Identity
The door opens and I'm suddenly not the only one in the room anymore.
Angelo curses loudly. "Madre-de-fuckin’-Dios, Paige, not again!" His skin pales, becoming even more ashen then normal before flushing a dull red. He’s angry. A little shocked. Good. Good. I’m glad. I want him to react. I want him to remember. I peer at him over a swath of black bandages and shrug. The leather creaks softly with the movement, and I twist my shoulders just enough that the coat flares, swirling around my ankles.
His eyes narrow as he looks away. "Do you even know what that is?" he asks, gesturing with his hands at the thin ribbons of green, blue, and orange that seep through the bandages and cascade down over my chest.
It’s light. It’s just light this time, I think. But for all that I can try to reproduce the physical appearance of the manifestation, I can’t do anything about the actual. I take a step towards Angelo and reach out a hand to him, but he flinches away from it and backs toward the door. He opens his mouth to speak, but before he can say anything he closes it again, shakes his head, and is gone.
Later that night, when I slip through his door and into his bed, I am myself again. His body stiffens beside mine momentarily, his hand carefully reaching out to touch my face, sliding over my lips and tracing my chin before he relaxes and allows me any closer.
He still hasn’t forgiven me for the last time. I doubt he ever really will.
Blond hair so similar to my own and large white teeth bared in a genial grin shine back at me from the mirror. The height is a problem, it’s harder to replicate and maintain mass I don’t normally have. I’m a little too thin, too gaunt, too skeletal. I'm not trying hard enough. But my skin is perfect and unmarred. No scars running out from under my hairline and over my ears, no fine slashes across my right cheek. My nose isn’t straight, but it wouldn’t be. Not since the time Elizabeth took that plastic shovel and belted me across the face with it.
Belted Sam with it, not me.
"Y’know, I don’t care what Frosty says. Therapeutic or not, this is just plain creepy." Jubilee crashes onto her bed and looks up at me critically. She doesn’t seem surprised. Angelo must have gotten to her already.
"Creepy is relative." My hand runs up my jaw, feeling the heavy curve of cartilage under the skin, mimicking bone. It’s not quite the same feeling, a little softer, a little more flexible. A little more fake. "I think that wanting to fuck your surrogate father is creepy. It’s a perspective thing."
Jubilee reacts badly to that. I knew she would. Unfortunately instead of making her go away, it starts her on a lecture, instead.
"Fuck you, Paige!"
The tremor in her voice makes me glance over at her. She seems dangerously close to flinging the pillow she’s holding at me, despite the fact that she’s clutching it to her chest so tightly her knuckles are white. That’s probably the only thing sparing me from a face full of miniature explosions. I don’t really care. She’s been pissing me off a lot lately. She doesn’t understand.
I turn my back on her again. I already know what she’s going to say.
"You’re not the only one who’s lost something here! You’re not the only one who cared about Jono. He was my friend, too!" Her voice loses a bit of its anger. She almost sounds like she cares.
"And I’m sorry about Sam. Everyone is! But Sam’s going to be okay. And Scott’s permanently fucked up. But the both of them were hurt trying to help other people. Jono," her tone turns more derisive, "Jono gave up on us. He killed himself, Paige. Don’t expect me to keep feeling sorry about that."
That’s a new addition to the usual litany. I use the fingers on one hand and spread my eye open as wide as it will go and examine its reflection. Color is so hard to duplicate. You’d think that Sam and I would have the same shade of blue being siblings, wouldn’t you? But no.
"Are you even listening to me?" The bedsprings squeak, and a moment later her face is beside mine in the mirror.
And the truth is, I’m not.
"No," I tell her, digging my nails into the edges of my scalp and tearing my face away.
"…and you cannot, I repeat, cannot go around pretending to be your fellow students! Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Ms. Frost."
I’m sitting in Emma’s office, hands clenched in fists by my sides. Emma doesn’t quite believe me. You can tell by the way she’s looking at me but not at me. Telepaths. I can feel her poking away at my shields. I know that she’s not going to be able to get through them. We worked too hard on them to keep her out.
