Shadows and Sparks

**This is my first completed X-Men story - it's divided into seven parts, the story of an OC as she searches for her identity.**

**I did a lot of research into juvenile detention centers and adoption procedures (even if it doesn't show), but I don't have any personal experience with anything like that so I apologize in advance for any mistakes or discrepancies.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned X-Men, I wouldn't be writing fanfiction about it :)**

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Part One

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It was an accident, honestly, but no one else seems to see it that way.

It was a school day like any other – trudging through lessons hoping that maybe if I learn enough, I can escape this endless cycle of inconsequence and ending and the next home and the next family but never really a home and never really a family. I was walking out of the building, heading for the art room so I could eat lunch while working on that project I needed to hand in at three, and it seemed so important and pressing and I was worrying, and now it just seems so stupid.

I was almost across the courtyard – just a few more feet, if I had been walking just a bit faster maybe it never would have happened – when Jerard York and his entire posse of roughousing, laughing teenage boys – and girls, led by one Jamie York – remembered that social norms dictated he point out my shortcomings to the rest of the world.

I have no explanation for his need to tear me down, but maybe it has to do with the very obvious fact that I don't belong in this school. No matter where I go, I'm singled out and I don't belong, and I'm never sure if it's because of the people estranging me or if it's because I really don't. Sometimes it doesn't matter, but to Jerard and Jamie, they feel that strange obligation to make sure I knew just how strange I am. By now, I'm used to it, even if it still makes me cringe down into my collar and try to ignore them and that prickling on the backs of my hands that appears whenever I want to hide in a dark closet and block out the screams.

And I guess I thought that it would be like any other day – pause a minute, let them laugh their insults and make themselves feel secure that they have a place and I don't – but then the first blow fell and I realized very quickly that it was different.

I don't know why it happened; it was all a blur. I think that maybe he was a little too high on the approval from his peers, or maybe she didn't like how I had not-looked at her that morning in homeroom, or maybe it was just bound to happen eventually.

All I remember is that suddenly I was knocked sideways into a tree, and something was bright and wet on the back of my head, and my back was light where I used to have a bag, and I was breathing hard and trying not to hyperventilate, and my father was there screaming and my mother was there dead, and I didn't want it to happen again, and someone was coming for me with a hand drawn back to hit, and something snapped and I wouldn't let myself be hurt and then they were screaming and stumbling back and I looked down and my hands were scorching prints into the stone.

When they calmed me down enough to bring me back inside, the police were waiting for me and their eyes told me I had done something criminal.

They tell me I attacked Jerard and Jamie, and I am suspended indefinitely now because I'm a danger to the students – but really we know it's because the two students have a father on the school board. They don't listen when I tell them it's an accident, and they don't say anything about mutants but I know that's the reason they can't understand that sometimes teenage girls are just children with fears like everyone else, not killers who want to attack everyone who is not like them.

And I don't know what's going to happen to me, because no one is listening to what I'm trying to say – which isn't much of a change from normal, but at least then it was because I was inconsequential and irritating, not because I am dangerous and feared.

Yvonne and Parker look at me like I'm a cockroach they brought into the house thinking it was a puppy. I've seen resentment and irritation and apathy and regret and even downright hatred in the eyes of my various families over the years, but never anything like this. Never fear and disgust and some sort of twisting curling guilt-hate-revulsion that makes me want to skin this filth off myself and hide in a hole where no one can ever look at me again.

It was an accident, I tell them, but it doesn't matter. They've already decided what I did.

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Part Two

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The ceiling is a dull dirt beige and the single light flickers every seventh and eleventh second. The concrete bed is uncomfortably warm on the backs of my naked thighs. Cool air kisses my hairless head and I stare at the ceiling, watching that light and wondering if that's what I look like to others – flickering bright-not-bright, useless.

I have lost track of time somewhere after the fourth time I startled awake in the dull light, and I'm hopelessly bored but I don't try to sleep.

I know that eventually they'll be here with a jumpsuit and a tray for breakfast, even if I have to wait hours for the distinctive footsteps to pause beside my cell door. Until then, I just stare at the light and try not to think about all the things I miss – and, like most other things I try not to think about, that is all that enters my mind.

