There was a jolt of pain that shot up from your knees as you dropped to the ground, with your hands weakly protecting your face and a thick string of saliva and blood dripping from your mouth. Tears pricked at your eyes and it seemed as if they were on fire, or had a thousand tiny needles stabbed into them. The skin on your palms was cut up as they slammed into the ground, scraping against the uneven ground. Sounds seemed too far away, and a ringing was left behind that only seemed to intensify. The wind from your lungs was knocked out as something pressed against your back, shoving you further into the ground, while your forehead was forcefully pushed against the rocks and stones that were underneath you.

"Again." He sighed loudly, the sound of his shoes grew quieter the further he walked away from you.

The weight from your back was released and you could finally breathe once more. The tears dripped down your face and you spat out the blood that collected in your mouth, warm and metallic. With shaky arms, you pushed yourself back up, struggling to stand on your own two feet without swaying and stumbling around. A sharp pain, around the middle of your chest on your left, was due to broken ribs. But your right-hand side wasn't doing any better, it was completely bruised, and the stitches you had been given almost a week ago were undone and bleeding again. Your eyes were almost swollen shut, but you managed to look up towards the balcony area where he stood. The stupid metal helmet was perched upon his head, his dark red clothes hung off his body.

"This time, don't disappoint me," he called down to you just before he looked up and raised his hands in the air.

The ground beneath you shook violently, and with your lack of coordination and balance, thanks to being struck in the back of the head, you weren't able to continue staying standing. Your legs gave out beneath you and you dropped to your knees once more, this time, the jolt of pain was beginning to feel like a small tap, compared to the pain you were about to feel next. The rocky terrain had changed, some parts of the ground began to shoot up towards the ceiling. One of the other mutants that he had standing beside him was able to control the elements, hence why half of the ground was elevated towards the top of the cave room. On his other side, there was someone else, she was able to duplicate herself. Your father was watching with a deranged smile as you were knocked to the ground over and over again by the duplicates, then thrown up into the air when the ground shot up underneath you.

He had it stuck in his mind, almost as if he had branded it there with white-hot iron rods, that you were a mutant like your mother and himself. He had an obsession with her and her abilities, which he projected onto you, despite your mother constantly reminding him that you weren't like them, but that was okay because you didn't need to have any mutation for her to love you. But he didn't think that way, he believed that because your mother was able to control people's minds, emotions, and bodies, that you had to have had at least some part of you that was as strong as they were. He had become unhealthily obsessed with your mother when they first met, somehow convincing her to stay with him, maybe it was because he was the first person who fully encouraged her to use her powers to the full extent, while others wanted her to keep them hidden. When she fell pregnant with you, he believed that the more she used her powers, the more likely you were to become powerful. Which, clearly, wasn't the case. You were human, through and through, but that wasn't enough for him, it never would be.

Soon, the duplicates disappeared. When you turned your head weakly towards the balcony, the girl was gone, and Victor was stood in her place. The other mutant then changed to play with fire and water. Your father laughed as the air began to thin out as the fires around you grew. Even as you dropped to your knees, suffocating as licks of fire grazed your skin, he was still laughing. When the fire was taken away, bursts of water slammed into you, knocking you back until you couldn't move anymore. The male mutant soon left as well. Your father placed his hands on the railing and looked down at you with his lip turned up in disgust.

"You are not much child," he spat before he turned around to leave.

He left you laying on the ground in agony, barely able to breathe and move without something feeling as though it was ripping you apart from the inside. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to swallow, and it hurt to even twitch your fingers.

Victor approached you slowly, crouching down to look at you closely. "It's worse than last time."

Victor wasn't wrong. The last trial you were forced through, only your arm had broken. Your father forced you into hand to hand combat, which of course left you with small cuts and bruises, but at least you didn't break your ribs, possibly your collarbone or hip like you had this time around. With so much pain, it almost felt like you were numb. Your body was in so much shock that you now felt paralysed.

"I won't wait around to the point where the next time I see you I'm scraping your body from the floor and into a body bag," he told you.

Carefully, he tried picking you up, hearing the muffled noises of protest that he had to ignore in order to get you to the medical. Tears still streamed down your cheeks, mixing with the blood and speckles of dust and dirt. Victor laid you down softly, looking at the burns on your body. He had to carefully peel your clothes away from your body before he was able to clean you and start some form of treatment. It was no secret, to you at least, that Victor resented your father. Even in the beginning, when he didn't know you, he hated the way your father treated you. He didn't know why he acted in such a way when it came to you, you weren't a mutant, you didn't know the struggles that the mutants went through, but he supposed that, in a way, you did. Only, it was the other way around for you. Mutants mistreating non-mutants.

"Then leave," you croaked out, choking on the blood you had forcefully spat out to the side.

Victor turned his head from your hip to your face. "And leave you with him?" You stared at him as he scoffed. "That's not happening."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not leaving you here with them alone."

"That's not... an answer."

He winced at how wheezy your voice was, and even more so at the pause that you had to take to breathe. "Is it so wrong for me to care about you?" He looked back at your hip, knowing that he would have to get you to a hospital instead, somewhere far away, where Magneto couldn't find either of you. "He's going to get you killed, and I don't want that to happen."

"You can't... stop... him, Victor."

"No, I know. But I can get us away from him."

"Us?"

"I'm taking you far away from this place, someplace safe. Somewhere that he won't find us."

"Too... optimistic."

Victor shook his head. "You'll see," he mumbled.

As your eyes closed, your body felt like lead. You couldn't move anything, you couldn't hear anything, you couldn't see anything. If this was what death felt like, then you didn't mind it much, although, you weren't sure if you would have been able to think while being dead, then again, you wouldn't know. The last thing you could remember was Victor's overly hopeful plan of getting out and away from the island, away from your father, and away from the plain that he inflicted. Maybe it didn't work, maybe you didn't get out in time, maybe you were forced to leave in a body bag. You couldn't blame Victor for that, he tried, but he wasn't successful. As long as he got out, you were fine with it.

A hand touched yours.

You paused, waiting for something else to happen. Maybe it was your mind playing tricks on you. But you didn't know, you had no clue or understanding of what was happening to you. Especially not when a faint sound began to emerge from the silence. There was a beeping, a hushed murmur of voices, and the sound of scrapping. Maybe it was the end, maybe you were forced to hear Victor scrape your remains from the walls of the cave. But, then something brushed against your hand, maybe a thumb? The voices got louder and louder, but it took a few minutes, minutes which felt like hours.

"Is she awake?"

"She's waking up. Slowly but surely. What was it that you said happened again?"

"Uh, a car accident. She was coming home from work, roads were slippery, she crashed into a tree."

"Right."

"When do you think she'll be allowed back home?"

"Well, she's been out for a few months, the doctor checked her over and said he liked how well she was healing, she'll need to have a wheelchair, crutches would only cause her more pain. Do you need a cab to drive you back home? I'm assuming you don't have a car with wheelchair access."

Your eyes opened painfully to a dark room, the lights were off and on your right, you saw a woman in a nurse uniform. She was looking over at your left and your eyes glanced over to see Victor sitting down in the chair next to you.

Victor nodded. "Uh, yes, please." He looked over at you and his eyes widened, and a smile spread across his face. "Hey," he whispered, brushing your hair from your face, a nervous habit he would later admit to, even when there was no hair for him to brush away.

"I just need to do a few more checks then I will get the wheelchair and call you that cab," the nurse smiled kindly.

"Where?" You tried to speak, but after not using your voice for so long, it came out weak and croaky.

Victor smiled, still holding your hand in his. "Someplace safe. Home."