Disclaimer: If you think I actually own rights to Marvel or Fox, where have you been for the last seven chapters? Do you even read my disclaimers? Hm...yes, by opening this page you have forfitted your own rights to all of the sweets in your house. I will be in touch with you for shipping days. Thank you and have a nice day. ;-) (Please enjoy!)

Nearly a week and a half later, I was hurrying through packing a small bag for my overnight stay in Brooklyn, when there was a knock at my door.

"Come in," I called.

The door opened and Uncle Scott walked in. "Getting ready to leave?" he asked, walking over to where I was standing.

"Yeah, I'm just trying to get some of my stuff together before we have to go."

"Shouldn't you have done that last night?"

"Uh, yeah, probably. But hey, it's me; I'm the most procrastinating person you know, remember?"

"No, you're just a procrastinator; you're the most optimistic pessimist I know."

"Yeah, what does that mean by the way?" I asked, stopping what I was doing and looking at him.

"It means that you always expect bad things to happen and are sure that they will, but you think that something good will always come out of it."

I laughed some and nodded my head. "That's so weird and yet…oddly so true. Wow."

"Do you need anything that I can get for you?"

"No, I think I'm set," I said, placing a pair of my pajamas into my bag and zipping it closed. "But thank you."

"You're welcome," he said, still standing beside me. "So what's with all of the black? You look like you're going to a funeral."

"Maybe I am."

"Thank you Johnny Cash," he joked.

"Well, he does sing a song about me."

"You're aware that he kills the Delia in his song, right?"

"Yeah, I've heard the song once or twice, I think I gather that much from it," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Are you nervous?"

I let out a sigh. "A little bit, yeah. I don't even know what to expect. I'm starting to think that this whole thing is just…crazy."

"You don't have to go if you don't want to."

"I know…I know. I feel like I need to, though. Perhaps everything's only far more complicated than it seems because I'm making it that way."

"Maybe," he said. We both stood quietly for a while. "Really, what's with all of the black?"

"I'm trying to look like an adult instead of a six year old or a cartoon character. Is it working?"

He smiled at me. "Yeah, you sort of look depressed compared to what you always wear, but yeah, you look pretty grown up."

I was wearing a pair of blue jeans and a black T-shirt with a black sweater over it and a pair of black ballet flats. My hair was down and still slightly damp from just getting out of the shower. I had decided to try to make a good impression on my father's family and thought that wearing brightly colored, whimsical clothing might be slightly off putting.

"Hey kid, you ready?" Logan asked, appearing in my doorway.

"Yeah, let me tell Uncle Scott bye and we can go."

"I'm gonna' wait downstairs."

"Alright, I'll be down in a bit." I waited until he was gone and then turned back to Scott. "Are you nervous?"

"A little bit."

"About what, me staying alone with Logan overnight?"

"Yeah, that too, but I'm also nervous about you meeting these people. I don't want you to get hurt by them. Enough people have done that to you already."

"I'm going to be okay, I'm pretty tough skinned. I don't think that there's too much that they can do to me in just a few hours that can hurt me too badly."

He pulled me to him and hugged me. "Just be careful Delia, I love you."

"I love you, too Uncle Scott. I'll see you when we get home tomorrow. Bye."

"Alright, bye."

It took nearly four hours for us to get to Brooklyn. Once there, we checked into the hotel down the street from the address that I had been given for my father's parent's house.

"Hm," Logan said, walking through the door of our room. "I've seen worse."

I followed in behind him and looking around. It wasn't too bad. It wasn't dirty or anything, just severally outdated. The walls were a light, pea green color and the floor was covered in an orange, shag carpeting. There was a photo each hanging over both beds. They were of some weird looking log cabin with the same color schemes as the room. The bedspreads were covered in a mixture of an outdated flower print and a geometric pattern in brown, orange and green.

"It's not that bad, at least it's clean. I'm just not sure that anyone's stayed in here since the seventies."

"I wouldn't've stayed here then."

"Do you even remember the seventies?" I asked, tossing my bag onto the bed closest to the bathroom.

"No, but you know what they say; if you remember 'em, you didn't live through 'em."

"Yeah, I think they were referring to being high rather than losing your memory through a mutant experimentation program."

