"Sara Louise (hic) Adrien," she sobbed. "...'s my name..."
"Aw man... I'm sorry, hon. I got confused."
"It's okay," she squeaked. "I test high on forgettability..." her voice dwindled into a squeak and she crumpled against him again.
His skin was so cool. He was soft and he wanted to hold her. But that didn't stop her crying. She was in deep sobs, now. The sort that were soundless but for the various attempts to breathe.
The occasional squeak escaped her as her breath hissed out.
She was trapped in her own misery.
"Shh... Shhh..." Todd kissed her, holding her close. "It's okay, baby. It's gonna be okay."
"...i don' wanna hurt anybody..." she managed. "...i like th' li'l birds t' fly..."
Todd began to rock her. "It's okay. You can leave the birds alone if ya wanna."
Cuckoo!
"There's th' doc. What's he sayin'? 'Eyes may still have scale remnants near th' optic nerve.' Yo' got any of that eyewash stuff?"
Sara nodded. "Medkit. Down near th' bottom."
"Bottom?"
She sniffed. "Of m' bag."

Todd brushed her face and kissed her. "I'm'a get it, hon. You hang on, 'kay?" He dived over to the bag. He tried to haul it over to her, but couldn't pick it up. Never mind, he un-packed it in situ until he found something with a red cross on it.
"Here it at," he cried. He opened it on her lap. Lots of gauze and mysterious tubes, bottles and sachets. He found the eye cup and put it in her trembling hands. "Which one's th' eye stuff?"
Sara reached automatically for a largeish bottle under the top layer. A generous, practiced squirt and she filled the thing.
"Yo, you done this befo'..."
"I'm rather accident prone." She placed the cup on her eye and tipped her head backwards. "Neee... ow... ack, it burns..."
Todd read the lable. "Ain't this th' stuff they use to wash contacts?"
"Yeah. It's a very good eyewash, too." She tipped herself back down. "Something's moving in there..." She blinked, stretched her eye at the corner.
Something milky and white appeared on her bottom lid.
Todd carefully flicked it out. It was a ragged circle-like shape with a neat hole in the middle. "Whoah."
"At least we know it works."
"Hey, yo' over yo' shakes!" Todd grinned.
"Not quite, dear. I put them away so I could handle this. I'll get back to gibbering annon."
"Please don't think like that?" he begged.

Sara put the cup over her other eye and bent herself backwards over the chair.
Krickledy-kract-pop-snap-krakle went her back.
"Yo, that's gotta hurt."
"Nah. Happens all the time. I can snap every joint in my body if I want to."
"Dare you to do it near Pietro," Todd laughed. "Dude'll have a fit."
Her eye was burning in the chemicals. She could stand it for another few. "I like to think I'm not that mean, despite my subconscious impulses to eat live prey."
"Uh. What?"
"I dreamed of eating birds last night."
"Oh..." said Todd.
Sara straightened up and removed both cup and leftover scale. "Nnngggh... That has to be the single most peculiar sensation ever."
Todd was typing. Sara peered over his shoulder.

FrogPrince: Eyewash did the trick. Huzzah
BigBlue: V Good. Monitor over the next few hours. Be alert for extra mucous or rapid swelling. Bathe for former, ice for latter
FrogPrince: K

"Ask him what works when calamine doesn't," said Sara.
Todd handed her the keyboard. "Go fo' it, hon. You need t' know what to expect.

FrogPrince: Is Sara, borrowing KB. Calamine not helping some lge irritations on back
BigBlue: What's the sensation?
FrogPrince: Prickly-heat plus crawliness plus raw skin plus pins and needles. Ick.

"Ow... Mah po' honeybuns..." Todd soothed her skin with his hands.

BigBlue: Tried that aloe stuff for sunburns?
FrogPrince: Trying now.

Sara dived into her medkit and liberated another bottle of blue gunk. A generous squeeze into her palm went right under the back of her shirt.
Ah, cool relief. "Oooooohhhhh... Oh yeah."
Somewhere outside, someone had a conniption involving every metal object in the house.
"That's what yo' get fo' eavesdroppin', Pie," Todd yelled. "Ass."

Todd grumbled some more at Pie and rubbed some of the sunburn lotion a bit further down her back. Sara blushed as his hand went up under the back of her shirt. He hadn't asked. Todd froze, realizing what he was doing.
"Sh - sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't even ask." He looked like he was expecting a slap. Sara touched his face, gently.
"You were thinking of making me feel better. I'm not ever going to hit you for that."
"You'd be surprised, yo, what excuses people come up with." He remembered one time when Mystique had gotten sick. He'd walked into her room while she was half-awake to offer her a blanket and nearly got his arm twisted out of his socket.
"You'd be surprised how many people balk at touching me. When I'm healthy. Right now I definitely qualify as an untouchable."(1)
"Not to me you don't." Todd couldn't help but ask, "Do I?"
Sara kissed him in response and released his lips from hers only at piercing stab in the back of her neck. "Ow, what was that?"
Todd went around and looked. "Holy shit yo. Yo scales are... they're beautiful."
"They're coming out? Now?"
"Just here." Todd stroked one small patch on the back of her neck, smoothing the disks down and gently freeing the skin. "I guess cause the layer of skin is so thin near the bone. Places you got more skin an' muscle might take longer."
Sara started typing.

