering, torture, cruelty, I was used to all of that; I saw it on a daily basis back in the asylum, but death? Death used to be something I saw as an escape route, a solution to my problems, until I got out and came to the CIA facility; that's when I wanted to avoid it at all costs, because I had something to lose now. I knew it was a risk we all took by signing up for this mission, I knew it was a potential fate for any one of us, but for it to have come so soon, so sudden, and to the one person I'd never expect it to, that's what shocked me the most. All of our woes about being bullied by the agents, that all seemed so miniscule now that we'd lost someone. The facility didn't matter, the agents didn't matter – they weren't why we were here, they weren't the mission, or what brought us together. We had Shaw to thank for that, and we had Shaw to thank for showing us how dangerous this was going to be, for showing us how real he was, how serious he was about his plans.

Shaw killed Darwin.

I wasn't sure how the others were handling it. I hadn't made eye contact with anyone since it happened, let alone spoke to them, but I hadn't heard much talking between them anyway. Somehow we ended up outside the facility, huddled on a stone bench while every surviving agent set to work searching rubble and debris and carrying the dead away. Body after limp, lifeless body was carried past us, a constant stream of reminders that we could end up like them too.

Shaw reduced Darwin to ashes. There was no body to carry out, to bury, to pay respects to. The ash had probably been blown away already by the wind, or brushed into a trash can by an oblivious cleaner. There was nothing left of him. He was gone.

"Raven!"

My movements felt sluggish after sitting in the same position for God knows how long, but when my head finally lifted I saw Charles hurrying around the debris to meet Raven as she jogged towards him, the siblings embracing earnestly. Erik marched purposefully behind him, grey eyes glancing sharply at each of us before settling on me, while MacTaggert hurried to join the men. For a while I had completely forgotten that there were other people involved in this mission, as well as the five of us.

Erik stopped in front of me, eyebrows furrowed slightly and jaw clenched. I had no reaction for him, I just sat staring blankly. "Were you injured?" he asked. I shook my head. He didn't seem satisfied at all, but just gave me a terse nod and stood back again.

"We've made arrangements for you to be taken home immediately," Charles told us.

"We're not going home," Sean replied grimly.

"What?"

"He's not going back to prison," the ginger continued, looking to Alex, "And there's no way she's going back to an asylum," he added, looking to me. I didn't have it in me to care.

"He killed Darwin," Alex snapped.

"All the more reason for you to leave," Charles replied. "This is over."

"Darwin's dead, Charles," Raven stated, "And we can't even bury him."

Saying it out loud made it all the more tangible, and it stunned everyone into silence for a moment, until Erik spoke up. "We can avenge him," he stated, arms crossed defiantly and an intense look on his face. At that, everyone's heads whipped around to look at him.

"Erik, a word please," Charles said, leading him a few steps away. However, that didn't stop us from listening in. "They're just kids."

"No, they were kids. Shaw has his army, we need ours," Erik insisted.

Sighing, Charles turned to look at us all. "We'll have to train," he said loudly, "All of us. Yes?"

"Yeah," Alex replied, completely on board.

"But we can't stay here," Hank pointed out, "Even if they reopen the department, it's not safe. We've got nowhere to go."

"Yes we do," Charles replied, a slightly smug smile tugging at his lips.

"I'll see if I can get a jeep big enough for all of us," MacTaggert proposed, already moving to find one.

Charles took Raven by the arm and led her away from us to talk alone, while Erik motioned to Sean to move over so he could sit next to me. "What happened with Angel?" he asked tensely.

I blinked, replaying the moment in my head. "Shaw's words got to her," I told him. "He knew exactly what to say, how to win her over. She was already on the road of blaming humans; he just gave her a boost."

"She abandoned us," Sean added bitterly. "Erik, was Charles really gonna send Evelyn back to the asylum?"

Erik frowned. "That would never have happened."

"Hey!" MacTaggert called out, standing off to the side. "I got us a ride."

