I am not a storyteller.

I'm not good with words. I'm good with weapons, and I'm good with anger. Anything else went away a long time ago. Still, they're telling me I should put my story down on paper, because if I don't someone else will. I almost don't care, but then I think about the stories I've already heard, and I don't want anybody to think I'm a god. I'm not. I'm just a human being.

Just a flatscan.

The last year of my life that really counted, I was eighteen, still in high school, my senior year. I was going to college in the fall. I was going to be an actor. Funny how some things stay the same. My whole adult life I've acted. To survive, not to entertain. I came from Seattle. It's not there anymore. Just a glowing pit in the dark, they tell me.

Pits don't glow. I know that. I've spent too much time in them.

My spring break, my drama club went to New York City to see shows. The last civilized thing in my life was watching CATS. Hell came that night, the next day, for the rest of my life. Apocalypse came, and his bastard mutant children came, and they killed.

I was lucky, if you call it that. I'm not a mutant, but I stayed alive. For weeks it was by happenstance, luck and chance in my favor. My friends died all around me, and I survived. I ran and hid and killed when I had to. I never thought I could, then. It's a good thing the girl I was can't see me now.

Then Sabretooth found me. Scented me out, I don't know. I was hidden. And he took me, and he raped me, and he would have killed me, but I was pregnant, and that black bastard Sinister ran a genetic scan and told me I got to live, because the kid was a mutant. He took me away from Creed before I had a chance to try to kill him. Before I had a chance to try to die at his hands. Anything but have his child. He marked me when I tried to run, once, four scars along the right side of my face, from temple to jaw. Not very much later, when Apocalypse began to mark those who were his, the scars were tattooed over in blood purple, four scores to remind me who I belonged to.

I hated those scars for such a long time. My hair grew long in the Pits, I never wore it long before. It's to my butt now, always in the way, but I can't bring myself to cut it. I hid behind it in the Pits, hid behind it when I didn't want to face the X-Ternals after I escaped. It covered the scars, falling over my face. I used to be pretty. Then I was only hard and angry and bitter. Sometimes now I'm pretty again. Even with the scars. A lot of us have them, inside and out. They used to mean we were owned. Now they mean we survived.

I thought I'd die after I had the kid. I wasn't so lucky. I carry the X factor. Four out of five kids I had would be mutants. That made me useful, even if I was just a flatscan. I was a breeder, and that what what they wanted. More mutants.

Five years. Four live births, two aborted ones when scans told them I was carrying humans. Useless to them. Sabretooth was the only father I was certain of. I had a girl for him, called her Pandora, hoped her birth would lead to my death. Cyclops or Havok fathered the third one. The others I can't name, but one was a telepath and I tore his belly apart a few weeks after I finally escaped the Pits. He had a partner with him. I killed her, but neatly. I liked her clothes.

I never knew I was a match for the Pits. That I had it in me to change, to become hard enough to survive them. Five years I survived. No one survives the Pits that long. No one survives the rapes and the beatings, the deliberate torture, the telepaths shredding your mind. And nobody ever survives Havok.

I almost didn't either. Scott -- Cyclops, First Prelate -- saved me. I belonged to him for a few weeks; it was the only time in the Pits I knew anything like kindness. For that, I'm glad he escaped. I always hoped -- as much as hope's allowed in the Pits -- that that kid was his. Probably not, but I can hope.

Five years I studied the Pits, the layouts, the guards, everything. I knew Apocalypse's range better than he did. After the last kid, I knew I had to run. I was dying, and in dying I found out I didn't really want to. Another kid would kill me, and so I had to run. Everything I'd learned in five years got me out alive. I'm not sure I even killed anyone on the way out. I can't remember.

Gambit found me a day or two later. I had nothing left, nothing but hate and rage and when he found me and I'd have killed him if I could. Just another damned mutant, but he saved my sorry, dying ass, and brought me in to the X-Ternals.

Jubilee didn't like that, and especially Lila didn't. She and I never got on, though we learned to fight together. I can't blame her. I'd be pissed too if somebody came in and fell in love with my man, which is eventually what I did. Eventually. It was months before I could even be civil, but in the meantime I was good at what I did. I killed. And I killed, and I killed, and I killed, and after a while all the blood started to cool some of the hate. Not all of it, not by a long shot. But between that, and the X-Ternals, I started learning how to be a little more human again.

