Changes

A Brotherhood of Mutants story

by Jennifer Bickley (Violet Light)

Disclaimer:Marvel comics owns the X-men, obviously. I wrote this story for my own entertainment and have made and will make 0 off it, so don't sue me.

Author's Note: This is an alternate-universe story about how Mystique's childhood. I started writing it before I read most of the comics regarding everyone's favourite shape shifter, before I knew she was actually 80 years old, Nightcrawler's mother, etc. I was just wondering about what she said in the first movie, about how she was afraid to go to school as a child, and this story grew from there. I know it doesn't follow comic or movie canon, but I hope you enjoy it anyway. Thanks for reading!


Part 1

Have you ever felt alone in the world, like nobody else could possibly understand you? I bet many people have, but not in the way I do. Nobody else is a monster, a freak, a mutie.

I'm not sure exactly what a "mutie" is, besides an insult my brother and sister call me. I know I'm different from them, from my parents, from everyone else I know. After all, nobody else has blue skin and yellow eyes, but what's wrong with that? Why do my siblings constantly pick on me, blame me for bad things that they do, like the time they forgot to feed the cat for a week? Why do my parents always believe them, and act like I don't exist, especially after we moved here, to New York City. I know it's different from Vienna, but still, why is it they're embarrassed to introduce me to their new American "friends", even though they line up my siblings like dogs at a pet show? Why won't they ever tell me just what's so bad about being blue? Why is it such a horrible thing to be a "mutie"?

For all 12 years of my life, I have tried, unsuccessfully to fit in. To be the child my parents wanted me to be. I tried impressing them with my high grades, my skill in martial arts, the stories I write, but nothing ever worked. I tried ignoring my classmates' taunts, tried to cover the bruises they left when they did more than just yell names. All my life, I have tried to be what other people want me to be, but I haven't been who I wanted to be. I want to be me.

Especially now.

Last Saturday, my life changed forever.


I was just sitting in my bedroom, looking up at the speckled pattern on the ceiling, and thinking to myself. Imagining. I often imagine things when I'm trying to avoid reality. I was just thinking of how I would like to look, beautiful, with silky long black hair, perfect soft peach skin, blue eyes with actual pupils. Not anything like what I really look like, skin as blue as a drowning victim's, fire engine-red hair, glowing yellow eyes that my sister calls "creepy". Sometimes, a lot of times actually, I just wish I looked normal. Maybe then, my parents would accept me, might actually be proud of me. Maybe if I looked like everyone else, I could be happy.

"Raven, dinner time!" My mother called from downstairs.

"Coming!" I yelled back. I wasn't actually hungry, and I doubted my mother cared whether I ate or not. She just liked to yell these things "to be like a normal family" as she put it. Whatever. I didn't feel like arguing with her that night.

I entered the dining room, trying to seem inconspicuous. "Inconspicuous", that's one of my favourite words. It means "not easily seen", not at all like me, the walking eyesore that I am. Anyway, I just wanted to get dinner, eat it, then go back upstairs to finish my English homework, as fast as possible. No arguing with my mother about how I should "go out and make some friends", no annoying brother calling me "bluie", and no disapproving looks from my father. I just wanted to get this over with so I could be left alone. I grabbed my plate from the kitchen and slunk over to the dining room. Suddenly, I felt the eyes of my whole family on me.

"Raven..." my mother started.

"What?" I looked up. They were all staring at me like I was from another planet. (as far as I know, maybe I am. Maybe a "mutie" is an alien - hey, it's possible!)

"Raven...is that really you?" my sister stuttered.

"What? What is it?" No answer. "Why are you guys acting so weird all of a sudden?"

"Raven, honey...here." My mother then dashed out of the dining room. Okay, now I know something's up. Mom never calls me "honey". She came back a few minutes later, holding something in her hand. My sister's makeup mirror. "Oh Raven...I always knew that one day...oh!" Mom threw her arms around me.

"What the hell...? Mom, what's wrong with you!" My mother never, ever hugs me.

