Subject: [OTL]: Excerpts 5/? Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2000 12:25:14 -0700 From: Magik ! Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel Comics and are being used for non-profit entertainment purposes only. The story belongs to me. Slight warning for adult situations. Excerpts by Magik Five: The Queen *** My sister once told me that when I was born, my mother cried because I was so beautiful and that my father smiled as if the clouds over his light had suddenly dissipated, letting the sun shine on him completely. I remember that memory like it happened just yesterday. Adrienne standing beside me, her red hair blowing in the wind, her eyes unfocused, starring blindly out at the trees and the lake. Our hands tightly entwined because Mother had told her to keep track of me, because Father had made her promise nothing would happen to his little angel, his princess. I was fidgeting, tired of standing and looking at nothing whatsoever, wanting to get back to the summer house so I could ride the horses, play dress-up, do something other than just stand there, doing nothing. Adrienne turned to me, her face impassive and unreadable, but then my sisters have always been unreadable. "Life is good for you, isn't it, Emma?" she inquired, eyes boring into me through the wire frame glasses. "Life is perfect for the little princess." "What?" I stuttered out, trying to pull away from the ever-tightening grip of her hand. "It's not fair, Emma! It's not. Mother cried when you were born, she wept tears of happiness because you were so beautiful, so small and fair, perfect. And Daddy smiled. You've never seen a smile like that on him. It was as if God himself had come down and touched his face. It's not fair, Emma." All the anger seemed to rush out of her quickly, as if she realized that it wasn't me she should be mad at, that I hadn't asked for this role in my parents eyes, for this superior position, but it hurt her all the same. I have never been close to my sisters. Adrienne resented me because of the way our parents treated her in comparison to how they treated me. She had to work for everything she got; she made herself a success. I was given things, taught to behave like high society, like a princess being prepared to become queen. And Cordelia? We were worlds apart, her and I. By the time she was born, the voices were already starting to cloud my mind, jabber on at night. I isolated myself from everyone, trying to make them go away, so that I could be perfect again. I tried so hard to keep the princess from evolving, from becoming a queen. Then, one day, Mother and Father just couldn't take it anymore. The voices. The nights I'd wake up screaming, crying, pleading for them to shut up, to just shut up and leave me alone. They put me in "The Clinic" saying it was the best place in the world I could go to, promising me that the doctors there could make me better. But they didn't want to help me, they wanted to hide me away because I was no longer perfect, I was no longer the angel, the princess. They paraded Cordelia around, dressed her in lace and satin, while Adrienne worked her way through college and I was raped by the guards at the asylum. I was a broken doll, Snow White lose in the forest and surrounded by wolves, unable to defend herself, unable to fight back, passive, the perfect little princess, always listening to orders, doing what others wanted to do. And the voices rose up, becoming loud and clear, a maddening wave that broke upon the walls I had feebly erected around my consciousness, my identify. I used to dream of freedom in those days. I used to look back on the memory of the lake, standing with Adrienne, before the voices, before Cordelia. I resented Cordelia the way Adrienne resented me. A vicious circle of pettiness and abuse, of hate. Eventually, I got out of there. I whispered to one of the guards, "Take me out of here," I reached into his head and wrapped my power around him, and he did. The place burned behind me, the fires reaching high into the night, the smell of burning flesh sharp in the air, but I didn't care. I kept walking. I was free and I had figured out that a princess doesn't amount to much in the real world. All princesses get stepped on. The queens had power. And I could be a queen. I am a queen. Powerful, beautiful, cold, and alluring. I am the wicked stepmother from Snow White; I am what became of Snow White after she married the prince. I have power and I will never be trapped, be locked away again. I will raise my students to be kings and queens, to be powerful and dependent only on themselves. They will work for their places, they will hold the world in their hands, and no one will take away their freedom. I am the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, teacher of the Hellions. Nevertheless, I am Emma Frost, too, and, sometimes, I dream of a little white cell, my hair knotted and short, my skin covered in sweat, my eyes glassy, the bruises raising on my skin. I dream of fire reaching high into the night and the screams of people burning. I dream of my sisters, my mother, and my father's smile. However, I do not listen to any of it because I am a queen.