DISCLAIMER: Monet St Croix belongs to Marvel but all the other characters belong to me.

Hello again readers! This is my first piece in ages because I have been working on a couple of things but I’m back! This story has a bit of swearing and maybe a couple of adult themes but it isn’t too bad. I hope you enjoy it and please send feedback to kptjhai@magna.com.au

I looked over the precipice.

The wind billowed around me as I looked down into the dark depths. I dimly made out the rocks and the white waves crashing against them. A wave of fear coursed throughout my body. I could not do it! I tried to repress my vertigo. I have to go through with this! I have to! I could end the pain with this one action. I could be free of rejection and the anguish. I could be in the light and not suffer the pains that mortals suffer.

I stepped back from the edge and regained my composure. I repeated to myself again and again that I could do this and there would be no regretting. I could not regret even if I wanted to. The state I would be entering was a permanent one. I would feel nothing, something that I dearly wished to experience. Emotions were a burden, creating sensations in me that I did not want to experience. In death, I could be free of emotions and finally feel like I’m free.

The time had come. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see my last moments. I could feel the wind, rushing across my face. I savoured the cold touch because it would be the last time I felt the wind. I took a couple of steps and felt the edge with my feet. I recoiled for a moment, the unconquerable fear of falling taking over my body momentarily. I ignored my body and leaped over the edge.

As I hurtled through the air, images of my life flashed through my head. I decided to ignore them. I did not want to see them. I wanted my last moments to be one of absolute clarity and acceptance of what was to come. I surrendered myself to death, hoping that I could finally find the peace that I could not acquire in life. I imagined myself meeting my father in death. He had died when I was very young. I hoped that I see him, face to face, not from photos or dim memories. Soon my thoughts evaporated into smoke as I gained momentum. My final thought was one of release. I’m finally going to be free.

I hit darkness.

The next thing I knew, I was lying somewhere. Was this death? I did not know but I concentrated on the sensations I felt. What felt like a slight breeze, flitted across my face meaninglessly. I was lying on a soft surface, probably grass. I could feel a warmth near me. It felt comforting. In fact, I could feel a warm blast of air hit me from time to time. I smelled what suspiciously smelt like a fragrance frequently worn by the females of our human species.

This was not death!

I opened my eyes in an instant, seeking to blast my saviour with words and possibly physical violence. They had cheated me of death! I was still in this cruel world that hated me, this world that causes pain! I was to be dead, free of emotion! Free of this accursed body and this accursed mind! I jerked upright with my eyes searching for my saviour. I felt anger course through my veins. I clenched my fists and prepared to let loose a stream of words to show my anger.

Then I saw her face.

It was beautiful. She had a dark complexion with unblemished skin to complement it. Dark hair framed her face. It was long and beautiful and it shone in the night. Her dark eyes were large and round. They glittered like shining stars in the darkness. Her nose was perfectly formed and she had red lips that were not too thick but were not too thin. Regality emanated from her as well as wisdom but yet, there was also a sense of innocence around her as well as youth.

She was perfect.

I lost the words I was going to say. My fists unclenched and I just sat there, looking into her face with undisguised adoration. I knew I looked pretty stupid but what else I could do?

She then spoke. Her voice was clear and crisp. There was an audible French accent in her voice.

"Pardon?" I said. I had failed to notice what she had just said.

She rolled her eyes. "I repeat. Are you alright?"

"Yes," I replied. However my body began to react differently. I shook violently for some strange reason.

"You are not alright. Your body is traumatised," she took off her overcoat and put it around me. "Calm down."

I still shook, partly because of the cold and partly because the implications of what had just happened.

"Why did you try to kill yourself?" she asked. Quietly bluntly, I must say.

I started to say something but I could not get it out. I tried to say it again but the words remained stuck in my mouth.

She gave me a cool look and then slapped me across the face sharply.

I cried out in pain. Why did she do that for? The slap was quite hard and it felt like a couple of bricks had just hit me. I cradled the side of my face, hoping that my cold hands could soothe the pain.

She looked at me coolly again. "Why did you try to kill yourself?" she repeated.

"I…I…I," my voice stammered.

"You really need to calm down," she remarked. "Come on, I know the perfect place."

Before I could respond, she had taken the overcoat from around me. She wore it and then she picked me up. She picked me up effortlessly! My eyes were bulging as she took off into the air with me enclosed in her arms. I looked at the ground below us and my vertigo set in again. I started to flail my arms in the middle of the air.

"Calm," she commanded. For some strange reason I did! My mind immediately became calm and I was not bothered by the fact that we were soaring through the air. Trying to figure out this mystery, suddenly the air around us turned black and we were in some sort of strange void with glittering stars all around us. I could not see her despite the fact I still felt her arms around me. I felt extremely disoriented and started to see strange black spots in front of my eyes. My head started to pound and my heartbeat increased in tempo.

