Summary: supposedly, according to the pattern of evolution, an organism adapts to its presented environment in order to guarantee survival. What's the human race doing, then, when it reverts back into its medieval stages of genocide upon their own evolutionary forms?
Slowly, Ephraim begins to the see sad truth that this new era holds. Subjugated by their human counterparts, mutants must not only be registered, but also contained.
Evolution, however, makes no mistakes, and it's not until the anti-mutant authoritarian society pushes the boundaries way too far that a revolt occurs, one in which a society – a society devoid of humans – blossoms.
Author's note: sorry if the summary doesn't say much. I didn't want to give too much away, but I didn't really want to bore any readers, either. This story is entirely made up of original characters (OCs), I just thought it still needed to be labeled under X-Men as I'm pretty much just borrowing the universe. In retrospect, it's pretty much an AU fic, dealing with my own take on the typical subject of the anti-mutant and mutant rebellion movements. I don't know if I'll add any form of romance, but if I do I'll probably make it an even helping of het and slash. I don't know. I might throw in an X-Men character here or there. Let's just see where this goes.
P.S. Any confusion will be addressed at the end of the chapter.
1:
The blinding bolts of thunder cracking outside had become a rhythmic song. The consistent claps, ripping sound waves into shreds, only to force them together to ring and die out, only to happen again. There was no rain; for in fact, this event had become a commonality, happening nearly once or twice a month, thrice if the air was pregnant enough with static. No, it hadn't even rained in nearly three months. The green – or lack thereof – wildlife surrounding Houston had been proof of that. The immense outbursts of wildfires, contagiously spreading from home to home, county to county, from news broadcast to news broadcast… a message had been sent out: these were different times.
And perhaps, that's where the story begins. The new era found a young boy, just of age, sitting in a dimly lit room, staring at the consistent flashes of blinding cracks in the air. A lamp had been shoved into the corner of the room, far away from everything else, letting only a light orange glow barely illuminate the room. His eyes had gotten used to it, though. Hardly ever was he awake during the day to endure the blazing rays of sunlight that scorched their very insides. He lived in the night, lurking and wandering about the auspicious darkness, for it was in the darkness where he was protected the most. After all, what one can't see, one can't condemn.
There was another crack, though this one shivered much longer in the sky, shuddering the skies with a fervor so strong, the boy's silhouette couldn't help but shiver, too, if only slightly.
There was another sound, though this one much warmer, but more subtle. The knocking of bony hands on a wooden door.
"Ephraim," an old woman called out, a heavy Texan accent walking on a thin line between domestic and foreign. "Ты хочешь есть?"
Russian?Ephraim, the boy with hollow dark silver eyes asked mentally. It had been a long time since Stara, his grandma, had even bothered speaking Russian, a long lost custom.
"No," he thoughtlessly replied, not really feeling any tempting feelings towards devouring any foods at the time. "I'm not really hungry."
He heard his grandmother sigh exasperatedly. "Ефрем…"
He stood. It was only ever when he was called by his Russian name, Yefrem, that he knew she was serious. He walked over to his door and pulled it open, staring eye to eye to his grandmother. Her sharp features still rung with a nostalgic youth, although that could have been due to her actually being quite young for a grandmother. Her dark eyes were not with the same depth as Ephraim's, though the idea that any were wasn't really that plausible. Her eyebrows smoothened into a sharp line, outlining her otherwise cursory face.
"We have a guest," she said, her brows furrowed now. "С нами ты будешь есть." Her voice was thorough, a strong sheen of defense coating her vocal fixtures, not allowing any space for arguments.
Ephraim's shoulders hunched. With his grandfather having been an important political figure, he had been used to the many "guests" brought over by his babushka, most of them being stern older men, with little or no hair and a disdain for the society of youth. Indeed, there was one too many times that found Ephraim picking at his uneaten cheese-drowned broccoli, a product of his grandmother's Americanization, while numerous old fellows babbled on about the death in the intelligentsia, the death of philosophy, the death of tradition; indeed, the heaviest topic to have been spread in his recent habitat had always had something to do with Christianity.