"You never know, kid."

"I'm pretty sure that's not what they were talking about. Anyway, the point is; it's not terrible. Besides, it's only one night, right?"

"Don't even have to stay the night, if you don't want to."

I smiled at him. "It's fine. Like you said; I've seen worse," I told him, looking around. "Actually, I've lived in worse."

He looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "Really?"

"Hey, drugs and alcohol aren't cheap, so that leaves little money for nice apartments. I lived in a motel for about six months…that actually wasn't too bad, everyone who lived there was pretty nice to me." He kept looking at me curiously. "What? Did you think I lived in a big nice house, or something? I told you that I don't keep homes for long."

"Yeah, but by homes I didn't think you were talkin' about motels."

"What did you think I was talking about? Sorry if I misled you, but we usually live in one-bedroom apartments in the dive parts of town, because those are the cheapest. I had been sleeping on a couch for three years when I get to the school." I stopped and laughed dryly for a moment. "Mother thinks I'm only being polite by always giving her the bedroom."

"Why do you?"

"Because it's easier to hear her when she leaves if I'm always sleeping by the door." I sat down on the bed that I had claimed and cradled my head in my hands. "I worked for seven years in a diner and all I ever did was go from sleeping on one crappy couch to another in some dump apartment in the worst parts of Connecticut. I'm going to be twenty-six soon and what have I ever done with my life? Most people my age have already gone through college and started their careers. And look at me," I said, waving my arms around and indicating to the room around us. "I'm back at square one. I'm in some weird hotel room in Brooklyn, New York because I'm here to meet family I never knew that I had because I have severe complex problems and need people that will love me. I have done absolutely nothing with my life."

"You've taken care of your mother."

"And she doesn't even want me to do that."

"Well if you always did what people wanted you to do, where would you be?"

"I would be boxing or going to college."

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know…I don't even know." I looked up at him as tears brimmed by eyes. I hurriedly wiped them away. "I'm sorry, I'm just tired."

"Don't apologize, kid," he said, sitting down on the bed beside me.

"I just don't know what I'm going to do. I know mother's not going to live much longer and when she's gone…what am I supposed to do?"

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "Hey, you're twenty-five, all right? You're smart, you're gorgeous and this ain't it, darlin'. You ain't gonna' live in some dump for the rest of your life, all right?"

"You think so?" I asked, looking up at him with tear glazed eyes.

He nodded at me, keeping his eyes locked with mine. "Yeah."

I curled up next to him and we both sat quietly for a while. "Logan?"

"Yeah?"

"You said you thought I was gorgeous. Do you really?"

He cleared his throat and shifted a little on the bed. "Don't tell me you don't already know you are."

"Well, I don't think I'm ugly or anything."

"Are you serious? You really don't think you're pretty?"

"Not exactly."

"How?"

"I let out a small laugh. "How what?"

"How can you not think that you're…" he paused and cleared his throat again. "How do you not know you're beautiful?" I shrugged my shoulders. He looked at me, his brow furrowed and his mouth turned down in a frown. "You're really not fishin' for compliments, are you? You really don't believe me."

"I guess when someone says you aren't enough, you just believe them."

His frown deepened. "Who told you that?"

Maybe it wasn't normal. Maybe it wasn't right. My life never had been, but perhaps it was time for me to really think about things and reevaluate my personal truths.

"Mother," I nearly whispered. After hearing how he had reacted when I told him that someone had said it to me, I almost felt ashamed to even tell him who it was.

He swore and stood. He then began to pace in front of me. "She told you that?" he asked, looking near livid.

"Well, it's not as bad as it sounds, I'm sure. It's not as if she told me that I was ugly…it's just… This is silly," I said, waving my hand dismissively.

"No it's not," he said, stopping in front of me, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Logan, there are worse things in life then not having people believe that you're beautiful."

"What? Like hatin' you."

I lowered my head, not wanting to look at him. "You promised that you wouldn't throw that up in my face," I said, then added quietly, "Mother loves me in her own way."

"Yeah, well you promised you were gonna' be honest with me, so we're even."

I lifted my head, looking up and meeting his eyes with a certain amount of fury that being accused of lying can bring. "Even? What haven't I told you the truth about?"

