Disclaimer: It's still the same, so I hope you've memorized it!
A/N: This chapter is really a flashback, heads up.
Eyes
They say the eyes are the window to the soul. They say the eyes give away all. They say the eyes are what makes a person human. What happens when a person is born with no eyes? Are they not human, not part of what we humans call accepted society? Are they a monster, to be feared, killed, and hated? Are they a disfigured human, to be pitied and put to sleep?
How can you see into my eyes,
Like open doors?
Leading you down into my core,
Where I've become so numb.
Do they not have a soul? Do they not feel, not love, nor hate? Do they not understand the way they are cursed? Do they know the world they cannot see? Do they not feel fear when someone whispers in their ear of wondrous dark secrets? Do they ever really live? Do they?
Panic. That was all the poor woman ever knew. Panic: would the villagers know? Panic: would the father know? Panic: what would happen at the birth? Panic: would either of them survive?
Her thoughts were broken, confused. Did the voice mean to kill the baby at the birth? Why her? Had the entity chosen other unfortunate women to suffer? God will she lived through this.
Pain tore through her body. In the forest, just feet in front of her, wolves howled. She felt a spasm of fear as the wolves growled before her, and the torchlight and rough shouts of the villagers chased her, fuelling her terror. Taking no note of her surroundings, she plunged into the darkness, her bare feet pounding on the rough, twig-strewn forest floor.
The wolves padded along, keeping pace easily. The villagers faded away and dissolved at the border of the forest, torches extinguished and weapons dropped. The wolves would finish the freak carrying the Devil's child. The woman felt pain as the baby kicked hard. She stopped and doubled over. The wolves encroached, their eyes glinting in the dull moonlight.
The woman's breath came in short, sharp pants as she looked up and saw the pairs of eyes focused on her vulnerable form. She stood. One of the wolves leaped for her, its teeth and claws raking rough gashes down her back. She screamed in pain and fell forwards. All the predators rushed forwards. Claws raked her skin and teeth carved out fatal designs in her chest and neck.
She was dying already. The wolves were doing her a favor. This baby was killing her. As four sharp canine teeth were about to end her short, painful life, a clang echoed through the woods and the sounds of yelping, pained wolves filled her ears. Blood dripped from her body into the ground, clouding her vision and senses. Rough hands lifted her as blackness and nothingness enveloped her.
The feeling of relief that her choppy life was coming to an end was replaced once again by panic as the woman awoke on a cold bed of stone. Where was she? Why was she here? Why did she feel no pain? She opened her eyes to darkness. Once they adjusted, dark grey blocks of rough-hewn stone swam into view. She saw the awful wounds the wolves had inflicted on her, but felt nothing from them.
She lifted her head and saw her toes. How could she? She was nine months pregnant – well, not anymore. Her fingers found neat rows of stitches on her stomach where the baby should have been. Nothing was right here.
The woman swung her legs over the side of the stone and sat up, making her head spin wildly. Once the world had come to a stop, the woman gazed around what appeared to be dungeons of a large castle. She was alone. There was a sliver of light cast on the wall from under a door. The way out. As the woman stood and walked over to the door, she heard faint noises. Noises of life, noises of habitation. She heaved open the door. Her breath caught in her throat.
There was no mistaking the cries. They were the screams of a newborn. The screams of a newborn in pain and distress. Her newborn.
In the laboratory upstairs from the dungeons, the man held the newborn in his hands. He was a normal baby, all except in the fact he had not opened his eyes. The man's gentle fingers opened the child's eyes and almost dropped the thing.
It had no eyes. Only empty sockets. A horribly disfigured baby.
"An outcast by birth. Nobody will miss him – except that woman . . . I could take care of her if you so wish . . . ?" A low, smooth voice asked from the man's left. "He will be perfect for your purpose . . ."
There was no arguing with the man's servant's infallible logic.
"Start the generators. I'll need electricity."
Separated from her baby and frantic, the woman was trying to reach the source of the cries, which cut off suddenly as a sinister humming wound through the walls.
"No!" she screamed. A door clanged open at the end of the hall and a figure stood silhouetted for a second before the door closed with an ominous groan.
"Come here, woman. I need to tell you something," the smooth voice of the man's servant spoke. The woman, shaking from head to toe, approached the servant. He had short red hair and wore a long, dark brown cloak. Heavy boots and leather gloves covered his feet and hands. He had a surprisingly kind face with dark blue eyes and an abundance of freckles stretching across the bridge of his nose. None of this mattered. What mattered was that he was a mutant.
"Tell me my baby is safe!" the woman shouted, ten feet away from the servant.
