Uncle Scott just collapses into a chair and looks at me.
"Cat… I'm sorry… I'm sorry…"
"Uncle Scott?"
His hand runs down his face.
"I had a choice. I could let Logan kill the man –and believe me, I wanted him to- and risk losing Thistle; or we could concentrate all our efforts in getting her to the Blackbird and back here as quickly as possible. I chose to try and save Aca. And… And right now I'm wondering what good it's going to do… Maybe I should have let Logan kill him…"
I scramble up onto the arm of the chair.
"Uncle Scott?"
"Yeah?"
"Is it difficult…? Being an X-Man?"
"In a word, Cat, yes. We save lives, help people and they still call us mutant freaks."
"Why do you help them then? Why don't you join Maggie?"
"Maggie…? Oh, you've been listening to Logan again, haven't you? Well Magneto believes that mutants are superior to humans and should rule over them. We believe that we can peacefully co-exist."
I blink.
"Why can't we just live separately?"
He smiles at me.
"And that's the third option none of us want. By segregating ourselves, we'd just be asking for us to end up at war."
I blink.
"Why do people hate us?"
"Cat?"
"I saw the Avengers fighting on TV once. Hawkeye was hurt –not as badly as Mummy- and people ran over to help him. Why did no one help Mummy?"
"Because they're afraid, Cat."
"Why are they afraid of us? Daddy can't really hurt people. Not like some of the Avengers –like Wonder Man- can. And Wonder Man used to be bad but they still help him. And Mummy's never hurt anyone who didn't try and hurt someone else first and she makes pretty flowers so why do people try and hurt her?"
Uncle Scott pinches his nose.
"I'm going to tell you something no one likes to talk about here. A few years before you were born, your mother and Uncle Bobby were planning to leave."
"Together?"
"No. Not together. Bobby was going to go to Antarctica and your mom was planning to go to Brazil."
"Why?"
"Uncle Bobby was planning to stop the ice melting and Thistle was going to stop the logging."
"That's good, isn't it?"
"No Cat. It wasn't. You see, to do that, they wouldn't be able to be human anymore. Your mom would be a tree in the forest and only able to keep the trees alive. Uncle Bobby would be spread out over the entire continent. They would die in a way."
I blink.
"Why were they going to do that?"
"Because people really hated mutants then and your mom thought it would help if mutants were seen to be saving the world in a very everyday fashion. Your dad managed to talk them out of it. He said that giving people an easy way out wouldn't make them change their ways. Instead your mom went to the Amazon for six months to find different plant types and copied their DNA. She brought back specimens for Uncle Hank and do you know what?"
"What?"
"She found over two hundred different species. Lots of them have medical applications. And because she knows their DNA, she can stop them from dying out."
I bite my lip.
"But if Mummy dies…"
And Uncle Scott hugs me.
"She won't Cat. She won't. I promise."