Her animosity towards them only grew with time. They did this to her, were doing this to her. She wasn't quite sure what to call them yet, couldn't think of a word to fully match their evilness, so neutral pronouns would have to do for now.

But one day, she awoke to a different scene. She was still chained in her cell, too weak to move, to open her eyes, to do anything. At first, Sarah had thought she was dying, maybe she was already dead? Her hopes were soon dashed by the sounds of screams, of death. The sounds weren't from the same voices she had grown accustomed to, so it must have been coming from them. But how? Who could possibly overpower them?

Sarah's questions were soon answered, as her cell door was opened. She tried her very best to move, get away, do something, anything! She was so sure that it was them, finally come to finish her off, finish what they had started, before whatever had overpowered them could get to her too.

Much to her surprise, she was wrong, as the chains around her arms came off fairly easily. Whoever found her had a key, which didn't bode well for her. However, Sarah found herself being lifted by gentle arms and held in a warm embrace. She was able to open her eyes for a moment, and catch a glimpse of a man's face, surrounded by silver hair, a shade similar to her own. The energy the simply action took caused her to fall into unconsciousness once more, but this time, she would awaken somewhere safer.

"No, no, no! Shit! Stay awake, please!"

When Sarah finally awoke, she was far more, comfortable, than she had expected to be. Quickly regaining her senses, she realized she was in a bed in a strange house. Confused and afraid, she quickly tried to run as fast as she could to get away from the unfamiliar and possibly dangerous place, only to fall and let out a scream of pain. Oh yeah, she'd forgotten about the whole experimentation and dissection thing. How the hell had she forgotten that?

She didn't have much time to think about it, because almost as soon as she had screamed she had been lifted up and tucked back into bed by someone who was apparently just as fast as her, if not faster. Thinking about it, they were probably faster. When she got a good look at him, she noted the long silver hair and realized that this must be the man that had saved her from the lab.

"You shouldn't push yourself, you're hurt." The man told her, giving her a quick once-over for any injuries.

"I'll be fine." Sarah stubbornly crossed her arms. Sure, this man had saved her, but she didn't know if she could trust him yet. She didn't want to look weak, although she was sure that she did anyway.

"Hopefully." The man muttered under his breath, as if he hadn't wanted her to hear it, before going to leave.

"Wait!" Sarah called after him, causing him to stop and turn to face her with a quirked eyebrow.

"What?" He asked.

"What's your name?" Sarah inquired, causing a smirk to rise on the man's face, as if he was famous or something.

"Peter Maximoff."

"Sarah Orville." She replied, knowing that it would be polite to introduce herself back. For some reason, the reply caused him to falter, but his cocky expression soon made its way back onto his face. Sarah doubted that anyone else could have caught it, it was so fast.

"Nice to meet you, Sarah."

Peter ran off. Sarah still had no idea who he was, or even if she was meant to know.

Peter took good care of her, although Sarah wasn't sure why he bothered. He kept her alive, fed her, tended to her wounds, gave her medicine if he felt that she needed it, he even let her have a bath. Not a shower though, he was worried she might get hurt. At least he felt like it would be too creepy if he helped her, so he let her get clean on her own. Sarah appreciated that. He was still more or less a stranger, anyway, and was old enough to be her dad.

He had some spare clothes for her, said he'd borrowed some of his sisters. They had both outgrown them now, so he was sure they wouldn't mind. Neither really wore anything that particularly appealed to Sarah, but she was just glad to have some clean clothes. She hadn't changed her own in years, literally.

Eventually she felt well enough to wander around the house, which Peter luckily allowed her to do, which was good because Sarah hated being cooped up in one place for too long. It just got so boring after a while! Sadly, she still wasn't allowed to run, Peter was afraid that she might re-open her wounds, which still hadn't completely healed. Sarah understood why, but that didn't mean that she had to be happy about it.

It was while she was exploring while Peter was out that she found a file. It had her name on it, but it definitely wasn't the one she had taken from the orphanage. No, this one was from somewhere else, but where? Checking to make sure that Peter was still out as quickly as she could, and cursing the fact that she couldn't use her powers as she did so, she felt confident enough that she was alone to open it.

The lab. That was where the file was from. The pictures that poured out of it the moment she opened it proved that, although the stamp on the front should have been enough. It did match the one of her wrist, after all.

Sarah couldn't bring herself to look at the pictures, so she shoved them to the side and read through the file. She had to skip some of the descriptions of experimentation as they brought back, bad memories. But one thing in particular caught her eye. A blood test. They had apparently noticed many similarities between herself and another mutant, Quicksilver, otherwise known as Peter Maximoff, the man who had saved her.

They had somehow managed to get a blood sample off of him, although if Sarah understood what she was reading, they had never managed to actually capture him, so she did wonder how they had managed it. But they compared the DNA samples they gathered from it to samples they had from her own blood, which of course they had taken.

They matched, 100%. Quicksilver was her father. Peter Maximoff was her father.

"Oh shit." Was his exact reaction when he walked in to see Sarah frozen, holding the file. When she finally turned to look at him, she had an ice cold look in her eyes.

"Was I not good enough?" She asked, causing him to give her a confused look. He had read the file, of course he had, who wouldn't? It was the entire reason he had taken it – to find out who she was, why she was like him! Exactly like him. But that didn't mean he understood her question.

"What?"

"Was I not good enough?" She repeated, slowly, as if she was mocking him. Peter had a feeling that she wasn't, considering the tears which were now rolling down her cheeks in waves.

