there's a certain kind of clarity that madelyne feels when she looks at her hands, at the green of krakoa before her. before her she can see paths winding out in front of her: she could peacefully enter, look at it all. prove herself a good little girl who could play by the rules, who could roll over, make smiles and act as if she were that woman who had first married scott, whip smart and kind to a fault. she could be that girl again if she really tried, she could force herself into it all.

the rest of her sees another path. in front of her is the knowledge that if she decides to rain hell down on this little paradise, she would be hated. she would be hunted, and killed. if she decided to work her ire out on this place, if she chose to be a destroyer, if she chose to make them all know what she felt like, if she did this there would be no going back. she would ruin everything she had worked so hard for, and she would do so in a way that would feel final, in a way that would close almost every door opened to her.

she knows that there might be a third path. a way to be neither good or bad, to make her argument for herself. she knows that there could be a way to do this peacefully, to make her point without making it so that everyone had to pay.

she however, remembers it. remembers her body coming undone in the wake of a bullet. remembers begging for mercy and never receiving. remembers how many times she had to prove that she was a real person, remembers that she has argued her own humanity how many times only to have the door shut in her face?

how many times would she be forced to do that? how many times did she had to prove endlessly, over and over again, that she was a person? that she was more than a vessel to bear a messiah that she couldn't even keep? how many times did she had to prove herself more than an experiment by a madman who always laid a larger claim to her own body than she did herself? how many times would she have to think about him, manipulating her to her very core, in ways no one else but she could see?

her fingers clench. she feels the goblin force stir within her, the magic start to whirl around her. it feeds on her anger, her spite, her despair, her grief. it had been easier to starve it before when things were good. now, it feeds on her feelings, on the rage inside of her. it knows it's true host, her true will and intentions. she may have been created from a spark of the phoenix, may nest it inside of her, but the goblin force is the being that has bound itself to her in a wish that should have never been made, through more than one universe.

it stokes her, and she makes her choice.

no. there is no way to do this peacefully. there is no way for madelyne to be nice anymore, no more way to beg and plead for her own humanity.

she had said it herself, didn't she? they always ignored her, always pushed her to the side unless she was hurting people. there was nothing in them that mattered unless she was making them bleed, unless she was a thorn in their side.

she unclenches her hand, and she breathes in and out. the goblin force breathes with her, the magic growing stronger and stronger the more her anger washes over her. why fight it? why deny it? it had been chains around her once, she had blamed it once upon a time. not anymore. it's a companion to her, a way to channel everything she was feeling into something that would carry her for as long as she could.

a laugh spills out of her as her fingers glow, as the layout of the island mystique gave her begins to truly take shape for her. as minds begin to open up to her to manipulate, to track. as she begins to pull horrors from their minds to turn into her own playthings, dragging our their secrets, their anger into the forefront just like her own.

she arms herself: they would call her insane through this. a knock off. they would call her less than jean, they would call her any and everything to degrade her in this. they would apologize later, hide their hands after throwing the rock, but madelyne knew better now. everything they said here, they meant it. before, maybe they were thinking only molly could hear, only molly would be kind or she would forgive them and think it was only madelyne. they didn't understand that they were one and the same, and they didn't get that everything they said about madelyne, they said about molly. that she was just as ugly, tainted, and secondary. she wasn't going to forget, she wasn't going to forgive even if it was from people she had cared about, loved even.

before maybe she could have let it go. not anymore.

she accepts the inevitability of the chaos, the anger, the hurt that this will bring. when her eyes open, they are no longer a natural green. they glow with the power of the goblin force, determined to see this through no matter how much it hurt, no matter what happened, no matter who was harmed in the way.

they wanted her to be a monster, a vessel, a womb. never someone angry, never someone concerned. they wanted her to be this and madelyne decides to stop fighting it. she decides to make them pay one more time -- and in the end, she will accept that she will die.

she decides it will be the last time mutants ever see her. and she hopes that they will be afraid of her, always. she hopes to never accept an open hand, a bleeding heart, a desperate plea from them ever again. they always bit her back, in the end.