Chapter 1
Mutant and proud, the girl’s careless words rang in Raven’s ears, catching in her head and coating her tongue, her teeth unable to scrape it off with any sincerity.
Hank watches Raven (Mystique) walk away, and it isn’t the first time that they’ve stood across from each other, split by the wreckage of their chosen sides, Charles not able to walk and needing her but not asking her to stay.
Hank looks in the mirror, examining his face for signs of aging that he does not find.
She leaves her baby with the nuns so that she can give him a better world, and returns to find the place burned down, her blue son nowhere in sight.
Pietro and Wanda, twelve, hold baby Lorna to their chests, waiting for a Moltov cocktail thrown by people who hate the Romani to kill them.
He meets a girl named Magda in a hotel bar in Poland who says she wants to move to America and become an actress.
In this world, Mystique finds Kurt.
The boy is born first, his sister chasing after.
Hank can still remember in perfect detail the way his uncle Bob had screamed when at eight years old, he had accidentally broken the bones in his hand.
Sean stopped calling, and Hank, so stupid, had thought that just meant he was done with them.
Alex doesn’t sign up for his first official war, but he’s already been in an army.
The twins and Lorna live with their American aunt now.
Their mama used to talk about how a boy who controlled metal lifted the fence with a flick of his wrist and freed her from the camp.
Before she was Mystique she was Raven Xavier and before that Raven Darkholme, beloved daughter until she wasn’t.
Pietro manifests first, but Wanda manifests unignorably.
Hank’s college football coach still mourns that the boy graduated.
Kurt grows up in a lot of places, but the one constant was church.
There are very few worlds in which Hank McCoy gets knocked down and doesn’t get back up.
At first it was just supposed to be high schoolers, but the children find them every which way, and babies are left on the doorstep, so that in the end generations of mutants are raised in that school.
The shots of gray show up when they are fourteen, and they were never identical, but they still feel like a part of them has been stolen.
Azazel was captured because his lover had his baby in her belly, and he needed to lead the men away from her.
Raven who is Mystique but who is also always going to be Raven, finds her way home in June.
He is six when someone calls him a monster to his face for the first time.
His mother had believed he could move the coin, she had seen him do it before.
The girl with green hair smirks and Hank feels himself fall, just a little.
Wanda accidentally sets the neighbor’s house on fire when she is fifteen.
It turns out that when you meet someone as a child and watch them grow you don’t love ‘em like you used to, Logan learns.
Pietro starts stealing when Wanda is sent away.
RoRo just shows up on their doorstep one day, and never really leaves.
It turns out that when you meet someone as a child and watch them grow you don’t hate ‘em like you used to, Logan learns.
Alex can still feel Darwin’s metaphorical blood on his hands when Charles tells says he has complete faith in him.
It takes many years for Hank to even consider allowing his parents to see him like that.
Lorna manifests early but gradually.
His aunt drinks and tries to tell Pietro his name is Peter and Lorna her name is Laura, and they might not have accents anymore but Pietro won’t allow anymore to be taken from them.
Pietro, bored, does the math of his birth one day.