f it were a movie, it would be raining.
But it wasn't. Instead, it was a beautiful, sunny, cloudless day when her parents were buried.
It felt like the universe was mocking her.
She stood solemnly, Mason's hand on her shoulder. She blinked, long and hard. She wasn't going to cry. She wasn't going to look so weak in front of a dozen strangers she barely recognized.
Not long after that, she was moved into Mason's apartment, just before the start of school.
Days bled into one another, most spent lying on her new bed, staring up at the foreign ceiling.
Occasionally, Mason could coax her out to have dinner. A conversation, if he was lucky.
Gradually, she ventured out of her room a little more, spoke to her guardian slightly more often.
Started to pick up the pieces.
On the morning of her first day of 8th grade at a new school, Mason stood by the front door, hand hovering over the doorknob. "You ready to go kid?"
Jacelynn walked into view, indigo backpack slung over her shoulder. "Should be."
He scanned her face, and his eyebrows furrowed. "Are your eyes blue?"
"Hopefully. Is it convincing?"
"Yeah, yeah. But why?"
She shrugged. "You were saying that it's important I lie low and don't draw attention to myself, right? Thought it would be best if I didn't have weird eyes."
"That's a good idea, kid. Alright, let's get going so you're not late on your first day."
Satisfied that he took that answer, she followed him out the door. He didn't need to know that looking at the eyes that reminded her of her mother in the mirror made her sick to her stomach.
"Here," Mason had said to her, "Ten bucks. I need you to buy bread on your walk home tonight. You can use the change to buy yourself a treat if you want."
He was trying to cheer her up, she was pretty sure. She'd been doing pretty well with her "pretend everything was okay" facade - but it was her dad's birthday at the end of the week, something she couldn't stop reminding herself. It had put a damper on her streak to say the least.
So with her school bag slung over her shoulders, she waltzed into the little convenience store up the street from their apartment. She had pushed herself pretty hard at gymnastics today, and that combined with her general down mood, she couldn't say she was opposed to a small reward for herself.
She grabbed some of her favourites and was about to head up the counter when she spotted an interesting package - a limited-edition flavour of a candy she happened to enjoy. Her hand was reaching for it when she noticed the price. After a quick mental calculation, she realized she didn't have enough money to get it too.
She was disappointed for a moment, but then a half baked idea popped into her head.
She didn't have to pay for it.
Spurred on by the innate teenage need to rebel and the secret part of her that always hoped to be like her parents one day, she discreetly stuffed it into her backpack. Then, another candy, and another.
Her heart hammered in her chest as she approached the cashier, holding probably half of the product she had on her person. Yet, she managed a genuine polite smile, and returned the cashiers casual small talk without her voice betraying her. Her nerves were starting to get the best of her - each second it took him to count out her change seemed to stretch for an eternity - and she had to steel herself from dashing out of there the second he told her to " have a good day.".
The second the little store is out of sight breaks into a run, giggling to herself as she made her way home. She felt so accomplished, high off of adrenaline and confident.
If this was the rush that she got for doing something so small - what did it feel like getting away with better things?
Maybe she should try her hand at this thing, she thought to herself.
It becomes a hobby, then a habit. Working her way up to larger and larger things - and soon she was a bonafide pickpocket. If she spent the better part of an afternoon at the mall, she was almost always able to walk away with a good hit. She only got caught once, when she was a little overzealous and tried to steal something with an officer just around the corner. She got off with just a warning, at least, and all Mason had to say to her was "Don't draw too much attention to yourself."
Outside of her casual stealing, she maintained the appearance of a normal pre-teen girl. Mostly for her own benefit at school, she couldn't handle being looked at with pity by other students or being seen as fragile by her teachers. She wasn't some five-year-old crybaby, so she put an effort into pretending she was fine now. Back to normal. Did her best to hide the fact that it only took a couple of bad thoughts or a glimpse too long in the mirror to send her into a panicking, sobbing mess. At home it was easier to hide, Mason was too buried in his own work to ever really notice, and when he did pay attention to her it was usually to reprimand her for something - but she had been managing.