FrogPrince: A couple of my scales have come out. Todd says they're beautiful.
FrogPrince: Why do I feel like a mommy?
Big Blue: lol! Congratulations. ;) What do they look like?

(1) the very bottom caste of the Indian caste system.

"What do they look like?" Sara rubbed at her knuckles, trying to peel away the old skin there.
"Yo, this one's icy green... This one's a kinda blue... Yo, this one's the colour o' them green beer bottles."
Sara revealed a cluster of four on a knuckle. The old skin peeled away, but stayed attached firmly to the rest. They were tiny, really, close together and as bright as uncut gems. Where a small mole had been, there was now one in lapis-lasuli blue. The others were varying shades of aqua.

FrogPrince: I think I'm going to be largely green-blue. they're varying between pale and dark greens, blues, and everything in-between.

"Ack! Mom! She's going to be worried," Sara blurted.
"Huggle-bumps... I don't think she miss you that much."
"All the same, I still need a good excuse." She bought out her cellular and began dialling. "I'll call Roy. He'll be out of the flack range."
"Roy?"
"Uh..." Sara bit her lip. "We kinda have a butler." She blushed. When she told people about her family's affluence, they usually started treating her like a human bank and got upset when she didn't have money to spare. "And a cook. And a maid. And a gardener..."
Todd took it in his stride. "Hey, it's coo'. Yo' don't need no dragons, aight?"
"My old grammar tutors would have a field day with you, darling."
Todd just grinned.
"Adrien residence?" said Roy.
"Roy... I am so glad you picked up. Can you tell Mom I'm working on a project with Freddy? Tell her it's extra credit. For..." she blushed. "Biology."
She could hear Roy smile. "I see... Good luck with your - endeavors. And remember restraint."
Translation: Have fun with your young man - but not too much fun. "Thanks, Roy. You're a dear." She hung up, bright pink and gigglish.
Todd was grinning. "Biology, anh?" He made a complicated gesture. "Yo, you my bad girl."
Sara couldn't help hiding her face in both hands as she giggled and blushed.

Meanwhile...
Hank flipped through his books. Aqua scales, were they? Fascinating. According to the available information, she was a class twelve shapeshifter with minor regenerative capabilities. Her skin may even respond to rough treatment by thickening up into some kind of armour.

BigBlue: Feeling better? I'm here if you need to unburden.

He leaned back and sipped his brew and waited. And waited. And waited...
What were they doing over there?

"Yo cute when you laugh," Todd grinned. Sara giggled harder but shook her head.
"You don't think I sound like a committed chipmunk on crystal meth?"
"Naw," Todd answered back, straight faced. Then he lost his composure and fell over sideways onto the bed. His laughter was just a bit on the nasal side, but contagious. Soon both of them were rendered helpless for no clear reason.
Sara stopped laughing only when her throat developed a tickle that would not be coughed away. She took another long draught from her mug.
Todd sat up and scooched next to her. While she drank he busied himself with brushing a few elbow scales free of their dead skin covering. Sara thrummed appreciatively, and by the time she put down the water Todd's fingers were stroking her arm in intricate patterns. She studied him for a moment, watching his amber eyes focused adoringly on her body, following the movement of his hand as it trailed down to her hand.
Sara leaned down and kissed his jaw in a non-distractive way, allowing him to maintain as much focus as possible on his loving task. She didn't want him to stop; ever. It felt... right. Some other part of her that seemed long ago and far away might have blushed to death, but she was far too happy to die now.
That wasn't to say she no longer doubted her actions; her heart fluttered as she kissed Todd again. This time under the jaw, on the neck. His skin was soft, beautiful. Somewhat dryer than might be normal, but it felt cool to the touch. Sara wanted more of it and that thought scared her. Her eyes sought safer territory and met his eyes. He returned her gaze calmly, but though his hand did not stop stroking patterns on her skin, it trembled and hesitated for the briefest of moments.
Both were too afraid to speak. Neither knew what to say. Being loved was such a novel experience and it was too much. Overwhelming. Sara felt the boxes in her mind start to quake a bit. They wanted to open, to spill everything out onto Todd. They wanted him to make it okay. She did too, but what if they were wrong? What if she talked too much and scared him away? Not yet, she told them. Ever obedient, they kept their lids on firmly.
Sara didn't want to deal with it anyway, even if there was some remote chance Todd could make it all better. The boxes became unimportant, almost non-existent. She could see the future in his eyes.
It was full of sandy-haired children with green eyes and scales tackling each other and trying to outjump their father. When they failed, of course, they demanded free froggy-back rides and defiantly turned invisible when he dared to claim tiredness.
She chuckled softly, now back in the present. He smiled back, the light in his eyes speaking of what he'd seen in hers.

