I don't own anything to do with anything in the X-Men franchise. That sucks majorly, but that's all right. I'll live. I do own Jaklyn Porter and Silence Allerdyce and most of this plot. Mina belongs to my friend. This fic is rated for language, violence, drinking, blood, gore, and some bad relationship choices. No explicit sexual content yet. That comes in the sequel. And I'm not listing pairings, because they're pretty obvious. Woo. Hope you enjoy this fic.

Illusive Rhapsody
Chapter One / Fear and Solitude

"She's a mutant! Get her!"

She ran as fast as she could, knowing it probably wouldn't be fast enough. But it was fast; her legs were muscled and nimble and they carried her with the speed and grace of a wolf. The men behind her were mutant haters and hunters, a bad combination, and they were in their trucks, howling along behind her, catching up, closing the distance… She tried to run faster. She was a mutant, she was what they were after, and she was absolutely terrified. Her breathing was quickly becoming shallow and ragged, and she could feel herself slowing down slightly, her muscles beginning to protest movement. Her heart was pounding painfully in her ears, and her emotions were reaching that critical height. Her form began to shimmer and blur as she ran.

She fell into a somersault because something inside told her to and a moment later, there was a massive wolf, black as pitch and streaked with plumes of electric blue around the neck and shoulders, in her place and obtained her gait. The wolf regained her lost stamina and left the hunters farther behind, slightly dazed at the transformation. Their confusion became rage and they unleashed a wave of bullets towards the strange animal.

Lowering her shoulders and running fast, she hoped she would not be hit. Her powerful stride swallowed the miles, and she found herself nearing a barn. Another wave of bullets was fired behind her and pain exploded in her shoulder a fraction of a second later. More bullets and pain tore through her right side and her left cheek. Blood obscured her left eye, and her body began to numb against the pain. She kept running.

The barn loomed over her suddenly and she tumbled into a pile of damp hay in the far corner, concealing herself from the hunters who appeared on foot at the doorway. She transformed back to her human state, and dug herself deeper into the hay, until her back was pressed against the damp wood of the building, trying not to make too much noise. The hay was clinging to her bloody wounds and a nasty ache had bloomed behind her left eye. The rest of her body was completely numbed with fear and pain and she thought for sure, she was going to die right there. Tears fell from her right eye and her thoughts turned to her parents at home in England.

"What are you doing on my farm?"

The voice was rather deep and had a heavy Russian accent. It cut through her thoughts like a bolt of lighting and she looked up, expecting to find she was being addressed. Finding no one there, she peered out through the hay and saw the hunters being confronted by a tall, young Russian man. He was leaning casually on the doorframe, staring the hunters down; his black hair was cut close to his head and he had a firm square jaw and a fire in his blue eyes.

"What are you doing on my farm?"

"A mutant ran into your barn," one of the hunters said.

The young man turned and looked around the inside of the barn. "I don't see anyone," he said, although his eyes rested on the pile of hay concealing her. "Now leave and let me get back to work. I have a lot to do today. The snows are coming soon."

"Just let us search your farm," another hunter demanded, raising his shot gun. "Now leave, boy. We won't be very long." The gun leveled at the young man's chest.

All she saw was the young man close his eyes as a silvery substance wound its way up his strong body, covering his flesh in a metal-like substance. She wished she could have witnessed the entire transformation, but she passed out then, and she saw no more.

Jaklyn Porter awoke with a start, her body covered in sweat and the right side of her face covered in tears. Her right hand fluttered the scarred mass where her left eye used to be, but she winced in pain as soon as her fingers made contact and dropped her hand. The seventeen year old sighed, trying to bring herself into her normal, calm state of mind. Failing to do so, she grabbed a tissue from her bedside table and viciously wiped the tears away. Her right eye swiveled around to look at the bright red number on her alarm clock. 4:27am. Muttering to herself and suppressing any sobs, she swung her graceful legs over the side of the bed to find her slippers and head downstairs to the kitchen for some hot chocolate and orange-flavoured vodka.

Her home was in a small village in the English countryside. It was a foster home, but it had been home since she was about six. Her real parents had been killed by mutant hunters, and she had been left to her parents' human friends for care. It was a good home, but Jaklyn was the only mutant in the village – everyone found out when wolves started coming and sitting outside her bedroom window – and she was hated. As a result, she had to be home schooled and she had nothing even resembling a social life.

With her alcoholic hot chocolate in her hands, she sat down at the small table and straightened her red silk pajama pants. Her mind was a mess, thoughts of her parents, their deaths, and of her dream running around in a chaotic fashion. Jaklyn put her forehead on the wooden table and sighed, trying not to cry again.