She got along decently with her classmates. Of them, she would only call a girl named Evie her friend. They had gymnastics together as well, and sometimes they would get ice cream after, or wander the nearby park. Sometimes Andrew, Evie's boyfriend also in their class would tag along whom she liked a lot less. He was nowhere close to being the most attractive guy in class - at least in Jacelynn's humble opinion - and he had a shitty sense of humour. Considering Evie was a very pretty, talented and outgoing blonde, Jacelynn was beyond convinced Evie could do so much better.
So when, one day alone at the park, the girl asked her to do some "kissing practise", Jacelynn might have been a little too eager to oblige.
In hindsight, that might have been a bad idea.
Jacelynn ended up making two pretty crucial mistakes the following day: the first was ignoring the angry glowers at her from Andrew throughout the day, and ignoring the fact that he and two of his friends just happened to be walking in the same direction. The second was, after having clued in, the fact she stopped, turned around, and asked "Can I help you?".
"Yeah," he replied, "I need you to do something for me,"
"So badly you needed to follow me home?" There were alarm bells going off in the back of her head - this was a side street that was quiet at the best of times, the sun was setting and this kid had a pretty good reason to be mad at her.
"I need you to stay the fuck away from my girlfriend," he said, advancing forward.
"Listen," she sighed, "That was a bad choice and we shouldn't have-"
"I don't care what you have to say you're a disgusting dyke and-"
"What the hell?" she shot back, "That's uncalled for -"
He responded by calling her something worse.
"I didn't make her do shit! She kissed me, probably because you're so bad at it," she barely got the sentence out before he was swinging a fist at her face. It was sloppy, fuelled more by rage then technique, and she easily moved out the way. And she could have left it there, booked it home and put a locked door between them.
But Jacelynn was nothing if not self-destructive.
If they wanted a fight, a fight they were going to get.
So as he stumbled she jammed her elbow into his shoulder and brought her foot up to his knee. When he hit the ground, she turned to the other two.
Jacelynn was not a bad fighter, even at that age - she had been doing martial arts twice a week for the past five years. But she was still young, still learning, and it was three of them against one of her.
She landed good hits - even got one of them square in the nose - but she wasn't going to be able to dodge everything. One bad punch to her stomach had her stumbling backwards into one of them, who grabbed her arms and pinned them behind.
"Clean shots, Andrew," he told him.
She tried to wrench herself free, twist away from his punches - but it was no use. One, two, three good hits to her face, and by the last one that side of her face felt numb. When she opened her eyes her vision was blurry, and there was a sharp pain in her neck from the impact.
"What the hell," she heard one of them say. "What happened to her eyes?"
"They were blue two seconds ago."
"What a fucking freak," she heard Andrew sneer.
She wasn't really sure what happened next - there was a ringing in her ears and she was trying to focus on maintaining an illusion. But one second she was being held up, the next she was being dropped to the ground.
She slumped there, one hand on her head, trying to get her bearings on the situation when she heard footsteps. "Are you alright?" asked a woman's voice.
"...Been better." she got out, as she looked up. A woman stood over her, with red hair and a look more resembling interest than concern. "Who are you?"
"A friend," she replied. "Someone who is like you."
"Like me? In what way?"
"I recognize those eyes, and what they represent," was all she said, sticking a hand down to her. "Come on - do you live near here? Let me walk with you and answer your questions."
Jacelynn paused for a moment. She had already made plenty of bad choices tonight, but what was one more? She took the outstretched hand and let the woman help her up. "What's your name?
"My name is Raven, but the people like us know me better as Mystique."
This Mystique spoke at length to her. Told her she was a mutant too - showed Jacelynn her true form, with blue skin and yellow eyes. Tells her that there were dozens more of them out there - some who looked perfectly normal, and some who had marks that showed their otherness, much like them. She asked her if people had ever bullied her over her eyes before.