"I'm afraid I cannot say that he is safe now. However, he will be safe in a few minutes," he said coldly with a wicked grin. The woman's heart nearly stopped.
"No . . . you can't . . ." the woman said weakly, sinking to her knees.
"No, I can't, but Magneto can. You were very hard to find, Mystique. Show me what you look like. I won't beat you. I'm a mutant like you. They call me Pyro, for a strange, small reason," the servant said with a smirk. Mystique looked up at him, afraid what he was going to say next.
"What do you mean, show you what I look like?" she asked in a wavering voice. Pyro raised his hand and struck her across the face swiftly.
"You know what I mean! I said I would not beat you, but you may push me to it if you insist on playing this game," Mystique flinched as she expected Pyro to hit her again, but this time, the tips of his leather gloves trailed across her cheek. She glared at him defiantly before letting herself go.
Her skin seemed to be burning for the smallest second before the change spread to the tips of her toes. She stood and Pyro took in her appearance with highly interested eyes. Her hair was now down to her waist and flaming red. Her skin, previously stained red with blood, was now a dark gray-blue. Her irises were very dark brown, close to black. Clothes had appeared with her, in the form of a long, neat-fitting white dress.
"I think I may have to go back on my word," Pyro said respectively, his gaze lingering on parts of Mystique's body.
"Now give me my child!" Mystique demanded. Pyro laughed cruelly.
"I cannot do that, you poor woman! I'm afraid your son won't survive what Magneto has in store for him. The best you can do is to leave this castle and never breathe a word. Perhaps you can have a real son now."
"What do you mean, a "real son"?" Mystique asked sharply. Pyro laughed again.
"The baby Magneto has upstairs has no eyes, Mystique. He would have been killed anyway. Do not trouble yourself with him. Go find yourself a new village, if you please." Pyro held the door he had come through open, telling more than inviting. Mystique was halfway through when she shape shifted. Assuming the form of a large grey wolf, she turned and attacked Pyro viciously, leaving him bleeding and moaning on the floor as she galloped through the castle, toward the source of the humming, and her son.
She flew up the stairs and skidded around the corner, flinging herself into the door blocking her from her child. The door splintered into matchsticks and blinding light met Mystique's eyes, stopping her dead in her tracks. With her eyes closed, she snarled horribly. From the images burning through her eyelids, Mystique saw the large figure of who she assumed was Magneto turn toward her and jump in fright.
Mystique's muscles coiled and released fluidly as she sprang at Magneto. She knocked him aside and snatched the baby from his hands, holding it gently in her teeth as she tore back through the castle. She followed her nose to the cool, fresh night air and burst out into the dark German night. She almost fell into the fathoms-deep ravine that was the moat of the castle, built on the mountains. Sliding to an impressive stop, she sprayed pebbles and chunks of turf over the side.
The baby in her jaws bawled pitifully. She wheeled around and galloped off along the side of the castle until she reached the stone causeway descending into the forest. The wolves in the forest howled again, still mourning for their loss of prey and defeat. As Mystique traced a path around them, the baby started crying again, attracting the canines' attention.
She shape shifted back to her blue-skinned form with the baby in her arms and ran for her life. Mystique came to a rope bridge strung high over the roaring, foaming waters of the nearby river. The wolves stopped at the edge of the bridge, wary of it. They snarled and growled, put tentative paws on the rickety planks, and howled when they found she was unreachable. The new mother looked down at her infant. She screamed.
The wolves went wild with the scream, howling and slavering, watching the people hungrily. The alpha wolf put two paws on the board and stretched his blunt, scarred muzzle toward them. Mystique was torn in horror between the approaching wolf and the monster her child was. The baby was blue, like her, but not by skin pigmentation. He had fur. His ears were pointed and legs deformed; they were digigrade. A stubby, spaded tail made itself known as it swished around the child's legs. He opened his mouth to cry and Mystique saw fangs.
The wolf, meanwhile, was four paws and three steps closer to Mystique, who retreated farther toward the middle of the bridge. The wolf growled in frustration, and snapped at the hem of Mystique's dress. The child was born without eyes, but through what Magneto had done to him, he had eyes, all right.
Suddenly, the wolf made up his mind. Mystique had not even a second to glimpse her child's eyes: pure gold with white irises. No pupils. The wolf bounded over the planks at her, and knocked the baby out of Mystique's hands, falling down toward the raging water that threw itself over the side of the mountain in a spectacular waterfall.
"Please, please! No!" the woman screamed as the wolf's teeth snapped together. Her last thought was,
Let my baby live.
In case you didn't know, the baby is Kurt. The song lyrics I used earlier are from Bring Me To Life by Evanescence … but Mystique didn't die, FYI.