Sunshine. Wind. Chocolate. Food that's not liquid, food that's not hot, food that's not bland and tasteless and sparse. Losing myself in a math problem. Reading books. Even Jerard and Jamie and their taunts, because that was real and I knew where I stood with them.

I haven't seen other kids my age for six weeks. Only the three guards who escort me to class, and the teacher-shrink who sits in there with me and pretends she doesn't have a taser in her desk drawer as she trys to teach me what I already know.

I know that there are others here, but they're all normal and messed-up and they don't want me to interact with them because I'm the only really _dangerous_ one in the building.

The psychiatrist tells me I need to integrate this part of me, this firey burning need to hurt others, and she doesn't listen when I tell her I can't control it, and that it's just as much a part of me as my hands or my eye color. She doesn't believe me when I say that I don't have urges to burn the world down – once I said that even if I wanted to, I couldn't, but all she did was put her hand a few inches closer to the desk drawer.

I can see in her eyes the wish to shut the door and lock it and leave me in the dark forever – I won't let that happen again, never again, so I fight tooth and nail to make her believe I'm not a lost cause. She is _afraid_ of me, doesn't want anything to do with me, and I'm not used to that, even though I should be by now, after six weeks and a lonely cell and before that, nine years and eight families and too many dark closets to count.

They don't let me have anything I could burn – so no books, no clothes, not even any music. No cards, no toilet paper, nothing I could hurt myself with, they say, but really I know that they know I can't burn and they want to prevent me from hurting others – I say I don't want to hurt anyone but they can't believe that.

I just sit here and stare at the light flickering and the embers flickering on my skin and the blackened concrete from when I had nightmares and I couldn't be awake to calm the heat in time and the blackened concrete from when I was too angry to care.

They say they want to help me get back to the real world, they want to help me get better, but we all know that there's no getting better from this, no fixing me, and they really just want to keep me away from the rest of the normal people in the world – too scared to care.

Eighteen weeks from now, when my time's up and I get to go back into the world, they're not going to believe me when I say I can't control it, I'm not malicious, I'm just this way. They've already decided that I'm not who I say I am.

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Part Three

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I had expected to go back into the system, find some family that cares more about the money than the mutation, never having any hope of a home now that I've both been branded mutant and been in juvenile secure confinement for six months – the man waiting for me in the front lobby is more of a surprise than the glowing skin that's snuck up on me when I least expect it.

They tell me he's adopted me, that the process is being completed as we speak, that I have a home to go back to and I won't have to leave ever again, but all I can hear is the rushing in my ears that signals I'm about to light up – I'm too upset, too surprised, too afraid, and I can't control it, not when I'm like this.

The prickling begins on the back of my hands, like it always does, but before it can take over and make me spark and scorch, I hear a voice in my head telling me it'll be alright, I'll be safe, he's one too, just calm down. I stare at the man, even more unsettled when I realize that he was _in my head_ but it did the trick and I'm not in danger of burning out of my clothes any more, even if the prickling hasn't stopped.

He introduces me to a boy just a few years younger than me – says he's my brother now, that we're all going to be alright, and the kid is wide-eyed and scared-looking and pale and he reminds me of myself except those eyes – hoping, praying, believing, optimistic, even past all the darkness he's seen and isolation and fear.

I want those eyes to be my own with every spark of my soul, but I know it'll never happen. Nothing like that will ever happen to me – not how it works, is it? I don't get the luck, and I don't get the love. All I get is mistrust and isolation and dark closet doors shut on screams.

The sympathetic look that man sends me makes me want to scream and burn the world down, even though I can't, and I shouldn't want to, not when something good has happened to me for the first time in my long sixteen years, but isn't it funny? I tell them I'm not dangerous, not angry, not going to burn anything – six months, six months of reassurance and disbelief – and the moment I get out and have a chance at happiness that's exactly what happens.

I'm not sure why, I don't think I'll ever be sure, but maybe it's just the way they have everything I never can.

