Running for Home - 71. April 6, 2022

April 6, 2022

Today was a fucking nightmare. A complete and utter disaster. I am not sure what the fallout will be for my mental health yet, but once again here I am feeling utterly violated and full of despair. I am angry, too. Angry at Emma for putting me in a position where this could happen, after all of the shit I’d gone through with Dom.

So Quentin Quire has been a problem since day one of my return to teaching, right? But I thought I mostly had him and his gang under control. They had mostly turned their shit down to a dull roar and class had been moving along okay despite them. I had almost gotten to the point of not worrying about them anymore. They were just an annoyance, not a massive problem I couldn’t deal with. At least, they were until today.

We were about halfway through class when it happened.

We had just finished reading a passage as a class and I was starting to instruct the students on the concepts I wanted them to get out of it when I felt it. There was this slick, slimy feeling crawling through my brain all of a sudden. I immediately recoiled, scrambling to throw up barriers like I’d been taught to do in the Brotherhood and in Freedom Force.

Well, I tried, anyway.

It was fucking useless. Fucking completely and utterly useless. Suddenly, it was like my mind was completely disconnected and I didn’t have control over myself anymore. I could just sit there inside of myself, struggling, watching shit play out to my mounting horror.

I found myself speaking, telling my students about how they shouldn’t listen to me, anyway, because I was just trailer trash who didn’t know shit. My marking, my criticism, my praise, it all meant nothing because I was beaten as a child and I was taking my anger out on them every time I marked their work up in red ink, every time I made them feel like they weren’t good enough.

The students were regarding me with confused, concerned looks, all of them, that is, except for Quentin Quire and his gang. The Cord twins and Vincent were laughing, and Quentin had this malicious smirk of entirely too much self-satisfaction fixed on his face.

It was him. He was doing this to me.

I struggled harder, but it did nothing. Absolutely nothing. Of course it fucking did nothing, the kid was psionic with Omega-level potential and was being fucking trained by Emma fucking Frost, the world’s strongest telepath now that Dr. Grey and Professor Xavier had both passed on. Fuck, from what I knew she had more finesse and skill than Dr. Grey ever did, too, and she was showing this kid how to do shit. Fuck!

I thought it was already bad enough. I thought for a moment that maybe that was all Quire was going to do and that would satisfy him. Well, I was wrong.

Suddenly I found myself telling my students that I was just a stupid terrorist with no self-control. I was good for nothing but blowing shit up. I was too stupid to see what a buffoon Magneto was and followed him. And then I let the fucking government of the USA treat me like a disposable waste of space. But worst of all, I’m just a faggot who likes bending over and taking it up the ass from whoever wants to use me.

I started raging against whatever bonds were holding me in, but it did fucking nothing. It was like I was nothing, just a wisp, a figment of imagination, not a real person anymore. Just an observer while my body was a robot controlled by Quire.

And then it happened.

I told my students that I was such a shitty terrorist that I got captured by the Iraqi government on a failure of a mission. That all my colleagues were killed because of me. It was all my fault. Finally I got the beatings, the torture I deserved for being a stupid mutie faggot terrorist who deserved to die. And I got raped by them, gangbanged. Ten men at a time. And I fucking loved it. I loved taking them all, as many as I could have, all at once.

In that moment, I lost something inside myself. I panicked beyond all reason, and I found myself reaching out, trying to access my powers, trying desperately in vain to set Quentin on fire, anything to get him to stop. For a brief moment, I felt it, felt the connection to my powers, felt something shift like something was about to ignite, and then it happened.

The ass of my pants lit on fire. I was running around the classroom in these jerky movements while my pants burned, screaming at the top of my lungs like a banshee. The students were looking at me in horror. Some of them had realized what Quire was up to and were telling him to stop. Quire’s gang was practically rolling on the floor laughing at me.

And then suddenly Emma was there, morphed into her telepathy-proof organic diamond form. She strode commandingly up to Quire and didn’t say a goddamn thing, just clocked him with a vicious right hook. He crumpled to the ground, out like a light.

In that instant, I regained control of my body, of my powers. The flames winked out. They had been under my body’s control, so they hadn’t burned me, just burned a hole through my pants. I moved to the edge of the classroom, turning so my students couldn’t see my bare ass and squeezed my eyes shut. My chest was constricting, my heart was racing, my thoughts spiralled out of control.

