Author's note: Thank you to CrazyNonWriter, The Redshirt who Lived, partygirl98, kmj1989, JaliceJelsa4eva, and anonymouscsifan for the reviews! Fear not, dear readers. Lucy's just too terrible for Hank to stay on this course for long ;-)


Normal

Lucy's expression is haughty and a little annoyed when she answers the door and sees me standing there.

"Hello," she says stiffly.

"Hi," I reply, feeling awkward because of her rather forbidding expression. "Um, should I have called first?"

"You should have called on Saturday," Lucy snaps, "instead of standing me up."

I wince. She has good reason to be upset with me- much more than she knows. "I'm really sorry about that," I tell her sincerely. "I had a work emergency and couldn't get away until now. I came over as soon as I could."

"What kind of work emergency is so important that you couldn't at least call?" she demands. "For two days?"

"Someone was dying," I explain. "And needed my help."

"I thought you said you weren't a medical doctor," Lucy retorts suspiciously.

Nice to know you do pay attention sometimes.

"I'm not. That's why it took two days," I lie glibly. "I was the only person they had at my work facility."

It's an explanation that wouldn't work on anyone else, I think, but somehow it works on her. She nods sagely and tells me she understands.

For some reason I'm a little contemptuous of her easy acceptance of my flimsy excuses- and the fact that she didn't even ask how the person I treated is doing right now. I mean, I said the person was dying. Wouldn't it be polite to ask-?

I brutally subdue the feeling.

Lucy steps aside and lets me in. I follow her to the living room, and I swear that I hear her grumble something along the lines of, "should've brought me jewelry to apologize. Or at least flowers."

I almost roll my eyes at her but catch myself at the last second. I chalk it up to being around Vivien so much for the past few days. She has a habit of doing that when I make lamer-than-usual jokes, but then she still laughs anyway-

The anguish catches me off guard, like someone just stabbed me in the chest at the mere thought of her.

"I came as soon as I could get away," I tell Lucy, pressing on through the pain. "I really am sorry."

"It's ok, I guess," she replies, still rather huffy. "I'm sure you'll figure out a way to make it up to me."

"I'll try," I agree, accepting the kiss she gives me. "But enough about me. Tell me how your week was."

And there Lucy goes, chattering away at me. Just like always.

My mind drifts while she speaks, despite my best efforts to listen. I can't stop thinking about what Vivien said to me before she left, even though doing that makes it feel like I'm being flayed alive from the inside.

"I want to be with someone who loves me for who I am, rather than what they want me to be."

It's certainly not a terrible thing to ask for, is it? Going into a relationship hoping to change someone is surely a recipe for disaster.

I suppose that's part of where I went wrong with Raven, as well. I expected her to change- mind you, because she told me she wanted to- and then I got upset and said horrible things when she decided not to.

Vivien, on the other hand, has never expressed such a sentiment. It was I who foolishly made assumptions about everything, that she would finally leave the Brotherhood because of how she felt for me.

My fault, as always- making presumptions without the evidence to back them up. Perhaps it's because I'm usually correct in scientific matters that I try to draw fallacious conclusions like this, without taking the time to check them.

I'm not as smart as I think I am. Certainly not about emotional matters.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that the Raven I fell in love with back in 1962 was a fiction of my own making. I saw a pretty face who smiled at my hideous mutation and immediately felt a bond with her. The fact that she hated her own mutation further drew us together. But what else did we have in common? Anything? I think now that perhaps we assumed that because we both hated our mutations, we would be similar in other ways, too. We just never talked about anything else to find out.

Raven represented so much for me. The chance to get rid of my hand-feet, the first woman to look at me and see me as something other than an awkward geek with nothing to offer the opposite sex. I wonder if I fell for that?

Because the woman I thought I knew would've never left her brother bleeding on a foreign beach, despite his urging, would've never believed in mutant superiority, and would've never walked out on Charles and I at the White House to deal with the mess of her creation.

The Raven Darkholme I loved probably never really existed.

It's different with Vivien, though. I've never been blind to her faults- the snarky attitude, the infuriating stubbornness and the occasionally off-beat sense of humor. She's impulsive, and mercurial, and-

And when I'm around her I feel more alive. I feel strong, and whole and... happy, just being myself with her.

It startled me this weekend, how much we have in common. Books, movies, the way we look at so many things... I'm starting to wonder if we're as far apart as I thought we were.

I feel another strong tremor of remorse.

Vivien saw it, saw how similar we are. She fell for me the way I am- an incurably awkward nerd- and didn't ask me to change a thing. She let me in, let me see the quirky, introspective girl underneath her sarcastic exterior. She told me I was extraordinary, just the way I am.

And in return I asked her to turn her back on her entire life, her only living family. On everything she is.

Because I have to admit now that Vivien was probably right- her choosing to stay at Xavier's would be a huge risk to everyone there. Erik wouldn't take her desertion lightly, and of course Jackal and Fox wouldn't stop until I, at the very least, was dead. Even Vivien's desire to make a difference in the world, in the Brotherhood, now takes on a nobility that is awe-inspiring.

Again, our similarities strike me. We both have so much hope that people can change and become better. How much of a hypocrite am I to begrudge her in her attempts with the Brotherhood? Her own brothers?

I'm such an idiot.

I was so blinded by the way I thought things had to be that I didn't bother to consider anything else. Didn't we prove these past two days that the fact that we're on different teams didn't have to come between us, just as Vivien said?

Could we really be together like this? Can we have both each other and still hold onto our missions?

It wouldn't be easy, and it certainly wouldn't be normal.

Normal...

I focus back on Lucy, who's waffling on about how she's caught between two hairstyles that she wants to try, and whether her face shape would look better with a bob-

Again I feel a surge of irritation aimed at her. Lucy's world is so small, so vapid. She's like a television performer, stuck in a tiny box. It doesn't even matter if I, the audience, am paying attention behind the fourth wall or not.

If this is normal, then I really don't want it.

I want something extraordinary. I want what I had- and hopefully still have- with Vivien.

"Lucy," I say, interrupting her. "We need to talk."