"Here sis, take a look." my sister smiled. "You're cured!"

"Cured...? Well...I was coughing a little this morning, but I didn't think I was sick or anything."

"No, dummy, you're not a mutie anymore!" my brother smiled, actually smiled at me.

"Wha...what do you mean, 'not a mutie'?"

"Take a look." My sister handed me the makeup mirror.

Staring back at me was the black-haired, blue-eyed , normal-skinned beauty I always imagined myself to be!

"How...?"

"It doesn't matter, sweetheart. All that matters is that you're finally better. The doctors all said you never would be, that there's no cure for mutations, but now, you're proof that they were wrong!" My father smiled, patting me on the back. "From now on, we can finally be a normal family!"

A normal family?

Us? The Darkholmes?

Somehow, I doubt it.


For a while, everything seemed great. For the first time in my life, my family was paying attention to me in a good way! My Mom would ask me how my day went, my father would be interested in my schoolwork, my siblings actually wanted to spend time with me for once. When my sister's friends came over, she asked me to join them, instead of shoving me into a closet or something so they wouldn't know her sister was a mutie. Everything was so much better now that I looked normal.

That was the problem. Everything was better because I had changed physically. The only reason anyone cared at all about my accomplishments was because I looked like a normal person. Had I got an A on my essay on Ophelia's role as an oppressed woman in Hamlet even a week earlier, my father would have just said, "that's nice, Raven", not taken me out for dinner like he did now. I know I should have been happy that I was now accepted, but I wasn't. The praise, the attention, everything just seemed so superficial, so fake.

Just like the "new me".

Every morning when I woke up, I looked in the mirror and saw the same blue-skinned mutie Raven I had always been, but simply by thinking about it, I transformed into the black-haired girl that was my new persona. The beast into the beauty. And contrary to fairytales, it's always the beauty who lives happily ever after.

Never, ever, the beast.

And you know what? Life isn't a fairy tale.

I began thinking of my black-haired alias as Raven Darkholme, at least, the Raven Darkholme that everyone expected me to be. But that wasn't the true me, and I knew it. "Raven" was simply a disguise, a costume to fool everyone else. The real me was the blue-skinned girl that everyone else had shunned. I know for sure, since "Raven" wasn't the only new form I could turn into. Once, my sister called on the phone, begging me to cover for her while she went on a date with her latest biker boyfriend that my parents "barely approved of". I decided to experiment, so I thought of my sister the same way I think of "Raven". Sure enough, I transformed into an exact doppelganger of my sister, right down to her stringy, perma-fried blond hair that she thinks is so beautiful. I even sounded like her. When my mother came home, she didn't even know the difference! After that, late at night before I went to sleep, I would practice transforming into my sister, her friends, models out of magazines, everyone. I could even turn into adults, like my parents, even change my sex, becoming a boy, not that I like being a boy. It's kind of gross, having that thing dangling between my legs and all. Anyway, between each new transformation I would have to turn back into my original form, my real, now secret form.

It has a certain air of mystery to it, a certain...mystique.


I thought I could get away with it forever, being Raven, or one of my various other disguises in public, and keep the true me a secret. But like all good things, my little secret came to its end.

About two weeks after my initial transformation, I was just practicing with my Raven persona in my room before school, looking in the mirror and trying out different hair styles, changing them, of course, as easily as I could change to Raven in the first place. The problem is that between each new transformation, I have to turn back to my old self, so every time I went from ponytail to braid to whatever, I had to change back to my blue-skinned, red-haired self before I tried something new. Mom and Dad had just enrolled me in a new school, where I could "start over" with no one there who knew I had once been a freak. I was excited about starting something new, and I guess I got careless.

"Raven, hurry up sweetie! You're going to be la..."

"Mom, NO!"

It was too late. I couldn't stop Mom from pushing open my bedroom door.

The pretty purple blouse she was carrying for me dropped to the floor. Her mouth hung open for a second, shocked at the sight of her "Raven" melting back into the mutie daughter she had thought was gone forever.

