Chapter 2: Higher Grounds

God, my head hurt. It felt as if I had been through hell and back- and to hell again. I could feel every individual bruise and cut covering my flesh. And might I say; it's not a pleasant feeling.

I tried to ask where I was, but it merely came out, "Wargh mm ah...?"

I was answered by the sweet voice of a women whom was standing by my side in a heart beat. "You're in the school for the gifted. You were hit by a car, and you're hurt pretty bad."

I looked up and was greeted by that women, Jean Grey, I had met earlier. You know? The one that led me and my friends to this hell hole in the first place.

"Haw?" I managed to mumble out.

"Well, you weren't looking at where you were looking." With that, she gave me a little smile, and left.

~Holy crap! I'm naked! What kind of people are they? Pedophiles, I tell you! Pedophiles! They didn't have to take off my clothes to examine the cuts I had, did they? I better get some clothes and get outta here before she comes back.~

I stood up, trying to cover up my nakedness, and ran to the nearest cabinet. I opened the top drawer; nothing. The second drawer; nada! The middle drawer; nothing! I see a pattern here. Second to bottom drawer; yes!

~There they were! But wait! Where were my unmentionables? Holy shit! Where are they? Oh, there they are. In the back.~

I got dressed as fast as possible, and ignored the pounding head ache. I could get some aspirin later.

~Whoa, woozy. Better sit down a second.~ I found a nice comfortable spot on the floor, against the wall. The cold wall against my back felt good.

"What are you doing?" Someone asked from the doorway. I looked up and was greeted by old red eye.

"Why the bloody hell should you care?" I snapped.

"Stop doing that stupid British accent! You're worse then Richard Blade!" He covered his ears to emphasize his meaning.

"Who's Richard Blade?"

"Some guy who used to be on K-ROQ."

"K-ROQ?"

"It's the world famous K-ROQ! You've never heard of it? How out of the loop are you?"

"You know what? I don't need this shit right now!" I deepened my fake accent just to piss him off. I actually started doing it to bring my music career up. Now it was just second nature.

"You know what you DO need?" He took a step towards me. "You need to learn to deal with your problems!"

"Problems? Problems!?" How dare he talk to me about MY problems! "I don't have any problems! MY life is peachy fucking keen! Now get the hell outta my way!" I motioned for him to move, but he just firmed his ground.

"No. You have to learn to deal with your problems like Sassy did." He stared at me with those damn things he called eyes.

Good! I can use those stupid eyes of him. "Can I ask YOU a question?"

He nodded, "Only if I can ask you one-"

"After mine."

"Fine."

"What happened to your eyes?" I tried to hide my smile when I actually made 'me fearless leader; you my humble follower' man flinch. ~Good, touchy spot. I can work with that.~

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play stupid with me!" I stood up from the wall and walked to him. "These! Why do you have these?" I pointed at his glasses.

"I have sensitive eyes-"

"Indoors!? That's a lie if I ever heard one!"

"But I can't-"

"But I can't, I'm so fucking week! I try to put up this front so no one knows me truly. Not even my bitch, Jean-"

"What?" She, Jean Grey, walked in right then. Perfect timing.

"Oh, me and Scotty boy here are just having a little talk." I gave him the fakest friendly punch in the arm I could.

"Good. I'll leave you two to talk then." With that, she gave Scott a kiss on the cheek and waved to me as she turned into the corridor.

"What's your problem, little boy?" Scott asked me in the most threatening voice I've heard from him. Probably ANYone ever heard from him.

"I'm just curious about your past. I mean; you're here trying to find out about MY life, and you won't give me two cents worth of shit about you!"

"What is your power, anyway?" I could tell that he was trying to change the subject. Good subject.

"Oh, I'm psychic." It was true. Telekinesis IS a psychic power!

"What kind of psychic?" Damn! I could have gotten away with just plain psychic with any other person. But nnnnooooooooooo! Not this guy!

"Telekinetic," I said in a quite voice. "What about you?"

"Oh, you see these glasses?" He pointed at the glasses.

"Yeah, I asked you about them earlier."

"They're the only things stopping me from blasting a hole in your head, the wall, and the next building over- in New York City."

