Xavier- Here to Listen

Dear Experiment 327,

This is, quite frankly, the hardest thing I've ever written. I have so much to say, and I have no idea where to even start. I have so many things I want to tell you, so many experiences to share, and oh God I'm getting all sentimental and you don't even know who I am. Okay. I guess that's where I should start. I should at least tell you who I am.

My name is Xavier, but I don't have a last name. It's just Xavier. I'm somewhere in my early twenties (I can't remember the exact number anymore), and I'm a mutant like you. I had the power of sonic screams, thought I was stupid with it.

I was captured early on after The Awakening happened. I was one of the first picked right up off the streets, thrown into the closest facility. That facility happened to be the same one you're at right now. I stayed there for many years, though I never knew how long exactly. Time just... crawled. I went in as a kid and came out as a freaking man. I grew up there, it's all I know. And even though I've been out for a while now, I'm not over it. I'll never get over it. It's all I think about, it's what I sleep, eat, breathe, live with. Even though I got out, the memories are so real. I still have nightmares, I wake up in the middle of the night thinking I'm still there. That kind of place screws with your mind, and that's the kind of thing you never get over. Even after you leave.

I remember exactly what it was like. The Government picks you up off the streets, throws you in a cell. They have the freaking audacity to call it the "Harvesting". They strip you of your name, they annihilate all existing files of your existence, they make it so that you were never born. So the world won't miss you. Once you've been stripped of everything- name, home, life, sanity- the experiments begin and they don't ever end. Every day it's something else. And the metal collar never comes off. It itches, it hurts, it's heavy, it's a cruse. It's a reminder of all you have to go through each and every day, and it won't ever come off. A part of me feels like they designed that thing to be a collar just to drain the hope and sanity out of the unlucky soul that has to wear it.

I remember the starvation. They only feed enough to keep their toys alive. I remember the humility. There were no bathrooms. There was no where to sit down and rest. There was only you, the clothes you came in that slowly deteriorated, and the cement walls. They changed what it meant to take a restroom break. They made nudity a necessity, otherwise you were laying in your own blood and filth all the time. They stripped us of what was left of our humanity- which wasn't much to begin with.

I just want you to know that I understand. That I was there. And that I am sorry.

I had the chance to get out. I lost my power in the process, and with it my voice, but I got out. Alive. That's all that mattered. But I left the rest of you behind. I left you behind. I'm so freaking sorry, because in that moment I was so selfish. I won't ever be able to forgive myself for it, I never have and I never will. I don't know what to do to make it up to you.

I want to know more than anything, how do you still do it? How do you survive? What keeps you from... Ending it yourself, if you know what I mean? And.. am I allowed to ask some more hard questions? It's alright to say no. If it's too much, I'll stop. It would be too much for me, that much I know.

I wanna know about you. Tell me about you, about your life before the facility. Before The Awakening. Tell me everything, I'm here to listen. And that's what I wanna do.

-Xavier