Prologue
The world had not been kind to you.
You can’t even remember where it started, if it had always been like this, or if there was anything different outside of this world you knew. Everything outside of the confines of this building was cold. You couldn’t remember even the slightest bit of warmth. Sometimes the others, late at night, whispered about mothers. About home, about family. Did you have one of those once too?
Did you have a family somewhere out there, mourning the loss of a child? If you think a little harder, you can almost see a face, almost hear a voice calling your name-
You stumbled over your footing, barely catching yourself as your eyes caught your opponents. There was no light there. Their face was expressionless. Even if you reached out, you knew you would feel nothing, if not the overwhelming emptiness. Their eyes were sunken in, their head shaved. Is that what you looked like to them? Was it like looking in a mirror?
The stumble lit a fire in the other’s eyes, and in their hands. Relief. You’d been through this before, they would feint right and go for a jab with their left hoping to catch you unguarded. All you had to do was wait for them to move and bait them into the jab and-
Your hand caught their arm before their flames could touch you. Fear. In the blink of an eye, their flesh began to melt away. You still didn’t fully understand how it worked, just that it did. Their screams echoed through the hall as they crumpled to the floor, guards and other personnel flooding to take them away and to escort you out. You could hear the whispers, unable to make them out. A cloud of flitting emotions; fear, pride, envy, delight. It always twisted in your stomach. Whoever these people were, they found joy in pitting kids against each other.
You didn’t even know how old you were, and you knew the kid with the flames wouldn’t be back.
Being escorted back to your room you were offered no congratulations, no compliments on your form. If the guards felt any which way about you, they kept it close to their chests, and you didn’t go searching for answers anymore. Instead you walked silently. You went into your room quietly, without a fuss. Others, those of which who had been stronger, who hadn’t been here as long, still fought them. They would show up later with new marks and bruises. You wish you could find that. It was so much easier to just sit in the silence of your room and wait to be called on. Meal time, training, sparring… whatever it was they called what just happened. It would happen whether you wanted it to or not. At least with cooperation, it would be over faster.
~
Feeling things decompose, deconstruct, under your fingertips was one thing. Changing one thing into another… it felt almost too natural. Those in charge must have taken note immediately, because it had barely been a few weeks since your first success when they had taken your leg from you.
It had always been weaker than the other. You remember the feeling of it being broken when you were smaller, when you still had a burning fight in you.
One thing you always liked about them was that they kept talking to a minimum. It made it easier to detach yourself from this life. But when you awoke to an empty room with only scrap metal in a pile near you, you had wished someone had been there. Why had they taken your leg? Why did it have to be you? Of course you knew the answers. To see what you would do. Because you were there.
You don’t know how long you sobbed to yourself, the phantom pain of a leg that wasn’t there setting your nerves on fire. All you do know is that eventually you stopped. You stopped and at some point you picked up the pieces of metal and started changing them.
It had been easy when the things you were changing were simple sheets of paper and wooden blocks. When the things you were shaping had no real purpose but to exist. But now, you were trying to mould this scrap into something, anything, that could resemble a leg.
On one hand, you knew you didn’t know enough to make one functional. Not like the arm of the man that showed up to train some days. On the other, what else could you do? They wanted to see what you would do, what you could do.
The guards only entered the room once you had made something you could stand on, attached to your skin almost as if it was melded together.
~
“C’mon kid, we gotta go.”
The voice sounds so far away, but you can feel the concern clouding the air. You could feel your leg throbbing, as someone pulled you up and out of the snow. Your vision began to clear, you saw the smoke, smelled it lingering in the air. As cold as it seemed, you could feel the warmth of the flames in the distance. “There we go, we gotta get out of here.”
Looking up you saw a man clutching your hand. His grip was tight, you didn’t even think about the warmth that always seemed to radiate from your palms. If it bothered him, you couldn’t tell.
He looked… normal. A black suit and tie. He didn’t look like the men who watched you every day. He was clutching your hand, and leading you away from it all. Away from the fire, and into the cold.
You held his hand tight.
~
Waking up with a jolt, breathing heavily you took in your surroundings. You were still in your room. Those were your clothes on the floor, those were your books on the shelf. The blanket you gripped was one that Maria had gifted to you years ago.
The nightmares never really went away. You still can’t recall what exactly happened all those years ago, but the nightmares feel so real… for a few moments you can feel everything you had felt back then.
The unease still lingers, so does the fear. While the memories that they brought up fade, you can’t help but wonder if any of what the nightmares showed were real. If you couldn’t remember it, had it ever even happened?
But those were your hands that brought that destruction to another kid’s arm. That was Phil’s voice, his hand holding yours… Could your nightmares really replicate reality so well? Absent-mindedly, you rubbed at your knee. The prosthetic wasn’t attached, you rarely slept with it. Your nightmare had been so vivid, but that part hadn’t rung true. The metal wasn’t melded to your skin, at least not in the way you had seen and felt. It was crude and raw, whereas in reality it was at least… manageable.
Rubbing your face, you calmed your breathing. You willed yourself to focus. You needed to sleep, the next day was full of meetings and classes and… You didn’t have time to deal with this right now.
And so, you rolled over and willed yourself back to sleep, putting the nightmares on hold just like you had since as long as you could remember.
The world had not been kind to anyone, least of all you.
