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She blinks back at Ruse when she tells her of her heritage: her smile widens, though it is a little cautious. Tensions are high with the Mutants. Their Terrigen Cloud causing an unexpected blight upon the race they once called family. She was doing everything she could to aid them, but it seemed not enough... "We share many similarities with your kind. Though our powers, our unique gifts, are granted to us by the sacred substance known as Terrigen. Once our children are throughly prepared, they may enter the chamber in which it turns the Terrigen Crystals to mists."

"Their true selves....?" Ivory repeated to herself in a whisper, brows knitted into a forrow. To think that a group of people purposefully obtaining powers, or "gifts" as it seems both mutant and inhuman would like it call it, baffled her. Why would they want to be burdened with the potential of being ostracized from the world around you? To be hunted down for something you quite literally can't help. To be treated more like an unpredictable rabid animal than a sentient person.

To be scared of yourself.

"There's... there's others who want to be like me...?" A sparkle of hope present in her eyes and tone, yet doubt remains,

"Can borrow it if y'like." It was age appropriate, he mainly enjoyed the book because of the lessons in it.

She then brought up the revelation that she had never actually had anyone read to her before.

"Naw? You ain't join de othe'a kids when Marcus was readin' t'em?" Then again, maybe she wasn't all that interested in hearing about monsters and heroes like the others were. Fair enough.

A half truth. She leaves out the detail of her plan of going to climb out the window to sit on the roof and look at the night sky being interrupted by seeing the commotion that was happening in front of the house seemingly between him and the other X-Men, buuut he doesn't need to know that. She dropped doing the action altogether and hopped back to bed after seeing that anyways! Learning to mind her business more often and all.

"Hmm..."

"Français!" Ivory couldn't help but let out a small giggle, she wasn't the greatest at her mothers' native tongue but there was something special to her about the two being the only ones in the Haven House being able to fluently speak it, even if Ivory's was still a bit rough around the edges and that half the residents can understand what they're saying.

It was odd to the fluffy mutant, her being excited to be read to about a story she hasn't heard about before. It felt like she was an actual normal kid for once, not some creature pretending to be one.

"Maybe it'll help with my French! I, um... always red books in both languages so I sorta had a hard time learning one over the other...." English being a priority from what she remembered, something about the people who visited for her checkups often spoke it instead and she would need to respond to them.

tw for derealization, depersonalization, and child abuse ‼️

Ivory being clumsy not because she's really all that clumsy, but its because her powers distort her own reality. The escapism hardwired in her subconcious to protect her from the abuse/neglect she endured from her mother. Bumping into walls, doors, and walking around things that aren't really there. Sometimes others can see these same illusions, sometimes not, its a coin flip.

She also has a hard time perceiving herself on her worst days, unable to recognize who she is in the mirror and just. Stares. Still in denial that even is her real self. Her mother refuses to acknowledge Ivory unless she made herself look more human, more presentable, less like a "pet" and more like a child.

She dehumanizes herself, often thinks of herself as below others, only there to serve and not much else. It's why she subconsciously tries to obtain the approval of others, and if she fails? Then her mother is proven right. She can't get anything "correct", not her surroundings, not even her appearance.