Behind Emma I can see Jubilee standing in the doorway, glaring at me. I uncurl my fingers and rub the fabric of my stolen yellow trenchcoat between them. A couple of sparks rise through the air as the uncovered hole in my palm gushes forth a mildly combustive gas. It slides over the ragged edges of my skin, stinging ever so slightly.
Jubilee’s eyes narrow and she storms out of the office, elbowing past Everett who had been lurking outside the door. Emma lets her go, choosing to lean over me instead, planting her hands firmly on the arm rests.
"Understand this, Paige. I have been lenient with you because of the situations with Jonothon and Sam. I had hoped that you would work your way out of this on your own. Clearly, I was mistaken. If I so much as hear one whisper of a thought that you’ve been playing ‘dress up’ like this again, I will be forced to take action. And rest assured that I will not be deterred from doing so.""Yes, Ms. Frost."
"Now go."
I slide out of the chair and slip past her, out into the hallway. Everett is still there and he shakes his head at the sight of me.
"Damn, Paige," he says with clear restraint, before heading down the hall after Jubilee.
I look back inside Emma's office, and she's in the doorway, studying me with an almost pitying air.
"Tell me, Paige, how many bridges do you have left to burn?" she asks.
I feel like I'm marking time, but I don't know why. Something's going to happen soon, something's got to happen soon. Something that will give me a direction, because God knows I've lost my map a while back.
Sometimes I stop and wonder what happened to the old Paige. She disappeared so quickly. Gone, just like that. It's like I'm an entirely different person now, with all of her memories trapped inside this little box in my head. I'm not... happy with who I am, or with what I've changed into, but I am glad that I'm not her any more. I can't help it.
I've discovered that it's all well and good to be something else -- steel, rubber, glass, plastic. Stone. But to be someone else, that's different. That's special. If you can be someone else, know them well enough to slip inside them, into their life, that's a feeling like nothing else. It's always a different high each time, a different rush. If it's anything like what Mystique feels when she shapeshifts... I think understand her better now.
"Emma?" Sean looks up from his desk at my entrance, surprised to see anyone interrupt his 'private hour'. "What is it? Is something going on?" he asks.
This, I know, is stupid. But Emma’s been back and forth to Westchester a lot lately, and all of us, Sean included, have been having trouble keeping up with her schedule. She should be gone right now, but that doesn’t mean she might not show up at any second.
"Not as such." I slip into one of the leather armchairs in front of his desk and try to look concerned. "Sean, I think we need to have a little talk with Ms. Guthrie. It seems she's started impersonating the students again."
"Aye. I heard Everett saying something about it in class." He shakes his head grimly and sets aside the papers he was grading. "I thought she was well and truly past that."
"Yes, well, it appears that you were wrong. We both were." I settle back into the depths of the chair and cross my legs, relaxing a little because he doesn’t seem to question my presence. "She's crossed a line this time. It is one thing to simply look like someone else, but to try to be them..." I let my voice trail off, littering the silence with potential implications.
"You don't think she'll do anything foolish, do you?" Sean asks, his forehead furrowed with concern. I feel a pang of guilt and something else. It's been a while since anyone's so obviously been worried about me. "Maybe I should talk to her."
I shrug. "Perhaps. I've tried to talk to the girl and she doesn't seem to listen to a word I say."
Sean nods and starts to rise, obviously intent on having a word with me. I can’t have that. I wave him back into his seat and draw my fingers over the carved desk, feeling the grain of the wood ripple beneath them, "Still, I want to give her one more chance. After which, it may be best to consider excusing her from the program."
I stand and smooth down the white silk skirt I'm wearing. "For the time being, could you speak with Jubilee? Make sure that any planned reprisals are minimized?"
I accept his promise and exit gracefully, trying not to break into an excited run.
I'm walking down the hall on my way to one of the guest rooms where I can safely shed my skin when I see Angelo coming toward me.
"Señora Frost," he nods politely as he passes.
I know the feel of his hands on my body, but this is different. It's not just that the shape of this body is different, tighter, more controlled curves in all the right places, but his touch is lighter, more tentative.
Lacking aggression.
They slide over my back, gently curving over my flesh, but not quite touching. He’s never been this gentle with me.
I sink my teeth into the skin of his shoulder hard enough to leave marks.
