She was a girl
Left alone
Failed, failed again. They’d gone on a mission only to fail. With every mission they failed, it drove the nail in her coffin in a little deeper, reminded her that they weren’t successful all the time. But she didn’t need a mission to tell her that.
Ororo stood from her bed, walking to the double doors leading to her balcony. She unlatched the lock and opened the doors, staring out into the darkness. . Where she had once found peace watching the night sky, attuning herself to the weather’s changing moods, she could now find no solace. Thunderheads loomed in the night sky, blotting out the light of the stars and the moon. There would be a storm come morning
She swallowed hard, thinking of the mission. They were supposed to save a young mutant. She had wondered what made this boy more special than the rest. What made the professor chose him and not any of the other mutants that were in distress that very minute? How did he chose who was worthy of being saved and who wasn’t? How could he play God with lives that were not his for the taking?
Her fingernails bit into palm as she clenched her fist tightly”an aide-mémoire that she needed to refocus her anger. She closed her eyes, taking in a deep, meditative breath. She would not direct her anger toward the professor. She would not direct her anger toward anyone but those who deserved it.
Nonetheless, her opinions on the matter were of no real consequence. If the boy was possibly alive, it was up to them to save him. Scott rarely argued the justifications in such missions anymore, even after she had shared her thoughts with him. It was a distraction, needed or not. It didn’t matter how many lives they saved, though. They would never be able to shake the guilt they felt about Jean.
With the professor’s guidance, Scott led them to some rundown house in the middle of nowhere where the boy endured goddess knows what. There was nothing when they found him, save for a husk of a teenage boy left. Lifeless, gray skin tried vainly to contain bones that threatened to split through the skin at any moment. His mouth was permanently O-shaped, emitting an unvoiced scream that would never be silenced.
And all she could think was that the boy had been alive, living and breathing, only hours before. But when they found him, he looked like he’d been dead for years. Death had a way of being more real at such times. Her own indigenous anguish over Jean only served to intensify the moment.
“Mein Gott…” Kurt had muttered behind her; to add the exclamation to Kurt’s statement, the corpse’s head fell back, teetering dangerously as if it would come off at any moment. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t. She felt a warm hand wrap around her own, bringing her out of her stupor”Kurt. Kurt’s lips moved rapidly. He’d been praying. She wished she could take comfort in something as Kurt did his God at that moment.
There was nothing they could do for him; there was little evidence of what even happened to him. Would they ever know what happened to him? Probably not, and such was life with the X-Men. Had he had any family? She found herself thinking about that a lot lately. Did the villains they encounter have anyone they loved, anyone who’d grieve for them when they died?
The boy’s clothes had been tattered, hanging around his thin body like a worn death shroud. She assumed he was a runaway, but it was possible his own family had thrown him out. Maybe his own family had been the ones who did that to him. She could never be sure in those situations. They lived in trying times, and people were capable of anything, even evil towards those they should’ve considered closest to them.
Leaving the scene, she’d felt her hands start shaking, and she’d clasp them together to stop the shaking. “You okay?” Logan had asked her, reaching out to touch her shaking hands. And she’d flinched away from his touch. Not because she didn’t want him to touch her but because he’d seen it”that imperceptible crack in her mental armor. The shaking only affirmed it.
Pain touched his eyes for only a moment. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. Goddess knows he’d been hurt enough without her adding to it. And Goddess knows she hurt enough not to want to cause anyone else any more pain. “I’m sorry. It wasn’t you. I just…” She couldn’t even finish her thought. She just shook her head and walked away. It was the second time she’d shown him that she was weak. If he loathed her, she would deserve it.
Logan, the enigma. She’d often chuckled internally at the way he pursued Jean like a love struck teenager. He challenged Scott to up his romance game. Something that Ororo thought Scott needed. He’d become too comfortable in his relationship with Jean, thinking that she would always be his because that’s the way things had always been”until Logan came along.
Then, Scott had felt threatened like he rightly should have. And maybe Jean had played a bit of the Devil’s advocate by showing mild interest in Logan’s advances. She just never figured out if it was because to fuel Scott’s jealousy or if it was because she truly enjoyed Logan’s attention.
Jean had a right to be flattered by his attention. He was forbidden desire personified. Dark, brooding looks beckoned and dissuaded, invited and frightened. Animal magnetism oozed from him like a dangerous pheromone. He had the ability to make the coldest blood run hot when he entered the room. He was the kind of man you’d give yourself to willingly but not without paying a price. She noticed that. What woman with a pulse didn’t? But she didn’t dwell on it; she did not covet what she knew she couldn’t have.
He caught her by surprise, earlier, though. No one ever asked about her feelings, a thing of her own doing. She was surprised at the things she admitted to him when he challenged her to come clean with her feelings. She didn’t want to release them. She wanted to hold on to her feelings, had to hold on to them. Not just because she feared losing control, but because she feared some weakness in herself that would show that she wasn’t the even-tempered person everyone knew.
She had tried to explain that to him, but he didn’t understand. No one really understood. Just because she chose to suppress her emotions didn’t mean that she didn’t feel. Oh, she felt more than they thought she did.
She could still her own mental screams”excruciating, pleading, angry”from that day at Alkali Lake, a sound she’d never be able to express physically. She had felt her pain wash over her like the tide of the waters washed over Jean.
Jean’s death reminded her that nothing was inert. That was something they took for granted. Even though they knew that violence and death was part of their life, they expected things to stay the same, but life was embryonic, ever growing, ever changing. Someday they would all die, and until they fully embraced that, they were all hopeless.
Still it was unfair that life”that fate”had its pick and choose of who lived and who died. One day, you’re laughing and smiling with your best friend, and the next day, she’s gone. And there was no warning prelude to her death, she was just gone. It was as if some unknown deity looked down on the world and said, “You have stayed too long.”
But every night she saw Jean’s face in her dreams, her lips moving slowly, telling her that death was not the end. However, they were just fleeting dreams, a psychological unreality, not meant to be taken literally.
How she wished Jean’s death had planted some hedonistic seed in her soul. She wished that she could preserve the memory of her friend by cherishing whatever life she had left. She wished Jean’s death made her want to have more, to sing more, to love more, to give more, to take more. Jean hadn’t died so her heart could dry up like a flower withering beneath the cruel sun. Jean had died so she”so they all”could live.
She wasn’t living, though, a disrespect to her friend’s memory. She was barely breathing. She just went through the motions, did what was expected of her, did what she could to comfort those around her while her emotions held a silent battle within her.
Smiles, laughter, they meant nothing to her now. They had come and swept through her life like a vengeful fire, stealing what vitality she had left. What was taken from her, she felt she could never regain. I will repay, she said to herself like some unforgiving goddess. What little compassion she had left she reserved for those in the mansion.
She appreciated Logan’s concern and honesty, but he had to be content with the fact this was who she was. Perhaps if she had someone to share her grief with, some other that made her complete.
But there was no other. Her control wouldn’t allow it. It effected so much of her life. Her inability to truly let go caused her to form fragile relationships with the men she dated. They were always on the verge of breaking, and it wasn’t truly anyone’s fault but her own. Her relationships started out warmly enough, but she would become afraid when she felt herself becoming too involved. The warmth would die, leading way to indifference, which led to the inevitable.
What was it she had told Logan earlier?
“My pain isn’t meant to be shared,” she whispered to herself. Never had she spoken truer words. This was her burden to bear and hers alone. She would be content with that. It was all she’d ever known.
Finally got that ending finished. Next chapter: IV. Release