I was having a fucking panic attack.

I was barely aware of Emma sending Quentin’s gang to Sean’s office for discipline. She dismissed the rest of the class, telling them they were to take the rest of the period as study hall in the cafeteria. They would be addressed about the situation later. The kids filed out, faster than I’d ever seen them move. I couldn’t blame them, after what they’d just witnessed.

Emma asked me if I was alright. I couldn’t speak, just shook my head no. She told me she had to take Quentin down to the subbasement brig before he reawakened, that she was beyond horrified that this had happened in her school, that it was entirely not my fault. She told me to stay right there, that she would send someone to get something so I could cover myself up. I just fucking nodded along, wishing a hole would open up beneath my feet and swallow me whole.

As soon as she was out of there, carrying Quentin’s unconscious body over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes, I stumbled up to my desk. I sat down, wiping my hands over my face. I couldn’t get in control, I couldn’t. I leaned forward, bumping my head against the desk. I started bawling.

Everything I had built up here, my reputation, my rapport with the students, it would be gone now. How could I recover from this? How could any of them ever look at me again without thinking about what just happened?

I felt myself freaking out even more. I couldn’t stay there. I had to go, had to move now!

Before I knew it, I was back in my room in the faculty wing. I quickly changed my clothing and then got the hell out of there. I was down in the garage, then in my car, driving.

Driving where?

I didn’t fucking know. I was just driving.

About a half-hour later, I had calmed down a little more, enough to get under control of myself. I was still freaking out, but I knew what I had to do. I worked my way over to the 684 and headed down towards New York City. I pulled out my cellphone and used voice control to dial Dr. Sofen’s office. The secretary was a bitch, but when she heard me freaking out, saying I’d been telepathically assaulted, that I needed help badly, she put me on hold for a couple of minutes and then came back on the line saying Dr. Sofen would see me as soon as I got there. She encouraged me to take my time and to drive safely.

It took me two and a half hours to get there because of traffic. Two and a half fucking hours, alone with my thoughts, barely keeping myself under control, barely resisting the urge to let go of the steering wheel and just fucking die, right then right there in the middle of the fucking highway. Fuck, Bobby even called me thrice but I didn’t answer, just let it go to voicemail. I couldn’t talk to him, not right now. I just kept telling myself I had to keep a lid on this shit, that Bobby and Liam and Daniel were relying on me, that even if shit at the school was fucking impossible, my life wasn’t over and I had responsibilities to fucking take care of.

I’m not going to write what I told Dr. Sofen here. It was a lot of panicked mental spew that went to some pretty dark places. I don’t want a record of it. I want it gone.

But she did get me to calm down. Talking through shit helped me get out of that horrible mental space and just left me feeling drained. She gave me a stronger prescription for my anxiolytic drug and a short course of prazosin in case I had trouble sleeping again. And she helped me decide on what I was going to do.

I was not going to run away from this. I was not going to quit my fucking job over this. I was stronger than this, just like I was stronger than the feelings that made me want to run away since Dom was being kept in the School’s subbasement. But this was different, this I couldn’t just avoid by staying out of one particular medlab. This I was going to have to confront head-on.

Tomorrow, I was going to start each of my classes with an honest talk about what happened, about how it was a violation of the worst kind, and about what was and was not true from amongst the horrible things that Quire made me spew out. I had to be real and I had to be vulnerable, and hopefully between that and whatever damage control Emma decided to do it would be enough.

But tonight? Tonight I am just staying at the condo. Thank God Bobby gave me a fucking key over the break. I was too exhausted to make the drive back to the School safely. I called Bobby after I got in the door. He was understandably upset about what happened to me, and was ready to pack Liam up and drive into the city to be with me. It would have been nice to have Bobby here with me, but fuck it. I’m not a fucking baby. I told him to stay put, that I would see them in the morning. I need to be a fucking adult and be strong and not rely on him to make me feel safe. I need to want to be with him, not need to be with him. I survived the fallout with Iraq on my own, even if Dom was there, so I can survive this too. It’s just until tomorrow. I will get up at 5:00 am and drive back to the School for 7:30. It will suck, but it will be fine.

Jesus fucking Christ.

It will be fine.