"No," she replied honestly, "Never. People sometimes asked me questions but not much else - I think he only insulted them because he was already angry."
"Did your mother have the same sort of eyes as you?"
The mention of her mom caused a stabbing pain in her chest. "Yeah. How did you know?"
"I knew her. We worked together many times. She was a wonderful woman."
"Y-yeah. She was."
"Tell me, Jacelynn. Do you live with a mutant now?"
"No."
"I'd like to help you, Jacelynn. Help you learn and perfect your powers. Would you like that?"
"I would!"
"Excellent," she smiled. "Here's what I'm thinking."
"Jacelynn, you're home late. I - What happened to your face?" Mason questioned as she walked through the door.
She hesitated on exactly how much context she should give. "Um, I uh... Got into a fight."
He sighs, shaking his head. "Come on Jacelynn, use your head! Doing that sort of stuff is only going to draw attention to yourself."
"I know, I know," but I don't know why she thought bitterly, rolling her eyes. She knew from experience though that it was a fruitless endeavour to bring that point up, and she really didn't want an argument tonight.
"Go put some ice on that and get cleaned up. I ordered Chinese and it will be here soon."
Mason never did ask her why she got into a fight. Andrew and his doofus friends also never spilled the beans to the rest of the class - they probably didn't want her to turn around and explain how she really got her bruise. Evie stopped talking to her, which was a bit of a shame, but there were only a few months left of the year. She could survive.
For a little while, she had things outside of school to look forward too. She placed silver in a city gymnastics competition - and Mason seemed happy for her when he came to pick her up although not overly interested. There was a cute boy - who did martial arts around the same time she did - who she started talking to, and he soon became her first official boyfriend. They broke things off amicably not overly long after as he found out he was moving states.
Most of all, she looked forward to meeting with Raven. The woman was a fountain of information - and the overlap of their powers meant she provided really good insight. Jacelynn felt she was improving leaps and bounds in such a short amount of time. Mason was noticeably less thrilled about this whole thing, but begrudgingly agreed to let her go. Likely only because he had met the woman before, through her parents.
So when at the end of one such meeting the woman said she was leaving the city, Jacelynn was genuinely devastated.
"Take this," the woman said, handing her a piece of paper.
Jacelynn unfolded it, "An address?"
"I'll be there at the end of August. If you really want to perfect your powers - your skills - find me there. I'll take you on. Make you a mutant your mother would be proud of."
Naturally, Jacelynn was ecstatic. She raced home and begged Mason to let her do this.
"Are you kidding?" he replied, 'I'm not abandoning my work for two weeks to let you run around with high profile mutants to better something you are never going to use. Besides you -"
"Need to keep your head down," she mocked, "God, you never say anything else! That's your only argument and you never explain yourself! Not once!"
"I don't need to explain myself to a child."
"I'm 14. I am not a kid and I deserve an explanation so I can form my own opinions!"
"I'm not doing this tonight."
"Yes, you are."
"You aren't going and that's final. And for the record, I'm glad she's gone."
"Why," Mason demanded one night, "did I just get a call from your gymnastics coach saying you're suspended from practice for two weeks because of unsuitable behaviour?"
"Suspended for bullshit reasons, actually."
"Answer the question."
"It was so stupid - I thought me and this girl were alone in the change room and I kissed her and then my coach came in and got super mad for no -"
"You WHAT?"
"...Kissed a girl?"
Mason was quiet, and he was looking at her in a way she had never seen him look at her before. "Jacelynn," he asked, "Are you a lesbian?"
"No! Well.. kind of but I like boys so-"
"Oh my god," he turned away from her, shaking his head, "I knew this was going to happen, I never should have let you around that woman."
"What do you mean? Raven? She didn't do-"
"You caught this from her, " he turned back, looking at her once again, "This isn't natural Jacelynn."
"Says who?"