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The journey lasted hours, but barely a word was said the entire way there. Raven sat up front with Charles as he drove the jeep, while the rest of us sat on the benches lining the sides of the jeep in the back. Erik had guided me in first and followed right behind me, cornering me on the end of the bench; Sean seated himself third on ours while MacTaggert, Alex and Hank took the opposite side. The blonde mutant seemed very agitated to me, constantly clenching and unclenching his fists, staring distractedly at the floor with an angry expression. I wished I could help him the way he helped me when all the fighting was going on, but I felt like I didn't even have enough energy to blink. MacTaggert was the only one to try and strike up a conversation, but after three attempts and only receiving a few short answers from Sean and Hank, she gave up. Every so often we could hear the muffled voices of Raven and Charles conversing, but they never lasted long either. Clearly no one was in the mood.

"I can't believe we lost two of our team in one night," Hank muttered gloomily.

"Two of our friends," Sean corrected him, "But we didn't lose Angel, she abandoned us."

It went quiet for a moment, and I found myself really considering Sean's words. "She was pushed to her limit," I said, my voice slightly croaky from lack of use. I could feel everyone's eyes on me, but I only met MacTaggert's. "I'm willing to bet that if we hadn't been thrown into a facility full of ignorant, asshole agents, she wouldn't have felt the same way." Something about confronting her made my heart jump, and frustration sparked in my chest.

"You can't blame her mindset on the agents," MacTaggert retorted unenthusiastically, clearly reluctant to get into an argument like our last.

But I was finally feeling something, I was breaking through the numbness, and an argument was the only thing giving that to me. "You're right, I'm sure if we didn't have them leering at us 24/7 and verbally abusing us any chance they got, Angel would still feel victimised to the point that she'd side with the man we're tasked with taking down."

"If she truly wanted to help save the world, including the human species, she wouldn't have been so easily persuaded to abandon the cause."

"Shaw knew exactly how we were being treated – some agent gave us up in order to save the 'normal' people. He knew what nerves to hit to win us over because of that agent."

Pursing her lips, she stared at me in anger. "I'm not doing this with you again. Not now."

I opened my mouth to snap back at her, but Erik grabbed my forearm and sent me a stern look. I looked at the others, seeing that the pain in their faces had only intensified – I was hurting them further, arguing like that; I was being selfish. I didn't deserve to be selfish.

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Eventually we slowed to a halt and the two in the front got out, calling on us. One by one we got out of the back. Still feeling ashamed of my actions earlier, I waited for MacTaggert to get up before I moved, the small politeness a form of apology. My feet landed on beige gravel, a cool breeze tousling my hair as the sun shone down – it was a beautiful day, but I couldn't enjoy it. First I looked right, amazed by the sheer expanse of a gorgeously-kept garden; trees and bushes were dotted around over the immense piece of land, with several benches and other decorations complimenting the simplistic but beautiful style. I could even spot a large pond half way down, with a wooden bridge crossing over it.

"This is yours?" Sean asked, bringing my attention to where the rest of the group were staring.

If I'd thought the garden was impressive, the house- no, the mansion, absolutely blew my mind. It was purely incredible: three floors high, with a ridiculous amount of windows and turrets. I had never seen anything like it in my entire life. From growing up in a small bungalow with barely enough space in my bedroom to sleep, to then living seven years in a cramped, cold, uncomfortable cell in a mental asylum, to the facility, to this? It was absolutely surreal.

"No, it's ours," Charles corrected Sean.

"Honestly, Charles, I don't know how you survived," Erik spoke up, "Living in such hardship." Playful sarcasm laced his tone, but I knew that if I was feeling unworthy and incredibly envious and slightly bitter, then Erik would definitely be feeling it too.

"Well, it was a 'hardship' softened by me," Raven said, moving forward to lean into Charles. After taking a deep breath and receiving a kiss on her head, she moved away. "C'mon, time for the tour."

It took so long that Charles eventually had to cut Raven off, she was so intent on showing us all every single room and tell us three of the hundred stories relevant to each one. The telepath then led us back to the corridor where all of our separate bedrooms were, then told us we were welcome to explore and that dinner would be at six.

It felt strange, walking into a room and closing the door behind me with no one else inside. This was my room, I wasn't sharing with anyone, and I wasn't sure how I felt about that. The last time I'd had a room to myself, I lived in constant fear and anger, and it was the most unwelcoming space I'd ever experienced. However, this room was extravagant and lavish and the bed was king-sized with thick, soft pillows and duvet. A cushioned armchair sat next to the immense window on the opposite side of the room from the door; a long set of drawers sat along the right wall underneath a mirror that stretched along its entirety, with a tall, wide wardrobe standing next to the drawers; and a door to the left of them led into my own bathroom with a toilet, sink, shower, and bathtub.

