Precious Pain
Dedication: To the inspirational jenn, who challenged me to write a Mystique story and didn't run screaming from the building when I told her how easy it was for me to get inside Mystique's head. Dude, I am such a sucker for a good challenge ::grin:: Since the movie gave us very little knowledge of Mystique, I felt absurdly free to follow my own twisted imagination as to why Mystique became what she did.
Warning: As the rating notes indicate, this fic contains dark themes. Please don't read it if you are easily disturbed.
Notes: A Melissa Etheridge song inspired the title of this fic. The lyrics at the end come from that song and belong to her.
{thoughts}
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Senator Kelly, what caused your abrupt change in views on mutant registration?"
"Senator, what do you have to say to the constituency that elected you based upon your position regarding the mutant threat?"
"Senator Kelly, do you have any comment on the allegations that you're being blackmailed by the mutant community to change your position in this matter?"
"Have you been bought, Senator?"
{The Senator hasn't been bought, you twit. Simply borrowed.}
I fight the urge to give an entirely inappropriate grin at the thought. I manage a conflicted grimace for the reporters who are still viewing my (well, Senator Kelly's) face. I've left most of them behind me, but a mutant can never be too careful.
They continue screaming accusations and questions at me. I finally push my way through the last of the vultures and reach the door of the waiting car. I restrain the potent urge to aim a leather-clad size eleven at the chin of one of the more persistent weasels, who is attempting to keep me from shutting the car door. Little prick flashes a camera right in my face and almost ends up having it for dinner. But the chagrinned Senator would never react that way, so I shove a hand against the lens and slam the car door shut.
The driver shoots me a glance in the rearview mirror. "Where to, Senator?"
"The townhouse," I reply flatly in Kelly's voice. I lean my head wearily against the back of the seat, clearly indicating a lack of interest in conversing with the routinely talkative chauffeur. For once, the idiot takes the hint. He keeps his trap shut, puts the car in gear, and merges into the late afternoon traffic.
I close my eyes and listen to the hypnotic rumble of the engine and the humming of tires on the pavement. The exhaustion is not just an act to keep Mr. Motor Mouth (as I've mentally dubbed him) quiet. Fatigue burns within my shifted skin, musculature, and bone structure. Keeping up a perfect façade without rest for such a long time is draining, and not just because the Senator's visage is so vile. The focus it takes to stay in another form is both mentally and physically depleting in a way that no one else could ever truly comprehend.
The car brakes to a stop and the soothing engine vibration ceases. I reluctantly open my eyes and (even more reluctantly) exchange pleasantries with the obnoxious driver before exiting the vehicle. I unlock the door to the townhouse and silently thank the still darkness as it closes around me, eternally grateful for the inspiration that I'd had to send the Senator's family to stay with relatives "so they would not be subjected to the scandal", as I'd worded it.
The door closed and locked behind me, I ascend the staircase toward my goal of the master bedroom, shedding the Senator's guise like the wretched, soiled thing it is to me. I don't turn on any lights when I enter the room and drop on the large four-poster bed. The faint glow of daylight hidden behind the heavy damask drapes is more than enough illumination.
I close my eyes and absently rub at sore muscles, feeling better each moment as I relax back into my own skin. I need this peace and solitude to re-center myself, to fully return to my true nature. One of my recurring nightmares is staying too long in another form, becoming ensnared by my own ruse to the point where I can't escape it. It is a fear that I keep to myself, knowing that amongst those with whom I share common goals, it would not be understood or condoled. It would be viewed as a weakness, and I will not allow anyone to sense the slightest indication of vulnerability in me ever again.
Exhaustion is sweeping through me now that my guards are fully removed. These unshielded moments are the ones where I haven't the strength to fight off the memories. The images of another life that led me here flash behind my lids.
I remember the girl I was back then - So stupid and trusting and weak that it makes me sick to think on it. I remember being eighteen and seeing her in a train station. I decided immediately that she was perfect. This was the face and form I would wear when I arrived at college.
She was soft and delicate looking; the type of girl that young men looked at and instinctively wanted to protect. That met my goals perfectly. She was pretty but not overtly so. She would neither draw too much attention nor too little with her delicate cheekbones and wide eyes. With hair that was dark blonde and fastened into a bun at the back of her head, I decided that she was a dancer. The inherent grace of her movements as she picked up a bag and crossed the platform convinced me that I was right.
On the train, I made up the rest of her life, as it was to be mine from that point forward. I arrived at school with the invented history memorized. A shiver of excitement raced through me as I unpacked my bags in the small studio apartment that I'd rented. I felt free and alive in her skin. This was a girl that no one would taunt or abuse or call a freak. This girl would have what I never could.