"You honestly think your mother loves you?"

"I have to. If I don't, then I don't have anything."

He ran his hand over his face. "That's why you keep goin' back to her? You wanna' run away from here 'cause you're scared of gettin' close to people and then havin' them hurt you. When you're there with her, you don't have to go through the disappointment of findin' out that she's gonna' let you down and hate you, 'cause you know she always will. With everyone else you gotta' go through figurin' out how they're gonna' hurt you, 'cause you're sure that they will. If your own mother does, why wouldn't everyone else, right?"

"It's not that simple," I said, not even bothering to wipe away the tears from my face.

"Then explain it to me!" he yelled. "Why are you doin' this to yourself? Why do you let her do this to you? You're just waitin' for a hole to open up and for everything you got that's actually good in your life to be taken away from you."

"It's because it always does."

"That's not how it's supposed to work, though."

"And how would you know?" I yelled back.

"'Cause lovin' people ain't about tearin' 'em down until all they can think about is how they can work hard enough to make you stop hurtin' 'em. You shouldn't have to worry about if your mother's gonna' love you or not."

"Well I do, okay? Because that's life."

"Not it's not."

"It's my life!"

"It doesn't have to be."

"Why do you care what I do? It's none of your business," I said, lowering the sound of my voice and staring up at him with an extreme amount of anger and fascination. No one had ever laid the situation out like he just had. No one had ever cared to. If you don't talk about it, if we only mentioned it in a hushed and low voice, then it wasn't really true. But he had said it, yelled it and although I was more furious with him at that moment that I had been the entire time I had known him, I was also curious as to why he was doing it. Why he cared.

He swore and shook his head at me. "I'm in some stupid hotel four hours away from my own freakin' home just so you can meet more people that're gonna' hurt you. From the moment I met you it was my freakin' business."

"They're not going to hurt me."

"Well accordin' to your theory they are. Everyone does, right? Your father died and left you to live with a mother who doesn't even love you. They both did, Scooter will, I'm goin' to, right? Why won't they do it, too? You know what your problem is? You don't need people to love you, you need people to hurt you 'cause you think you deserve it. You think that's love. Let me tell you something, kid; love ain't supposed to hurt. It ain't about tearin' someone down to feel better about yourself. It's about wantin' to make the other person happy."

"Which is what I'm doing."

"No, you're doin' everything you think she wants to try and make her happy and it's makin' you miserable. You're not supposed to feel that way, you never should. Both people have to try for it to work and from what you're tellin' me darlin', she doesn't want it to work. You do."

"Well that's awfully rich, coming from you," I spat.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's supposed to mean that you don't know about anything you're talking about. Loving someone isn't supposed to make other people hate you for it. You said that love is not supposed to hurt other people, but screw that, because that's exactly what you've done."

"What are you talkin' about?"

"I'm talking about the fact that you're standing there, judging me for my decisions, but how about this one, Logan; love isn't about making a pass at a married woman." He looked away from me and ran his hand over his mouth. "Yeah, it's one thing for you to stand there and pick me apart and tell me what to do, that's easy, isn't it? But it's something else completely for me to bring up something about you, right?"

He walked to the door, stopped, then turned and stormed back to stand right in front of me. "You don't know what you're talkin' about, all right? So just leave it alone."

"Well then," I said, trying to keep my voice even and controlled, and not managing to do so very well. The rage and bitterness inside of me fought its way into my mouth and spewed out with my very words. I stared up at him from underneath my eyebrows; my whole body shook with anger. "Why don't you explain it to me?" I said, throwing his words back into his face.

"You wanna' play this game little girl, fine. I'm better at it than you are." His eyes were focused on mine, his nostrils were flared and his breathing was heavy with anger. I took a moment to notice myself and realized that I was doing the exact same thing.

I focused on my breathing and tried to calm it the best that I could. I was mad. Scratch that; I was pissed. Absolutely livid. However, there was a reason for us to be arguing. It had started with a point, but it just seemed to have gotten lost in our yelling and pointing of fingers.

