Well, it’s been a week since Jason left. I don’t blame him but I wish that he’d stayed a while longer. I still don’t know who or what I am, or what I’m supposed to be. He was so sure that I deserved to live. I don’t know why. All I am is an abomination. When I look in the mirror, I don’t know myself anymore. The face staring back at me has the same high cheek bones, the same gray-blue eyes, the same short, straw colored hair. But all I have to do is think about not being seen and everyone looks right past me like I don’t exist. I disappear and the only way to find me is to check the video logs.

I’ve been doing that more often now. I just don’t want to talk to these people who rescued me. I know that they mean well, but I’m still not comfortable with them. Jean is okay, although her husband is a bit on the tense side. Who am I kidding, he’s a tight ass. I like Rogue too. She has the sweetest voice and seems to care about what happens to me. I don’t know about Xaviar. He’s kinda distant at times and to be honest I haven’t talked to him much. The Doctor, Hank, gives me the willies. He has teeth that I have nightmares about and he’s blue. He looks like everything I’ve fought against for the last nine years. And then he opens his mouth and he sounds like a science teacher I had in grade four. All logic and intellect, with this twisted sense of humor. I don’t know what to make of him. Gambit flirt’s with me and Bishop ignores me. And Logan spars with me, to help me get my muscle tone back. They all seem to be very forgiving. But none of them seem to realize that all this doesn’t matter because we should all be dead.

They don’t understand why I’m so confused. They seem so human, and yet I know they aren’t. And neither am I. Jason at least understood why I was feeling what I was feeling. He tried to help, but in a way he made things worse. He reminded me constantly of what I had been. He reminded me of the missions I had gone on and the mutants I had killed on those missions. And he reminded me of what I had become.

The day Jason left started out as the three days before it had. I went to see the doctor, and he checked me over to make sure that I was okay, took a blood sample to check the chemical levels, which had been going down but slower than he thought they should, and checked to see how I was sleeping. I lied and said fine. Then Jason came and picked me up so that we could eat breakfast together. He had been nothing but courtesy, but it seemed to grate on my nerves at times. This was one of them.

Jason and I were in the kitchen getting something ready, it being rather late in the morning and everyone had either eaten already. Even Gambit had gotten up this morning for one of Cyclops infamous early morning drills. So we had the kitchen and dining room to ourselves. So Jason took the opportunity to broach the subject I hated most. Me.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Like I know, I should be dead.” I’d been answering a lot of questions that way lately.

“Don’t say that!” Jason’s voice was starting to get louder. “I didn’t come to these people because I like them you know. I came here so that you wouldn’t die. You are human you know! You didn’t change just because of some quirk of nature decided to make you different!”

Well, the frustration and confusion of the past week of hell started to come to the surface and I lost it.

“I didn’t ask to be brought here. I didn’t ask for you to save me! If I had my choice in the matter I’d be dead! I don’t want to live like this! I don’t know what I am any more!”

“You are the same as me. You’re a person and dammit, I love you!!” This was yelled out at the top of his lungs, as I was running out of the room and turning down the hall. That stopped me in my tracks. Not even my father ever said that to me any more.

I turned around with tears in my eyes and walked back to him. I looked in his eyes and again everything I had done in the past nine years came back to me. “Jason, I’m not sure either of us is human. If I’m a person, then every mutant I’ve killed in the last nine years was a person. What kind of person does that make me? What kind of person does that make you?” And then I turned and walked away.

***

I guess someone had over heard that conversation. Both Jason and I had downplayed our roles in Humanity’s Chance, but that afternoon we were dragged into Xaviar’s office by Tight ass Summers to drag the whole truth of our involvement.

“They were both part of the extermination squad! They killed innocent people because they were mutants. How can you let them stay here knowing that Charles!” He wasn’t being very subtle in his accusations either.

After listening to the truthful slurs on our characters for the past twenty minutes, I guess Jason lost it. He always could be counted on to defend my honor.

“How dare you judge us! You know nothing of who we are or how we ended up there. Charity had no choice. Her father was the fucking leader of the whole camp. I was in there since I was ten! We both had little choice!”

“What sort of person says there is no choice when it comes to taking another persons life! You could have done other things or left!”

“You know what, Charity had no choice but I did!” Jason was starting to get very mad. Having this particular conversation with Cyclops was probably not the best of ideas. Neither Xaviar, or I could get a word in edge wise and now, neither of us wanted too. I knew things were about to get very personal, and I had a stinking suspicion that Charles did too.

“I was ten years old when my mother and I joined. And I wanted to kill every stinking mutant I could get my hands on to.” While the decibel level had decreased, I could feel the hate flowing between those two and things had gotten more tense as the sound level reached a whisper.

“You wanted to kill innocent people just because they were different, just because they were mutants.” Scott looked ready to kill Jason and the feeling was mutual.

