Disclaimer: All recognisable characters are the property of Marvel Comics and Fox Entertainment. I am making no monetary profit off this fanwork, nor do I intend to run off with any of the shiny people.
Author's Notes: No actual spoilers for X2, but it won't make any sense if you haven't watched the movie. Thank you to Kanna Ophelia for commenting on my first draft. Much gratitude should also go to the Melbourne Maelstrom, for luring me back into the X-Men fandom.
When a Japanese woman won the Olympics marathon in Sydney, someone said to Yuriko, "Wow! You must be proud."
Yuriko doesn't remember who said that to her. Sometimes their eyes flick from her face to her nametag and up again, and down again, the little line between their fair brows smoothening over.
She remembers running in college and pointedly not being told, "Aren't you too Chinese to be a marathon runner?"
She remembers bringing friends home from school and seeing, for the first time, the small octagonal mirror above the door. She'd laughed about Schizo Sam on the third floor, and Lauren and Ashley forgot to ask.
"Baihe," Baba said that night, "why you never bring your friends to see me?"
She had written down, very carefully in her chemistry paper, C16H12FN3O3. "Daddy, I told you, Lauren and Ashley's parents don't like them to go home late."
Baba knows she only calls him Daddy when she doesn't want to talk. He calls her Baihe. Mom calls her Lily, and she tells everyone else to do the same.
She doesn't remember the day Baba never came home from the factory, but she remembers moving into Gran's house. Everyone there makes fun of her Cantonese, but Baba always speaks Mandarin.
Mom got hysterical when she asks one of her Uncles to read a letter from Baba, so she burns the letter before Mom could do it first. Baba doesn't write again, and China is a long way away.
It happened years ago. She thinks.
She remembers meeting Stryker for the first time. The memory is sharper, and she remembers things like how his teeth looks as if they would gobble her up. He doesn't smell of cigars or alcohol, like she thought he would.
"You're a very talented young lady, Miss Shan," he had said.
She doesn't remember how they met, but she could extrapolate from the bits of memory. It is hard to do most of the time, though she remembers the sun, white lines on a flat red surface, and cotton bandages.
It must have been at a track meet. Somewhere, sometime.
She remembers Stryker saying, "Would you like to save the world?"
She doesn't remember if she said no.
She must have said yes, because she remembers screaming underwater and none of the staring men would pull her out of that cold tank--
She must have said yes, because she remembers Stryker's hand on her neck and his mouth at her ear. "You did very well, Yuriko."
It stings.
She doesn't remember what happens next, but she remembers later: he pats her on the head and withdraws his hand behind his back. He smiles. "Just think of me as your stepfather."
She remembers that Baba always calls her Baihe.
She remembers wrong, because everyone else calls her Yuriko Oyama.
The End