"Fuck."

I didn't know what to do with myself. So, I sat on the floor with my back against the wall, curling my legs in towards myself and tucking my arms around my torso. This was far too big a room for me – you could probably have fit five cells in the space. I wondered if Erik was thinking the same, but then he'd left his prison years ago so he could have been used to spaces like this by now; only Alex would understand, if he even felt the same way.

Rubbing my eyes, I told myself that this kind of thinking wasn't helping anyone. Now that we were finally away from the agents, now that Charles and Erik had stopped recruiting, now that we had our own space – almost too much, it seemed – now we could finally see about Charles' promise of helping with our mutations. I was confident that Darwin and I could-

My chest suddenly felt like it had been hit by a truck, and the breath was knocked out of me. Darwin's name escaped my lips in a pathetic whimper as last night's chaotic events unfolded before my eyes again.

He sacrificed his life to help Angel, to protect her from Shaw, to protect all of us. He was so selfless, so flawlessly good, and he was completely eradicated. Alex had helped, had tried to defeat our enemy, but Shaw just used his energy to burn Darwin from the inside.

Without reason, I pushed myself to my feet and walked out of my room, following the hallway to the left a couple of doors. My knuckles were rapping on the wood and before I could understand what I was doing, Alex was opening the door.

We stared at each other in silence; his eyes were tired and sad and angry and confused, and his jaw was clenching intermittently. I frowned up at him, examining every tiny detail in his irises. Then words were coming out of my mouth, and I couldn't stop them.

"You attacked Shaw." It was a statement, a little ambiguous in its tone, and it made Alex lower his gaze, almost guiltily. "You used your mutation against him and-"

"And now Darwin's gone," he snapped, glaring at the floor. "I know: he's dead because of me."

Something in my chest hurt at that. "No," I said, snapping his attention back to me. Why was I here? Why was I talking to him? "You could have been hurt, or died like Darwin." He frowned down at me, as unclear as I was on where I was going with it all. Then I said it. "I don't want you to die."

I blinked, frowning at myself as my gaze dropped. And then I walked away as fast as I could, refusing to even think about what his reaction was. What the hell was that? What was wrong with me?

Stumbling around a corner, I slapped a hand against the wall to steady myself, blinking away white walls and black eyes. A steady, high-pitched ringing started in my left ear, and didn't stop no matter how many times I shook my head or slapped my hand over it. Closing my eyes, I took some deep breaths, feeling something bubbling at the bottom of my throat. My stomach flipped several times, and my eyes began to sting as echoes of the doctor's voice and Darwin's voice overlapped and battled each other. Keeping a hand to the wall, I half-ran, half-jogged down the hallways, praying I'd stumble upon one of the million exits in this colossal building.

Eventually I did, the fresh air hitting me hard as I bolted out towards the tree line surrounding the grassy expanse. A few trees in, I fell to my knees and doubled over, emptying the contents of my stomach onto the roots and soil. It lasted for about five minutes, but it was only when I was finally free to breath properly again that I realised I was sobbing harder than I ever had in my life. Not wanting anyone to see me, I got up and kept walking further into the woods, struggling to keep quiet in the off chance someone would hear me and investigate. But now that the tears had started, there was no way I could stop them.

My sobbing was relentless and painful, never mind the fact that my chest felt like it was literally breaking apart. The ringing in my ears was growing louder and louder, so much so that I had to clamp my hands over them in a useless effort to cease it. My head was pounding with the effort of it all, and eventually I just couldn't move anymore. Slumping to the ground, I sat awkwardly with my head in my hands, sobs wracking my body as memories of one of the few people I could call a friend floated at the forefront of my mind. I'd never felt so much pain, not even in the asylum. Most of that had been physical, but this was pure emotion, stemming from my very soul, and I wasn't sure how to handle it all.