"Good for you!" Sarcasm; works every time.

"I'm just about ready to take these glasses off to show you." Sarcasm; didn't work for this guy.

"Well, if you don't mind?" I started to walk around him. But he grabbed my, already stretched, shirt.

"You're not going anywhere." He pushed me back towards the bed I was on. "You're going to recuperate, and you're going to like it!" I found myself nearly falling off the other side of the bed before I could protest.

"You stay there." He walked out of the room, leaving me unattended.

~Yes!~ I looked around. ~Well, can't go out the door, everyone would notice me leave.~ I looked around some more. ~Window! Yes!~

I got off the bed thing I was sitting on and walked to it. I was just small enough to fit through it. But it was a bit high for me to reach. ~Chair. I need a chair or something.~ I spotted one on the opposing wall ~Low and behold! A chair!~ I called the chair over with my mind, and stood up on it. ~Tight squeeze, but I'm small enough.~

I stood on the chair, losing my balance for a second, and reached for the window. Still to high. Not a problem, all I gotta do is lift the chair higher. Not an easy task. ~I gotta lose some weight.~ Up, up, up. And I'm there. A few seconds more, and I was out of the window.

"Holy shit!" I looked down and saw the four stories of nothingness to meet me if I took another step forward.

"Ne'd some 'elp, mon ami?" The voice was matter of factly, as if he'd seen me do this before.

I looked to my right and was met by the gaze of red on black eyes. "Um, maybe." I glanced down the side again, "Yes! Definitely."

"Well, ah ya runnin' away? O' ah ya jus' tryin' ta find a place nice an quite?" He snickered at my expression. A mixture of fear, contemplation, worry, and laughter.

"I'm just trying to get home." I lied. I always lied. Maybe it was a condition? Maybe it was just easier to lie? Whatever it was, he saw right through it.

"Ye ah 'ome. An ya know it." He held out a hand to me as if to welcome a long forgotten friend back into his life. I didn't take his gesture.

"Don't worry about me. I can find a home easy. I've done it."

"So 'ave I," He looked at me as though he were on the verge of a long story.

"Uh huh? What's your story?"

"'Ave ya ev'a 'eard of the T'iefs Guild?"

"Yeah, New Orleans. I think?"

"I'm the prince."

I looked at him, "No you're not."

"I am. De name's Remy LeBeau." He held out his hand again. Again, I didn't take up the kind gesture.

He let his hand drop as I started. "I've heard all about you. Yeah, you had a shitty life too. But your eyes are easy to hide. You have to touch something to use your power. I just have to think of something to have it happen.

"I was at school, once. Junior high. I was always the out cast type of person. Always wanting a friend to share my secrets with. The other students just stayed away from me, though. Not because I was a mutant. They didn't know it yet; nor did I. They hated me because I was once a friend of a mutant. You could easily tell he was a mutant. With his wings, and all. Looked much like and angel, only an angel of darkness. People would always pull at his wins to see if they were real; try to take a feather for a souvenir; and just kick his ass. No other reason. He was a good guy, just a mutant. Hell, my parents threatened to kill me if I turned out a mutant."

I took a long, shaky breath and looked to see if he was still listening. His expression didn't even change. "When my powers showed up-" I took another breath, "It was when they killed him. Tore the wings right out of his body. Their hands were covered in blood, and my friend screamed at each pull. I wanted to help, but I couldn't. I didn't know what to do. I mean, I didn't think I was a mutant.

"That's when I saw it. A big fucking car that could kill them all. Through all of this, I had been able to concentrate somehow, and did it." I stopped. I couldn't go much further. I could feel the tears burning down my cheek.

"Wha' happen, mon ami? Ya c'n tell ol' Remy. I'll keep it a secret if ya wan'." I could tell that he honestly meant it. I could hear the control breathing pattern which signified that he was trying to listen. I could feel his honesty, in my mind. It was simply there and pure. I knew I could trust him, even if I didn't want it a secret. I wanted everyone in the world to know what _I_ did and not my friend. It wasn't his fault. I did it. _I_ did it!

