A/N: This be my first published X-Men fic. Be nice, please. And if you're waiting for an update on Tourist, PLEASE be paitent. Muse and exams are hard on me right now.

Beautiful

Delirious, you staggered onwards.

You have been living on the edge for so long. Life and death had blurred so you were no longer sure whether you were walking awake or asleep. Too long you have been drifting, but you have nothing left to draw you back. Your entire life had been washed away from you in one bitter instant, and there was only emptiness. You were hollow.

Your mother had told you that you were the most beautiful thing she had ever seen, even when you were beaten and bruised, even when she was beaten and bruised. Life, though it had seemd almost unbearbale at times, was the best thing that you had ever known. And now it was gone. Torn away from you, like your innocence had been when you were far too young to understand what was happening.

Sorry had never been enough. Not for him. He would hit you until you screamed, until you begged for mercy between bleedin lips. Even then, he did not stop. He would not stop until he had had his wicked way with you, a way that would inevitabley leave you unable to walk for days afterwards.

School was not an option. Obviously, had you dared show your face there, covered in bruises as it was, the police would immediately be called and that would be the end of everything. This you knew. He was warned you many times not to go squealing, or else. Even at that tender age, you had a good idea of what else would be. A good enough idea to know that you really didn't want to find out.

The only constant in your life was pain.

And then the storm had come, and you had emerged from your hiding place covered in blood and dust to see her pinned to the wall, to see them lying in their own private pools. He was nowhere to be seen, so you did the only thing you were able to do. You ran, ran for as long as you could before collapsing. Then you forced yourself to your feet and dragged yourself forwards, away from that place of fear, torment and loss.

You had no idea how long you had been running before you left the city. Now you were even more lost than ever, in this green, grey wilderness. And as you wandered, you came slowly to the realisation that it was your fault. It was your fault that he had been so brutal. He had know, somehow, before even you did, that you were different. Something so putrid and disgusting that he tried to beat it out of you before it happened. And she hadn't understood like he did, so he had hit her too. And it was your fault that he had been so afraid that they would turn out like you that he had… done that.

It was your fault.

This knowledge was the only thing that kept you going through the long years of pain as you dragged youself on in a direction that lead away. Wherever you turned up, it had to be better than what you had left. The knowledge lent you strength through resolution and through anger. Yet you never found yourself hating him, even after all he had done. Without him, you would never have got this far in life, would never have learnt to control it so well that you could hide it even from those looking.

When, one winter that seemed a lifetime away from where you first started, you arrived at the gates of that place. They had taken you in, healed you and fed you. You wouldn't talk to any of them, not even to tell them your name. One, the guy you guessed to be the leader of this motley band, tried to find it by invading your mind. But your mind was the only bit of you that was still private, and you weren't about to let some cripple worm his way in.

He was surprised at your resistance, at the strength of it, you think, rather than that it was there. He tried to goad you into using that which made you so wrong, but you knew this game. He had played it with you many-a-time before you left.

Finally, he found the answer. He put you in a room with another freak, one who was the complete opposite of you. But in his gentle way, he worked his way into your mind, your heart, your soul. You weren't ready to let him be your friend, not yet, but it was comforting for you to have found someone else who cared.

One night, he convinced you to show him your – he called it a power. The Professor (as you had learnt he was) had called it an ability. You called it… you didn't know what to call it. But you showed him anyway. That night, you found release for all your anger, your pain, your fear. Though you would never completely let go of it, you were no longer imprisoned by it. The others were amazed when he spoke the next morning. He had just smiled quietly by your side. That night, you had been set free of the cage that had held you captive your whole life. And why?

He had called you beautiful.