A/N: Hi! For those folks who are regulars of mine--a clarification. This fic will not be cutting into any of my regular fics as far as time and inspiration go--as it's already completely finished. I'm just posting it chapter by chapter. I wrote it before I ever signed up with fanfiction. However, any reviews and constructive criticism will be most welcome for the time when I rework it with an eye for professional publication.

Part Three: Trying To Go Home Again

Once I was through with my transformation, it was time to return home and get serious.

Dad had died when I was twenty—did I mention that before? His death happened in between the fall and Christmas breaks in my next-to-last year. I will always think of it with the bitterest of feelings. During that fall break, the last time I saw him alive, he had reached out to me, tentatively. There had been the possibility of a real relationship between us for the first time. Then he had died, very suddenly, of heart disease.

I was preparing for some very heavy International Bar exams right then, and I did most of my studying out on the sun porch of our weekend place there at Gloster Bay. It was too distracting in the house. Ed had brought home his fiancée to meet the family. He had not told our parents in advance, so the welcoming of Elyse, who was almost ten years older than Ed, had two small children under the age of three, and was already pregnant with Ed's child, had been interesting, to say the least.

George had finally explained that the reason he had not yet gone back to college was that he had spent all his semester funds, all his tuition and board, on a trip to Majorca with his girlfriend. I must have looked very stable and reliable in comparison to them.

Dad came out and joined me on the porch, and sat there silently for a quarter of an hour before he said, "You deserved better than what you got." He was looking grey and worn, in those last few weeks of his life.

I looked at him, and I think I must have looked as shocked as I felt. He cleared his throat, and continued. "Not just from life, but from us, too. I realized, the other day, when I ran into an old college friend, and we started talking about our lives, and our families. I hadn't seen him in thirty-five years."

I didn't know what to say, so I nodded, and tried to look encouraging.

"I told him about Ed, and George, and when I got to you, I told him about your progress and what your professors have said about you, the sorts of job offers you're getting already and all…" He looked at his hands. "He said, 'You must be really proud of him.' He hadn't said that about your brothers. I was ashamed of myself. Am ashamed of myself. I had to see you through someone else's eyes, to see that you're turning out the best of all my boys. I have a lot to be proud of, in you—. Do you hate us?"

I stammered out, "It isn't nearly that simple." I had so many things I wanted to say, they were choking me up on the way out.

"No, I guess it isn't. We're your family, and that makes us the only game in town. I would like to try and make it up to you. I'm so tired these days, though. Let's make some time, at Christmas…" Mom called him, then, and he went in. I went back to my law school the next day.

He died only two and a half weeks later.

I was furious. I was heartbroken. At his funeral, I stood over his coffin, thinking, I waited all my life to hear you say you were proud of me. I waited all that time to hear you say you loved me. I wanted it so badly. Is that all I get, just a taste? You have no right to be dead, I 'm not through with you.

I did not cry. Yes, crying would have relieved my grief and made me feel better, but I didn't want that. I hoarded every scrap of feeling. Anger is an energy.

After Dad had died, Mom had given up her career in politics to take over the Genet-York directorship at the A.L.-Bion Consortium, to keep it warm until such time as Edward was ready to sit in it. The bigger plan in the works for Ed was still that he should become the Executive Directorship when Henry Lancaster died. It was a successful coup, and for twelve years now, Ed had been CEO of A.L.-Bion.

Incidentally, the A.L. in A.L.-Bion stands for Angevin Laboratories. The Angevins began the company, but there aren't any direct line descendants. The twelve Directorship families are all partly Angevin, to some degree of cousinship.

George was chief financial officer. Mother had stepped down when Ed acceded to the E.D., as the by-laws permitted only one director from each family. Since George had married Isabelle Neville, who held the Neville directorship, we effectively had two. Isabelle went with everything that Ed did.

The consortium was and is in danger of collapse because of the insane by-laws and the Imagist faith. And because George was CFO, but that's for later. The by-laws dictated that directorships were hereditary. Most of the A.L.-Bion directors couldn't direct a school play. And you cannot run a technology-based business according to the dictates of an anti-technology faith. Old Lancaster had been a hard-line Imagist, like my parents.

Ed was too placatory an ED. He wanted to please everybody. No. I tell a lie. Edward hadn't much of an idea what to do, and so he listened to, and took the advice of, everybody. Most of the other directors were of Lancaster's generation and also Imagist. Edward was spinning the wheels of a consortium stuck in the mud.

My goal was still the same. I wanted the Executive Directorship for myself. Everything I did was meant to advance me toward that end. Why? A.L.-Bion isn't the biggest or most advanced of the maker of reclamation units, contained environment systems, and hydroponics modules, true, but it is the one which my family has partly owned for five generations. The Executive Directorship was the biggest prize in our circle of acquaintances, and getting it, having it, would be at once the sweetest revenge and the greatest achievement possible. They had hoisted Edward up into it, regardless of the fact that there were more intelligent, more dedicated, and more talented people at hand.