"Jaklyn? Hon, are you all right?"

She looked up, despised to find there were tears, and found Jonathon Peters, her adoptive father, speaking to her. Jaklyn nodded, and wiped her eye clean. "I'm… just thinking about my parents, Jon… And… I had the dream again…" Subconsciously, she touched the scars on her face. "I… I don't know why I'm thinking about that day so much lately…"

Jonathon sat down in the chair next to her and took her hand. He was a kind man with sandy brown hair and bright gray eyes. A fatherly smile from him could usually cheer Jaklyn up, and he always knew what to say. "Do you think it might have something to do with Charles Xavier contacting you last week? That was when you started having the dream, wasn't it?" When his foster daughter nodded, he gave her hand a tight squeeze. A comfortable silence fell over the pair until Jonathon said, "Jaki, Hon, I think you should find out more about his school for mutants… I really think it would be the best place for you. You need to find how to control your powers, and be around other mutants."

"But… I couldn't just leave…"

"You shouldn't be here where you're hated and shunned. A seventeen year old girl should have a social life. You should have friends and be able to go to a proper school. Sammy and I will be all right, Jaki, don't worry."

Samantha Peters, Jonathon's wife, was just, if not more, as kind as her husband and was an excellent mother. Jaklyn had a great respect and love for the Peters, but she never called them Mom or Dad, and often, she often wished her parents had never been taken from her. She knew it was selfish, but she couldn't help thinking she had been cheated out of her right life.

"Jaki," Jon said quietly, "finish your hot chocolate and go back up to bed. You should try and get some more sleep."

She nodded and watched as he went back upstairs. As she sipped her not-so-hot chocolate and savoured the burning aftertaste of the vodka, she thought about her dream. That day had been over four years ago, but she could still feel the pain as if it had been yesterday. She had no idea who the mutant who saved her was, but she knew she owed him her life, and if she could find him one day, she planned to thank him profusely and do whatever else she could to repay him. Jaklyn replayed the dream in her head, focusing on the young man's face each time as she drank her comforting drink. Once she was finished, she deposited her mug in the sink and then trudged back upstairs and fell into her bed.

The next afternoon, Jaklyn volunteered to do the grocery shopping. She dressed in jeans and a big sweater, put her long dark hair up in a ponytail and tied a scarf around her scarred left cheek. Her army boots went on her feet and her MP3 player headphones in her ears and then she left the house, heading for the only grocery store in town, hoping no one would see her. She hadn't been outside in almost a week, so maybe she wouldn't be noticed.

The actual shopping went off without a hitch, and she was almost home before anything happened. A teenage boy, about the same age as Jaklyn was heading in the opposite direction, and he felt the need to run into her shoulder, knocking the grocery bags out of her arms, and her off her feet. Laughter erupted behind her, and she realized the boy had been walking with three of his friends, but she ignored them as she picked up what she could of the groceries. She managed to save everything but a few tomatoes and a couple eggs, and got to her feet, continuing her journey home. There was more laughter behind her, and then a wet splat against the back of her head.

A growl escaped Jaklyn's lips and her right eye flashed a violent blue colour, but none of the boys saw. She only paused for a second, and then kept walking, keeping the instinctual urge to change down. It was hard work, as she hadn't changed since the day she'd been shot, and there was a bottle of emotions inside ready to burst at any moment.

At home, she threw the groceries onto the counter and climbed the stairs growling that she was going to visit her parents' grave that night.

And so, several hours and almost half a bottle of vodka later, Jaklyn was putting on her boots and her MP3 player and heading outside again. It was near midnight, and the dark offered a concealing comfort, a protection, while the vodka coursing through her veins gave her the courage to venture out after the events of that afternoon.

"Be careful, Jaklyn," a quiet voice said behind her.

Giving only a growl in confirmation, Jaklyn opened the front door and left Samantha standing on the stairs, a pained look of worry on her face. Jaklyn didn't mean to be rude, but she was angry and needed the comfort of her parents. Samantha would understand.

The grove was perfect. At least, to a passerby, it was. The trees were tall, with long, elegant branches, and they weren't spaced too far apart or close together and there was a natural chaos about the whole grove. Foliage in every shade of green stood out against the dark, rough bark, and shaded the wealth of wildflowers. It was because of these rare areas that Jaklyn was beyond happy that her adoptive parents had moved from the big city, and back to this small village in the countryside.