“I wanted to kill them because They killed my father. I saw YOU kill my father.”

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed the last statement. I already knew the circumstances surrounding the death of Jason’s father and who was involved. From the lack of surprise on Xaviar’s face, I gather the news came as no surprise to him either. Scott was a different story. His face lost all the color and heat that had been present during the argument, and his hands started trembling. Jason turned a way, and still whispering, filled in the details of the story.

“I was so happy that my dad was finally home. He’d just gotten in and because he wasn’t home for a while, mom had gotten rid of his cigarettes hoping to get him to quit. But my Dad was stubborn as a mule and just went out to get some more. I tagged along. There was a commotion outside the store and things started lighting up the night outside the window. Dad stepped out to see what was happening and as he stepped out the door, he was thrown back with a hole the size of his head in the middle of his chest. I was just behind him and saw you in the glare of the light. My Mom then joined the HC and I was raised to feed my hate and use that to kill. What’s your excuse?” Without looking back, Jason stepped out the door.

I had to run to catch up with him. He was walking so fast and trying so hard to keep the tears from streaming down his face.

“I thought I could handle it Chaz, I really thought I could put it behind me. But I keep having nightmares about it and about what I’d done. Sometimes, I see myself shooting down my own father. I don’t know what to do?”

“Jason, just wait a second and calm down.” I had trouble with the tears in my own eyes. “Let’s leave. Just get out of here and leave this nightmare behind. We both need to forget what we did, and the people we’ve become.”

“I can’t forget. I’ve been trying for the last few years and it just gets worse Chaz. Besides, you need to stay here. These people can help you more then I ever could. I can’t get over my problems with them, but you need to be here, you belong here.

“This place is tearing me apart though.” He turned around and looked me in the face. “I’ll stay if you want me to, but I don’t think I can handle it much more. I need to get out of this place.”

I searched his eyes and saw the truth in them. He needed something we both did. Healing. And we couldn’t give it to each other, much as we wanted to. We kept reminding each other of things that were best left buried. And so I reached up and put a hand on his cheek, whipped a way a tear that had worked it’s way free.

“Get out of here then. Find your healing else where. I’ll try and find it here, since that’s what you want.”

“I don’t ...”

“Jason, you’re not. I understand. I’ll tell Xaviar why you left. I’ll even help you sneak past Bishop. You need something I can’t give you right now. And I need something you can’t give me. Maybe it’s better this way.”

***

I helped him gather what little he had brought with him and the things he had accumulated over the past week. It wasn’t much. A change of clothes, a tooth brush and a few other inconsequential things that barely even filled the small back pack I found for him. I went with him down the stairs and out down the driveway to the gate.

“Take care of your self, Jason. Don’t make any trouble for yourself.”

“I won’t. I have an uncle on my dad’s side that I might be able to talk to . He and Mom never got along so I might be able to get him to lie for me if she ever asks about me.”

“Just don’t do anything stupid, okay. You know what my father will do to us if he ever finds us.” Both of us remembered what happened to the FBI agent that infiltrated Humanity’s Chance a few years ago. He was found in a warehouse dangling from his feet where he had bled to death from the cut in his neck, after having been beaten half to death.

“I’ll be careful. I plan on getting to know you again in a few years.”

“I’ll consider that a date then. Till then.” My voice lifted up on the last word, making it almost a question. His eyes sparkled and he bent over giving me a soft kiss, his lips lingering before he looked in my red rimmed eyes. Then he turned around and walked out the gate he had entered almost exactly a week ago.

***

Since then I’ve spent more time by myself and talking less with these people. Charles knew from the start what exactly Jason and I did. He made it clear to everyone that that was the past and that I had enough to deal with without their accusations. It didn’t help me get over it, but at least Scott wasn’t so much a tight ass. He was still a little over bearing, but I think Jason really shook him up. He’s spent a lot of time talking with Jean since Jason left. And he’s stopped avoiding me. I wish I could say the same.

Right now, I’m sitting in one of the trees in the yard, pulling one of my disappearing acts. The more I come to grips with the fact that Mutants aren’t monsters and are very much human, the more the past nine years of my life come back to haunt me. I’ve killed children, watching their eyes as the spark of life left them. And at the time I was glad. Now, all those eyes stare back at me every time I close my own. Working out with Logan helps exhaust my body so that I’m too tired for dreams. Sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t.

Henry has given me a clean bill of health, even though I know that Jean has been keeping a mental tag on me, since before Jason left. I don’t mind the slight intrusion, because she’s quiet about it and she seems to know when to talk to me about it and when to leave me alone. And also because if I want to, I can shut her out. Apparently my particular talent is mostly a very strong psi-shield that blocks all conscious recognition of my presence. In other words, if I didn’t want to be seen, I wouldn’t be.

And so now I’m sitting in this tree, trying to come to grips with my life now and failing miserably.