I found ways to get breaks during the day to rest. I had arranged my course schedule to ensure that I never had back-to-back classes. Although I was blissfully happy in my new persona, I was practical enough to realize that my frangible control wouldn't allow me as much freedom as I would have liked. I would go back to my apartment during longer breaks. I'd hide in the solitude of empty classrooms, darkened closets, or inside bathroom stalls during shorter ones. And it worked like a dream. I was happy and carefree for the first time in my life. I didn't think it could possibly get any better.
And then I met Jordan. He sat next to me one day in the large lecture hall for my Psychology 201 class. He was all charming smiles, wide shoulders, dark brown hair, and glinting blue eyes. I was shocked to find him looking at me intensely several times during the lecture. Each time I glanced in his direction, he had the grace to look embarrassed that he'd been caught staring. Then I'd get an intimate smile or a wink, and he'd face forward again. At the end of the lecture, he asked me to go to the Student Center for coffee. I demurely refused, but seeing the genuine disappointment on his face, I relented and said that I could meet him there at seven if he was available. The thousand-watt smile I received along with his promise to be there had me floating across the quad in a daze.
I went back to my apartment and meditated, skipping my last class in my anxiety to be completely prepared. I spent hours cleansing my mind and strengthening my control. After that, I spent another hour practicing the Yoga that kept my body flexible. By the time I left the apartment, I felt as mentally centered as I'd ever been in my life.
Jordan was waiting for me on the stone steps outside the Student Center. His face broke into a wide smile that held traces of both relief and wonder at seeing me approach. That endeared him even more to me, that look which echoed my own feelings of incredulity that I hadn't been stood up. Once I reached his side, he cupped my elbow in his hand, escorted me to the door, and opened it for me. I liked that he did it without seeming to worry that he might offend any latent feminist streak I might possess.
We entered the noisy common room, and he deposited me at a relatively secluded table away from the food service area. Jordan returned shortly thereafter with a cup of black French roast for himself and the latté I'd requested. I took a sip and mused that the cafeteria coffee was surprisingly drinkable. He laughed - a deep, soft rumbling that felt like fingers tracing across my skin. We fell into an easy conversation that lasted through two additional cups of coffee for each of us.
I had felt the weariness of holding the shift for so long creeping into me for over thirty minutes when I finally told him that I needed to go. He asked if he could escort me home and I declined, telling him that I had to run an errand before returning to my apartment. He didn't complain or look petulant; he simply asked if he could see me again. I teasingly replied that he'd see me in class the day after next.
He smiled at the joke, then said he wanted to take me out on a real date and would I accept, please, before he died on the spot? I smiled in return, told him that there would be no dying on my account and that if he wanted a date, he should ask without histrionics. Jordan laughed loudly at that and asked if he could pick me up for dinner and a movie on Friday. I smilingly said yes. He took my hand, gently rubbing his thumb across the backs of my knuckles. After a long moment staring up into his eyes, I reluctantly pulled away and said goodnight.
I went directly to the campus library and found a vacant study cubicle. I shut the door to the tiny room behind me and relaxed into my own shape. I lost track of how long I stood there, leaning against the door, taking shuddering breaths at the overpowering exhaustion I felt. I eventually pulled myself together enough to leave the room in my borrowed form again. I then took the first of many future forays into the research section, looking up books on meditation, self-hypnosis, and anything else I thought could help me learn to maintain my illusion for longer periods of time.
Over the next months, I read books, honed my mental strength, and dated Jordan. I eventually felt strong enough to risk becoming physically intimate with him. I invited him to my apartment for a home cooked meal. His voice on the phone was delighted, proclaiming that he couldn't wait to taste something that didn't come on a cafeteria tray or from a take out bag. That night, he entered my small apartment with a bouquet of tiger lilies. I inhaled their fragrance deeply, thanked him for the gift, and went into the kitchen to find a vase.
We sat down at the small dining table and ate. He raved over my pasta primavera, to which I sheepishly replied that it was embarrassingly easy to make. He countered that ease of preparation made it no less delicious. I said he'd been eating cafeteria food too long, and he laughed.
I cleared the table as Jordan crossed to the stereo and put on some instrumental jazz he selected from my collection. When I returned, he held out a hand and asked me to dance. I felt myself being enfolded by impossibly strong arms that were paradoxically gentle on my body. I felt safe and cherished as I swayed with him to the beat of the soft music. His eyes locked on mine as he bent down and kissed me. We remained that way for a long time, wrapped in each other's arms and dancing as our kisses transformed from teasingly gentle to hungrily passionate.