But, to those in the know, the grove was not perfect in every way. The peaceful grove hid a secret. It hid the grave of Jaklyn's parents. The mutant couple had been murdered in that very grove, and their bodies had been left there to rot. Jaklyn had already been given to her adoptive parents at that time for protection, and she was only six when the incident took place. She couldn't very well bury her parents. Jonathon had begged the mayor of the village to allow Alexandra and Matthew's bodies to be buried in the communal graveyard, but he refused, saying that mutant remains did not belong in the same area as normal people. So, secretly, Jonathon had buried the bodies of his friends in the grove, hidden beneath the roots of the trees, and the foliage of years passed, and marked the grave with a flat stone engraved with the image of a rose.

Now, eleven years after the murder of her parents, Jaklyn lay in the dry brown leaves, the scarred side of her face pressed against the cool stone; salty tears trickled from her right eye, across the bridge of her nose, and past the useless mass of her left eye to pool in the recesses of the carved rose.

This was the custom for Jaklyn's visits. She would cry for a while, alone in the dark, and then gather herself together and tell her deceased parents about the events of her life since her last visit. Usually, her visits didn't last terribly long, because there was never much to talk about, and she was afraid. She talked a lot about the way things could have been if Alexandra and Matthew hadn't been taken away so early.

"Mom… Dad…" Jaklyn whispered, her hand tracing the stone rose. "I think I'm going to go to New York… to that school for mutants…" A sob. "I'd have to leave Jonathon and Samantha and you… but… I'd be safe and with mutants…"

Her voice drifted away as a metallic clicking noise reached her ears. There were no metallic noises like that in nature. The only thing that made that noise was a gun. But there shouldn't be anyone else in this grove. There shouldn't be anyone else even around the grove. It was three kilometers outside the village, and a ways back from the road. Keeping her senses alert, Jaklyn leaned forward and kissed the stone. With a whispered "I love you", she got to her feet and turned back towards the village, hoping she could walk back home without any trouble. Her boot heels clicked as they hit the pavement of the road, and the echo seemed louder than usual; Jaklyn didn't dare reach for her MP3 player, she needed all of her senses at her full disposal, even if they were heightened. Slowly, her wolf senses began to take over her human ones, and the world around her came into a brand new light.

Almost immediately after summoning her other senses, a yell broke out from behind her, back in the grove. Jaklyn snapped into a run and took off down the paved road. She heard more yelling and countless other noises arise, but no gun shots. Puzzled and alarmed she veered into the farmer's field on the side of the road, trying to loose the men behind her. That instinctual change rose inside her again and this time, she was powerless to stop it. Just as she crested the second hill on her trek, the change racked her bones, and she somersaulted twice before returning to her running pace, but as a pitch-coloured wolf, streaked with a violently bright blue.

"She's changed!" one of the men cried out behind her.

The fear began to grip Jaklyn's heart, despite the vodka inside her. This was supposed to be Jaklyn's safe-haven from the hunters; from everyone that hunted and hated mutants. Sure, everyone in the village knew she was a mutant, but they managed to tolerate her because she stayed away. But what had she done to make these men hunt her?

A gun shot rang out somewhere ahead of Jaklyn. The danger registered in her head and she turned to her right continuing at break neck speed. Another grove materialized around her. Jaklyn heaved a wolfish sigh of relief, but didn't stop. This grove was slightly larger than the one where her parents were buried, but it was less dense; the long shadows of the trees flashed in the moonlight. Jaklyn wouldn't be safe here either. She continued to run, panic gripping her heart.

Woosh.

Jaklyn howled painfully as the heavy net landed on her hindquarters and pulled her down to the grassy ground. She snapped her jaws frantically, twisting and trying to pull the obstruction that had become tangled around her hind legs off of her. Three dark shadows materialized above her, white eyes and teeth glaring down at her. The fear was pushed from her system by a mad surge of adrenaline; she growled and snapped, nearly foaming at the mouth.

"Looks like we caught the elusive bitch," the largest of the shadows sneered. He put a nasty emphasis on the oath. "Let's see if she'll attack my son now…"

That was it… These men were the fathers of the boys from that afternoon… They'd obviously lied and said she attacked them… There was no way she'd be allowed to stay in the village now. She'd have to leave… She'd have to go to New York.

She gave up only for a few moments, thinking all was lost, but then her energy made a resurgence, as the taunting began and her adrenaline levels escalated. When it had reached its height, she launched herself out from under the net and closed her jaws around the nearest man's neck. The adrenaline was pumping through her now, as she ripped his neck out and let him fall to the ground. Hot blood poured from her mouth, and down her throat, and she became wilder. Startled, the other two men froze, and stared at her. Giving a wolfish smirk, Jaklyn leapt at them. They bolted. She chased. She killed.