Kiss of the Phoenix

Group Therapy with Professor X

PART ONE
THE NEW ELITES

Three Years Ago

I was dreaming. I was dreaming that I was still in the clutches of my wicked stepmother. I was dreaming that instead of the X-Men coming to save me when my powers emerged, my stepmother beat me half to death, her spittle, mixed with my own blood, fell on my cheeks.

"Evil!" she screeched, as she brought the belt onto my back, me kowtowing at her knees. I could hear her thoughts, see the darkness that consumed her ever waking moments. "I am going to beat the devil out of you!" she continued to shriek, each of her words punctuated with the whip of the belt on my raw, bleeding back.

I couldn't understand why she was doing this. First, she had cut off my long, red locks as soon as she the metal gravitating around me like how the moon circles the earth, throwing them into the fire, cursing about the Antichrist that had been incarnate in my dead mother. Then, she hit my face over and over again until it was just a bloody mess, before forcing me onto my knees and beating me with a belt.

It feels so real.

Her face is cartoonishly grotesque, her dark eyes bulging out of her face, her lips pulled back in a tiger's smile. "You will not become a destroyer like your god forsaken mother!" she hissed, the pain so fire hot that I wanted to cry but I had no tears left. I had no nothing left. No future, no family, no body, no freedom... nothing.

It felt so real.

I wake up with a scream as my body arches off of the bed, my door busting open as my dad comes barging in, his clothes all askew, but there was sheer terror on his face that matched my own. "Sang!" he shouted, sliding across the floor and next to my bed, gathering me up in his arms. "Are you okay? What's wrong?" he asked worriedly, his hands brushing through my hair reassuringly.

I sobbed into his chest, wrapping my arms around him. I couldn't find the words to tell him, it felt like I was choking, but my hands found his forehead, and I gently passed my dream to him, my hands shaking as he did so.

I felt him tense as he saw my dream, before his grip on me tightened. "Oh, Sang, I'm so sorry," he cooed. "You're not there anymore, you remember? You escaped."

"I did escape," I mumbled, my sobs slowing down as my breathing evened.

"You did, sweetheart, you did," he reassured. "You're safe now."

"Safe," I repeated, and I felt some outside force acting upon my unquiet mind -Rachel, I was sure of it- and lulling me to sleep, but I didn't mind. "Safe..." I repeated, as I slowly drifted off to sleep, happy and warm and safe and loved in my father's arms.

"I love you," I heard my father say, before I drifted off into much happier dreams.

~~~

Therapy time with Professor Xavier had always been one of my favorite parts of the week. He always listened, never judged, and I'd always come out feeling much better than I had when I came in.

This week, and every week after, Kota and Victor would join me. Kota was apprehensive about it. It was still ingrained in him from his days with cult-like, mutant hating religion he had been apart of that psychology, and all other sciences, were wack, and couldn't be trusted. But after gentle nudging from me, he gave in.

Despite my best efforts when I calmed him down and tamed his mutation, his mind was still a mess of confusion and self-loathing. He had yet to use powers in the week since we had come back to Utopia, claiming he was "sick", but I knew the truth. He saw his magma form and all of his other powers as a sign from God that he was unholy and damned to hell. I was hoping the Professor could help with that.