Raven came out of that first lesson on a natural high so euphoric she practically had to be tethered down. "That was so much fun!" she exulted. "I can't wait for tomorrow. I had no idea. Singing! It's like, where has this been all my life?"
"Good," I told her, but inside, I felt an actual physical ache, because she was so happy. Even as I write this, I feel it now. If I can succeed in nothing else, if I can change nothing else, let me win this one. Let Raven have music and fulfillment instead of prison and bitterness. Let there be concert stages and applause instead of futility and betrayal. I will be there for her every step of the way. If she winds up with substance abuse issues, I will get her through them. If she winds up in ill-fated relationships with Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger, I will be there with tissues and ice cream. If she makes a disco album I will grit my teeth and smile, only let this work.
Let her be the first mutant superstar, let her rise up on the stage like a Bollywood goddess, blue skinned and beautiful, shining in gold and jewels. She has the talent for it and more. In 2013, they can digitally doctor voices until they sound good, but nobody can fake the vulnerability, the heartache, the passion. She has that in spades.
This could be the other way of doing things I've been searching for, the way that isn't violence or placation. After all, this is the beginning of the Golden Age of Pop. The Beatles are cutting their teeth as performers in seedy nightclubs in Berlin. All the millions of Baby Boomers, stifled and overparented and longing to break free, are getting into their teens and if Raven—if Mystique can capture their hearts and their imaginations, then being a mutant will be cool and enviable.
If I win this one, it might mean we all win. Humans, mutants, everybody.
Anyhow, back to Thrush Street, where I was searching through my purse for my keys. I stepped out from under a tree and into the full blaze of the later afternoon sun to see better, and abruptly everything got darker. A lot darker.
"Whoa!" I had to hang onto a tree for support, because I had both eyes shut and wasn't balancing very well. "Raven? Something's wrong."
"What?" she hurried over. "What is it?"
I explained. "My good eye—I don't know what happened to it. Everything went dark like I put on sunglasses." As I have said before, I do sometimes have panic attacks, and while I had not had one in months, not since arriving in this era, in fact—having something go catastrophically wrong with my good eye was enough to trigger one.
"You've gone white— and you're shaking. Are you okay?" she asked.
"Not if I'm losing my sight, I'm not."
"Oh, boy." She was catching my anxiety. "Okay, stay calm. Let me see," she coaxed. "It's okay. Open your eye." I did, and for a moment, everything was still dark, but with a blink, it went back to normal.
"OOoooh," she said. "That's weird. No, it's okay, it's going to be okay. Don't freak out. What I saw was like a third eyelid, like a cat's, you know? Only dark. It slid back when you blinked. Stay calm, because I'm going to move so the sun is on your face again, okay?"
The moment the sun hit me in the eye, it went darker again. I could still see, but like I said, it was darker.
"Yeah, I definitely saw it that time," she said. "Okay, I don't know what it is, but I know what we're going to do now. You're having vision problems, so it's probably not a good idea for you to be driving. You're going to give me the keys, and I'm going to drive us back to the base, where Hank is going to examine your eyes as thoroughly as he can. Don't worry, I have my license and I'm a very good driver. Charles even lets me drive his Rolls. Okay?"
"Okay," and that was what we did.
"It's not a third eye lid per se, it's a nictitating membrane," Hank said. He had checked both eyes, and both eyes now had the same peculiarity. "Your plica semiluminaris is no longer vestigial—that's the um, little pink blob in the inside inner corner of the eye, where you find mucus crusts in the morning—." he explained for Raven's benefit. "The only species of primate with a nictitating membrane that isn't vestigial is the Arctocebus calabarensis, or Calabar angwantibo. It's a monkey that lives in the rainforests of west Africa. Anyhow, it's transparent and it's definitely light-sensitive. Probably sensitive to other stimuli. I think it might even change color in response to ultraviolet radiation, because it isn't dark in artificial light."
