Slipping in the back of the lecture hall, Robin slid quietly into a sit and pulled out a notepad, thrilled to see that she hadn’t missed much. She had been oddly eager to come to this lecture, hearing it was about evolution on the most basic level and hopefully, giving her some answers to the many questions she had.
But after a short while, the young woman had absolutely no idea what the lecturer was talking about. She sat back in her seat with a soft sigh of frustration and boredom. Glancing around inconspicuously, everyone’s attention was on the man at the front of the room. She waved her hand a few inches above the notepad and pencil. The pencil rolled slowly though not steadily after her hand, stopping before it rolled off the notepad.
select from the following for my muse to respond to: Patching up a wound.
“Fuckin ah -” Sleip cut himself off, gritting his teeth together as the professor cleaned his shoulder up, warm blood and water seeping down his paling skin as he let out a held breath. “...will I need stitches?”
Gigi’s life was, more or less, a comedy of errors. Born to the wealthy Greene family which had long had a hand in massive, expensive car production, no one thought it was funny when her skin shimmered the same color as her namesake in the sunlight at the age of three. By the time she was five, Gwendolyn was not allowed out of the house without layers of expensive cover-up, gloves, high-collars, and sunglasses. Going from a cherubic child with blue irises to a green-skinned, dark-haired freak with her full sclera the color of moss and only black pupils denoting where her vision truly hailed from was the least of it. Along with her interesting appearance came the eruption of powers that she could neither control nor understand.
The first time the powers manifested, Gigi thought she was dying. She woke one morning covered from dark-haired head to green-nailed toes in flower blooms. They had burst through her pajamas, as if searching for the light and they ached from the very center of her. She cried for what felt like days, although with the transition she had gone through tears were in short supply.
She was lucky, all things considered; although her parents refused to look at her without the mask she was forced to wear to appear in front of any other person, they provided for her the best tutors. It was much too risky to allow her out and about with enough regularity to attend school but they wanted her to have as many advantages as they could provide her.
The problem with something akin to the Kensington system, as they soon discovered, was that it left something to be desired in the development of her personality. With no one to talk to about what she was going through, no one that could provide any true level of understanding, and parents that couldn’t meet her eyes for fear of what they looked like, Gigi grew resentful. First and foremost of the childlike nickname that sounded like poison when either of her parents uttered it.
Gwen, then.
Gwen excelled in the fields of math and science – little did she know, it broke her father’s heart to know she could’ve been a doctor if she wasn’t so afflicted – but had no real place to put her skills to the test. Years passed and the public grew more and more aware of what they called mutants, more emboldened by every time one of the popped up. Things had always been tense in the Greene household since Gwendolyn’s mutation was discovered but it all came to a head around her twenty-fourth birthday.
“it’s dangerous,” her mother hissed from the other side of the wall; Gwen had been practicing the piano for her customary two hours before her fingers began to ache for the sunshine. With a privacy fence that kept the light out for most of the day because of its height, Gwen was allowed into the yard at the very least. She wore the caked-on concealer from the moment she woke up until it was time for her to lay her head to rest. It made her itch, not unlike the gloves that covered her elongated fingers. Resting her head delicately back against the ivy vines along the brick wall behind her, she tugged at the glove.
Releasing her hand into the sunlight, she wondered at the strange pigments that glittered beneath the green.
“It’s dangerous for her to keep her here, Margaret! We’ve kept her practically caged like an animal for the last twenty years. What kind of life is this for her?”
“What kind of life would that be? Teaching.” Margaret Atwood-Greene scoffed and Gwen could imagine that she was pressing her delicately pale hand to her delicately pale forehead with a pained look pulling down her lips. Gwen grimaced at the mental image. “They can’t possibly provide for her the way we have, Gerald!”
“Are you listening to yourself? You know exactly the life she has had here. It’s just as hard for you as it is for me. We can’t keep her here any longer, for the sake of everyone here.”
Gwen had long since stood from her position outside the massive sliding glass door that would lead into the kitchen from the ornate deck. Sliding the door open wider, she looked up to catch her parents’ red faces. She had removed her hat, her glasses; unbuttoned the high collar of her shirt to reveal green collarbones and did her best to scrub at the peachy cover-up on her cheeks.
“Wherever it is, I’ll go.”
And go she did; not two days later, with all of two suitcases and one small box, Gwendolyn left her parents’ home for what she assumed would be the last time. She was covered, as always, from head to toe. When she emerged from the town car outside the front door of Xavier’s School for the Gifted, she looked mostly normal.
Her father knew a man who knew another man who had heard that the school existed – that was all she needed. She promised to tell her parents how it went but had immediately decided she would tell them whatever she needed to so that they wouldn’t come looking for her.
She was free, whatever that meant.
The driver unloaded the suitcases and box, looking at Gwen for a long moment before he was waved off. With a heavy heart and a gloved hand, Gwen lifted her hand to press her finger into the doorbell. Beside her, the bush absolutely bloomed with nervous-looking little yellow flowers that didn’t quite look like they belonged.