No matter how hard I try, I will always remember the look of pure horror, and disgust on her face, right before she let out a scream that pierced my heart.

Mom, I thought you loved me. Loved me for who I was.

I was wrong.


I never made it to my new school. Never got to meet new friends, join clubs, do all the things "normal" kids can do. I never got to have a normal life. I was never even given the chance. Mom and Dad spent the rest of that day yelling at me, yelling at each other, or yelling at some "expert" on the phone, demanding to know why I wasn't cured. I tried to tell them, tried to show them that I could transform into other people, but they wouldn't listen. They just didn't want to hear it.

"Look, how is this a problem? I can become 'Raven' anytime I want; nobody else has to know about me." I tried to reason with them. Too bad reasoning rarely works with hysterical people.

"You just don't understand, do you, young lady?" my father argued. "You're not normal! What would happen if this got out, if people found out you're some kind of shape-shifting..."

"Shape shifting what, Dad! Go ahead, say it!"

I never got to hear what Dad said (though I'm pretty sure it began with an F and rhymed with "squeak"). Mom got off the phone, and ran into the room, breathless. "Hans, the FMR said they'll take her." she addressed my father in a monotone.

"FMR? What are you talking about? Mom...Dad...?"

"The FMR is the Federal Mutant Registry. They're an organization meant to deal with..." my father began, then stuttered to a stop.

"Deal with what?"

"With mutants." Mother finished. "Raven, you're a mutant, a dangerous one at that, and these people are going to take you to someplace where you can learn not use these...powers of yours. They'll teach you to be normal, maybe even really cure you. It won't be long, then you can come back home and we can be a real family."

Mutants. I recognized that term, at least, from biology class. A mutant is a lifeform that has a genetic difference from others of its species, like an albino, an animal with all-white fur. I remember my science teacher saying that mutation was the driving force of evolution, that without those random differences, life on Earth would have never been anything better than bacteria. Sounds like a good thing, to me, to be born different, better than those before. I remember now, that term being applied to me, when people thought I wasn't listening, they'd whisper it, like it was the name of some terrible disease or something. Mutant, something different, something better.

Something to be feared by those who weren't.

Still, I couldn't believe this! My own parents were going to send me off with some government goons, thinking they'll make me normal! I exploded! "NORMAL, NORMAL! THATS ALL YOU EVER SAY! Did it ever occur to either of you that maybe, I like who I am?"

"Raven, what are you saying? How could you like being a..."

"A freak? A mutie? You didn't even have the dignity to tell me what "mutie" meant! If normal is what you are, hating those who are different, then that's the last thing I want to be! You know what, Mom, I am a mutant. That's who I am and I'm not going to change who I am for you, or Dad, or the government, or anyone else! I DON'T WANT TO BE NORMAL!"

I ran upstairs, grabbed my backpack, and started throwing things in. A couple changes of clothes, my karate uniform, about fifty dollars I had saved, Midnight, the plushie cat I have had since I was a baby, my story notebook, some pencils, everything that was important to me. Lastly, I looked at the family picture we had just gotten taken after I first became "Raven". It was the first time my family had wanted me in the family portrait at all. I threw it back down. I didn't need it. I then went down to the kitchen, and filled a thermos full of water and grabbed a couple apples and granola bars, putting them in my backpack as well. I was going, but not with the feds.

"Raven..." My mother started. She and the rest of my family were standing in the kitchen doorway. I hadn't even noticed them. How do they like it, not to be noticed?

"Please, don't go, sis." my sister asked. I couldn't tell if she was sincere or not.

"You were going to send me away anyway. What difference does it make to you whether I go with the Feds or on my own?" I asked them. "Either way, you got what you wanted -- the mutie's gone. You should be happy."

I walked out the kitchen door, away from the plain white-painted suburban house identical to its neighbours, away from the family I had believed for so long had actually cared about me. Away from normal. I only looked back once, when my mother called my name one last time.

No, she didn't call my name.

"It's not Raven." I yelled back, the last words I would ever say to my family. "My name is Mystique!"