A/N: This is the last chapter featuring solid backstory. Next up is "present time" with John being an arse.

October 3, 2001 – Sydney Australia

"Hi, Mrs McKenna. It's John."

"Oh, hello John!"

"Um. Is Eddie home?"

"Yes, one moment. – Eden! It's for you!"

John waited to hear the click of Eden picking up the phone in her room.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Eden, it's me."

There was a moment of silence where John could almost hear her gritting her teeth at the other end. Looking out of his bedroom window, he could see the warm light coming from behind the drawn curtains of her room on the second floor, just a stone-throw away from his.

"What do you want?" she asked sharply.

"Look, I have something important to tell you."

"Oh, so now it's okay to tell me things? You didn't think of that after you shoved your tongue down Holly's throat!"

"Hey! I said I was sorry!" John retorted, his temper immediately flaring up, mainly because she was evidently stubbornly holding onto her already two-week long grudge.

"I fucking hate Holly and you know it!" Eden nearly shrieked, making him jerk the receiver from his head to keep his hearing intact.

"Will you calm down!" he shouted back.

Looking over to her house, he saw her silhouette stalk over to her window to fiercely pull away the curtains to glare at him through the pane of glass.

"I thought I could trust you!"

He could see her breath fogging up a patch on her window. She was no calmer than the last time they'd talked. Or attempted to talk.

"I thought that was part of the bloody package deal when you had a best friend."

"Eddie, I'm still your best friend---"

"No! Best friends don't kiss their enemies! They just don't!"

"So my apology means nothing to you?"

"Not really, no."

"You're being unreasonable."

"Unreasonable? Fuck you, John Allerdyce. There, how's that for being unreasonable?"

That night, John didn't get to say what he wanted to tell her. She hung up on him and gave him the finger before yanking her curtains closed and leaving him there in his darkened room, with the dial tone ringing through his head.

He hadn't gone to that party at Finn's with the intention to hook up with Holly, Eden's (and by affiliation, also his) sworn enemy. It just happened. How the hell was he supposed to know that they'd both end up taking the wrong turn to the bathroom? How was he to know that the only thing that his fourteen-year old mind could think of to fill the vacuumed silence with, was to kiss her back? Because despite whatever Eden had yelled at him, he hadn't been the one to initiate the kiss. It had been Holly. But then the part where he didn't push her away, didn't call her a slut and didn't run screaming in the opposite direction made him just as guilty.

And of course, with his luck, Finn just had to yank the bedroom door open. John didn't even know how it had closed, but was willing to bet money that it'd been Holly's work. Then, obviously, as they were all a bunch of immature and pimple-faced fourteen-year-olds, the word of John and Holly making out in Finn's parents' bedroom! spread like a goddamned bushfire.

Inevitably, the combination of his guilt-ridden silence and the quick flapping of lip-glossed mouths, got the juicy story to Eden McKenna's ears earlier than he'd wanted. And so, two weeks of arguing and defiant silences followed.

Arguments and silences that did little to help him with another problem that had added to his already teetering pile of troubles.

Something had happened to him. Far beyond stupid things like zits, having the right shoes and chest hair (which he, for the record, didn't have and didn't want).

John could control fire. Or rather, he could do things to fire that definitely weren't normal. Saying that he could fully control it would be a bit of a stretch. The incident with his father's glowing cigarette and favourite ashtray exploding on the coffee table being perfect proof of how far his "control" went.

Nevertheless, he had needed Eden. Gabriel had spent a majority of the past few months in hospital due to his bad condition. And with no car, and no money to take the bus to visit him, John had gradually lost touch with his other best friend.

But with his stupid mistake with the even stupider and manipulative Holly Connelly left him without Eden as well.

She'd refused to give him an opportunity to properly apologise for exchanging spit with Holly, tell her about his power and more urgently let her know that he was leaving the following day.

Apparently, according to some bloke called Charles Xavier, John was a mutant. And apparently, there was a place for people like him to be safe from people who, for some reason, hated mutants. And although John knew that his parents didn't know how the ashtray had exploded or why they one day found burn marks on the hallway carpet, he knew that they'd be livid if they knew. They weren't exactly the accepting kind of people.

Early the morning after Eden had hung up on him, when his mother was still in bed and his father was still drooling down the living room couch, John snuck out of the creaking front door of their house. With a backpack stuffed with his necessary belongings, he shuffled down the strip of concrete that lead from their front porch to the sidewalk. Looking down the street, he remembered the first time he sat there, hearing Gabriel's squeaky five-year-old voice say hello to him.

John glanced over his shoulder to the house next to his. The McKenna's were all fast asleep, just like Mr and Mrs Allerdyce. But somehow, their house seemed more peaceful. John bit the inside of his cheek.

He'd tried to write her a letter, trying to say everything that he couldn't get through to her over the phone or face to face. He'd started it out with the usual 'Dear Eden' but soon found it to sound too cheesy, too made-up, too not like him. John Allerdyce wasn't the letter-writing kind of guy.

Hitching his backpack up on his shoulder, he felt his bracelet slide down a bit on his forearm. A few days after Gabriel and Eden's thirteenth birthday, when he'd given her the silver bracelet, she had gone out to get him one as well. She'd said that it was a little corny, but that it made sense at the time. Said that they needed something that was just between the two of them, without Gabriel. He wouldn't have needed an explanation, but he was glad for it none the less.

Hearing the soft purr of an approaching car coming from down the street, John tore his eyes from the neat house that he'd probably spent more time in than his own. The car was a small, black sporty one. The kind that Holly Connelly's dad kept in his garage just to look at or occasionally take on a spin when the weather was just right.

Pulling up, a black-tinted window was rolled down and a shock of white hair popped out before he saw a dark-skinned face smile up at him.

"Are you St. John?"

John nodded silently, feeling incredibly out of place. But the woman just kept on smiling. A little like Mrs McKenna, he thought.

"I'm Ororo Munroe. The jet is waiting just a few minutes out of town."