Me, for instance.

I had put together a group of people who would help me get there and help me run it once I had it. I found them as I found Dr. Visconti, by combing through the cream of the recent graduates until I found just the ones I wanted. Since they will play parts in my story from time to time, I'll give you a brief word picture of each.

J. Howard Norfolk is a name which evokes a prep-school background, country club membership, and a big trust fund. All of which was true of him, but I should also add that the J was short for Jesus, and the Howard stood for Howard University. His skin was a shade somewhere between sepia and sienna, and his family could look back on twelve generations of highly educated professionals, which was a lot more than mine could. His field was accounting and finance, and he was extremely good at his work would eventually be my CFO. I knew he could look after the costs and bring things in within a budget.

Outside of his work, his passion was for the works of Alexandre Dumas the elder. He owns every book Dumas ever wrote, in several editions and various languages. His enthusiasm had even inspired him to take up fencing, and he held several amateur championships. He got me to take up fencing, too. Life ought to be one long learning experience.

Regina Radcliffe was, like me, a lawyer. She went to law school as her youngest child started college. I foresaw the need for another legal mind, and also for someone with more life experience. She was a smallish woman in early middle age, with graying black hair, delicate elfin features, and clear grey-green eyes. She had no desire to practice trial law, because, she said, as the mother of grown children, she had done quite enough arguing in her life already.

Her intelligence and discernment were proven to me beyond all doubt when she declared that my sister-in-law Elyse was, I quote, 'an avaricious, sexually opportunistic social climber with a soul made of dry ice.' She had reached this conclusion independently. This coincided exactly with my own opinion, and I told Regina so, which surprised her. She had thought I was among Elyse's thralls.

Franklin Lovell would research, investigate and evaluate people, businesses and events, and compile dossiers. He worked his way through school with the goal of becoming an investigator, and then found himself doing nothing but background checks. I came along and offered him a job with more scope. He was a little taller than I am, Caucasian, but on the darker end of the spectrum, and good-looking. His major pursuit outside of work seemed to be sex. I think he took his last name too seriously, but as he was unmarried and a responsible sort, spreading neither diseases nor pregnancies, I decided it wasn't any of my business what, or who, he did.

These were the people who would accompany me to A.L.-Bion when I started there. I'm glad to say I chose people I could like and respect as associates. There are more of them now, and I hoped to find allies among the younger Directorship family members—those who otherwise wouldn't have a chance at power for decades.

I hadn't forgotten my doctor, either. She would have the best job in my power to appoint: Head of Science. I intended to enlarge and expand the scope of A.L.-Bion. The Mars Project was on the horizon, and I meant to get A.L.-Bion the life support system contract.

Of course, first I would have to win Primavera back again. We had not parted on good terms. She found out that I had blocked her from those two ecological engineering projects, that I might avail myself of her services. I said I had nothing to do with it. I lied.

We had been through so much together; she had gotten me through my transformation, and I had seen her through the death of her father. If I hadn't done that, I don't think our friendship would have survived. Discovering my part in her troubles had defeated her temper, temporarily, and I knew I had work to do on that front.

I missed her. We would be friends again, though. If I had killed two good opportunities for her, I would make it up to her with something better; a position she would have had to labor twenty years to get anywhere else.

There was a lot to do before that, however. I was returning to the fold, with my crew in tow, minus Dr. Visconti. I was going to join George in the finance division. He was in deep yogurt, so much so that he had cheated his sister-in-law Daenne out of most of her inheritance and maxed out all his and his wife's credit. He was hanging on by his fingernails, and I was ready to step on his hand.

I don't suppose George meant to become the greatest white-collar criminal of our day and age. It's not as if he had written essays about it while we were growing up. He probably thought that he could make good and cover it before he was discovered. He might have sworn that each new shady deal would be the last, but by the time I returned, the only thing propping A.L.-Bion up—was me. From a distance, even through the worst of the pain, I had been making myself useful to A.L.-Bion in general and Edward in particular.

I had told Edward all about my money raising ventures, and he was so impressed that he asked for my advice and assistance. He farmed out some of his own money to me and was delighted when bread cast upon my waters returned to him ten-fold. He rewarded me with stock, and more work. I did it legitimately, too. I wanted to have a bright, shining, virtuous record when the time came for George to go to prison and for me to step in as CFO.

I had stayed abreast of things on the domestic side, too, during my absence. I may have been distant, but I was a son/brother/uncle to pattern by.