Suddenly there was a flash of light and we were flying in the night sky again. I looked down and was surprised to see entirely different scenery below us.

"Where are we?" I asked.

She said nothing but indicated to me a landmark below.

I looked at it carefully and my eyes opened very wide in shock.

"That’s the… Eiffel Tower."

"How observant. We’ll be descending now."

She descended gently. As we descended, I took in the sights around us. There were wide boulevards beneath us; all of them lined with street lights crafted in styles from the Renaissance period. I could see the Arc De Triomphe alit and I saw the massive dome of the Notre Dame, dominating the Parisian skyline. There were surprisingly a lot of people still walking the streets at this time of night, whatever time it was.

We landed in a lane just off a boulevard.

"What are you?" I managed to ask.

"Me? I’m a mutant."

I manage to prevent myself from recoiling. How could she be a mutant? All my life I’ve been told that mutants were genetic freaks that were physically and mentally deformed. The girl standing in front of me could not be the image of a mutant. It simply was not what I was taught a mutant was like.

"You’re not, are you?" I asked timidly.

"I am. Do you have a problem with that?"

"Well… I was brought up to believe that mutants were… different."

"We are different."

"Well that’s not what I meant…"

"I know," she said shortly. "But we’re here to talk about you."

"In Paris?"

"Well I know a great place here where we can relax. Follow me," she said imperiously.

I followed her. We walked out onto the boulevard. For about twenty minutes, we wandered the streets of Paris. I could not believe that there were so many people out this late at night! It was not particularly cold so the stroll was actually pleasant. It allowed me time to think about what had happened. It’s not every day you try to commit suicide and get saved by a gorgeous mutant who somehow transports you to Paris so that you can recover from your ordeal. Maybe my life isn’t that bad after all. It had definitely taken an interesting turn.

"Here we are," she said.

"What?" I said, my head still in my cloud of thoughts.

"This is the place."

I looked up and saw a small café. There were only a few people there. The two of us walked in and were immediately seated. She then spoke to the waiter in French and he nodded. He went away, looking pleased with himself. I ran my eyes over the café and my eyes came to rest on the clock.

"It’s 1 am!" I exclaimed.

She nodded. "It’s 6 hours ahead of our time zone."

We sat there quietly for a while until she broke the silence.

"So I ask you for the third time today, what possessed you to try and kill yourself?"

I shifted in my seat very uncomfortably.

"You can tell me. It’s not as if I’m going to go around and tell the whole world about your personal problems. I can help you and I do deserve to know after I saved your life."

"Well… where do I start?"

"Wherever you want to. What is so bad about your life?"

"Lots of things. My father died when I was very young and my mother never recovered from that. She became an alcoholic and was never home until early morning. I suspect she went to parties and slept with some men she met at those parties. She neglected me and I had to take care of myself. Due to my lifestyle at home, I was very anti-social at school. I never made any friends and eventually became very lonely. I was never intellectually gifted nor I was good at sports. My teachers told my mother that I was a depressed child but my mother never took any notice of what happened to me at school. She was too busy with her drinking," I stopped to regain my breath.

She looked at me thoughtfully. "Many children have childhoods like that," she said. "But they do not attempt to kill themselves."

"Then in high school, I started to experiment with drugs. You know, crack and stuff like that. That helped me for a while but eventually they started to have a negative effect on me. I was very depressed. Then the local high school gang started to pick on me. I was the subject of frequent beatings and they threatened to slit my throat if I ever told the authorities. The drugs were making me even worse and I was forced to rob a lot of places to supply my drug habit. I eventually came clean but the school caught hold of what I was doing and they threw me out."

"So you couldn’t face your mother?"

"I could because she would probably be off her face but my life was a total wreck. I couldn’t go to school and there was no job I could do. I have no friends and no close family for support so I was all alone. I was really low and I felt there was nothing to live for. The things I had suffered here were a burden and I wanted to let them go. I was about to succeed when you interrupted," I shot her a nasty look.

She seemed unperturbed by my look but sat back in her chair thoughtfully.

"I’ve suffered the same things you have but you don’t see me going around attempting to jump off cliffs."

"You can fly. Jumping off cliffs isn’t a good way to kill yourself."

"Okay, bad example. The point is, I have endured a lot of pain like you have but you don’t see me trying to kill myself."

"Yeah? What have you endured?"

"My mother died when I was very young."

"So did my father," I countered.

"My twin sister died as well."

I scanned my head for something to counter that.

"My mother killed my dog when I was young. It was very traumatic for me back then."

"My father is a manic-depressive. Even Prozac doesn’t work on him."

"My mother is an alcoholic slut who doesn’t pay much attention to me."

"My brother is a monster who tried to kill me."

"School gangs have tried to kill me."

"My brother has killed many people and blames it on me."

"My mother blames me for her problems."

"I have catatonic states that affect me a lot."

"I used to be a drug addict."

"My father once sent me to boarding school!"