She could weather the pain of the scales' final emergence. It was only like being stabbed with a sharp pencil. Sara had had plenty of those wounds in her time.
Todd, she couldn't help noticing, was flaking, too.
She carefully pulled at a strip of skin until she met resistance. "Does it - hurt for you?"
"Naw. Not any mo'." He took over pulling the ghostlike veil from his face and neck. The skin underneath was a pale, pale green that quickly darkened to his usual sallow hue. "I mean, sure, th' first coupla times were pretty rough, yo. Itched like fury, but it hurt like a bad sunburn." He shrugged. "Idunno. Either I got used to it or-- you okay?"
She must have been wincing. "Five patches at once down my spine. Ooof."
"Ow... poor baby," he soothed. "I used t' find a cold shower kinda helped."
"How about more showers?"
"Shaddup, Tabby."
She didn't. "The fuck you doing with Essel the Perv?"
"Hey, just because you can't lock a bathroom stall--"
"Just because you always walk in on me, dumbass..." She lobbed a little glowing ball at her.
Sara reacted instinctively, batting it back where, shockingly, it exploded in the blonde's face.
"HEY!"
Todd cracked up. "Whassamatta? Can dish it out but yo' can't take it?"
Tabby gave him a dangerous glare, decided that she had to be elsewhere, and stomped off in a huff.
Sara still had both hands over her mouth.
Todd prised her fingers away.
"I'msorry, Ididn'tmeanit..." spilled out of her mouth. "It was an instinct. Something gets thrown at you, you bat it away... better my hands than my shirt... UNH. Ow." She hissed. Now she was getting cramps under her skin. She rubbed at the hurt on the back of her hand.
Freddy poked his head in, "I got dinner an' I did some washin' up so there's even clean plates."
"...definitely a hazmat team," Sara muttered. "Todd... is your room some kind of public thoroughfare?"
"It must be today," he said. "I oughta sell tickets. Or show you th' spare room."

It was, as he'd advertized, not much. There was never a bedframe. Just a mattress and a couple of boxes of random crap. And a sheet with little duckies on it.
"I know, it ain't a lot, but at least it ain't trash, right?"
Sara put her bag down. "It'll suffice for sleeping. Not that I think much of that will be done." She hissed and rubbed at another spot. "I think my skin's cramping."
Todd couldn't do much for that, and it hurt to watch her hurting. It also hurt to see her get that strange, blank look - almost as if she wasn't herself - for a couple of seconds before returning to normal. Whatever she was doing when she did that, he could tell it wasn't healthy.
And there'd been that weird moment when a whole world of hurt had turned up in her eyes... then vanished into the eery blank look. Todd ached to ask her what was up... but daren't. The poor kid had enough troubles with the scales.
Indeed, Sara was looking ragged in more ways than one. Parts of her skin had split, revealing gemlike, tiny scales underneath, but it clung fast and was too thick to rip, so it hung off her in tatters. Her colour - where she was still pinkish - wasn't good. She'd gone very, very pale.
"Maybe you should - y'know... have some dinner an' take somethin' to help yo sleep?" he suggested. "Yo're already havin' a rough time... Sleepin' it off's better'n bein' awake."
"Better than," corrected Sara. "I'm going to need the energy, yes. Dinner and an antihistamine. Lovely."
"What? No painkillers?"
"Asprin makes me sick," she said. "Paracetamol kills the pain but makes me slightly whack. Ibuprofen just makes me see things, and Nurofen just plain doesn't work. And I overreact to sedatives."
"Yo' kiddin' me."
"Seriously. Mom gave me a sleeping pill once?" she said. "She meant well. I needed to be rested up for the competition... Anyway, when she checked on me, I wasn't breathing."
"Whoah."
"It was, apparently, a very scary five hours in ER." Sara shrugged, absently holding his hand on the way back to the kitchen. "I don't even remember the time between tuck-in and life support. It's very weird waking up and finding out that a machine is helping you breathe."
Todd made a tiny little strangled noise.
"Don't worry about it, dear. I'm fine now."
"Yo, what frikkin' competition, doll?" he begged. "It shoulda been on the news."
"Oh, it was. I was three years old at the time. Little Miss Bayville charity beauty pageant. Ironically, we were funding a campaign against animal testing for makeup."
"Day-umn, yo." He shook his head. "Where have you been?"
"Lots of boarding schools. Some national competitions back when I was still cute enough to win prizes... you know how it goes."
Todd appeared confused. "I do?"
"It is the duty of a daughter to make her mother proud. A duty I rather failed when I was six and won 'best effort' instead of anything near first prize. I try... but all I am is trying." Twitch. Blankness. And then Sara was back. "Sorry, dear. You don't need to hear about it."
"Somebody's gotta," he said.