"I don't want to play games Logan," I said quietly as I stood. "I only want for things to start making sense. Not everything's as easy for me as it is for you. I'm still a kid, I'm still lost and I still have to finger things out on my own." Then I walked out the door and left.

Barbara Streisand was wrong; people who need people are not the luckiest people in the world.

I walked up and down the small street we were staying on for about half an hour before I finally calmed down and got up enough nerve to go to my grandparent's home. I had been nervous before, but added with the argument with Logan; I was nearly shaking with nerves as I rang the doorbell to their apartment. My heart pounded and my chest tightened, making it hard to breathe as I waited for someone to answer. After only a minute, which felt more like thirty, I heard footsteps fall behind the door and then it opened. A woman answered and smiled at me.

"Hi, you must be Delia," she said.

I nodded. "Yeah."

"Well, I'm Eliza; it's nice to meet you." I reached out my hand to shake hers. "Oh dear, no, we don't shake hands in this family."

"Oh," I said, retracting my hand. "Sorry." Great, I thought, we've just met and I've already offended her.

"Come here, give me a hug," she said, pulling me to her in an awkward hug. She then took my hand and pulled me into the apartment. "Joe, everyone, Delia's here," she called out.

I felt way in over my head as she led me into her home, down a hall and into a living room. There were five people, two woman and three men, sitting around on a couch and a few armchairs. The whole place smelled oddly of a mix between cats and too strong cleaning sprays with scented candles that I wasn't quite capable of distinguishing just what scent they were.

"Hi," I said, trying to smile through my nerves, though I was sure that it had come across as more of a look that of a frightened woodland creature staring into the headlights of an oncoming car.

"Joe darlin, this is Delia, I do hope I'm pronouncing that right dear," Eliza said, turning to me.

"Yes, that's right."

"Good," she said, patting my hand. "As I was saying darling, this is Delia, our granddaughter. How very odd is it to say that? Anyway dear, you must be curious about who these people are. This is Kevin, your uncle, and his wife Mary," she said, pointing to the couple sitting on the couch.

"Hello," I barely had the chance to say before she was continuing with her introductions.

"This here is Joe, your grandfather. That's your aunt Cathy and this is her husband Denis. I do hope that's not too confusing for you." I opened my mouth to say 'no' but before I could, she was already ushering me into a chair facing everyone else. "Good, would you care for some lemonade?"

I stared up at the very talkative woman in front of me and tried to process everything that I was hearing. "Yes please."

She took the pitcher from the coffee table in the center of the room and filled a glass with lemonade before handing it to me. "Cookie dear?" she asked, holding out a plate of cookies that looked too perfect to be homemade.

"No thank you, I'm quite full at the moment."

"Well, just help yourself when you feel like one," she said and then sat herself in a chair beside Joe, looking perfectly demure. She reminded me of June Cleaver and I wondered if she wore the pearl necklace that she was wearing then, even when she vacuumed. "Now, do tell us how your trip was. Did you find everything all right?"

"Yes, everything was great, we got here fine."

"We? Oh, did you bring a guest? You should have brought them with you; we would have loved to have met them. Wouldn't we Joe?"

"Yes, I'm sure," he answered.

No you wouldn't, I thought.

"Well, he was quite tired, so he stayed in."

"Oh, how long have the two of you been married?" she asked as I took a sip of my drink, promptly causing me to choke on it.

"I'm sorry?" I asked.

"Well I assume that the two of you are married since you both traveled here together."

"Well…no."

"So you're dating? We haven't quite missed the wedding just yet, then. How wonderful!"

"I, uh, well…no," I stammered. "We're not dating either. We're actually just friends, really."

"So who are you dating then?"

"Well, I'm not at the moment, actually."

Cathy laughed. "You're twenty-five, right?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You better start dating soon or you'll be old and single."

"I'll keep that in mind." I blinked.

"How can you been single? You're adorable and look at those dimples!" Eliza said. "Tell me dear, where did you get those?"

"My Uncle Scott."

"So you have another uncle?" Kevin asked.

"Yes, I'm actually staying with him for the time being."

"You don't have your own house?" Mary asked.

"Uh, no, not at the moment anyway."

There was a round of 'hm's and then silence from them all. I had never felt so small in my life.