He had promised he wasn't going anywhere, he'd believed himself when he said it, but that was when none of us truly grasped the severity of the situation. For all my talk of preparing us for battle against Shaw and his minions, I really wasn't as clued in as I thought I was. I overestimated myself, underestimated Shaw, assumed and expected too much of my friends. Sean and Darwin at least came from relatively normal backgrounds, as far as I could tell – how could they have been prepared to have faced the horror and cruelty Shaw was capable of? Hank and Raven were damagingly insecure in themselves – how could they have stood up to someone so solid in their beliefs and personality? Angel had seen the badness in some men, but that was sexism, exploitation and harassment, not murder, cruelty and, worst of all, acute manipulation – how could she have been prepared to protect herself from something she'd never been attacked with before? Alex spent years in self-inflicted solitary confinement, afraid of himself and of his power – how could he have come to terms with it without any guidance so that he could control it? As for me, that's where I really went wrong.

The whole world was trapped in a moment of inertia; there was only me, lost in my own mind, ambushed by a nauseating wave of reality which had hit me full force. How could I have kidded myself for so long that I was capable of holding myself together, of helping my friends become a team, of helping them realise their potentials and become effective at achieving immense tasks? For the first twelve years of my life I lived in a house where I was alone 90 per cent of the time; during the other 10 per cent of the time I would endure constant, emotional negligence, knowing that my dear parents were certain there was something not quite right about me. They raised me at arms-length, too afraid or repulsed to cherish and love me like they should have. Then when my mutation exposed itself, they seemed almost triumphant and relieved, glad for the proof of their suspicions, glad that they were not actually bad parents – they just had a bad kid. So they sent me to an asylum for the mentally deranged, where I absolutely did not belong. Surrounded by a smorgasbord of schizophrenics, psychopaths, sociopaths and more, suffering the guards and the doctor, I only got worse. Yes, perhaps I could improve in the presence of real, true friends and mentors; however, that was a long shot, and I wasn't confident that there wouldn't be a day where I would be free from my trauma.

"I'm a mess."

It came out in a whisper, and into the wind with it went the ringing in my ears, the throbbing pain in my skull, and the spinning in my stomach. I took deep breaths, uninterrupted by sobs or vomit. My skin gradually dried in the fresh, warm air, and my thoughts quietened down to gentle murmurs. I had tried to deny the fact for too long, preferring to keep up the pretence that I was of solid mind, that I was capable of completely repairing the 19 years worth of damage that had been done to my fragile conscious. I acted like my trauma was but a speed bump, that it could be overcome with some hugs and laughter; but it wasn't as simple as that, and I first needed to accept that being a mess was part of who I was, and it always would be.

But there was also much more to me than that. The messy, unstable part of me was unchangeable, but my identity as a mutant, that was something that I could develop enough to counter it. The messy part would never go away, and that was okay.

I had never experienced such a moment of pure serenity. My palms pressed down against the grassy soil beneath them and I could feel the life thrumming through each and every atom. I listened to the birds chirping and the wind rustling the leaves high above and the sound of the trees creaking and groaning, as if speaking to each other. The music of nature engulfed me, and I closed my eyes, surrendering myself to it. In the back of my mind, I was vaguely aware that something was happening, and that I was causing it, but I thought it best to let it happen without concentrating too much in case I ruined it.

Time passed, whether it was fast or slow I couldn't really tell, but eventually I realised that someone had sat down next to me. Turning to them, I opened my eyes to see Sean hugging his lanky legs to his chest, looking forward in saddened awe. Following his gaze, I found myself staring at a short archway of roots intertwining with each other, with a single, beautiful flower glowing from underneath it. It was simple, but it was lovely, and born from genuine, heartfelt emotion – it was something that Darwin would have liked.

A gentle, compassionate, and truly kind soul, Darwin's loss was devastating to us all, but he wouldn't want us to grieve, and he wouldn't want me to follow my natural instinct and prevent myself from hurting like this again. He would want us to honour his memory and cherish the time we had with him, using our pain instead to finish Shaw and ensure he never hurt anyone else like he did us.

This would not break us apart. This would strengthen our bond as friends and as a team. We would help each other, support each other, protect each other – and take strength in the knowledge that our reasoning was far sounder than Shaw's, because ours was built on family, and his on something as vulnerable as ego. Yes, I was a mess and, yes, everyone else was just as imperfect as I was, but that was what brought us together, and what would make our bond unbreakable.

We would stop Shaw, or we would die trying.