Thanks to hippiechick2112 and feathered moon wings for reviewing! About Cerebro, that piece was light on details because Cerebro didn't work-it started to boot up and caused a power outage. And yes, I am indeed horrible ;)

Scott looks like a doll. All wrapped up against the cold, only his face is visible. His cheeks shimmer, smeared with Vaseline to protect against the wind, and those eyes…

"You look just like your daddy," Katherine tells him.

Like if he hadn't fought and wrenched and torn his way out, she might doubt he was any of hers at all. Except how much she loves him, of course. And she does, even when he drives her halfway to crazy.

She hums softly and rubs his back the entire trip to the library, soothing him against a potential outburst, but Scott nestles against her shoulder and sleeps soundly. They have to go to the library. She needs the familiar, soothing scent of pages. She needs the embrace of the quiet.

She needs the boost to her confidence.

Katherine's heart flutters. She knows that flutter. It used to be a good feeling, the secret glances between them. Now it twirls like nausea.

She loves Chris. She loves Scott. She loves their home.

But.

Chris is good, kind, contagious when he's joyful (and damned handsome and they both know it!), but he is not happy.

Scott is beautiful when he smiles, but he cannot sleep and he screams to wake the dead.

Their home is lovely, but somehow, always, she misses something. Katherine never did well in home economics; she has painted a garden down the hallway but always a spot of dirt, of dust, of cobwebs remains. The kitchen remembers boiled-over pots; underdone meat; overcooked vegetables. (Charcoal.) The only reliable meal she provides comes from her body.

Katherine loves but life is so hard and she is so alone. She cries at night; Chris is exhausted and Scott understands nothing in his infant mind. Her voice searches when she says those words—"I love you"—for something not found.

She stands in the kitchen and takes a deep breath.

"Today will be different, Scott."

Of course, she expects no answer.

Scott had received a letter the previous afternoon and buried it in a dresser drawer—figuring that was the safest place because even if somebody went digging under his boxers, nobody would admit to it. (He suspected his brother of possessing a spring-loaded snake. He couldn't level this accusation, of course. Alex would have made a joke that could scar him for the rest of his very long life.)

The following morning, however, he withdrew the letter and tucked it into his back pocket. He couldn't keep this a secret. It was pointless and wrong.

On his way to the lab, Scott bumped into Ororo.

"Uh-oh," he remarked, noticing her grin. "What are you up to?"

"I'm not up to anything," she replied. She held up her cast and laughed. "Hospital. It's coming off today!"

"Enjoy being lopsided."

"Un-lopsided!"

"You'll overcompensate."

"Like you do?"

He sighed. "I walked into that."

"You know, because you have a small—"

"Ororo."

"—Twinkie."

Scott shook his head. His face had gone slightly pink, but he didn't give her the satisfaction of looking away. "Better hurry or you'll miss your appointment. They might make you keep it on an extra week!"

Ororo glared at him, but she hurried.

Scott continued to the lab. He needed to talk to Charles—but first, he needed to see Hank. Hank didn't have expectations the way Charles did, which made him much easier to talk to, and he seemed tougher. There was a reason Hank had seen Scott's scars and Charles had not.

So when faced with a difficult decision, Scott started by talking it through with Hank.

Or he meant to. He passed an open door and noticed Alex and Chris attempting to clean dark muck off themselves with a garden hose.

Scott hesitated, considering moving on and simply not acknowledging them—not interrupting, pretending he hadn't noticed. It would be better. But he was supposed to talk to his father, the whole world seemed to say, so he asked, "What happened?"

Chris and Alex traded glances. "Alex," Chris prompted.

"I was rerouting a secondary coolant supply," Alex said. He looked at the mess on his hands and shirt. "Well, that was the idea."

"It didn't go quite according to plan," Chris acknowledged, "but it was a good idea."

"Is that what coolant looks like?" Scott asked. He wasn't much with cars, but that wasn't what he imagined.

Alex gave him a look. "In space it is."

Scott wasn't sure what made Alex an expert on being in space, but he accepted that. He nodded and went on his way.

"Hank," he began, letting himself into the lab, "this came yesterday and—who the hell are you?" He started out calmly, if slightly tense. The question was shouted.

Hank wasn't here.

Instead, Scott was a scrawny, slightly twitchy young man in baggy clothes and wire-rimmed glasses. Scott's hand went to his glasses.

"Who are you," he asked, a threat heavily implied, "and what are you doing here?"

"It's not what you think," the stranger said. "Scott, it's me."

"Who? How do you know my name?"

"It's me—Hank. It's Hank."

Well, that was stupid.

"You're not Hank. You don't look anything like him," Scott said. Hank was a rather difficult man to imitate. After all, one either was or was not a furry giant.

"I am," not-Hank insisted. "I know… I know about the laundry room door."

Scott shook his head. It wasn't enough.

"You have a scar," he began, and roughly mimed the scar on Scott's chest.

"He sent you!"

"No!"

Scott nudged his glasses up, ready to blow the wall out of th house.

"Scott, I know—I know why you don't like Andy Griffith."

Scott hesitated. He lowered his glasses, but kept his hand on them as he asked, "Hank?"

Just then, Alex and Chris burst into the lab, Alex explaining, "We heard shouting, he was worried and Bozo! You're back!" He, too, changed his tone when he noticed the scrawny fellow. But he didn't seem to mind.

