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Mar. 8th, 2020 01:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
machspeak[ When other kids were writing to Santa, Thomas Shepherd had put pen to paper and asked for salvation.
Not the Christian kind. Though he guessed that would have been okay too. Being pulled from one shitty living situation and dumped into another with bonus fluffy clouds could’ve been a nice trade. The Shepherds weren’t anything. Didn’t go to church, temple, mosques - they called it all a scam and washed their hands of it, much the same way they did anything relating to child rearing. Tommy raised himself on a steady diet of cheerios and found parental figures in the faces on the news.
The Avengers.
The X-Men.
And so at eight, on a chilly December morning, he asked for the only thing he really wanted. A place among them. A chance to prove himself, a chance to be good.
Maybe it was because his grades were a tic tac toe pattern of Cs and Ds. Maybe it was because he already had the starting of a criminal record. Shoplifting food and games with quick fingers that cameras hadn’t caught, the security alarm giving him away
( he knew better after that )
but no reply ever came.
That was how he learned you make your own salvation. Heroes don’t exist. Not really. Not where it matters.
His parents didn’t use the M word. Not even after the divorce, when custody was a point of contention - neither of them wanted him and argued why the other would be better suited to taking care of a ‘special needs’ child. It wasn’t even said when later, much later, Frank fell off the wagon so hard he broke his hip when the car hit the tree - stunned and confused as to why his son, who had been in the passenger seat, hadn’t gotten impaled by the branch that broke through the window. He wasn’t allowed to use the word, not even as he went through the regiment of keeping his naturally silver hair dyed a tidy black.
He wasn’t allowed to run track when he nearly doubled the school’s speed record.
He wasn’t allowed to do anything. Other than keep his eyes down and his smart mouth shut - but that, like so many other things, proved to be an impossibility. His powers were growing. His anger was growing.
And it all culminated in the explosion of his school. An accident. Nobody from Xavier's showed up at the court hearing to try to claim custody, he was just handed over to the authorities. Bye-bye life. Would've stayed there if Lisa hadn't tracked down where he'd been shunted off too, her spellcaster friend making short work of the supposedly top of the line defenses. She'd offered him a purpose, and he'd latched onto it like nothing else.
And now he was here. Standing shoulder to shoulder with burgeoning heroes. Their leader is rattling off a speech the rest of them aren’t into - Tommy’s toes are tapping against the ground, itching to make some noise. There are guns trained on them and
“Seriously, give up. Do you guys know who you’re facing here? Only New York’s leading super heroes! You are in a fight with the latest, the greatest YOUNG AVENGERS!”
Gag.
Tommy knows for a fact that there’s another team out there with the name and they aren’t going to take kindly to some trashy kids using their name, issuing the kind of justice that the snooty kids from the upper crust turn their nose up at. Neither are the X-Men, not when two of the loudest members of this little outfit are mutant and not afraid to shout it. They’ll come calling, and while he thinks it’s a stupid fucking plan that might have worked if their team wasn’t primarily staffed by sociopaths, Melter isn’t changing his mind. It isn’t as if they have anything else going for them.
But he's pretty sure it won't be long until someone changes it for him.
He won't even consider cutting them out, even if they're fucking nazis and future school fucking shooters in the making, so they stay and Tommy stays because he's got nowhere else. Its a ticking timebomb, but three outta five people he can tolerate can't be bad. Beggars can't be choosers.
They beat a hasty retreat when the man screams for help as Egghead crunches his arm under his heel. Scattering into the night, promising to meet back up before dawn at the base. ]
Not the Christian kind. Though he guessed that would have been okay too. Being pulled from one shitty living situation and dumped into another with bonus fluffy clouds could’ve been a nice trade. The Shepherds weren’t anything. Didn’t go to church, temple, mosques - they called it all a scam and washed their hands of it, much the same way they did anything relating to child rearing. Tommy raised himself on a steady diet of cheerios and found parental figures in the faces on the news.
The Avengers.
The X-Men.
And so at eight, on a chilly December morning, he asked for the only thing he really wanted. A place among them. A chance to prove himself, a chance to be good.
Maybe it was because his grades were a tic tac toe pattern of Cs and Ds. Maybe it was because he already had the starting of a criminal record. Shoplifting food and games with quick fingers that cameras hadn’t caught, the security alarm giving him away
( he knew better after that )
but no reply ever came.
That was how he learned you make your own salvation. Heroes don’t exist. Not really. Not where it matters.
His parents didn’t use the M word. Not even after the divorce, when custody was a point of contention - neither of them wanted him and argued why the other would be better suited to taking care of a ‘special needs’ child. It wasn’t even said when later, much later, Frank fell off the wagon so hard he broke his hip when the car hit the tree - stunned and confused as to why his son, who had been in the passenger seat, hadn’t gotten impaled by the branch that broke through the window. He wasn’t allowed to use the word, not even as he went through the regiment of keeping his naturally silver hair dyed a tidy black.
He wasn’t allowed to run track when he nearly doubled the school’s speed record.
He wasn’t allowed to do anything. Other than keep his eyes down and his smart mouth shut - but that, like so many other things, proved to be an impossibility. His powers were growing. His anger was growing.
And it all culminated in the explosion of his school. An accident. Nobody from Xavier's showed up at the court hearing to try to claim custody, he was just handed over to the authorities. Bye-bye life. Would've stayed there if Lisa hadn't tracked down where he'd been shunted off too, her spellcaster friend making short work of the supposedly top of the line defenses. She'd offered him a purpose, and he'd latched onto it like nothing else.
And now he was here. Standing shoulder to shoulder with burgeoning heroes. Their leader is rattling off a speech the rest of them aren’t into - Tommy’s toes are tapping against the ground, itching to make some noise. There are guns trained on them and
“Seriously, give up. Do you guys know who you’re facing here? Only New York’s leading super heroes! You are in a fight with the latest, the greatest YOUNG AVENGERS!”
Gag.
Tommy knows for a fact that there’s another team out there with the name and they aren’t going to take kindly to some trashy kids using their name, issuing the kind of justice that the snooty kids from the upper crust turn their nose up at. Neither are the X-Men, not when two of the loudest members of this little outfit are mutant and not afraid to shout it. They’ll come calling, and while he thinks it’s a stupid fucking plan that might have worked if their team wasn’t primarily staffed by sociopaths, Melter isn’t changing his mind. It isn’t as if they have anything else going for them.
But he's pretty sure it won't be long until someone changes it for him.
He won't even consider cutting them out, even if they're fucking nazis and future school fucking shooters in the making, so they stay and Tommy stays because he's got nowhere else. Its a ticking timebomb, but three outta five people he can tolerate can't be bad. Beggars can't be choosers.
They beat a hasty retreat when the man screams for help as Egghead crunches his arm under his heel. Scattering into the night, promising to meet back up before dawn at the base. ]
