Disclaimer: This actually another attempt at a common person/people story. Everyone seemed to love "In the Shadow of an Angel", and since I just got asked to archive again, I wrote another piece my muse has been dangling in front of me like a carrot. It's a little like continuum but it's not. You'll see what I mean once you get started. The characters are all mine, so if you want to use them you got to ask. *Grins* I'm a friendly person so don't worry. I don't bite unless you ask.

PLEASE send feedback.

~*~*~*~

Do you think you know me?

Are you honestly sure?

I bet you're right, but I know your wrong.

You know 'me'. You've passed me in the hallway, braided my hair while we ate popcorn and laughed at movies, shared a moment's glance, hated me or idolized me. You've called me best friend, brown noser, girl friend, suck up, beloved daughter, high school snob, bitch, prep, slut, and even teenage queen, but you've never met me.

You don't know me.

You can't know me. I don't even know me.

Because there is no me.

I've become the reflection in the mirror that you've made of 'me'.

My IQ isn't anything special, and I couldn't quote you pie out to

the twentieth if you were going to pay me. I've made terrific grades all but once in my life though. I got a B in Chemistry my fourth six weeks of my senior year, but everyone sympathized because Snowflake -my little white kitten- died and it was hard. That's not what's made you know 'me' on sight though.

There's one of 'me' in every town of every state and every country in existence, maybe even every planet if there are extraterrestrial's out there. If not then I'm jealous of every alien beauty on every planet who was never born because their species never exsisted.

She's not a 'me', because she'll never be.

I'm that girl with the perfect blonde hair, the bright sparkly blue eyes and the dashing million-dollar winning smile you'd all die to have. The one with the huge group of friends who'd come and go with the gossip, wouldn't be caught dead with an extra ounce of fat on them, and will never have a stain on their shirts or a hair out of place. I'm the one with seven credit cards in her purse each with their own account, and enough allowance from my father in one week to last me the next two.

Who's parent never said no to her never unreasonable request and would send her to Sweden for Christmas with seven or ten friends for company, so she won't be lonely. The girl with the perfect daughter-parent relationship. The one who's dating the senior, star quarter back that looks like he could be a model, or even pose for Play Girl, he makes your knees weak so fast.

Yeah, that’s right, you're getting it now. I'm the girl whose life makes you need a dentist.

You're so sure you know me that you don't.

You only know two things about me truly.

Number One. My Anglicized name is Angela Marie Chance.

It's on my birth certificate, my fingerprints, and my medical files.

Everyone forgets that. Maybe I missed it when they made that decree.

They all call me Angel.

I used to love the name. Now I hate it.

I would rather Angie, or Annie, or Anne. Even my grandmothers fleeting memory where she calls me Angelina-Rose seems better.

I have this memory from when I was six and a half, bouncing up and down on an English pony. The wind was blowing my hair in its baby curls behind me and laughing in my ear. The sun was this bright radiant beacon in the sky I was bound to find and put in a locket as a jewel if I just kept riding far enough towards it. The clouds and sun streamers were my guides and they all whispered joy in my ear.

I adored horses at such a young age, they said it was strange for children, but a bright sign of a good rider if they started me right then. So immediately it was crammed smack dab between early novice tumbling lessons and a tutor whom spoke in French only. Great parents right? Kids at six are going to start first grade and I was learning French, to ride, and to tumble.

Oh, you wanted that?

Take my life. What'd Oliver ask?

Yes, I'll ever wrap it up in a bow for you.

Well, I fell off the horse that day. Never before had I entered a day like that, and after it there would be many more like it. So many that I've lost count, forgotten there was a time when I might have known there were ways to rebel, to break free. But none of them as clear as they day I fell off.

'I not want ride ta' pony n' more!'

But that wouldn't do would it? They couldn't just let you stop, could they? NO! Of course not. You were so far beyond normal children. A child prodigy they called you. She's only a child, don't let her waste her talent away on the fear one bump has landed her. So of course the next day they shoved you up and slapped his rear and you hold on for dear life like any sane person would right?

