Sabrina ➳ X-Men

[01] lightning in a bottle

SABRINA BENNETT SCARED HER PARENTS.

Most teenage girls did, of course. But Sabrina scared her parents in a different way.

The Bennett family consisted of five people. The mother and father, Hana and Tom Bennett; Julie and Zara Bennett, the thirteen year old twin sisters; and Sabrina herself, a strong-headed seventeen year old girl. Women outnumbered men in the family by a strong ratio, but Tom Bennett owned a manufacturing industry in Manhattan, thus leading him to believe he was the head of the family.

Julie and Zara weren't scared of their older sister like their parents were; just embarrassed. Sabrina was, well, an emotional person, and when her emotions got out of hand, so did other things.

The year was 1983. A newspaper lay on the kitchen table, with an unavoidable headline. MUTANT 'MAGNETO' HAS COME BACK OUT OF HIDING, KILLS 10. Sabrina clambered down the stairs, a warm yawn crawling up her throat as she spotted the newspaper. Glancing around her, she reached out for the paper, her fingers barely grazing it as her father came out of nowhere and swooped it up swiftly.

"Damn it, Sabrina, what did I tell you about reading about the mutants?" Tom Bennett glowered down at his seventeen-year-old daughter, his dark eyes darting down to the paper in his hands. Sabrina clenched her fists, growing angry.

"Don't touch this when your mother and I go out to check on the factory. I'll have Zara keep it with her or something; I don't need you becoming any more obsessed with these freaks than you already are." Her father's cruel words rung throughout her head, echoing and bouncing around. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get the image of her father's nasty look out of her mind.

Thunder rumbled in the distance ominously, lightning flashing not a mile away, visible through the kitchen window. Her father's head whipped around, his eyes widening. Hana Bennett rushed into the kitchen upon the noise, surveying the scene in front of her, eyeing her eldest daughter nervously.

"Sabrina, honey, please calm down." Hana spoke softly, her hands and voice shaking as Tom begun to rip up the newspaper, forfeiting his original plan. "I am calm, mother." Sabrina replied, a hard edge to her voice, clearly lying. But she unclenched her fists and took three deep breaths, eyes trained on the lines in the hardwood floor.

Sabrina's parents exchanged looks, not unlike the knowing looks they'd shared before, but this one was different. "Darling-" Her mother began, but her father cut Hana off with another sharp look. "We will be back by eleven, at the latest. Please do not forget to eat breakfast." He said hurriedly, placing a hand on Sabrina's mother's back and pressing her along gently towards the front door.

"I haven't put on makeup yet-" Her mother tried to say but was cut off yet again by Tom telling her she looked beautiful as always, and they had to go now. Sabrina watched her parents rush out the house, slamming the door behind them as they went. They'd forgotten to lock the damn door. Sabrina sighed, walking over to the door and locking it tightly, but not before glancing outside. While just minutes ago there'd been lightning and thunder and the works of a storm brewing, it was now bright and sunny, not a cloud in the sky.

"All these weird things just keep happening to me," Sabrina muttered, plopping down at the dining table and looking around as she had before, picking up the newspaper when she saw it was safe to do so. Skimming over the article, she caught snippets of phrases like "daughter killed" and "mutant gone rogue." Sabrina scoffed, throwing the paper back down on the table; it'd been of no use to her and her thirst for knowledge of the mutants that lived among them. It was just some mumbo-jumbo written by a lazy journalist who couldn't care less about the real story.

She felt herself grow angry again, at the world this time, for not being accepting of their mutant brothers and sisters. In retrospect, to Sabrina it was like segregation all over again. As her thoughts bubbled and frothed in her mind, getting nastier and nastier as she grew increasingly upset over the prejudice, thunder rumbled in the distance yet again.

Sabrina's head shot up, and she stared out the window, watching as dark storm clouds rolled across the previously blue sky, covering the landscape ominously. She decided to try something. Mimicking her earlier position, fists clenched and eyes narrowed, she allowed herself to lose control of her emotions, letting them fly freely in the air, letting her anger go wherever it pleased.

Just as she'd expected, the storm started getting worse, and lightning flashed several times, scarily close to the kitchen window. Excitement buzzed in her, and she wanted to get angrier. She tried to think of something terrible, the most horrible thing she could think of, but as she closed her eyes and tried to think, she heard a nasally, high-pitched feminine voice break her thoughts.

"Sab! TV's not working and I wanted to watch my show." Sabrina's eyes flew open, and the spell was broken. The storm had vanished, and Sabrina wrote it off as a figment of her imagination in her mind. She had to be going crazy.

"Coming, Z." It had been one of Sabrina's sisters who'd spoken, and despite them being twins, it was easy to decipher between Zara and Julie due to their different voices. While Z's voice was more feminine and sounded quite like a young Britney Spears, talking through the nose, Julie's voice was more defined and deep, making her sound much more mature than her thirteen years.

Sabrina was extremely jealous of her beautiful, normal teenaged sisters, but she'd never let them know that. "What show are you trying to watch?" Sabrina asked Zara as she made her way into the living room, where Z lay sprawled out on the couch, pressing button after button on the TV remote. "Sabrina the Teenage Witch." Z replied, trying to hold back a snicker.

'Sabrina the Teenage Witch' was a running joke between Zara, Julie, and all the kids at school. It was a real show on television, but since Sabrina showed such interest in mutants, and since Sabrina was a little abnormal, they'd all nicknamed her after the cartoon teenage witch, whose show they loved watching every Saturday.

"I'm not a witch," Sabrina murmured, and then picked up the remote, throwing it at Z. "And I'm not fixing the TV now that you've said that." She added as the remote hit Zara in the stomach, causing her to let out a decidedly fake little 'ouch!'.

"Gah, Sab, don't be such a bitch. It was just a joke." Julie appeared in the doorway, a smirk on her face. Sabrina stared at the twins, shocked at how bitchy they were behaving now that their parents were out. "Why do I even bother around here?" Sabrina exclaimed, storming out of the room and heading outside, slamming the front door behind her.

She sat down on the steps, resting her head in her hands as she looked down the street, watching cars drive by slowly. She must've sat there for an hour, the sun beaming down bright and hot, Sabrina attempting to keep her emotions bottled up, her face stoic and betraying no feelings.

As the time passed and Sabrina sat there, her legs growing numb from not moving so for so long, a sleek black car drove down the street. Sabrina watched it out of the corner of her eye, as she'd been doing with all the vehicles for the past hour, and was surprised when it slowed to a stop in front of her house. Sabrina scrambled to her feet, ready to race inside at any sign of danger. A cloud passed overhead, and Sabrina had to squint to make out the figure stepping out of the car.

She already knew it wasn't her parents, but was still surprised when an older man closed the car door behind him and began walking up the steps to the porch. The man must've been in his late 20's, with close-cropped brown hair and black-rimmed glasses, his figure tall and slight.

As he reached the porch and Sabrina, he adjusted his glasses nervously, his eyes a bright blue. Holding out his hand to the teenager, he cleared his throat, once again in a nervous manner, then spoke words to Sabrina that sent a chill down her spine. "My name is Hank McCoy. Your parents are dead. I'm here to take you somewhere safe."