Chapter Text
Your first memory was at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.
You had been the first mutant that Charles Xavier had taken in after the Cuba incident. Or more accurately, Hank took you in. Charles cared for you, but he was busy planning out an entire school, so most of your care fell to Hank. Your parents left you on the doorstep with nothing but a note. They gave no more information than your first name, your birth date, and a description of the problem: you were a mutant.
Charles speculated that your parents had been people with CIA access, and they had found his name in their databases after a desperate search for answers about their strange daughter. Hank thinks that it is more likely that they lived in town, and had heard rumors of the odd man who lived in the mansion on the outskirts of Westchester County.
Whatever really happened, it didn’t matter. Your parents didn’t want you, but you had found a home with other mutants, end of story.
You grew up in the Xavier Mansion, and Hank McCoy was the closest thing you had to a father. He raised you and taught you about the world. The day you had to register for a driver’s license, you took the last name McCoy.
A few years after you had arrived, Charles opened up the school to all mutants. You had loved it. No one as young as you enrolled, but having others around made the mansion seem full of light and warmth.
Then teachers and students started getting drafted for the war effort. Alex Summers was the first to get the draft letter, and you had clung to him, sobbing, the day he shipped out. A confused corporal had to escort you off of the ship after you had teleported on in an attempt to stay with the mutant that you considered a brother. Hank hadn’t had it in his heart to punish you for running off.
More and more men were being called away, and more and more students had to move back home to support struggling families. The school waned away, and eventually the doors closed for good.
You and Hank stood watching the last student’s car roll away, and you knew that from that day forward, nothing would be the same.
You spent most of your time with Hank in the lab, working with him on his experiments and helping him build his inventions.
Meanwhile, Charles wasted away upstairs, drowning in addiction no matter how much you or Hank tried to help.
All in all, it wasn’t the worst life. You were safe, which was something no mutant should ever take for granted, and you had a family who loved you. You just didn’t get out much.
Some days you wished you could go back to that life, dull as it was. Maybe things would have been easier. Or maybe you would have driven yourself mad in the monotony of the days.
Either way, things were about to get real exciting, real quick.