Losing your Muse
by Contrail
Disclaimer: Piotr Rasputin and all other characters belong to Marvel. Please ask before archiving this story. This story is set in between Mikhail's 'death' in the sewers of NYC, and the Soulskinner arc that resulted in the death of Piotr's parents.
I look at the canvas and it looks back at me, splotches of paint daring me to try to turn them into an image. I sigh. After... Mikhail, I'd wanted the solace, the release of painting. To pour all the grief and anger and other emotions I could not express in words into my painting, and by doing so ease them.
But the paints and brushes and canvases thwart me. I cannot seem to make a brushstroke without immediately regretting it. The results look worse than a child's first experiments with finger paints. Forms are misshapen, colors distorted, perspective nearly nonexistent, and my composition of laughable.
I cannot seem to find that state, that way of looking at things, that lets me *see* and *record* things with my hands, with the paints and brushes. That lets me convey the appearance and feeling of the subject before me. That shuts out all the world save the subject and the image forming before me on the canvas. Once, I could fall into it with ease, eyes observing and hands recording as one. But now... now, it eludes me, like fog, visible but when you try to grasp it, it slides through your fingers. I remember what it felt like, the peace and timelessness of it, but cannot reach it no matter how I try.
I look again at the canvas, paint scattered upon it but devoid of all meaning. My frustration rises and I rip the canvas from the easel, breaking it in two. I stare at the twisted wreckage in my hands. Why? Why could I no longer paint? I hadn't managed a successful painting since... since... since I was still living as Peter Nicholas...
A chill ran down my spine. Could it be that when Gospodin Xavier removed the Shadow King's influence from me, destroying Peter Nicholas to do so, he also...? No, he couldn't have. He wouldn't have. He would never be so cruel...
It must be something wrong with me. I will try again. This time, I hope, I will be able to paint...
Author's Note
My muse dropped this idea into my head this afternoon and simply would not leave me alone until I'd written it. So apologizes to those I've promised stories to recently, this one just demanded to be let out.
This is *not* intended as an 'Xavier is cruel and evil' story, btw, it's an 'Xavier's actions having nasty little unintended consequences' story. Not sure if this can quite fit into cannon, but hey, that's why this is fan- fiction, right? :^)