Wow, for once I wasn't the biggest geek in the room. "Hmmm—correct me if I'm wrong," I thought out loud, "but diving mammals like sea lions and otters do have functional, transparent nictitating membranes to protect their eyes while swimming and since my adaptation seems to be moving me in that direction, then this makes sense. But in that case, why am I still mutating?"
"Ah!" Hank perked up. "Yes, you're right about diving mammals, and I think I know what's happening to you. When I examined that DNA sample you gave me, I saw something—Actually, I might be able to prove my theory, but to do that, I'd need you to, uh, take your blouse off and put on a hospital gown. I have a fresh one here. I, um, need to examine your skin under ultraviolet light alone. I can also test my theory about your eyes with it, so it serves more than one purpose. I'll just leave the room while you change."
Raven stayed to help me. "You're going to be okay now, right?" she asked.
"Now that I know I'm not going blind, sure. Thanks for being there for me." I put all I felt into the last part.
"Well, you're my friend. We're hidden dragons together, right? I'm really glad you're okay. It was kind of scary, because you're always such a together person."
"I haven't had a panic attack in nearly a year," I said, "That was a phantom of the old me, come back to haunt me today. Attacks like that were why I used to take medication. It comes from feeling powerless."
"Then I'm twice as glad I was there to help," she said. "Hey, Hank? Is just her blouse okay, or does she need to take off more?"
"Oh, just the blouse," he replied.
"Then I'm ready," I said. I had an idea where this was headed, and if I was right and he was right—it was going to be pretty mind-blowing.
He came in bringing a hand-held UV lamp with him. "If you could turn around so I can illuminate your back—Thanks. I'm going to turn off the lights now."
He did so, and Raven exclaimed, "Stripes!"
"They're called Blaschko's lines, and they usually only show up under UV. It's not a mutant trait, it's a sign of something very different." Hank explained. "You see—Joon-Yi, you're a chimera."
"That explains a lot," I said. "A lot a lot." Not my most coherent statement, but my mind was racing.
"The only chimera I know about is from Greek mythology, " Raven said.
"Right," Hank said, turning the lights back on, "A fire-breathing creature that was part dragon, part lion, and part goat. But a genetic chimera is different. It's the opposite of identical twins. Identical twins happen when one zygote divides and splits apart into two individual organisms with identical DNA. A chimera happens when two zygotes merge, and what would have been fraternal twins had they developed normally, becomes one individual with two distinctly different, yet related, sets of DNA. The Blaschko's Lines prove it, they show where the skin's DNA differs. In some individuals the lines are even visible to the naked eye."
"Does that happen a lot?" Raven wondered.
"With animals that normally have litters, it happens all the time," I added. "The more zygotes there are, the more likely it is to happen. Nobody's sure how often it happens in humans, because the condition is usually only identified if something goes obviously wrong, like certain autoimmune disorders where the tissues reject each other, or with hermaphrodites, where the two zygotes were of opposite sexes, although it doesn't always follow that it results in hermaphroditism every time." I raised an eyebrow at Hank.
"Oh, in your case, both zygotes were female," he hastily said. "But there was something else, something that makes you truly unique."
"Let me guess. One zygote was mutant, and the other was human," I said.
"Exactly!" he said. "How did you know?"
"I think I always knew, on some level," I said. I always knew I was a mutant. "It explains a lot."
Like how my blood tests all came up human, when I knew, ever since I understood what it meant, that I was a mutant.
That was because my brain was a mutant brain, while my bone marrow was human.
It explained why Mr. Magnussen misidentified me, and why the Homeland Security thought I was the product of incest—they misread my DNA profile.
It explained my birth defects—the two zygotes did not fuse perfectly, and my forearms got left off altogether.
Perhaps it even explains why I respond so emotionally to A Tale of Two Sisters, when a psychiatrist shows a young girl a photograph of her family and asks if she can point to herself, if she knows which one she is. I am Jangwha, and I am Hongryeon, together in one. I am my sister, and she is me.