They did everything right and legal, and when we get to the house he tells me that I won't have to worry ever again because they won't ever abandon me or send me back – I want to believe him, I do, I really do, but they've told me that before and, granted, no one ever tried adoption, but I'm in too deep to trust anyone on that now.

They say I'll be safe here. They say I won't be judged on how I burn when I'm upset and scared and angry, I won't have to hide my light from the world, I'll be included and loved for who I am, now that I'm part of the family here.

He knows I don't believe them, but he says nothing and just lets me work through it on my own, and I think I might be grateful for that, but I've been alone for too long and I'm not really sure how gratitude works anymore. All I had for six months were my thoughts and me, and now there's a man who wants both, and I don't know what I'm going to _do._

I don't speak until they show me to my room and say that I'll meet the family tomorrow – the ones who don't have anyone to go back to, who live at the school always because they have no choice but to be among their own kind – and then I only say thank you and good night and I'll see you in the morning, all the while wondering how these people could think they know me.

They've dealt with abandoned children, those who were hurt and abused because of what they are, those who don't have anything left, those who came on their own with a past haunting them, those who were searching for a family, those who thought they'd never find it the way they were – but I'm not those things. I don't have their scars. I have mine – from screaming and hurt and alone and dark closet doors locking me safe and away before the spark ever lit in me – and if he knows that then why is he treating me like I want to be accepted for my mutation?

They think they know me, and I don't know if I should just let them think that because maybe it doesn't matter who I am, if everyone just keeps telling me that I'm someone I'm not.

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Part Four

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Everything's fallen apart and I guess I should have known it would happen eventually. It always does.

I'm sitting here in the fourth row, end chair, watching as we all mourn the beloved telepath. He knew me, and I guess he was the only one who ever did, but I can't bring myself to grieve because I've thought death was too good for him for a while now.

He's been in too many people's heads, messed with stuff that he has no business seeing, let alone touching, like George the third father who didn't care that I was just nine years old and fresh from the country. Anyone who can do whatever they want, no repercussions, can't be allowed to stay happy. It broke me inside that I didn't want him to have the life I never had, because I knew I was a bad person to want that but then there was the other part of me, the part that hated him every time he tried to comfort me after nightmares like he knew them just because he saw them, the part that wanted him to burn for every thought he ever stole.

I know I'm broken. I know I don't belong here, don't deserve people who accept me and like me and even love me, because I've never deserved it and that's why I never got it.

I know that, but I still don't want to change, I don't want to care about this man who's dead because he messed with the wrong mind – because caring would hurt me and I haven't cried in eleven years and I'm not going to start now.

This was nice, for a while, being somewhere where I could light up and play family and pretend people liked me for who I am, but in the end it never lasts, and long before the telepath died I realized that this isn't where I belong.

They're all broken here, but in ways too foreign for me to understand. They're broken and healing, broken from grief and loss and love, broken from trying to hold on for too long, broken from hate and lost defenses. They're not broken from dark rooms and shouting and hatred and abandonment and hiding in the shadows and trying to fit in and never succeeding no matter how hard they try and always being _never good enough_.

They all want to be better, and I'm still just trying to survive.

The students are nice here, most of them, except for the ones who look at me and see someone already gone, someone with no hope, someone who is trying but not hard enough – the ones who see me and compare me inevitably to the one who left, those are the ones I fear. They're the ones who've seen someone go through this all before, the wanting, the trying, the failing, the anger, the fire burning in the eyes.

They're the ones who know there's no hope for me, and I hate them and fear them and if I cried, it would have been for them because they know the truth about me and I hate that.

Too many people have died here. More are going to die before this ends. I'm not precognitive – all I can do is burn – but I've seen things like this even if they've never been quite so mortal.

The day is beautiful, like it is mocking the death we've all seen, and I know that they must feel cheated out of their moment of pathetic fallacy, their moment of grief being reflected by everything and everyone – because we all loved him, even me, even when I hated him – but I think it is fitting.

The world doesn't care about us.

Even when we can control the weather and the sea and the rocks beneathe our feet, we are just little spots of light in a sky full of stars.

We all think we're important, but I know that we're not. We are nothing more than our own delusions, and maybe that's why we always need other people to tell us who we are.

