Chapter Text
Darcy Lewis has a gift.
At twelve the headaches start. Ticking at the back of her head, an itch she can’t scratch. The television remote burns in her hand. Ozone and melted plastic fill her lungs and she cannot breathe. She’s grounded for a week, no tv, no music, and no trips to the bookstore. She never voices a word about the blue light emanating from her hands. Electricity that tickles her palms and leaves no mark on her skin.
The first voice that speaks to her is the computer she inherits from her step-brother. The machine is slow, and not very bright but it’s the first time she has access to the internet. She closes her eyes and lets it sing to her, a slow buzz in her brain that feels like home.
She’s fourteen when runs. She gets on the bus one morning and steps off in a city, as far as she can get with the fifty-seven dollars from a shattered piggy bank. All she has are the clothes on her back, a blue and black plaid Jansport backpack, and a pair of scuffed black Converse with neon blue laces. The backpack holds a few tattered paperback books, a spiral bound notebook, a Casio calculator, and a pouch full of colored pens. The calculator had a grudge.
“You’re a freak.”
“I promise I won’t do it again.”
“It’s too late for that, freak.”
*
Darcy’s fifteen and sweet talking a stubborn ATM into coughing up some cash when the hairs on the back of her neck raise up. The machine beeps, and she shoves the cash into her pocket. Thanks, buddy.
“All yours, dude,” she says to the person hovering in the shadows at the edge of her vision. She grips the strap of her backpack tight, shoulders tense. The bones in her fingers ache, belly icy with fear. Fight or flight.
“I’m not here for that, child,” says a soft voice. “My name is Ororo Monroe. I’m here to help you.”
Her right hand curls into a loose fist, blue energy pooling in the palm of her hand. It’s not much of a defense but it’s all she has. Darcy tilts her chin up a little and turns to face the owner of the musical voice. The woman is tall, white hair loose over the left side of her head, and shaved smooth on the right.
“Look, lady, I don’t know what your deal is. This isn’t an afterschool special. I don’t need your charity,” Darcy grits out, adrenaline spiking down her spine vertebrae by vertebrae.
“Have you heard of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters?”
“I ain’t got time for your fairy tales.”
“It’s not a fairy tale.”
“Suuure, whatever, lady,” she says, eyes skating sideways down the sidewalk. Xavier’s School was a story. A whisper on the internet. A safe place for those like her. Mutants. “I’d say it’s been swell talking to you but...”
“You have a gift, child,” Ororo says, tilting her head to the side. Her eyes flash white, and a swirl of storm clouds gather in the cloudless blue sky.
The sphere of electricity gathering in her hand pulses and splutters out. Darcy takes a steadying breath, listens to the beat of her heart encouraging her to run. The air tastes of ozone and electricity tickles against her skin.
"Not a child," she protests, but she's already stepping closer. The fear in her belly fighting against the surge of hope in her heart. "My name’s Diode."
*
As fairytales go, Xavier’s kicks solid mutie ass. Three square meals, school all day, and a library as big as her house.
The computers, though.
They’re singing to her even before she gets through the door, so much power that she nearly misses the round of introductions as Storm walks her through the house. (It’s not a house. It’s a mansion. She’s never even seen a mansion before, and now she’ll be living in one.) One of the girls - and really, she should probably try and remember which one has the poisonous skin and which one likes to walk through fucking walls - takes her into the common room, and there’s a whole wall of babies, just sitting there, waiting.
“For homework and stuff. We’re allowed laptops in our rooms, too, and for real work, the Professor sometimes lets us use the big ones downstairs, and you should see how fast they are, like entire gigs of data,” the little brown-haired girl rambles.
“Uh - “
“Kitty,” she provides with a smile.
“Yeah, sorry, Kitty. You like computers?”
“Oh yeah. Like - a lot. Do you code?”
“Kinda - not really. Don’t need to. We just ... talk I guess.”
And it turns out, geeking out over the same stuff is still the easiest way to make a friend. She learns all the names, eventually, but Kit, and Jubes, and Rogue - these are her homegirls. Her crew. For a while she forgets Darcy, but not forever.
Forever only lived in story books.
*
She runs those hallways all night long, in her nightmares. Roguey’s there, and Iceman, and Pyro, and they scream from one room to the next, looking for Kit and Jubes. Then there’s a bellow, and soldiers, and blood.
So much blood.
Rogue had introduced them, once, that southern-sweet voice practically dripping honey. She called him Logan, and sugar, and growly man. To everyone else, he was Wolverine. Maybe it wasn’t his fault that the soldiers came, but still they came. And Wolverine tore them into bloody chunks. It still wasn’t enough, they were just a bunch of kids. Mutant kids in their pyjamas, with bloody feet and tears in their eyes fighting a battle they couldn’t possibly win.
She’s no coward, but she’s no fighter either. The soldiers rounded them up like cattle, herded them into metal cages. Technically, Wolverine rescued her. Rescued all of them, really. But the guns pointed at their heads, the cuffs and collars, the glint of his blades, the blood on the walls, the sheer, stark terror of it …
She’d told them she couldn’t do it, couldn’t stay and pretend that learning to be an X-Men was fun anymore. She couldn’t be a target, she said. Wasn’t willing to die for this. Didn’t have to, not when she could pass. She’d go off to college and hide in plain sight. Be normal.
Be Darcy. Forget Diode.