Do I even need to say 'insert sigh' here, or is anyone getting the drift yet?

Oh, where was I, yes telling you why you were wrong. I've eighteen years of reasons and I've only begun. I sound like a spoiled brat whining to you, don't I? Maybe I am? Or maybe I'm just a caged bird, whose mute, and forgotten that a small trap door ever exsisted, but blindly searching still.

The hunk of a boy friend you'd love to have, you know the football quarterback who I seem blissfully in love with? He gets drunk every Saturday night and after games, and then goes and messes around with stripers he'll never see again, leaving me alone, thinking I don't know. I've only seen him drunk once, and we've only slept together twice. Once on our one-year anniversary, the second after Winter Formal Party ended.

He'll probably even ask me to marry him when we're snuggled into each other's arms that third time after prom.

And those friends, who seem so into everything and agree with my opinion a lot of the time because I'm cheer captain, or soon to be Prom Queen, that you wish you had because I'm so liked, so popular. They'd turn their backs on anyone in a second. I've seen lambs go to the slaughter, I've sent them myself, maybe you were even one of them. I see that look, I know their cruel and vicious need for dirty, slimy, goop, dirt or gossip.

Why? Because it's our image. The image you give us.

The image we give you because you demand it.

OH, where was I?

I am a poet, but you'll never know that.

But back to the point. I told you only one of the two things you DO know about me. The first was my name, a thing I can not change. The only part of me that is me.

Number Two. I'm a mutant.

I've known since I was six and I fell off that horse I was, I am, my own support system. There is nothing else there in a world built of money, china plates, and crystalline, to hold you. I told them last night in the middle of dinner, hoping beyond all my knowledge my mother might grab me and hug me, tell me the world would still be a safe place for me.

It's once snow princess now condemned child of hate and bloody fear.

My mother has shrunken into a world of dillusions, I think. She smiled at me when she opened my windows to let the sunshine wake me like always. I am curios and nervous to what her thoughts are. She mentioned shopping, and a date with her best friend for lunch and left saying Ella would have breakfast ready in a matter of minutes.

I stumbled from bed, feeling shaken and my chest and throat dry from crying myself to sleep last night. My arms have small feathers along the other edge so the stain against my long sleeve shirt hurts. That was how it started to a degree. I started waking up with feathers in my bed, tiny down ones that I couldn’t figure out where they were coming from and one morning I woke up and a row of them were on my under arm from along the bone from shoulder to an inch from my wrist.

Do I even have mention how ironic and scarey it is when I get called Angel since then?

No one noticed my sudden like for turtle necks or sleeves, and why should they? It's still January and I also get too cold. I don't know what I am. The feathers don't go anywhere they just stay there and hurt if I press down, and the electricity flickers when I get emotional, shutting off when I get too angry. I know I'm different. I know they'll call me a mutant.

I don't know who or what I am to me thought.

But again I got up. Brushing my teeth, my younger sister appeared in the doorway and stood there. And there we were; me- brushing my teeth looking at her reflection, her- brushing her hair and looking at mine. It was one of those moments you don't have words to explain because there aren't enough in the world to explain expressions.

She's not all that much younger really. Only ten months. Our parents must have been madly in love or under too much lust for any two god fearing people. She is standing brushing long strands of brown and red gold hair, as it coasts over her shoulders and past her chest in this waterfall effect, looking at me like I'm no one new. For a moment, a shot of jealous strung and it only got worse as I looked at her.

The look that surrounded her was wind blown, and careless. Or was it carefree? She was standing there in clothes I wouldn't see anyone wear no less ever be seen touching in a store. A rainbow tie dye looking small tank top, and a pair of tight on the tights and then loose bell bottoms that had holes in the bottom from her constant walking around bare foot.

