This room is so small. I know that even though I can barely move my head from side to side. The pain is horrible, splitting my body in two. Why can't they make it stop?
I'm beyond coherency, I think. Hell, I've probably been that way for a while now. Since I've been here, in this damn room, at least. Maybe before. I'm having a hard time letting myself remember. And I'm trying to keep my memories, the ones I said were trickling in earlier, from flooding me with chaos. So, I'm gonna have to talk about this, aren't I? Just to straighten things out.
Who gives a flying fuck if they hear, either? Haven't they been trying to get me to do just this for too long? Maybe they didn't want to hear the truth then. Maybe I didn't want to tell them. That's changing now.
I won't be like this forever, damn it.
* * * * * * * *
The covert glances followed me wherever I went at first, eyes full of concern that might have touched me once, if I hadn't been sure that their concern would be the downfall of my trips into the memories. I even felt the urge, once in a while, to go to Jean or Professor Xavier and ask them to help me. Somehow, I always managed to squash that down into the darkest recesses of my mind. I needed the touch too badly to allow myself to ruin it.
I did, however, decide on a subtle change in my strategy. No more would I hide away for a chance to experience the touch while alone. Even though I earned the reputation of a dreamer, a person who will sit and stare into space almost mindlessly for more than ten minutes while the rest of the group laughed and had a good time, soon I became someone more than the loner girl whom no one was sure they wanted to get to know.
I made friends. Kitty and Jubilee, my roommates, were more than willing to admit me to their closely linked friendship once I demonstrated the desire to be a part of it. Their gossip became mine, and their larger circle of friends soon embraced me. Bobby, the boy I’d been too embarrassed to talk to after the whole Statue of Liberty incident, became another close friend. Surprisingly, he knew what I was going through, in a way. It shocked me when he told me how his mutation caused anything in the vicinity to freeze when he was experiencing emotion of any sort unless he kept strict and sometimes painful control over his abilities. This had made him reluctant to seek out personal relationships that had any chance of making him lose control of the power. So, no romance for Bobby either.
There were those who saw our long walks in the forest near the mansion and the occasional movie we saw together as something more. We agreed to let the others believe what they would, each of us for our own reasons. Only Jubilee and Kitty knew the truth, and for once they kept a juicy piece of insider info to themselves. I’ll always be grateful for that.
The “relationship” Bobby and I had convinced the adults that I was doing all right, finally. They stopped watching my every move as if they were scared I’d live out the threat to myself that I’d voiced to Jean.
I worked hard to make it to the top of my class. That June I graduated from Xavier's School and decided, albeit with a lot of coaxing, to begin training to join the X-Men. What I could offer them besides some rather good fighting skills, I didn't know. But I wanted to try. It was the most intense emotion I felt outside of the memories, the need to destroy any hint of the "other side", the mutants who were willing even to sacrifice their own to prevent mutant oppression.
Yes, that's right. I kept slipping into the memories at every opportunity. The thought of touch was too tempting for me, especially as I was mingling more and more with my fellow mutants. It was apparent in their eyes, in the way there was always at least a few inches of space between me and just about everyone else, that everyone except those who understood me the most were shying away from any inadvertent touch. Damn them, didn't they realize that was why I wore at least three layers of clothes in a house that was heated very ably against the cold winter air outside? It wasn't as if I was running around in a bikini and trying to throw myself on innocent bystanders!
I took my mind off of this by training to the point of physical exhaustion, socializing when I had to, hanging out with Jubilee, Kitty, Bobby, and the jokers St. John and Remy, and letting myself get caught up in memories at every opportunity. No, this wasn't a good sign, I know. My dependency on the memories to survive from day to day without breaking grew, and yet I wasn’t able to stop it, didn’t even want to, then.
I believe that at times they noticed that something was definitely wrong, but even to Professor X there wasn't an obvious cause. I think that he put my listlessness down to stressing myself too much with training in the Danger Room. He ordered me to spend less time there, to try and relax. That meant only one thing to me: more time in the memories.
