I look out at the world below me, the wreckage of my home waiting behind, and realize that not for the first time I am going to have to pick up the pieces of my soul...my life, and move on once again...Kitty always the strong one...always the one to know what to do, how to keep the lives of others from falling apart while my own isn't even existing anymore. I find myself thinking about the X-men and how I felt when they died...the first time??? Or has it been more then once that I have felt this abandoned and alone??? I can't even recall anymore. I feel like a piece of driftwood in the ocean below me...getting tossed about with no control over what happens to me. I almost laugh as a thought occurs to me...God was it so few weeks ago that I found myself standing watching Jean Grey walk down the aisle to marry Scott...two friends that had finally found happiness, and had found something that I had thought long dead as I helped to plan and execute the affair...hope. It gave me hope that those two, who had been through so much, could actually find happiness and faith in each other's arms. Now I don't know if hope even exists anymore. Illayna's gravestone is out there, and it seems that I can see it even from my vantage point high on the mansion's roof...the stone sitting there mocking me. It seemed to speak to me that everything and everone in my life was destined to fall apart around me. An image of Piotr rises in my mind, the man I loved and still find myself loving, turning his back on me to return with the Acolytes. The pain that image brings makes me want to push it back into the box from whence it came, but I instead let it wash over me... too tired to fight it anymore. He had once again chosen something else over the love I offered so freely. I had thought, in my naive way, that he would someday find out what it was that I offered to him when I offered my heart and soul, and that he would then turn to me...sorry that he had rejected my love so many times before. I was a fool. He first chose to leave me for the love of another woman...it still hurt after all of this time that it only took him about two weeks to fall in love with her and out of love with me. He then chose the X-men over me when he and the others thought it best not to tell me and Kurt they were alive.
The pain that thought brings is quickly pushed aside as I resolve myself to the fact that if I let in ALL the pain right now that I will not survive it...and so I push that down into a box and slam the lid shut. Then he calls me about Illayna and I come to see my best friend...knowing in that way I have as soon as I look at her that she is dying. I kept up a good face for people around me, and even let myself think for a moment that Charles was something more then what he was...a man with a man's limitations. He thought that he would be able to cure my soul sister...he was wrong. It seemed almost like God was trying to get across that life and death was still his job when he took blondie's light and snuffed it out. God proved a mortal man all too wrong...Charles had no power when she passed softly into that good night. Piotr thought he could control life and death as well...he thought that by living for his sister he would not have to deal with the death's of his family. He then tried to turn his heart as steely as his metal form...pushing all emotion deep into himself until he cracked. I had believed at that time that he needed drugs...something to help get him through this time since my love didn't seem to be nearly enough, but of course, that did not work...no one wanted to believe that Piotr needed help when everyone else was suffering so much. One person suffered in silence though...Jubilee. I find a soft smile as I think of the plucky youngster who has become a friend of mine whether she wanted to be or not...both of us united by grief and by a love for a friend too quickly taken from us both. Piotr...I lost him to so many things, and now he chose the friendship of people none of us even knew over what I once again offered. He hurt so much...I still wish I could take that pain into myself. By the amount I already carry...a little bit more would not hurt me, and it would help him heal the massive rifts that still exist in his soul.
I kept going even after that and had to watch Rachel get flung from us into an unknown future to bring back a man that still doesn't resemble the Brian I had once known. To think her sacrifice was in vain tears a little bit more out of my heart every day...not to mention the not knowing what happened to her and the fact that I may never know. I let her go though...what choice did I have but to let her walk into the light that had been denied her so long. I knew what it was like to exist in shadows that no one could see...that is how I was existing now. I see my breath puff before me in the cold night air, and look down at the wool trenchcoat that I had pulled over myself. The black blended in perfectly with the night, as does the navy blue turtleneck sweater and black jeans, the wind whipping my hair and my coat not making a sound...my phasing power taking care of that...as my mouth doesn't make a sound to the masses of agony that exist behind my brown eyes. The worst grief is experienced silently I have noticed in my short life. It is sometimes amazing to me that some people can experience so much pain that they have to suffer in silence...like giving voice to the pain will make it all the more real and thus they will fall apart. Douglock helped to get me to that point. An alien or something more I do not know, but the visage of my best friend of so long ago staring back at me is hard to swallow for me. It seems to mock the sacrifice that Doug made so long ago. I still remember the letter of his death that Danny had written to me. I had found it a couple of days ago, and the words there still have the power to tear me apart...and want to render the self control I still hold so close to me lest all the pain break free, to ribbons.
Then to save Douglock and the world..again...we lost a young woman by the name of Clarice. That loss hammered home to me that to be an X-man you just couldn't win a battle...and to win the war you must lose more then you at first thought. There was new pain in Jubilee's eyes that had not been there before...the loss of the young woman hit her and hit her hard...as it did us all...especially Sean...another innocent lost to the evil that seemed to gain more and more ground on us every day. I wonder when it will be that we will stop losing and for once start winning enough that the scales will be balanced and know deep in my heart that it will never be balanced. Sometimes I think that being a hero is all about endurance...to survive all of the loss and all of the pain. As I turn away from the ocean and look back at the wreckage of Muir behind me that the X-men were helping us to rebuild I reflect that if that was the case then we will certainly win the war...for no one is as good at suffering and surviving that suffering then we are. I silently pull out the object that brought me out to the cliffs high above the world, being so high up seeming like I was at the edge of the world itself on the brink of falling off. I find that apt as I pull out the object that has brought me here on this hellish night.
It seems like an insignificant thing...a small round disk flat with an X stamped into the middle of it in red, but to me it stands for more. This X is different from the rest...this X was the X off of my first X-men uniform. Even when the uniform got destroyed I kept it...as a symbol of how I was now a good guy fighting the evil of the world. Looking down at it now I see it as a symbol of the innocence I always kept close to me and hoped to someday regain again. I don't hesitate as I fling it hard toward the ocean below...that period of my life being gone forever...the innocence dead after such a hard fight. As I watch it fall I feel something land on my shoulder and look over at the small dragon who has come to be my best friend in the world...he at least never betraying me and had not left me yet. He runs a wing along the back of my head and coos to me in a language only I seem to be able to understand... sharing my loss of my friends and of my innocence. I then see the figure standing behind me and for once I can't come up with a false smile of assurance that I am fine. She needs none though and doesn't hesitate to throw her arms around me, I barely being able to solidify in time lest she go off the cliff behind me. I hug Jubilee back, and for once in a long time I feel something I thought dead...I feel hope. If the future lies in the hands of once such as her...then we still got a chance of winning this fight...and that is all any of us can ask for. As the rain starts to fall I find myself laughing up at the sky...the rain I take as a symbol of the change that is coming...and know that no matter what the X-men will live...for how can anyone ever kill a dream...and if nothing else I still have something to believe in...something that will NEVER leave me even in my darkest hour. I head back with Jubilee, hurrying to avoid getting soaked... headed back to my friends and family...and to light a candle for each of my friends that had died for a dream that was worth the loss and the sacrifice...one of peace...what more could I ever fight for.