Afterwards he reaches over and runs his fingers down my arm. I feel his fingers catch on a loosened flap of skin and freeze. He’s still for a long time. I lie beneath him counting each breath he takes, feeling the rise and fall of his chest against mine. His grip tightens on my arm as I reach sixty-two and he rips the skin away.
"Why?" he asks when I don't flinch.
"Something different," I reply.
Months pass. Jubilee moves in with M at Sean and ‘Emma’s’ suggestion, and I am both more and less myself more often now that I have some privacy. I’m Paige only in public, and not always even then. The original Emma is away more and more often, and while I try to limit the contact my ‘Emma’ has with Sean and the older students, I let her have free reign over the younger ones who still are intimidated by her.
I spend most nights in the basement with Angelo, and even though he knows, he pretends he doesn’t. His touch is still light and careful, and he never calls me by name. He never calls me by any name.
I think Emma knows, or at least has a very good idea. It's nothing she's said or done, but it feels like she's waiting for something. Independent confirmation, heartfelt confession and apology, I don't know. I keep waiting for her to pounce. I'm almost looking forward to it.
Sleeping with Bobby is different. It was also an accident. He doesn't figure it out.
He and Emma had a thing once. Jubilee knows more about it. We used to huddle together between our beds at night, munching on Oreos and giggling over it. It had something about body-switching and holes where people's hearts used to be. I can relate to that. What I remember better are the odd little fights they had in the hallways on the rare occasions that he came to teach us normal subjects like math and geography. You got the feeling that there could be something, if one of them would drop their act.
I manage to send Bobby off afterwards without him realizing, promising to call the next day. I should have known that it wouldn’t work out, that I’d been lucky too long.
The backhanded blow catches me by surprise and knocks me sideways.
Emma doesn't hit. Emma doesn't need to.
I grab the edge of the kitchen counter as I fall, my cereal bowl sliding over it and shattering on the floor below.
The backs of my eyes sting like I'm getting a headache and my knees buckle. My eyes water briefly before tears start coursing down my cheeks. Emma's voice is everywhere, but I can't make out the words. It's shrill and reverberates inside my skull, doubling and tripling in volume as it bounces back and forth.
Is she yelling? I can't tell if she's yelling, or if it's just in my head. Her voice is everywhere, and she's so angry. I can't...
The pain increases and I let myself go down. I stop trying to make out what she's saying. I don't think it matters, it's not like I don't know what she’s angry about.
I can't let you play with the lives of others, Paige. I warned you. The words cut clearly through the noise.
The floor is cool where my cheek rests against it. It's better if I don't move. I'm not sure I can anymore, anyway. I know what she's doing, she's walling me in -- locking me inside my own skull where I can't hurt anyone. Or myself. I'm not scared. It's not dread in the pit of my stomach, but a sick kind of excitement, instead. I try to fight her off anyway because I feel like I should. But the shields I'm so proud of don't even begin to offer any protection, and she pierces right through them. She always could it was only a matter of -
No one gives Emma the credit she deserves. Former villain, second stringer, it's always about the other telepaths, but someday Emma will surprise them all.
When I wake up in the medlab, they tell me I've only been out a few hours and start to unwire me from most of the machines surrounding the bed. It feels like I've been gone a lot longer, but I don't tell them that.
Emma's gone, they say. Her behavior was inexcusable, they tell me as they clear the area around the bed. But when I look at their faces as they fluff my pillows and smooth my blankets. I can tell that they don't really believe their words. Emma may not be here any more, but some of them think that I deserved what I got. And hell, maybe they're right.
I promise them that we can talk tomorrow. I’m so very tired, after all.
I know that if I weren’t a Guthrie and Sam’s little sister, I wouldn’t be accorded this treatment. I wouldn’t be in the medlab, but in one of the mansion’s holding cells, or on my way to Muir. I’d be a prime candidate for institutionalization, but I’m here instead. I don’t think they realize how far I’ve gone.
They tell me that I need rest, and I agree, settling back among the pillows. When they leave, I wait only long enough for the footsteps to recede before I get up. No one will be checking up on me. Not anytime soon.
My room is empty when I get there and I quickly fill a bag with things I need to take with me.
I plan to leave without seeing anyone. I plan to go before anyone knows, but I can't seem to prevent myself from stopping outside of Angelo's room. The door swings open before I can knock, and he's standing there in the doorway with his keys dangling from his fingers.