Alex walked over and clapped him on the shoulder.

"Nice!" he remarked. Then, to Scott, "Deep breath, Opie. This is Hank. This is what he looked like before he Raven'd himself."

"Raven'd himself?" Scott asked.

Hank narrowed his eyes at Alex.

"Whoops."

Before Alex could worsen the situation, Chris stepped in. "Everything's all right?" he asked.

Hank nodded. "It's fine. Scott didn't know what I looked like before, that's all."

Alex opened his mouth to say something.

"We'll leave you to your conversation, then," Chris said. "Alex."

Alex looked between Hank and Scott, and decided, "I should see about fixing that coolant system, anyway. Nice job, Hank."

Scott watched them leave, uncertain about much of what he just happened and most bothered by a single question: was his brother a good person? Bozo?! That was a horrible thing to call someone! Then again, Alex also called him twerp and Ororo gnat, and he did that affectionately…

"Congratulations," he said, finally. "I guess. You look… different. No—you don't."

Hank nodded, and Scott assumed he understood: he looked not-different from everyone else.

"I wanted to hide my mutation," Hank explained. He held up one of his feet and Scott saw that it was more like a hand. "So I experimented on myself, I used pieces of Raven's cells to build a cure."

"A cure?"

"Obviously, it didn't work. I was able to use pieces of your cells to reverse the effect. This is what I looked like before."

Scott just nodded, trying to take that in. Mostly it was a blur and rush, but he did register that Hank said 'pieces of cells'. He tried teaching Scott about organelles, but it had been a difficult concept to grasp. For Scott, things he couldn't experience in practice were difficult to understand.

After too long a silence, Hank said, "You were saying that something arrived?"

"Yes."

"What…?"

"Oh! Um—it's—it's this." Scott took the letter out of his pocket and handed it over. "From the fourth of July."

Hank nodded. He turned over the envelope. "You haven't opened it?"

Scott shook his head.

Hank handed the letter back.

"Hank…" He really wanted to talk about this. But could he? With this Hank, the different Hank? "Hank, what if I don't want to go to college?"

"Why don't you want to go to college?"

Scott shrugged. "I don't want to go." He had explained this several times, but no one ever seemed to understand.

"Then why did you…?"

"For the Professor."

"Of course."

"I'll talk to him."

"You should do that."

Scott nodded. "I will."

So his conversation with Hank did not provide all the clarity he might have hoped. If anything, he left feeling foggier. Someone must have told him before that Hank used to look smaller and less, well, furry, but seeing it still came as a shock.

Scott wanted to be happy for his friend. Hank had something he had apparently wanted, and Scott had been able to help him. Granted, that help had been indirect, but it still counted. Right?

He still wasn't certain, and it must have shown because the moment he sat down in the study Charles asked, "What's wrong?"

"It's—it's nothing." Scott shouldn't be the one to tell Charles, anyway. This was Hank's achievement.

"In which case—"

"I mean, there is something," Scott interrupted. He cleared his throat nervously. "I, um… I don't want to go to college, but I know it's what you want. And you know what's best for me, so, it is what it is." He handed over the sealed envelope. It was a relief, really: the thing had been burning a hole since he found it in the postbox.

Charles took the envelope, looked to Scott for an explanation, then back to the envelope when he saw none forthcoming.

He set down the letter and said, "You don't want to go to college."

Scott nodded.

"Why?"

"I just… I don't…" he stammered, then shrugged helplessly.

"Is it math—is it algebra?" Charles guessed. Scott did not do well in math. Geometry was going much better, but algebra had been a very steep uphill battle. "Not every degree focuses on sciences."

He understood about liberal arts degrees. Charles and Hank had both talked to him about them, but it was really Ruth who helped him understand—you think this is something I studied? What do I need with math? Okay, yes, this is true, one class, but not so much. Only one for all four years.

"It's not that."

"The cost?"

"No…" A little bit.

"Then why?"

"I don't want to go."

A flicker of frustration cross his face. "And I cannot understand why—" And he changed tones entirely, realizing, "You don't want to go. This isn't about college at all, is it?"

Scott shook his head. "I've never really had a home before. I don't want to leave it for anything—but if that's what you want…"

"Oh, Scott. This is Westchester! There are plenty of wonderful liberal arts schools in the city. You don't have to leave home."

"I don't?"

"As if I would even allow it."

For the first time, Scott thought about college and smiled. He had never before realized that going to school didn't have to mean… going to school.

"Now, as to these." Charles picked up a letter opener and sliced open the envelope, then slid out the sheets of paper inside. He was quiet for far too long as he read them over.

"It was sort of a… trial run. Hank said it's helpful to try it once and have the experience."

Charles raised his eyebrows. "Hank knew about this, then."

"Well… I had to tell someone where I was going."

"The fourth of July," he realized.

"Yes."

He lowered the papers for a moment. "You decided to sneak out to take the SAT."

Well, when he put it that way… "Yes."

"You're in the ninety-sixth percentile for language arts."

"I got ninety-six percent of the questions right?"

Charles visibly winced. "We'll keep working on the math," he said, "but no, not exactly. Ninety-sixth percentile means you scored higher than ninety-five percent of people who took this test. It also means that you are absolutely going to college, these are not the scores of someone who stops at a high school diploma."

Well, wasn't that Scott's luck. The one time he snuck out, it sealed his fate!