#ofthexdream

   He hates it here. He has hated it here ever since he first woke up in this sterile, suffocating place. The Muir Island facility has never been home, and David is sure it never will be. Even when he believed Moira and her staff wanted to help him David hated it. The things in his brain hated it. He pleaded with them to be calm, to not fight and just let the healing happen, but they never did, and then David began to understand why.

   This isn’t a place of healing. It’s a nightmare. It’s Hell.

   David wants out and he has a plan. He’s smart, smarter than these doctors think he his. They say he’s autistic and insane and assume he can’t think for himself. They assume he doesn’t feel. They’re wrong and today he’s going to make them all feel like idiots. But there is one wrinkle in his carefully constructed plan. Rahne Sinclair.

   She’s his friend. At least she’s as close to a friend as he’s ever had. The only other kid in this place. The only other person here that’s his age. Part of him is aware she isn’t like him. She’s not insane. She’s not broken, but she’s here all the same. Except, she seems happy. She’s definitely got more freedom than him. She doesn’t have a doctor or orderly watching her every move. She’s not always wearing the same tracksuit as him, with these stupid slippers. When he’s given time to play in the common room, he sees her come skipping in all by herself, beaming at him and chatting in the same accent as everyone else here.

   An accent David finds himself starting to mimic. He’s not sure if that’s a good thing. Sure, the English makes it easier to communicate but he feels like he’s losing a part of himself. He wants to cling to the French in his accent, to the Israeli in his voice.

   Today, as David flips through a comic book he’s read a hundred times already, Rahne comes into the room, happy as ever. He glances at her, chewing his lip. Does he tell her his plan? Does he bring her into it? Would she even want to come with him?

Stryfe was angry. Not because of Nathan. No. Because of who stood before him. His teeth grinding in his head as he looked at the woman who was his mother. Who SHOULD have been his mother. But wasn't. The only person who was there for him besides the Android Zero. Was himself. His blue eyes beneath the helmet shook and vibrated with rage as he clenches his fist.

"You dare show your face around me..?" He asked as he cranes his head to the side. His voice spits venom as he studies her. Jealousy, anger, disgust. He felt so many things about this woman and he was itching to kill her here and now. Make Nathan Summers feel the true meaning of loss. But he refrained.

Why..? Why was he refraining from hurting her? His fingers were like a twitchy mess. Looking around him. There was so much strone about and she was open to an attack. His tone a low growl as he spits." You're nothing more than a waste, 'Mother'. His body turning aside he reaches his hand up clenching his fist. A crazed smile forming on his lips as he looks back at her.

David tilts his head, taking another mental scan of his surroundings. Making sure no one is watching him. With a satisfied hum the teenager turns his gaze to the wall he stands beside, a wall at the back of the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. He runs his fingers over the bricks until those fingers slot inside one certain brick. An illusory brick. One made by him to appear and feel very real unless David himself touches it or someone else he’s allowed to access this little hidey hole.

He pulls out a box and flips up its lid to reveal a bag of dried marijuana and a few rolled joints. David takes a joint and shoves the box back into its hole. He leans back against the wall, slotting the joint between his lips.

Come on, dude, whines Cyndi, still providing David access to their pyrokinetics so he can light the weed. I wasn’t that annoying.

“You wanted us to burn down the fuckin’ classroom,” David hisses around the smoke huffed out through his teeth. “And weren’t letting up. Hence the panicked teleportation out of said classroom and now the weed. I need you an’ everyone else to fuckin’ mellow out.”

Psh, can’t take a joke.

David rolls his eyes and takes a good, long drag on his joint. He closes his eyes and leans into the mellow calm seeping into his mind. He feels it as the marijuana does the job, feels as it makes his alters sluggish and sleepy. Much better. Easier to deal with. Even if he does soon find himself getting uncharacteristically hungry.

It also fucks with his own focus, his own awareness. Which is why he’s surprised when he hears someone come around the corner. Which is why he jerks away from the wall and why eyes widen when they lock on Tabitha Smith, the lit joint still in his hand.

   Perhaps that whole business with the elder gods was solved neatly. He got free of the No-Time, where his hungry mind grew out of control. Devouring other minds and creating new ones endlessly until it was all he could do but to retreat into one dark, hidden corner of the World Mind he was becoming. Pulled from that place, from that nothing and dumped into a new fleshy body. He was so broken then, so out of control. People got hurt. He killed people. One of them is still in his mind, placed on a small, protected island where all the good ones go, the ones that don’t deserve to be with the menagerie of monsters.

   And Illyana? He destroyed her tormentors for her. Gave her some freedom of her own. Despite feeling bitter over being used like that, over being weaponised again and again, David does hope her freedom was better than his.

    David sucks his teeth, a hand rising to rub at his eyes. He’s tired. It’s made him grumpy. He can admit that.

“Overworkin’ ‘gain?”

Jean was one of the more diligent mutants among them, her work ethic was impressive, but to a fault. Once her mind was set on something, it seemed as though she’d do whatever it took to see it through. In this case that meant a lack of sleep.

@ofthexdream asked: “I think everyone would be more tolerable as a wolf. Including ye.” (From Rahne.)

Unprompted

   David gives a small laugh. It doesn't last long, but it softens his sharp features, and when his mismatched eyes focus on Rahne, there is something fond in their usually tired depths. He gives her a small smile, no offense coming off him at all.

   “‘Course you'd say that an’ I’d be inclined to agree for the most part but my inner Wolf … well,” David grimaces, his features darkening once more. “He's a bit o’ an aggressive bastard. Really gives into the bestial instincts. Has an obsession with eatin’ faces. Makes it hard to focus when he's close to the surface.”

   Okay, maybe he doesn’t completely hate having The Wolf as his co-pilot. David does enjoy the strength in his limbs, the rush of movement and vicious action, and the sheer indestructibility that comes with that healing factor, but he hates the instincts. He hates the feel of losing control, of being beholden to a baser version of himself. Hates that feeling of his reason and logic getting overcome by The Wolf’s hunger and feral will.