"So what exactly do you do? Since you don't have a husband you must have to work yourself," Cathy said.

"Well…I don't, at the moment. As I said, I'm living with my uncle and his family."

"So your uncle is supporting you as well as a family?" Denis asked.

"Not quite."

"Well either he is or he isn't dear, it's a simple question," Eliza said.

No it's not, I thought.

"I am staying with my uncle but I suppose that I should clarify that he and his wife are teachers at a boarding school where they both live. His family is the other teachers, as they grew up there together."

"So he is supporting you, then?" Cathy said.

"No, he's not."

"But you said that you don't have a job. If he's not supporting you than who is?"

"The school where I'm staying allows me to live and eat there for free. There's really not much need for me to go outside of the school for anything."

"Well what did you study in school?" asked Kevin.

"I'm afraid that I didn't get to go to college," I said and then remembered what Logan had said about that not being it for me and added; "Not yet anyway."

They all shared a laugh. "If you haven't gone by now, you never will," Mary said.

We continued to make small talk for twenty minutes as they also continued to make me feel smaller and smaller with each new thing we talked about. I remembered what I had promised the Professor about leaving if I found out why my father and his family never spoke, but I needed to stay a little longer. There was more I needed to know.

"I do apologize, this is a bit off topic, but the reason I came here was to learn about my father. I'm afraid I didn't get to know him better."

"Typical of William to run off and leave his child," Eliza spat as Joe nodded his head in agreement.

"I beg your pardon, but my father didn't leave me, he passed away when I was eight."

"Hm," snuffed Eliza. "One less thing to worry about in this world then, I say. Joe darling, do pour me some more lemonade."

"I-I'm sorry?" I stammered.

"Dear, you really should have that stutter checked on. At least I know now why you're not married," Eliza said, sipping her newly poured drink.

"It's not a stutter, I'm just having a hard time understanding what happened between you that made you feel the way that you do about him."

"How could we not? What with what he became and all."

"You stopped talking with him because he was a boxer?" I asked, genuinely confused.

"A boxer?" She laughed. "Is that what he did? Always had a fascination with those sweaty men on TV beating each other, William did. I never allowed him to watch it in my house, mind you. But he would sneak around to a friend's house and watch them." She let out a sigh and shook her head.

"So if you didn't know he was a boxer, then what did he become that you didn't agree with?"

"Agree with?" she shrieked. "We not only didn't agree with it, we were down right disgusted by it. Your father was a monster, be sure of that. And one who refused to get help for his problem."

I felt sick to my stomach and scared. "What are you talking about?" I asked. I closed my eyes, preparing myself for what she was going to say. For the terrible secret that had apparently made them hate their own son and what he kept from my mother and me. I had never been so nervous before.

"Your father, I'm afraid, was…" Eliza paused and took a deep breath. "He was a mutant."

My eyes snapped open, my jaw dropped and my mouth ran dry. I suddenly felt sicker to my stomach than I had before. "Oh my word," was all I could manage to say.

"You had no idea?" Joe asked.

I shook my head dumbly.

"Would you tell other people that sort of thing? He was probably ashamed of it, as he rightfully should have been. It's terribly disgusting," Eliza said with a shudder.

"But he was my daddy," I said quietly, shocked by the news. There was no way that mother could have known. She hated us as much as they did, if not more.

"Well, he was also a sick freak of nature," Eliza spat.

"No, he wasn't sick, that's just who he was," I argued. "You can't hate people for who they are."

"It wasn't who he was, he could have kept it a secret, he didn't have to tell anyone. Judging by your reaction, he learned from his mistake of telling us. He could have gotten help, but he chose not to. That was the decision he made when we decided to sever ties with him. We pretty much stopped talking about him after that," Joe said.

"Help? What kind of help do you think he could've gotten? Mutation is not a disease that can be cured. It's a genetic difference. You can't take a pill to change the color of your skin, or you hair or your eyes and you can't do it to change being a mutant, either," I defended.

Eliza looked at me hard for a moment. "You sure seem to be defensive about the subject. Why is that?" she asked. "Are you a mutant?"

Everything stopped. My heart, my breathing, every blood vein in my body seemed to stop pumping blood. Everything except for my brain, which went into overdrive trying to process all of the information. I swallowed hard, but my mouth was dry, so it only made a loud sound.