I'm never gonna be good at it again. But I'm better than I was. I still kill, I still hate, and I still judge. Ever since I escaped I reached some kind of legendary status: The Flatscan Who Got Away. I'm not a legend, I'm not a god. I'm a survivor. That's all.

They hated me, Apocalypse's dogs. Can't blame them. I made them look bad. And I did it not once or twice, but over and over. I killed every one I could, and they couldn't catch me. Then Magneto's group came -- Rogue came. Hell, even in the Pits you knew the story about Gambit and Rogue. They wanted to do a raid, infiltrate the Pits and steal back a child, and Gambit can't tell Rogue no.

They wanted Sabretooth's daughter. Pandora. And I found out that Creed had turned coat, was on the side of the gods now, fighting with Magneto. And they needed my help.

I went batshit.

It took a couple months for me to get anywhere near sane again. And then I helped. We got the kid out. I haven't seen her since and don't care if I ever do. I have seen Creed since, and would be happier if I didn't again.

Although we worked together in the final battle. In another world, he and I might've made a good team. But this is the one we're stuck with.

Lila died in that raid, the one for Pandora. I never liked her, but I wasn't glad to see her die. Gambit was one part mess and two parts stoic. As long as Rogue's alive ...

We came close to being caught I don't know how many times. I have scars the Pit left me, and ones freedom have left me. I can't say which define me more. Two, three years in the tunnels with the X-Ternals. Jubilee grew up. Tough as nails, Jubes.

We got hit hard, after those years. We'd made fools of them long enough, and they couldn't stand it anymore. They came in like the hellhounds they were, and we weren't there. Warned, by Cyclops. For me. Because of me. I think I even loved him, once. Those few weeks in the Pits when I belonged to him. He wouldn't come with us. Creed could betray Apocalypse, but if Scott did, nothing on this earth would stop his hounds from riding Scott down and killing him. And us too. All of us.

We spent time at the Westchester mansion, and then we went back. Gambit, me, we weren't meant to be apart from it, we were supposed to be under the city, fighting there. Robin Hood, they call him. And Gambit couldn't stand being with Rogue and Magneto. And Charles. Especially Charles, Magneto's son. Jubilee came with us. Gambit is her family. Guido didn't. He never got over Lila's death, and in the end he died too. Maybe he wasn't hard enough. Maybe I'm too hard.

Then Magneto was captured. Still nobody knows what happened to him, but Rogue had lost too many people then. She didn't order, just asked, those of us who were left to give it one last try.

She even got Angel to help. Half a dozen or so crazy brave men and women joined us. Some of them died. One is a friend now, Hound, a tepe. Me, friends with a tepe, when being near Jean Grey set me screaming. I hate that woman. I hate telepaths. But Hound's my friend now.

There wasn't really any choice. And in the end we won. Bloody victory, but we won. Rogue nearly killed herself, bringing Apocalypse down. Hell, we all almost killed ourselves. I could barely walk, when we left, and there were a lot of us who couldn't. I think pride kept me on my feet. And then they treated us like we were gods, saviors, when we're only men and women. I didn't like it then, still don't like it now.

Still, I can't keep people from talking. I can't keep them from believing what they want to believe. I'm helping rebuild, now. Me, a destroyer, helping to build. World's a funny, fucked-up place. They still call me a savior and I still scowl at them but they seem to like it. It's a hard world we're building, but it's a hard world we've lived in for the past -- hell, I don't know how long. I guess I'm around thirty now. The only reason I think it was five years in the Pits is that I was pregnant four times all the way to birth. It could have been longer, the time between the pregnancies longer than I think. I don't really care anymore.

It's been a year since Rogue took Apocalypse out. Not alone, she didn't do it alone, but she did the majority of it. More than a year since Magneto disappeared. She can't find him, and she has Gambit. They'll be okay. I wish he were mine, but he never was, not even at the start. He never belonged to me, never to Lila. He was hers from the beginning, and part of me hates her for that, but more of me just hopes they'll be ok. We live in an ugly enough world. I don't need to hate them for loving each other.

Besides, after four or five years of rest, it turned out I wasn't quite burned out yet. The Hound says it's twins, and the gossip says Scott's the father. I figure Hound's right, and know rumours aren't. It's enough.

There's a lot more to this story, but I'm not the one to tell it. Not to write it down. If people want to ask me, they can ask, and I'll tell them. Maybe they can write it down, but I'm not a storyteller.

Just a survivor.