"I killed them. I somehow got the car to roll up the hill, and hit them. It wasn't a fast hit, either. I wanted them to feel the pain they caused him, and me. I made sure the wheels would roll right on their heads and have their heads pop like a fucking egg.

"I got my wish. I got that and fear. I killed my friend. I killed him because I didn't do anything to save him. If I had tried, he would still be alive." I started to sob. "All I did was make his assaulters pay. But I didn't save him. I didn't even wait for the police to come and help me save him. He was still alive when I left. I could still feel him breathing. Hear it. I knew he was alive.

"When I got home, I was still scared and pissed. Every time I would look at something and think of my friend, it would move. I remember, in particular, I was in my home right after the incident. I was in my room before my parents saw me. I was glad of it too. If I saw them first, who knows what would have happened to them. When I got in my room, I lied down on the bed and cried for what seemed hours. I didn't even know for what after a while. When I finally decided that it was enough crying, that'd it would be okay. I looked up at my mirror.

"In the mirror, I saw my friend. I saw his bloody face, broken teeth, everything just mutilated. He just looked at me. Just the stare scared the shit out of me. I didn't even relies what I did until after it happened. I seemed to black out, but when I realized what happened, it was to late. My dresser, which weighed about three hundred pounds, easy, was thrown out the window. Not a big window either. The dresser blasted a huge hole in the wall where once the window was.

"My parents heard what happened. I'm pretty sure that all of China heard what happened, too. They ran up stairs and threw the door open. Apparently, when that saw my eyes, they were green. As you can tell, I don't usually have green eyes." I pointed to m eyes. "They're black. But they were green when they saw me. They fucking started freaking out and told me to get out of the house. My dad even tried to kill me by choking me. But finally I left. I didn't want to leave, but I did. I never came back. Didn't need to, either. The next day they were killed in a car accident. Seems they were looking for me. I read a newspaper talking about it.

"'LOCAL FAMILY KILLED; SON NO WHERE TO BE FOUND' was the title of the column. It talked about how my friend was killed, and my parents died. They were trying to make me seem like the bad guy. I don't even want to talk about what happened when they found me."

Remy took this as an invitation to speak. "Ya don' hav' ta. It's okay." He put a hand on my shoulder, which I shivered off.

"Well," I wiped away tears with the back of my hand. "I was adopted by Sassy's Mom. Fortunately she was a mutant. She adopted mutants like me, Sassy, and Pyro. We all loved her. She was a nice women. She was loaded too. That's how we started our band. She bought us the stuff just so we could have fun. Turned out a good and bad thing.

"When we, the Mentals I mean, were at a gig, some bastards broke into our house. They spray painted swastikas, some weird bird, and the letters FoH everywhere. We didn't realize it at first. But somewhere during the gig, we had a sudden shock of dread and sadness. We all knew what happened. We stopped playin, although the listeners didn't approve," I forced a laugh. "and ran home. When we got home, we saw that the lights were on. We all had turned off the lights when we left, but they were on. Sassy's Mom went in first, she wanted us all to be safe. It wasn't, though. The second she opened the door, a bomb went off. All but Sassy's Mom survived. She died instantly. They had some time trying to determine her ashes from the cedar of the house."

Finally, the pain of all that went on that night hit me. After all this time, now it hits me. I collapsed in convulsions of crying. He picked me up, but I fell right back down. I couldn't go on any more. It was too much.

When I finally recovered from all of my tears, and self hatred; I stood up and looked at Remy. "Don't stop me," I said as I slowly backed away from him.

He realized what I was doing and yelled out, "WARREN! HELP!" He jumped at me, but I dodged him and leapt off of the building.

There was a few seconds of nothingness before I felt strong arms under me. Stopping my decent. My needed death. I cursed as I was slowly brought to the ground. I couldn't go on. I needed to get it all over with. I struggled to try and get out of his arms, but he tightened his grip.

When we reached the ground, I looked up to see what ass hole stopped me. I was shocked by what I saw. The wings! Those damn wings! Why? Why did he have wings? Why couldn't he just have something else? Those wings weren't his! They weren't his! He couldn't have them! They belonged to my friend which I killed so long ago. My friend. MY friend. Not this bastard-

Warren?