She'd never been afraid of our parents. She gave them her opinion. She swore when she was angry. She sang into her brush at the top of her lungs with the radio. She was her own person, she didn't allow anyone to push her to something she didn't like. Always my little pest though. The bounty of my confusion, and my jealousy.

She was free.

My pest was nervous, but I'm not sure I'd ever seen her get scared. There wide eyes, sparkling blue, as she watched me watching her, watching her watching me, I wonder if for the first time more than yelling at each other or saying snide comment we realized how different we were, and how much we actually did care about each others opinions.

I finished my teeth washing the brush off and dropping it in the holder, trying to prepare myself for whatever she'd start saying now. It was bad enough watching all of them last night when I told them, but I don't think they expected em to leave electrical blast marks on the floor.

I never asked to be a mutant. I can't see where it could be my fault. It just happened one morning.

She rushed to hug me suddenly before I was half turned around and I was startled to say the least. My sister was one of those people who holed themselves up in their room at the computer or with a spiral the moment they got home from work or anything at all. Almost anti-social to a degree, though she did have her social butterfly's points, too, I must admit.

She was my little sister? How would this hit her life?

"Cass," I started but she looked up and pressed a finger against my lips. I was bewildered to say the least. The last time we'd really stayed around each other it was to talk about the fact she didn't want to go to prom because it meant wearing a dress.

Cassidy stepped back slowly unevenly, her eyes still on mine holding out two slips of paper. What was this?

"I got these for you last night, Ang."

I took them, and glanced down at the papers under her watchful eyes. One was a printed up white card with black lettering that read:

School for Higher Learning

Prof. Charles Xavier

1407 Grey Malkin Lane

Salem Center, NY, 10274

1-914-555-1234

I was a little confused automatically reading the name for "Higher Learning". What was that about? It sounded like a geek, prep school. What was I thinking? I was a prep. Being a mutant just seemed to come first for classification suddenly. I flipped the paper to the back the second was a hand written piece of paper with two things written.

It was bad hand writing, nothing professional like the first. One said

Underground, and had a phone number for someone to contact with 'Special Problems the everyday world can't Handle' it read. God, that sounded like a therapists call from a million miles away. The second jotted note on it read 'Haven: A Community' in it's self and had an address. I looked up bewildered. I knew my sister well enough -I thought I did, I hope I do- to know what she was trying to do.

Was she trying to help me?

Did my sister actually know mutants?

I effectively was surprised when she moved and hugged me again, this time placing a kiss on my cheek. We hit the Twilight Zone suddenly as I smiled barely, and then she mirrored it. I pulled her back into my arms and hugged her tight, just holding on for moments on end as she held on to me. I'm not sure if any tears fell, it was a moment outside of time.

"Jesus," my lips whispers without me as whole world seemed to spin oblivious in that moment when I hugged her tight. Nothing outside mattered. There was no bathroom, no cook calling breakfast was ready, no world waiting to hate before it could even have a chance to love. And yet here, in the smallest way it was being given to me. Someone wanted to acknowledge me, and maybe try to help.

The smallest gesture suddenly made me feel so alive. So wanted for just being me. And me didn't matter for being in box's. Neither of us did.

"I love you, Cassidy."

We weren't a prom queen and a hippie. We weren't school prep and school grunge. There were no mutations. We weren't on different sides of the same war. We weren't seeing the lines. The rest of the meaningless world and it's images vanished. What we didn't know didn't matter. We were just two girls in a frightening world realizing it was a frightening world and we had something to hold on to for a single moment in time where it had decided to stop.

"' Love you, too, Angela." The lights flickered sparatically like the

dinning room ones had last night, but we were too busy holding on for the first time in years to notice.

We were sisters.

---------------

* - School For Higher Learning card edited and changed a tiny bit (changed name and real/canon address) from the School for Gifted Students card, shown in Marvel Graphic Novel: The Aladdin Effect.