The Element of Change {Xmen first class}

Ch. 5 "Water's Sweet but Blood is Thicker"

A/N:If it's underlined then it's being spoken in Chinese.

   It was a full moon that chilly, October evening. The trees hushed and whispered in the cool breeze and the green fields were alight with the glow of the moon. But clouds loomed ahead.

Lei was practicing by the large fountain. A breeze blew by, stirring the young woman's braid and rustling her dress so that the tips gently kissed the damp grass. She pushed and pulled the water, trying to sooth her racing mind from Raven's harsh words. Slowly, but surely, a large wave began to rise into the air. Lei knew she couldn't blame the young shape shifter for the outburst. Raven was angry at the world and was expressing that through the only outlet she could find at that moment. That outlet had just happened to be the young waterbender.

The moon brought new vigor to her abilities and Lei found herself pulling the wave higher and higher. She thought being here with her own people would calm her, but it only brought on memories that she had tried so hard to hide.

The hazy memory of the day she lost her mother came flooding back. Her mother had been an airbender, one of the most peaceful types of bending, yet she was hunted down and taken with the rest.

"Māmā! Māmā!" Lei remembered calling out to her. The woman reached out to grab her, but it was to no use. The men in black pulled her back, binding her wrists and injecting her with something that would momentarily take away her abilities until they could bring her to the Leader for the permanent solution.

Lei's mother slumped forward, her body already taking the tolls from the drug. "I love you baby. I love you so much!" She shouted before being taken away.

"What should we do with the rat?" One asked, pointing a thumb over to little Lei, who was whimpering in the corner, afraid to look up for fear of being taken.

The other in black shook his shoulders. "She's clearly not a bender, so High Leader won't want her. Maybe we can come back later to... deal with her. Her and her father, once we have proof that they're mutants."

The men nodded, sending a disgusted look towards the little Chinese girl before leaving. Lei cried out, her heart aching as she wished for her mother to come back.

Her father arrived later that day from work, unprepared for the scene before him. Chairs and tables were upturned. Pictures frames overturned and broken. The leaves from the Cherry Blossom trees were strewn around the gardens like a strong wind had blown through. Panic began to set into his heart.

"Lien! Lien!" He shouted, running through the house like a mad man, his pace quickening as he saw the destruction. Then he stopped.

"Lei," he mumbled, slowly stepping towards his little girl. She turned her head to look at him, her round eyes gleaming with tears.

He crouched by her side, looking to see what she clutched in her little hands.

It was her mother's engagement locket.

"Oh, Lei. My little flower."

"At least, they did not take you," he mumbled in accented English, picking up his little girl and rocking her in his arms.

Then, there was the day she had been taken away from her father, three years after she had discovered her abilities, and ten years after her mother's death.

They were at an airstrip that a friend of her father's had owned. Lei protested for her father to come with her, but he insisted that he stay behind.

"Miss Watson, we have to go!" The pilot shouted, his thick Southern American accent coming from the cockpit in the front of the plane. Lei turned back towards her father, tears brimming in her eyes as she looked back at him for probably the last time.