We drive in his Jeep for a couple of hours and are a good ways into Pennsylvania before we finally pull over. It's pretty there in between the hills. A little like home if I close my eyes.
I start to grab the bag at my feet and open the door, but he pulls me into his arms and holds me. He just holds me, and we stay that way until the sun starts to rise.
We stop at a Greyhound station in Pittsburgh. Angelo hands me a roll of bills and a small stack of plastic cards. Fake IDs, all of them with my face on them. I climb out of my seat onto the sidewalk and give him a half-hearted wave as I shut the door.
"Be good to yourself, Paige," he says, and I nod, turning and heading inside the station. He doesn't drive away. I don't look back.
For the first six months or so I am someone new every day. It’s easy enough to do so long as your money holds out. If you don't need to earn money you can slip along anonymously for a good long while. What Angelo gave me keeps me going for twice as long as I would have been able to otherwise. Eventually I need to get a job, though, and when I use the IDs, even though the names were different, I am still me within my skin.
At least one of the IDs is a ringer. I rotate through them pretty regularly as I move along, and I'll see familiar faces crop up from time to time, hidden behind a newspaper or under a ball cap. Jean’s still reading those awful Shannara books.
I don’t know why I don’t ditch the IDs and get new ones. Or go without. I could do it. But I can’t seem to let go.
I cross the country two or three times those first few years, trying to find myself. I still don't like that phrase. It's too loaded with meaning that I can't steal from it. It takes me too long to learn that I have to define myself as who I am as opposed to who I want to be. By then I’d settled down again in Oklahoma, Tulsa, and set up housekeeping for myself and one of s a series of temporary boyfriends while I went to the local community college and got myself a degree in computers.
It’s a slow thing, learning to be proud of yourself for who you are, and what you can do -- not what you want to do, or have the potential to do. Your sense of self doesn’t hinge on setting yourself up for inevitable failure.
Anyway, I figure that out, get my degree, dump Danny, and start traveling again. I do some covert superheroing, but it’s mostly things like stopping some idiot from knocking over a 7-11, and stuff like that. I don’t go back to the X, because I still need to work some stuff out on my own, and make something for myself. I may not know what that something is just yet I figure, but it’ll come to me.
And it does.
Eight years from when I left Gen X, three months out of a really bad six-month stretch I spent in LA attending church services (and I’m not even Catholic,) I’m sitting in a Kansas City library when a headline catches my eye: ‘Teenage Mutant Disappearances On The Rise.’ Most of the disappearances in the article are attributed to runaways, and it notes that the percentages are higher and growing faster for mutant teens than they are for normal ones. But it also hints at something darker, insinuating that not all of the kids are runaways.
I start digging deeper, scouting around on some underground sites on the Internet. There’s wilder speculation on these sites as to the real cause of the disappearances. Elvis, serial killers, and space aliens are all equally to blame so far as they’re concerned. I do a little checking, and then a little more. Call in a few favors, not that I have many left. A year and a half of solid research later and I find myself slipping under a fence onto government property with five other similarly ‘concerned citizens’. It goes badly and we’re only able to liberate two of the kids held captive before the building goes up in flames. I cut loose at the end, providing cover with an acid spray as we escape. One of the kids dies before we can get to the safe house. In the end, there’s only three of us left, myself, Jerome, and the kid, Simon. Jerome sticks around for two more missions before he takes off. I don’t blame him. He wasn’t trained to be a soldier.
But I was.
I come home to my apartment three weeks after Jerome leaves, and there’s a white envelope on the table. I stop, because it’s a new apartment under a new name. My old identities are all compromised, and my face, my own, original face has been plastered across every television as the ‘Newest Mutant Terrorist’. I can’t afford to be found out so soon. But my name is written across it in Emma’s crisp, distinct hand. Inside is a cashier’s check for a half million dollars.
It’s not an apology. It’s not forgiveness, either. It’s a chance for a new start. Emma’s way of reaching out and offering one last hand up, relying that I’ll make the right decision. And I will use it to finance a new start, although not in the way she intends. I’ve already got a good start on saving myself. I’d rather use it to save somebody else.