Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel Comics and are being used for non-profit entertainment only. The story is mine.

Notes: This story was halfway inspired by Sequoia Swennes's "A Chink in the Armor"

    I'm lost in the wavy reflections on the glass. I see me but that's not me anymore.

    I can see the shy shadows of a properly raised rich upper class British girl. I can still see the model's smile and the tears staining the cheeks of the weak child hiding from her brother.

    However, in the sharp angles of the harsh desert light, I can catch the fleeting image of a proud warrior, holding a sword as a daring smile plays across her face. A warrior with hollow, unseeing eyes. A warrior who is blind.

    Quickly, choking back the tears I never want to release again, I turn from the mirror, hiding my mechanical eyes from everything I don't want to see. Nevertheless, it gets through, it always gets through.

    I can hear voices, whispering, talking, and sobbing. No laughter, no laughter, no laughter.

    How long has it been since we laughed?

    Alison's crying. Tears, painful, Longshot, leaving, no, no, no!

    Alex is yelling. My fault, mine, always mine, mine!

    Piotr is whispering, quietly talking in his sleep to the man in his painting. Katya, Illyana, dead, think I'm dead, Illyana.

    And I'm sitting in the bathroom, rocking back and forth, trying not to cry.

    I want to shut down. I don't want to hear the voices anymore or look in the mirror and see fake, mechanical eyes. I don't want to be Betsy. I don't want to be Psylocke. I want to be...

    Free.

    The floor beneath me is cold, so cold that I think the skin of my legs is just going to stick and stay stuck forever. It's the greatest thing I've felt in years. Just...feeling the cold floor up against my legs.

    Moreover, it's quiet.

    I can't hear the whispering or the sobbing. All I hear now is the dripping of the faucet; the only thoughts pushing through my head are my own.

    When I look into the mirror, all I see is me. Hysterically, I begin to laugh.

    "It's me," I whisper, touching the glass with a shaking hand. "It's me."

    She is me, the me I used to be. Hair blond, untouched by dyes and the like, shinning like a beautiful waterfall of sunlight down my back. And my eyes are my own again; wonderful, seeing, purple orbs that sparkle in the light. I am no longer anyone else. I am no longer lost in the world of tawdry reflections.

    Now, I am me.

*****

    I can hear Alison crying softly as she carves out the epitome on the tombstone. Piotr's saying something in Russian under his breath and I'm standing here with a bottle of bear in my hand, looking around for Wolverine, the shadow man who has left us. I wonder if he's out there somewhere, watching. He'd blame me for this. But it is my fault. It's always my fault.

    Then Alison steps away, crying into her hands and I know there's no one left here to comfort her. Tonight will be yet another night that she cries herself to sleep.

    And Piotr will whisper to his pictures as he sleeps. He'll talk to them about his sister and Kitty. Those quiet mutterings in the night that she would have heard and that she would have stilled with a light mind-touch or a kind word.

    I watch them go back inside. Alison places a hand on Ororo's grave and says softly, "Do you see? Do you see?" and her voice is sad, small, and breaks over every word.

    The wind blows around me, biting into my flesh with ravenous teeth. I don't feel the pain anymore.

    With great effort, I keep myself from stumbling and falling face first onto the fresh grave. I place my hand on the tombstone and let the words sink into my jumbled brain.

    "Here lies Elizabeth Braddock, beloved daughter, sister, and friend. She lived the warrior's life and fought the good fight. But, like a butterfly, she lived for such a short time and then was gone. She will be missed."

    I can feel the tears slip from my eyes as I throw the beer bottle into the depths of the coming night. "Damn you, Braddock!" I scream. "How can you do this to us? How can you leave?" My voice begins to shake and sink to my knees in the soft soil, hand resting over on the stone carving of her face.

    The only answer I get is the whispering of the wind.

    "No. No," I insist as I raise my face, my eyes to stare into the murky sky above. "I can't, Betsy. I...the team would fall apart. I...No, Betsy. Don't leave us."

    The call of the wind becomes louder, more urgent, and her voice is everywhere, strewn through everything. It is all I can hear.

    I close my eyes and all I can see is her.

    What happened to her? What caused her to go from being the perfect, calm British X-Man to the sobbing, screaming woman who locked herself into the bathroom?

    I can still see the blood flowing from her pale wrists. Alison's cries of alarm are still ringing through my ears. And the taste of alcohol, the thing I have always turned to in times of trouble, is at the back of my throat.

    "I can't do it, Betsy. I'll kill them. The team will fall apart. It's already fallen apart."

    Now the wind has died down. It speaks to me in a soft, lilting English tone. And it speaks only encouraging words.

    Slowly, I nod and talk to the wind. "I promise, Betsy. I will try. I will try."

    I get up, brushing the dirt off my knees and begin to walk towards the door, aching for a cup of coffee, wanting to be sober again and forever. No more alcohol, no more blaming myself. I have been left in charge, I have been left in charge, I have been...

***

    And on the hill overlooking the cemetery, Gateway just smiles sadly, as if he knows everything but is not allowed to speak.