***
Material Manipulation. That was what the Professor had called it. A delta level mutant, capable of manipulating physical materials with empathic abilities. You were able to change and manipulate anything you could understand, but you were also aware of the feelings of other people around you.
In some aspects it’s a relief. You would take manipulation over destruction any day. The empathic bit had been confusing at first. It made sense, but putting names to the emotions people held was always hard and most times overwhelming. When you were young it had been simple, or at least it had felt like it.
They had told you, once you had finally come to weeks after they had found you, that you were about twelve years old. You were a mutant, like the others at this school. It was safe here, you could live here peacefully as you learned to control your powers. In fact, you didn’t just learn to control your powers. You learned everything you could about mutants, going as far as even to study a broad spectrum of sciences. Anything and everything to keep your mind off whatever had happened to you before this.
The man that had brought you here was a SHIELD agent, Phil Coulson, he checked in on you frequently, and in the summer’s you stayed with him only to train yourself physically. You met many other SHIELD agents in your time with him, yet it felt like you were just another secret.
Your past felt like a blur, and you didn’t remember just about any of it. Nightmares held bits and pieces, but you could never trust them. Professor Xavier had told you it had been traumatic, that they hadn’t even known the true extent of what you had gone through. As much as you wanted to know where you had come from and what had happened, you supposed you were better off not knowing.
Despite your efforts, it had been hard to connect with the others you grew up around. Hank, Raven, Jean, Scott, Kurt, and Ororo were the only others that had been around as long, if not longer. Things had always been tense with Jean, which was fair. Scott had been another story. Ororo and Kurt definitely tried their best, and you had to admit that they held a very soft spot in your heart.
The Professor himself seemed to be just as distant as Jean. you didn’t blame any of them to be fair. It was hard to connect, especially with these people who had seen you at what seemed to be your worst.
Over the years your skills had developed exponentially, in no small part with help from the others. As tense as things seemed to be between you and them, they didn’t leave you to work on things by yourself. You had grown to understand your own powers of physical manipulation, being able to manipulate any matter you fully understood. Once you were old enough you had left the school for a few years, going to learn at SHIELD’s academy, yet the isolation continued. You couldn’t really connect with the people around you.
Your perseverance led you to getting doctorates in multiple sciences, meeting with other renowned scientists in your field.
When you came out as trans, it hadn’t been a big deal. For the most part. You were all mutants, what matter was the transing of gender? There were occasional slip ups here and there, but in the long run it was fine. Great, even. It was more awkward in your SHIELD circles, but over the years Phil had become somewhat of a father figure and as long as he was accepting the rest didn’t matter
Eventually, you became a Professor yourself at Xavier’s school. Of the older mutants, you weren’t the only queer one but you were definetly the most open one. The kids found comfort in you, often being the first one young queer mutants confided in. You took it in stride. While you still kept most at a distance, terrified of possibly harming any of them, you also found comfort in caring for them.
This was the closest you had ever had to a home.
~
However, you knew you weren't going to stay at the school forever.
From the day you were taken in by the Professor, you knew. It was a lovely place, and you adored the people around you, but deep down you always knew you wouldn't stay. Growing and learning there had been a gift, as well as helping the next generation and you would always be forever grateful for that.
It was still hard to accept it as anything other than it was. You were a highly skilled mutant, of course you were useful to help educate and keep others safe. But actually being close to the others was a different story.
Sure, you knew almost anything there was to know about those around you, but that didn't mean anything when none of them seemed to care past the surface level. Everyone had their own problems, how could you be selfish enough to think they would care about yours? You were fine, functioning, what was there to care about?
You still cared about the others, no matter how distant some were. The older mutants would always hold some space in your heart, and you knew you would still check in on the kids no matter where you went.
While the general public knew next to nothing about you, your name was spread across the mutant and super communities. It wasn't something you had wanted, not entirely. Being... known; it was difficult. Most didn't actually know you, just the basis of your powers and your alias. Though they were those few who knew of you through the academic field.
When you entered a room with other well known people you weren't often given a second look until it was revealed who you were. And you were fine with that. You generally didn't work in the field, or with other people for that matter, but when you did it seemed to take them by surprise. Of course you were trained in combat, even if your powers could be classified as passive, how did anyone expect you as a mutant to be defenseless?
Aside from the other X-Men, you had only worked with a handful of people. Sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. You were familiar with Tony Stark, who wasn't? But you had been present and subsequently calmed them when a student had a panic attack remembering how his home had been bombed by his weapons. Bruce Banner was a name you had come across more than once in the scientific community, his research fascinating you. Hr had been something of a mentor to you before he had seemingly disappeared. You had helped SHIELD from time to time when they reached out for your expertise on biology.
Most times, you plainly were just an observer and calming presence. It helped when most people didn't know who you were from first glance.
It had been more than a surprise when Nick Fury himself had approached you with an invitation to his Avengers initiative. The file he had on you was thicker than you had imagined it to be, and argued with you when you had said they had no use for you. They had people like Captain America and the God of Thunder, you argued they didn’t need you.
Even without your combat training, he pressed the issue. He said he would have wanted you purely for your powers and knowledge alone, they always needed more scientists.
So you were right. You knew you wouldn't stay at the school forever. The decision to join the Avengers had practically already been made for you, despite your protests. You would miss your students, the comfort you had found in routine.
But you knew you couldn’t stay there forever.
It had never actually been a home, not really.
Maybe it was time to move on.