He sighed. Generally, his grandmother and he had a relatively unstrained relationship. A generally quiet introvert, Ephraim was always posed to be one with listening ears, whilst his grandmother, too full of words too long and too passionate, babbled on about several crises, young hoodlums, and everything wrong with modern society.
Modern society. What a laugh. Ephraim looked up as he walked down the stairs of his enormous house. Beyond the fantastic staircase, standing in the foyer of what he considered his home, was a black suit, with the soulless blue oxford shirt carefully fitted under it, a nice, solid colored tie surrounding what could have been a neck, had the man inhabiting said outfit had one. He recognized this particular man.
His blood chilled, if only slightly, as the hairs on his arms registered the guest.
Mayor Hardy, he was commonly called. He had not actually been the Houston City Mayor, but had in fact only taken in the county in which he resided in; the lovely Clearbrook, an upper class country forested by nearly multimillion-dollar homes, where the upper middle class stood on the very bottom. As the mayor of a county with a higher ratio of bitter, elderly, and – quite unfortunately – politically active people than the rest of Houston, he represented everyone quite well with his dangerous stance, his show of power through inappropriately expensive clothing and watches.
"Ephraim!" he boasted, almost in a fatherly tone. Ephraim didn't twitch, neither did he jerk, but he merely stared. "It's been a while, my boy. You've gotten quite big now. Tell me, are you in university, now?"
Ephraim nodded, if only awkwardly. "I start in the fall," he couldn't help but add. It didn't really mean much considering summer had in fact just began.
"Exciting, exciting!" Hardy's eyes gleamed, and Ephraim couldn't tell as to whether he was genuinely excited or not. The tough thing to Ephraim about Hardy was knowing whether he was truly genuine or not. Throughout the years, Hardy had been a close friend of Ephraim's grandfather, with whom he had barely had much of a relationship at all, if any. And thus true, having known Ephraim nearly as long as Ephraim remember, he couldn't help but fear the man as of late.
These were different times, after all.
"Ephraim?" Hardy asked, giving Ephraim a questioning look. Ephraim's eyes focused, and he couldn't help but wonder if he meant to zone out or not. "You there?"
He waved a hand to get Ephraim's attention, the Swiss watch catching a particularly sharp glint through a weaker crack of lightning from the outside.
"Sorry, it's been a long day," Ephraim lied. "What did you ask?"
He could feel his babushka's scolding looks from behind him, but that didn't help the hairs on his neck, which were going through bouts of rising and falling.
"What are you studying, my dear boy?"
Ephraim nearly shrugged. To shrug would have been, however, the wrong answer. "Linguistics," he curtly replied, feigning fatigue.
It seemed Hardy had grown bored with the subject, however, as he quickly patted Ephraim on the back and jumped towards his babushka, greeting her like one would greet the first lady.
Ephraim breathed out. His surroundings blurred slightly, with every uncalculated word erupting from Hardy's mouth. He felt something on his neck, and looked up to see dust – if only a few, barely noticeable specks – falling from the chandelier which hung above them.
No. Ephraim gulped again and tried to excuse himself. Babushka gave him a firm nod, while Hardy had already forgotten about him, deep in conversation with an intrigued Stara, already hanging his coat and making way towards the living room.
Ephraim reached the furthest bathroom on the first floor. It was a good few minutes from them, a mere guest bathroom that had only ever been used by the visiting old men, and sometimes by their accompanied wives, if only to pamper and admire themselves in the majestic bathroom mirror, before retreating to impress the great of Hilda Tvarova.
He locked the door and put down the toilet cover on the seat, sitting on the velvet toilet cover. He ran his hands through his short, nearly metallic, brown hair, first causing it to stand up in all places, and then smoothing it out. He hands massaged his cranium, the impending headache…
Of all days, today could not be the day for him to lose control. His hand fluttered to the back of his neck, where he felt those blasted specks of dust.
All of his hopes of it being dust vanished as he felt the prickly feeling on his neck and fingers. It definitely wasn't sawdust from the ceiling, and it definitely wasn't any ash residue. He took a look at his hand, if only to see small red dots forming.
