Title: Becoming
Author: Shana Nolan
Email: aericura@micron.net
Fandom: X-Men (movie)
Rating: strong R (implied sexual sitches, language, violence, drug usage)
Summary: to quote a line from a later part: "the year from hell"
Series: Perfect Ring of Scars #1
Category: angst!! (J,L,S,R)
Disclaimer: Fox and Marvel Entertainment Group have the X-Men and their movie. Stan Lee, I worship at your feet. I don't own anyone and I don't intend to sell this. no money, no sue, no powers. but my CB handle was Phoenix (great, date yourself, why don't you).
Archive: the usual suspects, and others will ask first
Comments: are welcome. Flames, however, are only accepted from a mutant named Pyro and even he knows better.
Dedication/notes:
-- to Trent Reznor: yes, I've ripped off your lyrics and combed through 4 CDs for lines that summarise these bits of pain. if you're not pissed, here's my phone number, we should discuss future lyrics I can tailor for my own uses. and so I can worship you for doing "Closer."
-- to Misty and Diebin. this is your challenge. as per your orders, no one could be happy, and I made it just that way. AngstGrrls rule, and block the flying objects when they're hurled at their fellow AngstGrrls. and for the record, my PETS membership is still intact even after this. aren't you proud? luv ya grrls.
-- to Tiff. Toronto will never be the same. *eg*
-- to Mary. when people hunt me down after one of the later plot twists, I'm directing them to YOU.
-- to the other AngstGrrls. you know who you are. revel in the pain with me. :)


"i'm stuck in this dream, it's changing me and i am becoming, the me that you know had some second thoughts"


They all should have seen it coming; the sudden change in the air, the emotions seething at the surface beneath cracking masks of decency.

It was the end, and the people involved were so wrapped up in it they didn't realise how it was affecting the others.

It wasn't her fault, not really. The mind wandered, the dreams formed around the Forbidden Fruit that had been too close for too long, and indulged.

Apparently more than once was too much a sin to forgive.

A dream. A dream that echoed into reality and shattered it. Shattered them.

To the casual observer, hardly casual in their curiosity over the cold stares and bottled demons, it was a normal thing. In the modern era many couples broke up, it was all too common. The first fight, the sudden lack of affection, the final fight. Same old, same old.

The removal of the ring from her finger. After setting it on the hall table and leaving for almost two days, he had left it there. Left it to turn to dust like the devotion that had once lain between them.

The end never comes gracefully, or slips past an observer easily. When she went to the Professor to request a break from her duties and a separate room on one of the upper levels of the school's mansion, the rumour mill was burning as if someone had dumped gasoline and then a lit match on it.

The elder students, the ones honoured with the chance to have a room on that level, said they heard her crying for a week after in the middle of the night.

Then the sounds changed. Sometimes it was silence, sometimes it was a set of sounds that no witness dare mention near the main figureheads of the school.

Especially Him.

The glasses afforded him the luxury of others not seeing the distant look in his eyes, the misery sinking deep into his heart. He was hurt and angry. Angry at himself, at her, at the world.

And, soon after, he would be angry at the Other. The one who inadvertently started the whole thing.

The One who would later smear the blood on his hands.