I led him to the bed; assured him I was ready as I unbuttoned his shirt. He eased the straps of my yellow sundress down my arms and told me how beautiful I was. We sank down on the mattress in a tangle of limbs. I cried out his name as he entered me, clamping down on my mental control as my internal muscles clenched him inside me. I lay in his arms afterwards, glowing with happiness and feeling truly alive for the first time in my life.
Before he left me that night, Jordan asked me to go to the party his fraternity was having the following Saturday. He'd asked me to attend parties several times before, but I'd always refused. Arrogantly taking our night together as proof of my control, I said yes.
I should have known better.
Saturday arrived and I prepared myself for the party accordingly. I dressed in the green sweater and flower patterned skirt that Jordan liked best and went to the fraternity house.
Once I arrived there, I wished I hadn't. Although some of Jordan's fraternity brothers were nice, most of them were obnoxious jerks. They consumed large amounts of alcohol that imbued them with an alarming lack of restraint. Despite the fact that I was Jordan's girl, they took his occasional absences from my side as an invitation to brush against me with whispered crudities. The bolder ones went so far as to grope me places that no one had a right to touch without permission.
After just such an incident, I felt my mental guards shake dangerously. I knew they wouldn't remain viable much longer, so I pushed my way through the crowd to Jordan's side. I apologetically told him that I had a headache and needed to leave. He handed control of the keg over to someone else and looked down at me with worry, saying he'd walk me home. I told him no with near desperation. I knew I could never keep my brittle control for that long. I'd be lucky if I made it out of the building before I broke. I insisted that he stay at the party, that I'd be fine going home alone. I reminded him that he was an officer in the fraternity and therefore, a defacto host. He didn't look convinced, but I didn't give him a chance to protest further. I kissed him on the cheek, said I'd see him later, and pushed through the crowd.
I raced away into the cool night as fast as my skirt and heels would allow. When I knew I could go no further without a break, I quickly ducked into an alley behind the Student Center. I collapsed against a brick wall next to a dumpster and pulled in deep breaths. As my blond hair bled into red and my honey toned skin turned deep blue, I heard a collection of sharp gasps and muttered swear words. I prayed to whatever higher power might be listening that whoever had seen my transformation didn't know me. Still panting heavily, I raised my eyes from the pavement and looked in the direction of the shocked noises.
My heart sank as I recognized three of Jordan's fraternity brothers, staring at me with varying degrees of shock, disgust, and hatred. My greatest fear up until that moment had come true. Exposure of whom and what I was had been my worst nightmare. The next minutes would provide me with a new horror to replace it.
They encircled me with deliberate steps, tossing condemnations at me with drunken, gleeful malice. They took turns spitting verbal venom at me: I was a pathetic fool for thinking I could keep my dirty secret forever; I was a fucking moron for tricking their brother into caring about a disgusting mutie; Jordan would be told of my deceit.
I had raised no objections until that point. But I found myself pathetically weeping and begging them not to tell Jordan the truth. They scoffed at my pleading and said they'd make sure that Jordan never wanted to see me again, let alone touch me. I let go of my dreams in that moment; let them shatter on the pavement into brittle shards. I weakly tried to push past the one in front of me - the one who had groped me back at the fraternity house, I suddenly realized.
He shoved me back into the brick wall. Said I was an uppity bitch who needed to be shown her place. My flesh crawled as he reached for the fastening of his jeans, leering that he was just the man to show me.
I pushed my terror down, gathered the fragments of courage I had left, and spat in his face. As he stood frozen in shock, I snarled that he was overestimating himself, that he was a slimy, bigoted slug who had no right to call himself a man.
His eyes flared with rage. His fist slammed into my face, splitting my lip and knocking my head back against the building so sharply that my vision blurred. I was still dazed when the next blow came, this one a hard kick in my left kidney. I cried out and sank toward the pavement in pain. The two on either side of me caught me before I fell, pinning my shoulders painfully against the brick wall behind me.
The excruciating throbbing in my head and side congealed to a nauseating terror in the pit of my stomach when I heard a zipper being lowered. My mumbled pleas for mercy and help broke into a cry of pain as the first one violated me. A sweaty hand smelling of stale beer was clamped over my mouth. The other two urged their friend on with catcalls as he pounded mercilessly into me. The bricks bit into my shoulders as he gave one last heave and pulled out of me.
My mind closed around itself as the next one pushed me to my knees on the pavement. I used the mental exercises that were supposed to have prevented this from happening to me in the first place. Most of me was numbed to the pain as I was sodomized. But the part I couldn't anesthetize cried silently at the horror of what was happening. It begged to an uncaring universe for leniency.
When the third rolled me over, my internal weeping stopped. I shut down everything inside me that resembled human feeling, outside of one sustaining force.
Rage.
