sister



Shakespeare's Sister


		Nearly a year after Paint's Peeling
	make me a willow cabin at your gate and call upon my soul within the house write love cantons of condemned love and sing them loud even in the dead of night; hallow your name to the reverberate hills, and make the babbling gossip of the air cry out "Olivia!" O, you should not rest between the elements of air and earth -Twelfth Night, 1.5.237-244


			I am fluid now. In this coma, in this sleep. The only constant is Cloe Olivia. She reminds me of Shakespeare and I think about how I would call her Olivia, and not Cloe, and everyone would think I was being formal and distant, but they would be wrong. In Shakespeare, Olivia fell in love with the wrong person; she accidentally fell in love with a woman. So I would call her Olivia. Not much else penetrates. I push it back. I want to push it all back, the responsibility, the powers, the name. The Phoenix always rises again. I don't want to rise. I want this cocoon forever. No one ever asked if I wanted this, if I could take it. I'm so tired, tired. They used to try to get someone inside my head, but it didn't work. The others have gotten tired of me now, I don't do much, I'm a lost cause. Just Olivia, Olivia always coming to talk to me, to tell me words that I hear but I don't listen. I catch snippets. Something about Lilly and Kitty, and they're fine. Something about Pete and then it starts to flare up inside of me again, and I shut down because it hurts, hurts so much. I spend the time fighting not to hurt, fighting not to think certain thoughts. I don't know how long I've been under, but I think it's been months. And it's not like I don't miss them. I do. But I can't open myself up, I can't unfurl anymore. I am tight, fetus position and I'm not unrolling for anyone. Dr. Griffith stops by every once and a while, checking my responses. I can feel my body move, jerk, but I am not there. Red came down once, with a man, maybe Pete or maybe someone else, probably not Pete. She tried to get the man to make love to her on the floor beside me. The man was horrified and ran. She stayed behind and sat next to me for a while, not trying to enter my mind this time and she didn't have to. She knew what I was thinking, because it's always the same. She knew that I wanted it to happen, the two of them beside me, a distraction with four arms and four legs. I think maybe she felt for me then. But she hasn't come back. Just Olivia, dark, sweet Olivia. Every day, without fail. She is so desperate for me to be okay that I feel bad about disappointing her, about being selfish and self-preserving. But I am mad at her too, mad that there is so much on me, that I can't rest even now. But she begins talking more and I can't stop the words from coming. "We heard from Katherine today." Katherine? Oh, Kitty. "Actually, Hugh did and passed it on to me. Pete won't talk to her." Don't say that name, not that name. "They're doing okay. Managing. Charles is helping support them, but they've had to move back into the Academy." What? Why? "It took Lilly a bit to adjust, but I think she's adjusting fine now. Kat is fine too, though she is upset over Charles having Lilly train." Has it been years then that I've been out? Is Lilly four or fourteen? "She wanted to know how you were. Hugh said you were fine. I don't like it that he lies like that, but he's just trying to make her happy." The truth won't make her happy; nothing is fine, not with me anyway. "She just finished her yahrzeit last week. Amazing to think its been a year." A year? Oh god. That seems like so long and yet so short. "It was really hard for Kat there for a while. We thought she might have lost it." I'm sorry, my fault too. "But she's okay now. Better. Kurt helped." Kurt? What about Piotr? Don't tell me he really left, he didn't come back. I can hear her sigh, almost fell her run her hands through her long hair. "A year. To think that Piotr's been dead for a whole year." I'm off. I don't open up, I thrust and throw myself open. Novas and cosmos are dancing inside my head again, welcoming me back. Piotr dead? Dead? No. It's not right and I push my grief out onto all the stars. I can feel Olivia's panic, her confusion as she tries to hold my rising body down, but there is no use. I am my name. I am Phoenix and I was born to rise. My mind, my thoughts hurtle a million different directions and I read the time line, find she's not lying. There's so much going on and so fast but I relish in it, the power feeling good amazingly enough after a year of rest. I can feel something cracking in my brain, but I can tell that it's not bad that this is happening, it's good, because its not part of me. For the first time in so long, I feel like me. And I am powerful. I spiral down, watching history, pinpointing certain events and reading them, telepathically scanning thoughts and even all the thoughts in the world cannot drown out the one I am searching for, the one I am finding. It is loud and hateful and destructive and I know it too well; I've heard it before too many times without knowing. There's Piotr, a look of panic, his mouth twisted into an 'o' as he begins to fall forward. The enemy has his gun leveled straight at his back, a clear shot right through the heart. He is alone on the field, dying, dead. The bullet flies over his shoulder and leaves him untouched. His mind has been lit aflame. It wasn't the bullet. It was an aneurysm, a blood clot to the brain. Created, not organic. It's so wrong and the whole universe screams with injustice, with punishment and retribution. I am not Rachel Summers. I am Phoenix, bringer of justice, messenger of the stars. I do what they know is right. ************** Miles away, Charles Xavier straightened in his wheelchair, his body tightened. There was no time to gasp, no air left in his lungs to do it, no heart left to try. In his minds he saw flames. Katherine Pryde was the one to discover him when she went to report to his office for a meeting. He was half out of the wheelchair, his head, shoulders and upper chest slumped on the floor, his neck twisted without dignity, his mouth in a small little 'o' and his skin dead cold. Flies had begun to settle around the body.

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