It took me seven months to reach a level at which Scott--and I was calling him Scott or Cyclops more now, instead of Mr. Summers or Cyke, as I would whenever the Logan in me was given an extra bit of freedom--deemed me fit to go on my first "practice" mission. It was a bleak January day, just perfect for Storm to call up as much snow and hail as she might need without draining herself. The rest of us were just going to be diversions, while Storm hit the enemy with all of the force of ten blizzards combined into one.
That was the plan.
Of course, you can’t always follow a plan through to the letter. Hell, that’s as rare as a snowstorm in Hawaii, I bet! And this one was no exception to that rule.
We arrived at the site where a bunch of Brotherhood assholes were reported to be beating on an anti-mutant group. The place was at the docks of New York City's worst slums, a set of dingy, empty buildings that had seen better days maybe a hundred years before--if they were lucky. The anti-muties didn't seem too happy to see us, either. At least, they weren't very grateful-looking as they ran off with their hides more or less intact while we X-Men--took me a while to get used to phrasing it that way--went about the business of kicking some major ass.
Only it didn't turn out quite that way.
The first time I realized something was wrong was when I took some time from punching and kicking and avoiding skin to do a head count of the Brotherhood mutants. Let me tell you, I listened very hard throughout the entire mission briefing. I didn't even give into the pull of memories for a single second. So I know that the number I came up with was not what we had been expecting.
There were thirty-five of them, approximately.
Thirty-five against four aren't good odds during the best of times. It seemed like every time I knocked out a member of the Brotherhood, three more took his or her place. It was infuriating. That's probably why I didn't notice the hand coming towards my face until it was too late. The bare hand.
Her touch didn't last for more than a few seconds. I doubt that the mutant whose body that hand was attached to stayed in a coma for much longer than a few weeks. But it was long enough for me to gain the ability to see in the dark and breathe under water for about a week or so. It was long enough for me to gain her memories.
There were a lot to choose from. Let's just say that this Nightstalker, as she liked to call herself, had been one frisky woman in bed. Her flirting capabilities outside of the bedroom weren't too shoddy, either.
It was the first time I'd had the memories of a woman, a female mutant, to access as I pleased. It was a treat that I didn't want to give up. I even forestalled Logan memories to be able to feel the touch any woman might receive.
And, thanks to the night vision which NightStalker had possessed most of her life, I got some really interesting and edifying memories from her. I never knew it could be that big.
Well, anyway, it was in those few moments when her hand met my cheek and stuck, before I managed to pry her loose, that I realized something. Something which would bring me close to the breaking point, closer than I'd been before.
I could get new memories of touch--during our fights. I couldn’t go back to what I had been, a girl caught up in a prison that happened to be her own body. I needed to grow up somehow, be more than I had been since childhood.
Sweetness and innocence would no longer be the key for survival. This I knew. The world was too dangerous, especially for mutants. I had to be strong and tough, more than I had ever been before.
If Jubilee and Kitty noticed the change and disapproved, neither ever mentioned it. Instead, Jubilee kind of grinned whenever I told off Scott or Jean or ‘Ro and Kitty just looked away. I’ve never been sure exactly what she thought about it all.
Bobby drew away from me a little when I began to assert the person I wanted to become. He got used to it, I think, but we were never as close again. That suited me fine, and even though to the adults it seemed as if we had “broken up”, they didn’t appear too concerned about it.
In my opinion, at that time, distance was a blessing because it gave me more and more time to live through the lives I was stealing, piece by piece.
Because, you know, Nightstalker wasn’t the first to donate her memories to my special cause. She also wasn’t the last.
* * * * * * * *
Perhaps that was the end of what I had been before I knew what the X-Men were, even before I knew what I was. I know that it was the end of anything about me that had been childlike and innocent. I could never go back.
And my dancing went on.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Author's Notes: This story has been revised to make up for the author’s formerly stupid approach to them. Hopefully, it's much better now.