Disclaimer: I am not associated with X-men: Evolution in any professionally. None of the characters, except for some of the students at Bayville High and Aurora Briase, belong to me.
Author's Note: I am not an avid watcher of the show, so I don't really know what's happened since the first episode of the new season.
Prolouge:
Since the arrival of students like Bobby Drake, Sam Guthrie, Jubilation Lee and Rahne Sinclair, two other mutants have arrived at the Institute. Warren Worthington III was the first, a young man of eighteen, bringing with him feathery wings. The second was Elisabeth Braddock, another eighteen-year-old who had already faced great trauma in her life when her mind was switched with that of a dangerous Asian assassin. The exotic young telepath had brought her powerful fighting skills and psychic knife to aid the X-men.
Let the story begin…
She had known it would happen. Ever since they had come, she knew that one day, he would find out. And he did. Her father had discovered her secret.
"No daughter of mine will be a mutant!" he roared. "Get out of this house!" And his strong arms, arms that used to playfully toss her up and down as a child, grabbed her and dragged her to her feet. He used to be nice. He had always been nice, until he discovered her secret. She had harbored the hope that he would still be there for her when he found out. Obviously not, she thought bitterly.
He had pulled the long coat from her shoulders, revealing her secret. She was blinded by tears, trying to stop the sobs of fear that broke free from her throat. Incoherently pleading with her father as he ranted at her, she had felt nothing until the snap of breaking bone, and the burning pain that followed. Then her father gathered her up, thrust her coat at her and told her to leave, allowing her to pack what she could into a duffel bag.
She ran to her room, grabbing clothes and ramming them into the bag. She stuffed her wallet into her pocket and arranged the coat so that her secret was hidden beneath the fabric. She paused at the mirror. Looking at herself, she saw a sixteen-year-old girl with black hair and dark eyes now blood-shot and watery from crying. Hearing her father start to yell again, she stifled a sob and turned back to her bag. She glanced at the long box in the corner of the room, grabbed it and forced it into the bag. She dragged an old army blanket from the closet and added it to her bag. Finally, she squeezed a stuffed animal, a timber wolf named Kodiak, into the little space left.
Her father appeared in the doorway and she cringed, waiting for the shouts to begin anew. But he merely stood there, his hands gripping the doorframe with white-knuckled force.
"Aurora, I'm sorry. But you understand, don't you?" he said. No, father, she thought, I don't understand. She knew he would pretend that she understood, pretend that she knew it was for the best. That was her father's one flaw. He pretended. When her mother died, he had pretended that it was an accident. That he hadn't been drinking the night of the crash. When he had just a little to drink, he said, and the car careened out of control and ran into a tree and killed a little six-year-old girl's mother. And the police had believed him. They hadn't even checked him for alcohol. Stupid police, Aurora thought savagely.
Her father moved out of the doorway to let her pass, then followed her down the hallway, trying to explain to her why she had to go.
"It's just that…the family, they would never understand why I kept you. I would be a disgrace." her father went on, fumbling for excuses to justify throwing his daughter out into the streets.
She stopped at the front door and turned to him. "Good-bye father." Aurora said shortly. He looked at her, a mixture of anger, disgust and fatherly concern in his eyes. Then he dug into his wallet and dug out fifty dollars.
"Here. I know it won't last long, but its all I can give you."
There it was again. He was pretending to be poorer than he was. He could have given her another house if he wanted to. But he couldn't stand the thought of giving too much money to a mutant, even if she was his daughter.
And then Aurora stood outside of her childhood home, in the darkening night. Her father spared her one last glance before slamming the door shut. The sound echoed in the still air, but more so in Aurora's mind, where it overrode the pain she was feeling. She turned away from her house and started down the street to nowhere.