[AU] NARRATIVE, PART 1.
Most people knew Betsy Braddock as simply “the model.” On every conceivable dimension, that was entirely her fault.

The halls echoed with the sound of her new heels, her footsteps ringing softly off the walls on either side. It wasn’t that she disliked anyone at Xavier’s. Betsy came from a petty and judgmental world, where it was considered perfectly normal to do things like indulge in a drug habit and spread rumors about a supposed friend’s growing waistline, only to turn around and smile once the friend showed up to your party. Betsy had seen cruel and snide at its finest, and the high school dramatics that seemed to crop up from time to time on the Xavier network didn’t interest her. For every unpleasant character at the school, Betsy had met someone twice as worse. Beyond that, most people were decent sorts, friendly enough – particularly the headmaster himself. Charles Xavier was the world’s foremost known telepath, and Betsy thought it required an astounding amount of empathy (not to mention a philanthropic spirit) for a person to offer his personal guidance to people of all unusual abilities the world over. In the social class Betsy came from, most people simply threw money at a problem and never looked twice, but Charles was a rare breed. He genuinely seemed to want to train people like her for a better life. A better world, for them.

The footsteps slowed to a halt as the model opened the door and stepped out into the dying light, the evening’s final glow casting cool hues onto her skin. For a few moments, Betsy stood in place, gazing up at the palette of colors spread across the darkening blue sky. The view wasn’t as open as it had at Braddock Manor, but here, with the temporary peace and serenity, Betsy could pretend – even for a moment – that the world was hers.

No, she decided, sliding a cigarette out between two manicured fingertips – it wasn’t the people that were preventing her from becoming fully ingrained into Xavier’s. It was herself, though not for the reasons people might have expected. Betsy was older than the students and younger than the faculty, and she’d lived a vastly different life than many of them had. That didn’t mean she saw herself as better than they were.

What was keeping Betsy apart from the school was precisely what had drawn her to the mansion in the first place: a sense that there was something waiting for her. It was a feeling always lurking at the forefront of her mind – she needed to be here. It felt right, and yet, when she paused to analyze it, she felt oddly exposed, as though someone was standing just past her shoulder, watching her think. A brief chill graced her skin as she flicked her lighter, and Betsy shifted her leg positions uncomfortably as a breeze floated through the grounds: Colder weather was on its way.

One of the doors creaked behind her, and Betsy turned her head as she brought her cigarette to her lips, expecting someone to be there – but the entrance was still, undisturbed. Suppose she’d heard wrong. Either way, company or no company, she felt the urge to move. The silence was almost – no, definitely uncomfortable, and the sound of her shoes rustling the grass would serve to fill in that void.

A trail of smoke hung in the air and spread slowly into nothingness where Betsy had been standing, her back growing steadily smaller as she walked off toward nowhere in particular. She supposed being here didn’t feel “right” in the sense that it was pleasant, or even a satisfying sensation. Rather, it felt as though she was on the cusp of discovering something, but had yet to do so. Her fingers were on the lid of the box, but she hadn’t lifted it.

Betsy glanced casually off toward the horizon, noting that most of the colors that had been in place before had since disappeared. Soon, she would be completely in the dark. She lifted her cigarette to her lips again, closing her eyes momentarily. She was the only one outside tonight. Where to go? Should she continue on the pathway? Or should she be daring and potentially risk damaging her heels by walking on uneven ground? Her next step would decide for her.

There came a soft dip in her next movement, and Betsy felt her heel meet the grass. Risky adventuring it was, then – but not at the expense of her shoes.

In one sweeping movement, Betsy brought her leg up, reaching down to remove the relevant shoe first from one foot, then the other. Occasionally, it was acceptable to give polite society an irreverent hairtoss and walk around on grass barefoot. How long had it been since she’d done this? Betsy asked herself in some surprise, unprepared for the coolness beneath her skin as the grass folded under her foot. Not for an age and a half – not since the last time she’d had the chance to walk down green and hills, and not a catwalk or a club floor or a street.

Back then, she’d been Bee, the pirate princess who somehow managed to single-handedly lead her own crew, fight the English navy in a pink dress, and never needed stupid things like baths or school. Betsy tapped her cigarette lightly into the grass as she walked, her gaze locked on a statue ahead. She supposed she must have been about as tall as that – thin and gangling, wearing a silk shirt and trousers rolled up at the bottom, because Emma would have been exasperated with her for playing outdoors in any dress, let alone her favorite pink one. She thought she remembered carrying her own plastic sword, too – Excalibur, she called it, after the famed weapon in the Arthurian legends. Excalibur had bailed her out of many a brush with the law, and she’d always wielded it with fierce precision, except for when it flew out of her hands and into the bushes after a particularly emphatic duel with the air. Sometimes, she thought she remembered a friend locking blades with her, but that must not have been often – as she recalled it, she hadn’t been too close to many of Lady Braddock’s friends’ children.

A purple strand floated into Betsy’s face, and she brushed it aside before taking another drag, a distant smile in place at the memory. What would Bee have thought if someone had told her she was going to one day give up her nefarious ways and become a model? Betsy suspected she wouldn’t have been impressed. After all, compared with a lifestyle of travelling with pirates, digging up treasure, and swinging from ropes with a knife between her teeth, strutting her way down a catwalk was downright boring. What was it she’d said when she was attacking the hoards? “I’m the Princess Bee,” she thought aloud, puzzling. “No, that’s not it – ‘I am the Princess Bee.’” What came next? It had apparently been an impressive line for a six-year-old, old-fashioned and sounding like it came out of a pirate tale. Maybe she’d borrowed some words from a film she’d seen.

A large spread of bushes was mere yards away from Betsy, and lost in her own thoughts, she only barely registered their presence in the fast approaching dark. “And on this ship – and on my ship,” she corrected herself, murmuring. It was a rhyme, sort of. She remembered that she’d chanted it to the point where it had driven Jamie mental. “I am the Princess Bee, and on my ship, all shall submit to me.” That was it. Privately glad no one could see her talking to herself, Betsy inwardly repeated it. It didn’t sound as poetically special now that she was old enough to have read the supposed greats.

Suddenly, Princess Bee’s pale feet came to a halt in the grass. The scene was dead silent, almost as if it had been waiting patiently.

Spreading before Betsy in the growing blackness was a segment of the memorial garden. She could just barely make out the outlines of the markers closest to her, but almost immediately, a kind of coldness began to leech into her skin. There were people buried here. Young people, who’d died while enrolled in the school for one reason or another. Betsy was standing in their midst, and as she remained motionless, she felt the presence behind her again. There it was, although it wasn’t talking to her, weighing on her consciousness. What was she supposed to do?

Her skin, despite the impossibility of the concept, felt as though it was standing on end. Suddenly spurred into motion, Betsy turned on her heel and began to walk briskly, admonishing herself for approaching the creepiest possible location on the grounds in the dark.

What was keeping Betsy apart from the school was precisely what had drawn her to the mansion in the first place: a sense that there was something waiting for her. It was a feeling always lurking at the forefront of her mind – she needed to be here. But despite all that she’d seen in the past year, Betsy wasn’t a very strong believer in the supernatural. Perhaps this was simply what insanity felt like.

[reposted in the right comm this time!]