I swore that no human would ever hurt me again. I vowed to find some way of avenging myself on my attackers. I loathed them with an intensity that I hadn't believed I was capable of feeling before that instant. There was no being on the planet that I despised more than the three surrounding me, save one.
I reserved a special kind of hatred for myself.
As those three drunken, ridiculing, malevolent bigots took turns violating me with a cruel delight I'd never before experienced, I berated myself for my weakness. I had allowed this to happen with my arrogance and my frailty. I was far more despicable than any of the three bastards who were making me ache and bleed, because I had brought this upon myself. I had been blindly vulnerable to this horror. They had simply taken advantage of that fact.
Such a thing would never happen again.
They finally decided that they were done with me, stood in a circle fastening their pants and leering down at my broken, bleeding body. One said that I had been shown my place and that if I had a brain in my fucking mutie head, I would stay in it. He said he'd enjoy finding an opportunity to show me the light again if I ever dared to contact Jordan. I raised weakly on my bruised, scraped elbows and watched them laughing and congratulating each other as they turned away. I wished for the ability to kill with a thought as I stared at them with virulent hatred.
For the briefest instant, I thought some benevolent being had granted my wish. The massive dumpster beside me silently floated high into the air, drifted a few yards, and suddenly dropped on top of all three of them.
The crunch of bones; the spray of blood; the complete lack of sound otherwise told me that they were dead instantly. It was everything I'd thought I wanted, but it wasn't enough. They should have suffered at my hand. Death should have come neither so easily nor so quick.
It was then that I first saw him. My own personal Messiah from on high, who had returned as the lion with wrath and vengeance just for me. He floated aloft before my eyes, then slowly lowered to the ground. I looked into his eyes and silently swore never ending fealty to this being, the savior that had given me the justice I would never have had otherwise.
The godlike presence slowly approached me and unfastened his cloak. With tentative hands, he reached out toward me. Seeing that I didn't shrink from him, he wrapped the silky material gently around my bruised and bleeding body. I took in the kindly visage and mentally pledged body, mind, and spirit to the silver haired entity. I vowed to do whatever he asked of me.
Then he spoke in soft, cultured tones that earned my instant worship. But instead of demands, he spoke of causes I could serve; skills I could be taught. He promised a better world if I was willing to become a warrior and fight for the rights due to all our brethren. He gave me something to believe in when everything I'd hoped for had been shattered. He asked for nothing in return except the loyalty that I'd already sworn to him - sworn before he'd said the words that rebuilt the ashes of my destroyed existence into something I could be for him and for myself.
I told him just that. The beatific smile was ample reward for my vow. He gathered me into his arms and rose to the heavens. He carried me into my second life, speaking words of the strength and the cunning that he would teach me. He explained how physical strength was only one component of a true warrior, and how it was often the less important part - Guile and manipulation were tools that could be used to deadly result against an opponent with a stronger body but a weaker mind. I absorbed the words with rapt attention, determined to become what this powerful deus claimed I had the potential to be.
A long time passed before I fully comprehended what had occurred that night. I had sold my remaining humanity to Erik, handed him the broken scraps of my soul for the promise of retribution. The realization didn't change my devotion or sway my determination. I still felt the undying loyalty and remained faithful to the cause.
It wasn't until recently that I thought to question the events themselves... to wonder exactly how long Erik had been watching before he crushed those mongrels into a bloody pulp.
I was his master pupil in the art of manipulation. I had learned well. I knew the immense power that gratitude could bring.
I knew then - knew without being told or ever asking for confirmation. Erik had knowingly let those bastards destroy the person I was. It was the only way that I could leave her behind and become the person I am now.
And I love him even more because of it.
It's only the moments after a draining experience like the press conference that I allow myself to remember her - That naïve, powerless girl who stupidly believed she could live a normal life without making a sacrifice. I even permit myself to miss her, just a little bit, before pushing away the images that went with her life.
I stand up next to the bed and stretch languorously. I sink to the floor and arrange my body into the lotus position. After an hour of cleansing meditation, I perform my Yoga exercises.
I glance over at the clock. It's still fairly early. I should catch a flight to New York. I'm itching for a confrontation, and Xavier's whelps make for an interesting challenge.
A smile on my lips, I assume the form of an elderly woman I saw touring the Capital building the other day. She's sweet and vulnerable looking. Perhaps I can tempt a mugger on the way to Dulles.
Life was tailor made for bitches. Make no mistake about that.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Everybody's got a hunger
No matter where they are
Everybody clings to their own fear
Everybody hides some scar
Precious pain
Empty and cold but it keeps me alive
I gave it my soul so that I could survive
Keeping me safe in these chains
Precious pain
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
~* The End *~