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Part Five

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Watching it on television now, I don't remember what I was thinking.

It had been a regular day, just school and training and trying not to feel like I should be somewhere else where I don't have to hide all my wounds from the peering eyes of my fellow mutants, and nothing happened that hadn't happened before.

And yet, I wasn't content to stay and walk in the garden – I had to leave campus and go out to try and walk in the beautiful city park that is filled with humans and mutant-haters alike.

Maybe I wanted to feel normal, maybe I wanted to feel special, maybe I just wanted to hide, but for whatever reason I found myself strolling under beautiful oak trees, passing couples and children and old men playing chess, thinking about nothing and just feeling the sun on my face.

I never expected anything to go wrong.

When the man fell into step beside me, I thought it was just someone trying to pass, so I slowed and stepped aside in an effort to be polite. He just stayed with me, though, and that was when I knew something was wrong.

I didn't know where I had seen his face before, but I knew that he was familiar from somewhere, and I remember wondering how someone so plain, so normal, could inspire such a rush of excitement in my soul. Somewhere inside, I knew who he was, even if I didn't know in my waking thoughts. I knew that this was someone who would burn the world down if he could, and all I wanted was to get away and stay close and burn brightly for everyone to see.

He smirked, like he knew what I was thinking, but he didn't because I knew even in that moment that he wasn't a telepath. He started to talk about mutants and the professor and the school and shouldn't a young lady like myself be there, safe, not walking around where any _human_ could see and hurt and hate.

His words drew attention from another man, this one older and too familiar not to know, and if I hadn't known who this man was before, I knew now, and I stepped back into the grass, feeling fear light my insides on fire.

I thought he was gone forever, fixed and broken and set down to be everything he ever hated, but he just smiled at my words and asked if I ever truly thought mutation could be defeated by mere humanity, my dear.

And I thought they were going to hurt me, but they just wanted to talk, they said – and maybe if I hadn't listened, it never would have happened – and as they herded me down the path, one on either side of me, a group of humans must have noticed us for what we were.

One man, a large one wearing a t-shirt and shorts too big for him, with tattoos betraying a hardness of heart and a smile betraying a hardness of mind, he came for me spitting insults, raised hand to hurt me.

The fear that had calmed when I felt safe with these two men started up, raging in ways I hadn't felt for years, and that raised hand and large man made me think of things best left in the dark of my memory, and the fire lit me up like a living coal, scorching my clothes to ashes and smoking the grass like a campfire sputtering out.

I remember freezing in fear, lost in the fire of my fear and this overwhelming loss of control, really afraid for the first time in years, and then I remember him on the ground, screaming, as a fire crawled over his clothing and spread around to his friends.

I think I was screaming, but I don't remember actually making a sound – this broadcast has the sound of my screams, so I think that it might have happened that way.

Then I remember being back at the gates of the school, fire out, looking lost and feeling safe in someone's long black coat covering my naked body.

And now I am sitting in the common room with that same coat in my lap, watching the entire episode play out on grainy cellphone video, as I scream and burn and the man next to me brings the fire to the other humans, and the newscaster states that the mutant terrorist known as Pyro has taken responsibility for the entire incident, stating that it was a warning to the Human Rights Activists who had burned down a mutant's house in California earlier in the week.

His statement says nothing about an unstable X-Man who lost control at the sight of the hate in the man's eyes, and everyone is just assuming that the woman who burned on tape was just another unfortunate victim of the attack.

I hold the soft fabric tight in my hands and watch as someone shields me from what I need to be shielded from, and watch as the coat doesn't burn in my lit grasp, and remember how it feels to know that someone is looking out for me.

They knew how much it meant to me not to be caught losing control, and they took all the blame to the detriment of their own goals. Something so inconsequential for anyone else means the world to me.

For some reason, these two mutant terrorists who have killed more people than were ever in my many families are the only ones who have ever made me feel like I am fine the way I am.

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Part Six

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We've all known this day was coming, since the first moment I stepped foot in this place and felt alone.

