Looking Through Your Eyes
A/N: This is an AU with most of the X-Men: Evolution characters sprinkled in. There may be some huge differences in personality and character, so don't flame me for that. I'm just trying to fit them into the story. This is set in Northbrook, Illinois. Mostly shown from Lance's point of view.
Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men: Evolution. It belongs to Marvel and every other legal person who claims they own it.
Prologue
Eight-year-old Lance closed his eyes shut, hugging his pillow close to his person. He could hear his parents yelling. They had gotten increasingly worse over the years. Sometimes, they would just fight for the sake of fighting. This had broken Lance's young heart as he witnessed a happy family slowly crumbled into pieces. Even his baby sister, who was only a year younger than him, was catching on to the fact that something was wrong in their home.
"Lance?" Light filtered into the room.
The young boy hastily rubbed his face to prevent his sister from seeing the tearstains. As an older brother, it was his duty to be strong for her, and also to protect her.
"Hey, Tati, why aren't you in bed?" he asked, sitting up, the pillow set on his lap.
"When are mommy and daddy gonna stop fighting?" Tatiana asked. She had a sad frown on her face as she stood at the doorway, one hand on the doorknob.
The fact that Tatiana kept coming to his room during the nights when they were supposed to be in bed grew even more frequent. Just like their parents' fights.
"I dunno, Tati," he said.
"I can't sleep with all the yelling," she said, looking helpless under the light from the hallway. Her tanned skin looked pale.
"D'you wanna sleep with me tonight?" he asked, scooting to the side slightly.
"Okay," she said. She closed the door behind her and got into bed with her brother, clutching a teddy bear close to herself. "Lance?"
"Yeah, Tati?"
"I want things to go back to the way they were. I want mommy and daddy to stop fighting," she said sadly.
"Me too, Tati, me too," he said, his eyes on the last family photo of them happy.
Years passed by. When Lance was ten, his parents filed for divorce. Rick and Helen Alvers were required to separate for 365 days and see where things would go from there. But by the time he was eleven, things still hadn't changed. Their minds were made up, and by the end of June, he was living with his father and his girlfriend, whom he had met during the separation, while Tatiana went with his mother.
His father's girlfriend soon became his step-mom when Lance was thirteen. And for a while, he thought he could stand her. But after a while, it just became downright annoying. She was trying so hard to make him like her that it was almost pathetic. Lance looked for every opportunity to be out of the house.
Meanwhile, his close relationship with his sister pretty much crumbled after his mother decided to move back to her parents in a suburbia area of Northbrook. They used to see each other all the time but now it was reduced to a couple of times every few months, not counting the times he saw her in grade school and middle school. There were times when he would go down to visit, but other than that, nothing. His sister was having a great life with their mom and step-dad Jeff Jenson. She was pretty much oblivious to the hidden torment that Lance was living in as she continued to be a cheerful, happy, bouncy person who was also on the cheerleading squad.
In high school, he was pretty much the popular bad boy with a well-off background. A very rare combination, he mused once. He had everything he ever wanted thanks to his father's business. And because of that, he obeyed his father's wishes. Except for one thing: basketball. He couldn't understand his father's fixation with the game.
His rivalry with schoolmate Scott Summers considerably worsened over the years especially after he started pining away for Lance's long-term girlfriend, Marie Darkholme, best friend of the head cheerleader, Jean Grey. At first, their rivalry was based on playground innocence back when they were ten. At Northbrook Grade School, there was a tradition every year that their fellow students would vote on who would be king of the playground. It was all about the popularity and the privileges that came with their parents' name, both very recognized names in Northbrook.
Then there was Katherine Pryde, Scott Summer's best friend, who just also happened to be the smartest girl in school. But by being Scott Summers' best friend, she too ended up at the bottom.
Other than that, he had another half-sibling on the way. His three-year-old half brother was an annoying little puking monster. Lance was forced to baby sit him on a fairly regular basis. He did manage to slip out of babysitting duties a few times. But other than that, it was a no-go. Marie was a huge help of course. She came by every time and just seemed to be a natural with kids.
By sophomore year, Lance Alvers knew one thing: his life was almost perfect, if only he could have his family back. But if he had known that his life would spiral out of control for the rest of his junior year, he would have done anything in his power to stop it.