"I don't-" He began, before being cut off.

"Is that why you didn't want me? Why you left me?" The sentence was choked by her oncoming sobs, the inevitability of which she tried her best to avoid. But Peter understood what she was saying. He had felt the exact same way when he had met his own birth father. Honestly, he never thought he'd be on the other end of that argument. It sucked.

"Sarah, you have to listen-"

"No, I don't!" She yelled, standing up so quickly that her chair went flying back, which caused Peter to fuss over her injured as he was struck with worry, only for her to push him away. "Why didn't you want me?!" She finally asked, breaking down into the hysteria of sobs.

"…I didn't know you existed." It was a lame excuse, Peter knew that, but it was the truth.

The next few years didn't go by like they would in a movie montage. There was no fun looking and adorable father-daughter bonding. At least, not right away.

Sarah stopped trusting him for a while after that, but Peter understood. He had to, he had been in a similar spot to herself, so he could empathise. But he wouldn't be like his dad, he wouldn't turn her into a weapon, he would try and give her the loving, caring family that he deserved. She just needed to accept him first.

So, Peter began his quest to try and gain her trust. Not necessarily her love, he knew that he couldn't force that, it was something that would have to happen naturally. But he needed her to know that he wasn't a threat; to believe that he hadn't known about her until he had found her that day in the laboratory.

What he did was fairly simple. He made sure that she was getting better, made her food to the best of his abilities, which usually meant calling for take-out, he let her play video games, and even taught her how to improve her running once she was better.

Once they had bonded some more, he took her outside, let her play in the park like a real kid should, ran around with her a little. Sure, she wasn't a kid anymore, but from what she'd told him she hadn't had much of a childhood, so he was going to give her as much as he could of one now.

They opened up to each other too. They told each other how they'd discovered their powers, what it was like growing up, their family, or lack thereof. Peter told her about Erik, and how he had been in a similar situation to her, along with his twin sister, Wanda. That seemed to shock Sarah, and from her change of approach afterwards, he thought that it may have made her trust him more. He would be right in thinking that, too.

Eventually, they even began to try and figure out who her mother could possibly be. Peter had an idea, but quickly dismissed it. After all, surely she, of all people, would have told him if she was pregnant, or even had a child that she thought may have been his. Hell, Sarah had said that she'd had silver hair for as long as she can remember, so it was likely that she'd known since Sarah was born! That was, assuming that it was her.

The idea of being a parent never appealed much to Peter, and he couldn't say that he felt the instant connection and love to Sarah that so many people said they felt when they first saw their child. But then again, he hadn't been at her birth, and he'd missed so much of her life that it didn't even surprise him. But the love, the connection, it developed. A bond was slowly weaved between them, and Peter was sure that it was so much more magical then any instant love for a baby could have ever been.

The moment he knew that he had been caught in the web? It was simple, really. He never knew that one word, one simple, innocent, slip of the tongue, could have such an effect on him.

"Hurry up, dad!"

They had always been a strange term in Sarah's mind. She used it for a lot of people, people that weren't like her, that didn't understand, that ridiculed people like her for something so completely out of their own control. Perhaps out of jealousy, perhaps out of spite. Sarah never quite understood, but it was probably different with each of them.

However, it wasn't something she had ever thought about enough to be able to give them a better name. She knew the difference between species, between humans and animals, and humans and mutants. They was a term she usually bestowed onto humans, since she hadn't really known any mutants until she met her dad, and her mutation didn't allow her to communicate with animals, so she didn't know what they thought or said. But she had never truly believed that all humans could be a part of them. Surely some could see the light?

Ironically, it hadn't been Peter that had showed her the truth, although technically he did, indirectly. How? Through introducing her to his mother, her grandmother, Magda. She was human, and had 4 mutant children (counting Anya, her first child who had died in a house fire caused by them). She had even married a mutant man, Erik Lehnsherr, or Magneto, who apparently hated humans, which was also odd, considering that he married one. She proved to her that all humans weren't them, that some were better than that.

Some mutants were a part of them too. Sarah had heard of them, mutants that used their abilities to murder their own kind just because they thought that their existence was wrong. Luckily, they were far and few between, so they weren't much of a threat anyway. Not that they would be able to catch her.

Sarah was glad that Peter had found her, had saved her, in more ways than one. She finally had a family, a home, what she had been dreaming of her entire life, even if she had been too hard-headed to admit it, even to herself.

Her family – Peter, Magda, Wanda, Lorna - they had shown her the light, and she would not return to the darkness. Not again. Never again.

"...Hey, dad?"

"Yeah?"

"Mercury use to be called Quicksilver, right?"

"...Yeah, why?"

"That's what I want my name to be."

"What?"

"Mercury. The new name for Quicksilver."

"Oh, come here you little shit."

So this is the end of Mercury! Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! If you have any tips that may help me improve my writing, please leave them as constructive criticism in the comments!

Also, in case anybody's wondering, you can imagine whichever version of the characters you want while reading this. The years are mainly a guideline to show the passing of time and how the main character of these stories changes over the years, but in this case they do show which version of these characters I was thinking of while writing, which is the X Men movie-verse. Although feel free to imagine whichever versions you want! Just remember to adjust the years accordingly ;)

Once again, thanks for reading, and remember to check out Redonkgirl who was a huge help in creating this story! I hope you have a great day (or night, whatever xD)