These people, all of us, we tried to pretend that it could last, that I could be changed, that I could heal, but all the while we knew deep down that it wasn't meant to be.

I know that they're going to find my empty room in the morning, everything gone like I was never there, and they're going to be sad but resigned because you can't cage a flame in a place where it doesn't belong.

She'll close her eyes and feel that wave of sadness that there was another one she couldn't save, he'll shake his head and give a sad smile and know that there was nothing he could have done, he'll rage and try to go after me and realize later that it was all useless, she'll feel that ache deep inside and try to hide it with a smile and a touch and try to ignore that she feels exactly the same way, he'll remember the time it happened before and he had to tear apart his friendship because some people just can't be healed. They'll all mourn, but they'll know that it was inevitable, and eventually they'll move on – really, I was never that important to them anyway.

But I can't care about them now, and I never belonged there so there is no reason why I should. They never knew what makes me tick, they never understood the depth of lonliness and abandonment and how deep that mistrust really runs, they never tried hard enough and neither did I so we're both at fault and, really, no one is.

I look at the sky and the stars and pick out the one I always felt was me – in the future or in the past, that star is me – and find the ones around it that no longer seem to crowd away, but now stand around in solidarity, broken-beating hearts knowing exactly how the world is, how it feels to be let down again and again, how you can't trust anyone – not anymore, not really, no matter how wonderful they are.

He takes my hand with that smirk and I know he knows what I am thinking – he does that, but I don't know if he knows me that well or if I'm really just that easy to read – and I smile back because now I don't have to pretend anymore.

I've chosen the people who will understand me, who will understand that not all scars can be healed by being with mutants because not all scars are from being mutant, who will understand that sometimes darkness is more than night, it's a blindfold and a lonely path – that it doesn't always turn to day, but to more twists and stumbles and pain.

My back feels light where there used to be a bag, and I watch as I light and he burns, and all my former possessions go up in flames.

I can't control the fire, only start it, but once I've started it he can take it and make beauty with it. They can take me for who I am and accept me and build on me, and not try to change me so I'll be perfect before they start – no one's perfect, and we know that better than most.

I don't know who I am, and neither do they, but we're all willing to take a chance and build something great out of shadows and sparks.

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Epilogue

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I always thought I would die in the darkness, alone, broken and crying and everything that I am lost to the world. It would have been fitting for the life I lived – a life of darkness, of broken things, of losing myself and finding myself, of _pain_.

Of course, I also always thought I would never find love or acceptance or a family, and I have all of those things and more now, so sometimes I don't mind being wrong.

They are huge and scary and blocking out the sun and we know that we don't have a chance – we haven't had a chance since they identified us and started to track our mutant blood across the world.

The others are all gone, left us to protect their retreat while they leave and keep the important ones safe.

I don't mind that they've left us, not really – it's happened too many times to be bothered now, when there's an actual reason – but I am angry that there's no way we can help except by our deaths.

They have another one now, a younger one, someone who cares and trusts and hopes, someone who has a family in the team and a life he wants to leave, someone who can start the fire and control it, and they don't need us anymore and we know it.

Being left is nothing, but being replaced makes me remember all those fears from dark childhood days of leaving homes and families and seeing the growing child in the body of someone who could have been my mom but who now found someone better, someone who is more useful and more inherent and more loved.

I clutch at his hand like I once did so many years ago, when I first chose myself and a reality without healing – because reality is harsh and sometimes you just don't heal – and light up one last time.

We give them a good fight, in the forest under the sun, together like we have been through all these years, we give them everything we've got, and together we are a formidable team with all the flames to burn down the world – me starting, him controlling – but in the end, it doesn't matter.

It was inevitable, and we knew it, and at least we die together, and that's all I could have asked for – not alone, not dark, finally understood for who I am, even if that's what we die for.

My name is Ember – I am a mutant, and I am not alone, not anymore.

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**So, that's what I came up with after a Saturday of not doing homework. It's funny, because I don't even like Pyro that much, but this is what happened.**

**I would love to hear from anyone who read it - tell me what you liked, what you didn't like, what I absolutely suck at, anything.**

**Thank you for reading, and please review!  
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