"I’ve been THROWN out of school!"

"I’m perfect but no one can accept it!"

"I’M BLOODY DEPRESSED BUT NO ONE’S TAKING MUCH NOTICE OF IT!!!"

We stared at each other incredulously. Then we started to laugh at once.

I wiped my eyes. I was crying because I was laughing so hard. "We are sad," I said.

"I know. Trying to outdo each other in the ‘how bad are our lives’ stakes."

I looked at her fondly.

"You know, I thought you were a snob when you said you were perfect but I really believe you ARE perfect."

"Well I am," she said with a straight face. Then we both burst out laughing again.

The waiter came around with two coffees. She picked up her coffee and sipped it. She spat it out. She turned on the waiter and started an argument with him in French. I had a feeling that the argument was slightly theatrical for my entertainment but the argument ended when she pulled out an impressive looking credit card. The waiter stalked off, muttering something.

"What was that all about?" I asked her.

"I told him to bring us two coffees of the most expensive brand they serve here. He served us a cheaper brand because he thought we could not afford it."

"Is that why you whipped out the credit card?"

"Yes."

"You can tell the difference between the brands?"

"Of course," she said rather smugly. "Can’t everyone?"

I decided to ignore that comment.

The waiter served us the proper coffees but we didn’t take much notice of them. For the next two hours, we chatted ourselves mad. We talked about everything from music to the politics of the African continent. She was a stimulating conversationalist and I must admit, I wasn’t too bad myself. Time passed quickly and it wasn’t long till the clock struck three.

She looked at the clock in alarm. "I should be back by now!" she said, with panic in her eyes.

"Where?"

"At… my boarding school."

"Oh," was all I said.

"Let’s go!" she cried. She got up and threw a note at the waiter. It must have been a large denomination because the waiter looked very happy. She dragged me along into the street and we took off in front of three drunk men. They looked at us in drunken bemusement and must have thought they were hallucinating. She took off with me firmly grasped in her arms. We entered the void in a split second and exited it in another split second. We were directly above my house.

"But… how?"

"I got the location of your house from your mind."

I hid my astonishment but said nothing as we landed on the roof of my house. She knocked a few of the tiles off as we landed on the roof. The next door neighbour’s dog started to bark.

"Shut up, you lump of shit!" A woman’s voice cried.

The dog whimpered and stopped barking.

I looked for the attic hatch in the dark but could not find it.

"Here it is," she said. She threw the hatch open.

I started to say something but she said, "Night vision."

I started to climb down into the attic but looked back at her. She was like a goddess with the moon glittering in her hair and on her body.

"Well… this is goodbye."

"I guess it is," she smiled.

"It’s been fun but I guess I won’t ever see you again."

"You never know," she said mysteriously. "I can pop up. If you try to kill yourself again, I will most definitely return and I will not be happy."

"I won’t," I smiled. "I think you gave me the inspiration to live again."

"At least I got through to someone. Everyone at my school thinks I’m spoilt little brat."

"Maybe if you let down your guard a little bit and stop acting so perfect…"

"But I am perfect," she said with a straight face. I could not tell if she was serious or sarcastic. It would not surprise me if the first one was true though.

"Maybe," I said dubiously. "You give yourself too much credit."

"Really?" she said. As I prepared to reply, she vanished without a trace.

"Great," I muttered. I climbed down into the attic that also acted as my bedroom. I got the matches lying beneath the ladder and lit a candle. A warm light gently bathed the attic. I closed the hatch and then I suddenly realised something.

I never asked her for her name.

"Well that makes looking her up harder," I muttered to myself as I made my way towards the other side of the attic. On the way, I encountered a needle and a shot of heroin. I looked at it as if it was evil and I picked it up and decided to dispose of it. Someone had given me the inspiration to live. The will to live and to find pleasure in life, to fulfil my dreams and to make a difference in the world. She gave me back what I had lost through the pains I had suffered. I could learn from these injustices and make them into positives.

This nameless girl had given me everything and I had given her nothing.

Or so I thought.

Six years later:

"Here’s ya bacon and eggs."

I thanked the waitress but ignored my breakfast as I picked up the newspaper and looked at the headline article.

I smiled. She had not forgotten me even after those years! I felt good for giving her something in return for what she had given me.

"Well of course you gave me something," said a familiar voice. "Despite my perfection, I just had to get something out of that long conversation we had in Paris."

I turned around quickly and saw a familiar face.

"Monet, right?" I said.

"Right," she smiled. "Don’t worry I know your name. I stole it out of your mind all those years ago."

"So what have you been doing all these years?" I asked. Then I looked at the newspaper. "Stupid question," I said ruefully.

"Yes, it was." Monet smiled at me smugly. "But the question is what have you been doing?"

"It’s a long story," I warned.

"We have a lot of time," she replied.

Indeed we did.

Fine

Now you can send feedback to kptjhai@magna.com.au