"Society. Common sense. If you start to go down this path -"
"Start?" she laughed, bitterly and angrily, "I've been doing this for a while! I've kissed almost as many girls as I have guys. Which maybe you would have known about if you ever paid attention!"
"Trust me, I'm paying attention now. You are grounded-"
"What?" she protested "That's bull-"
"You are grounded and I am taking you to see someone about this. You are messed up, and you need help."
She leaped to her feet, anger radiating off of her. "No. I. Don't." There was nothing Jacelynn feared and hated more than being seen as weak - she was not about to let him force her into a situation where she would feel like that for hours.
"You will be going, or you won't be living here anymore. And that is final." With that, he left, slamming the door behind him.
She took a few deep breaths, trying to rein in all of the emotions she was feeling at that moment.
Well fuck.
Guess she didn't live here anymore.
Jacelynn spent the next few months on the road. She left the city and headed south. The address she was given was in Mississipi - but she knew it was going to take her a while to get there, considering she had little to no money to speak of.
The streets were a shock to her system at first - she never fully realized the things she took for granted until she was without them - but she adapted quickly. Her powers and her penchant for stealing came in handy there. She was a pretty woman to get the most money from strangers, a strong-looking guy to stay safe in the middle of the night, and a rich blonde when shoplifting because people just didn't seem to want to accuse them of stealing.
It gets to the point where she was changing her gender presentation not only when it was convenient to her but just when she felt the whim. Some days she woke up normally, some days she woke up and felt like walking around as a guy.
She also picked up on another peculiar talent of hers - one that makes people do what she wants when she tells them too - whether they really wanted to or not. That was intriguing, but she learned quickly she needed to be very careful about wording how she spoke in general because she had no idea how to turn it off so to speak.
Almost exactly three months to the date she left, she made it to the door. She had checked and triple checked the address and made sure that she used an illusion that looked like her but a little more presentable than she really was.
Mystique was altogether not unsurprised to see her there, but still pleased. From then on Jacelynn was her protege, learning and honing the crafts of combat and pretending to be other people. They would train, and after a certain point, she would accompany Mystique on the lower stakes missions that her mentor's shadowy boss figure would put them on.
Jacelynn excelled. This was what she was built for, spying and convincing and fighting and beating the absolute shit out of people. Mystique could be harsh at times - she expected perfection and never let Jacelynn forget it. Tough love, with a lot more emphasis on tough than love. But shit, she paid attention to her - she hadn't had an adult figure do that since her parents died. And she couldn't deny the incredible boost of confidence that surged through her when she received her mentor's infrequent praise.
She travelled frequently with her for a year, before Mystique informed her that they were settling down for the long con in a town in New York called Bayville. This meant that she was, unfortunately, going back to school, and she wasn't going to be able to roll out of bed and look like whoever she wanted to anymore.
Gong back to her real appearance was absolutely not an option - she still wanted to break down and cry whenever she caught a glimpse of that her in the mirror - so she had to come with something else. She went with something that looked about as different from herself as possible.
Swapped out straight black hair for brown and wavy; went for a skin tone a few shades lighter, and normal, non-glowing green eyes. From there it was minor adjustments, changing her nose just a little and making herself ever so slightly taller and curvier just because she could.
She practiced keeping it up, and resummoning as similar as possible. She got it down fairly quickly, and that was the Jacelynn she presented to the student body of Bayville High.
Things were relatively quiet and relatively normal for the next few months.
That is until Mystique dropped off a short, foul-smelling alien with a really long tongue, and told her this was her new roommate.
Hope you guys enjoyed the new backstory and updated chapters! Now - the other chapters should be scrubbed clean of any scenes that no longer make sense with the new backstory - but if I missed anything let me know! They will also be getting some minor editing and quality of life changes, but nothing major like this!
If you enjoyed, feel free to leave a review! Constructive criticism is always welcome in my reviews, but so is speculation or whatever the hell you want to leave, haha.