"No, I'm not," I lied. "But I don't believe that we are born to be a certain way. We all choose how we want to be and so I completely disagree with you that all mutants are sick people. Some of them are, yes, but so are some normal people. Being a mutant has nothing to do with it. And I'm sorry that you hated my father, but more so, I'm glad that he was nothing like any of you. He was a good man and he never judged my mother or me for anything," I said and then left.

I walked out the door, jogged across the street and then ran down to the hotel where Logan and I were staying. Once I arrived to our room door, I opened it, closed it behind me and then slid down it, landing on the floor as I began to cry.

Logan, who was lying on his bed sleeping, sat up, jumped from it, and ran to me. "Hey kid, what's wrong?" he asked, crouching down beside me. His eyes were wide with concern and having just been woken.

I wanted to answer him, but I couldn't. I was crying too hard. It had hit me like a wave as soon as I had stepped into our room.

The Professor had warned me about meeting them. I should have listened.

Daddy was a mutant. He had kept a secret from us.

They had asked me if I was a mutant. I got scared and lied to them.

I cried and cried until I was unable to catch my breath. I opened my mouth to say something, but then closed it before jumping up and running to the bathroom. The heavy sobbing had caused me to become sick, so much so that I began vomiting. Yes, I know, not the most glamorous thing in the world.

Logan followed me into the bathroom and again, crouched down beside me where I was kneeling in front of the toilet. He took my hair and pulled it away from my face. "You need me to get anything for you?" he asked.

"A cold, wet towel so I can put it around my neck," I said before bowing my head to get sick in the toilet once more. He stood and then quickly did as I asked him, ringing out the excess water from the towel before placing it around my neck. "Thank you."

"Don't worry about it," he said, helping me as I tried to get up and moved to sit on the edge of the bathtub. "Here, take your sweater off, you need to cool down." He pulled the sweater from my arms then folded it and placed it on the sink counter before sitting down beside me. "What happened?"

I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm myself, even though I was still crying. "They hated him, they hated daddy. He was a mutant and they hated him," I sobbed. "When I found out, I tried to take up for him, but then they asked if I was one and-and, I said no, I lied. I lied."

He put his arm around me and pulled me to him tightly. "Hey, it's alright. You don't have to trust people if you don't want to, not about this. It's none of their business who you are."

I continued to cry, though. I didn't exactly know why, and I'm sure he didn't either. But never the less, he continued to hold and comfort me. In some odd way, he reminded me of my father. Whenever I would cry, he would hold me to him and hug me, then he would tell me to cry for different things before always ending with 'And cry for the stars because they will never know my darling Delia'.

Perhaps I was crying because his family had the chance to know him longer than I and yet they chose to hate him and push him away.

Perhaps I was crying because I felt guilty and ashamed of lying about being who I was.

Perhaps I was crying because I needed my daddy to be there to tell me to cry for them because they will never know his darling Delia.

Perhaps it was all of that and more.

"All I have is Uncle Scott. Without him, I don't have anyone, not even mother. What am I going to do, Logan?" I cried.

He pulled me to him closer and held me tight. "You got me Delia. I'm all yours darlin'."

It was hardly 'darling Delia' but it had the same comforting feeling to it. I sank deep into the feeling of his arms and wondered if that was happiness: The two of us in a bathroom of a motel room in Brooklyn, me crying and him holding me.

Was happiness that safe feeling in the back of your mind as you emptied your heart out to someone, to have them give themselves to you?

Was it being able to argue with someone while still knowing that they will never hate you? That was a foreign feeling to me. It had been so long since I had known it, though at one time I had. He didn't hate me. Not only did he not hate me, but he trusted me. And there was no way I could escape what I felt for him. Oh my word, how I trusted him.

Something happened that day in that room where I surrendered all of myself over to him, because I knew he could take care of me. Not only could he, but he would, he was. Maybe happiness is love and love is something you can't explain, it's deeper than words. And if there was something I had learned from Logan, it was that words aren't always needed. Some times, there's a connection between two people and they never have to speak to know how the other feels. If that's happiness, I found it that night with him.