"Okay, but why am I still developing new adaptations?" I asked.
"Well—that's where it gets even more interesting. You see, between twelve to fifteen months ago, judging by your telomeres—that's how we can tell the age of cells, by studying their telomeres—," he told Raven, "you were exposed to a very powerful mutagen, repeatedly."
"I can tell you exactly what it was," I said. "Ethylmethane sulfonate. It's used in horticulture to create new varieties. I had an elderly friend who was…a hybridizer of daylilies, and in his old age, he…wasn't as careful as he should have been. That's how I was exposed—we were both exposed, actually. He got cancer from it and died. Obviously it did something to me too."
"Yes. Your mutant half went through a secondary mutation process—it's fascinating, really. I had no idea such a thing was possible. But your human half has been—well, turning mutant. Aggressively. All the cells that are fifteen months old or younger are mutant cells. Eventually, all of them will be, but with two different sets of DNA, you're going to wind up with—well, I have no idea what the end result will be. I believe that it will be confined to your soft tissues, since you're fully adult and your bone plates are finished forming. This is why you now have nictitating membranes. Oh, here."
He flashed the UV in my eyes, and yes, the membrane went up and it was darker. "So I now have built-in sunglasses. And diving goggles."
"Yes, effectively. It does look—odd, though."
"No, it doesn't," Raven contradicted him. "It makes your eyes look enormous and liquidy, like a fawn's."
"Sweet!" I said, startling Hank. "Hey, just look at this nose of mine. The bridge is almost as flat as a pancake. Glasses slide right down it and nearly off it. This is a very practical adaptation. I like it."
"Oh," he said, pushing his own glasses back up on his nose. "But—it is still happening, I mean, you may wind up with something you don't like."
"Well, until then, I'm going to have fun." I smiled at him. "There's a swimming pool somewhere in this complex, right? Raven, you want to go for a dip?"
I told Erik all about the latest development that night, and he was as interested as one might suppose he would be, which is to say, very. He asked questions and I answered. It was the third night he was away and our first two conversations were short and constrained by the near certainty that someone was listening to every word, but this time it flowed more easily. When it was winding down, he asked, "Am I to Assam everything is well with you then?"
"That would be an entirely correct Assam-ption," I replied. "Ugh, what a dreadful pun."
He chuckled. "That whole business really wasn't necessary, you know. If something were wrong, I would know from your voice."
"I…miss you," I said, and the words hung there on the line for a long moment before he replied.
"And I, you." he said, the words sounding new, never used.
"Come back soon," I said. "Come back safe."
"I shall," he said. "for I've something to come back to. Stay safe."
"I will. Good night."
"Good night." he answered, and that was that.
Except that I practically had another panic attack all by myself there, because I am horribly powerless in the face of this emotion. I need not write what it is, because it should be obvious to anyone.
A/N: Again I apologize if I have not replied to your reviews. Not only am I still playing Arkham City, writing this fic, and holding down a job, but Assassin's Creed: Revelations has just come out. If I do any more I shall have to give up sleeping and showering, and that just wouldn't be right. Many thanks to you, my readers. I definitely appreciate your reviews and I do plan to answer.
Anyhow, the science of chimeras is as accurate as I can make it. I've been considering this revelation for some time. The X-Men movies have often hinted that mutant is a metaphor for homosexual, such as Bobby/Iceman's mother asking him if he could just try not being a mutant, and Hank saying that 'You didn't ask, so I didn't tell', and this is my addition. It is thought that many transgender people are actually chimeras whose brains are a different gender than the parts they wound up with, and they have reassignment surgery to correct that. In that spirit, Joon-Yi, therefore, is transspecies.
Also, you don't have to worry. She won't be developing multiple personalities, because that's overdone. Her brain is all mutant, always was, no conflicts there, and if she and her sister had been born separate, they would have had a great relationship. Now that I've thoroughly confused you, I will tell you that next chapter will be at the airport and will be about Erik and Charles' return with the group. There will be many surprises…