Glass. Glass from the fake candles, glass from the light fixtures in the ceiling… He breathed in. He had control. He had learned to control it, after all.
He had tried so hard. It didn't seem fair for him to lose control now.
He didn't notice the quickly elapsing time as he stood up and went to the grandiose counter, deciding to take post at the sink on the left. He'd have to exercise control. If he could prove to himself his control, then perhaps he wouldn't lose control at the dinner table.
After all, he had managed to slip away unknown, hidden in the dark, the light of his true self hidden from those who needn't know….
He looked at the sink. His vision began drying, his focus dying and splitting into several, unequally distributed pieces. His vision was not one of visual images anymore, but rather movement, a vision of stability, connection, buzzing power. He felt the buzzing. It was enough to let him know he had control.
He turned on the tap, half of his concentration still on the subtle, incessant buzzing, the other on his surroundings. He felt the light creak of the lever, and suddenly, he felt it.
It was stronger; it was smoother, but nevertheless still as powerful, if not more. He felt the buzzing gain momentum, his concentration requiring more of his vision to elapse. His ability to feel was slowly dissipating as he felt himself lose control. Managing to maintain a steady view of the sink, he saw no water come out.
He counted down. This could either end up a mess, or it could work. He hadn't done it before, but had often thought about it. All he had to do was keep the buzzing alive…
And then, for a fraction of a second, he let go. Water spurted out from the sink in a speed unnatural even for a deprived drain; the water, however, did not touch the surface of the sink, but rather, curved and jetted into mid-air, twisting about her and their, the incessant buzzing fading into a consistent hum.
Ephraim nearly smiled as he closed the tap. With one eye on the hovering, delicate water, he sat on the toilet cozy again. If he could just get it to…
There was a knock on the bathroom door, and that was enough to send the water roaring towards the ground. Troubled, indecisive about which to address, he replied with a measly "что"as he fumbled to prevent the now spilt water from reaching the door. The spreading water, half soaking up the imported rug, half rushing in every direction, using the ends of tiles as irrigation, stopped clean as he fell on the ground, nearly splashing himself in the process.
"What?" An American voice responds in a dumbstruck tone. "Sorry, I don't understand Russian. However, your grandmother does express her disdain at your prolonged stay in the bathroom, as your food is getting cold…"
Ephraim nearly panicked. "O-okay, sorry, tell her I'll – tell her I'll be on my way," he stuttered, his mind more focused on the water that now slowly resembled a stream, rising and heading toward the sink.
Most of the moisture on the floor and on the rug had disappeared by the time Ephraim managed to sit down and sigh for a moment. He did have control. Perhaps not total control – he had managed to lose concentration rather quickly, and he ended up dying the tap-water magenta due to accidentally shedding some of the rug on which he sat – but overall, it was slightly satisfying.
After all, it wouldn't do well for the man notorious for hating mutants to find out that a mutant had been so close to him for all these years.
Notes: There is some Russian, though not too much, I don't think. I've put the sentences below in case anyone was curious as to what they sounded like and what they meant.
- "Ты хочешь есть?" (Ty ha-CHESH yist'), Russian for "Are you hungry?/Do you want to eat?"
- "Ефрем", (yi-FREM), or (YE-frim), Russian variation of "Ephraim", pronounched "Efrum".
- "С нами ты будешь есть", (s NA-mi ty BU-desh yist'), Russian for "You will eat with us."
- "Что?", (shto), Russian for "what?"
Also, it's really common for Russian names to have a million nicknames and diminutives (think how Alexandr has the nick name Sasha, etc). I couldn't find very many things on the name I picked for Ephraim's grandmother, as her name isn't very Russian in the first place (Hilda is actually Germanic, this kind of comes in to play later on), so she is addressed in many ways:
- Hilda Tvarova (Ephraim's last name is Tvarov, keep the gender distinction in mind)
- Stara (from the Russian word Стара, short form of Старая, meaning "old")
- Babushka, from the Russian word "Бабушка", meaning "granny".
Sorry I had to explain so much of it, I just feel like this might all be of relative importance later on in the story.