Everything sent to or from their various e-dresses also came to me, unbeknownst to them. All their records were wide open to my inspection, as well, and I would skim through their files and folders every so often. I was the trout in their milk, the fly on their walls, and the snake in their beds.

I even wrote and called regularly. No milestone or event in their lives went by without an appropriate remembrance from me. A few words here, a thoughtfully chosen gift there…I quite enjoyed it. There is a special pleasure that comes from choosing just the right present. It doesn't have to be anything extravagant. A quarter kilo of a particular candy from someone's hometown can give much more enjoyment than a randomly chosen bottle of perfume—my brother Ed's wife Elyse had written a long clikgram of complaint to her sister after one birthday. I can proudly say that I was the instigator of seven different fights about gifts over the years.

And I was an uncle several times over. I had nine nieces and nephews I could admit to knowing about—Ed had several secret children for whom he was paying child support. Edward and Elyse had four of their own. There were two from Elyse's first marriage and of course there was Stephen, the son Ed had sired while in high school. He was already a grown man, an MD with a clinic in Uganda.

George had married Isabelle Neville, as I mentioned before. She and her sister Daenne were home-schooled with us. George and Isabelle had two kids of their own. George was either less fertile or more careful than Ed; he had no seedlings outside the garden patch. I had never seen most of these children in the flesh, but, as I told them all, I had grown to know and love them through our correspondence. They were primed and prepared to greet me with delirious joy.

I wasn't dropping in without warning. I had informed everybody of my plans well in advance, and then monitored their reactions. My six year old niece Margali wrote to her friend Odette, "its grate hees coming coz hees the best of all mi uncles and ants but ive never seen him M & D say hees Quazimodo im really really skared". Ed was blithely pleased I would be working for him full time. George referred to me as 'the little turd.' Well, George was sweating and scared of what I might learn once I got there. Too late!

Isabelle said nothing at all, and Elyse wrote to her divorced friend Maree, "You ought to meet him. Good-looking men are all shits anyway just because they can be, and when they have money they're even worse. Look at Ed."

Mother, however, was wary. "I don't think he's changed. I think he's capable of going on for years, as caring and thoughtful as anyone could be. Then, one day, we'll find out he was just being polite."

Smart woman, my mother.

I think I put as much thought and care into what I would wear to meet them as any girl getting ready for a first date. I had needed a whole new wardrobe after my transformation, of course, and I wanted to do it up right. I had opened my wallet wide for it. I now got regular compliments on my appearance, and I liked that, it was nice. For this occasion, I chose a classic: a custom navy blue suit, a good shirt, and a silk tie. Before I got to the waiting area, I paused, took off my jacket and rolled up my shirt sleeves a little. To make the change even more dramatic. To let them see. I realized then that the surfaces and angles around me turned the wall in front of me into a shadowy mirror. I could see the whole Genet-York clan, without being seen.

With all the kids, there sure were a lot of them. I zeroed in on something I found very interesting. The adults were watching for me—but they weren't looking at the faces of passers-by. They were looking at their bodies. Except for my mother. She was scrutinizing the faces. She had guessed.

It gave me a nice feeling to realize she knew me well enough to guess what I had done. That passed in a moment.

I picked up my carry-on, slung my jacket over my arm, and stepped around the corner, a slightly crumpled, slightly weary man looking forward to a reunion with his family. Which was the sincere and honest truth.

It took me three steps to reach my mother. I said, "Hi, Mom," took her hands in both of mine, leaned over, and kissed her powdery cheek, realizing as I did so that I was now taller than she was. I'll give her this; she only flinched a little as my lips brushed her skin. Around us, the rest of the family gaped and gasped before breaking into a hearty welcome. I was thoroughly hugged and thumped and kissed, with small children jumping up and down as if they had springs and attaching themselves like limpets to my legs. The adults might have been singing a round, only instead of 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat', the lyrics were: "I can't believe it! This is wonderful! You look great!" The children had an antiphony going, of "Uncle Richard! Uncle Richard! Uncle Richard! I'm Margali! (Or Ed junior, or whichever he or she was) It's me it's me it's me!"

Not much could have made that moment any sweeter.

Of course, I was still planning to drive a wedge into every crack and flaw in my family and then start in with a sledgehammer, but for that one brief speck of time, I could and did suspend my disbelief, and just accepted it all.

So I was home. Time to settle in to my job and my life.

I found a furnished executive apartment, and took out a short term lease. I didn't intend to live there for very long, because I intended to leave my bachelorhood behind me, and my wife might have opinions about our living quarters. I had a particular girl in mind, too. Daenne Neville, Isabelle's sister.

I had several reasons for marrying. Love was not among them. Some were business. She didn't know it, but George had seen to it that she received less than her fair share of the Neville estate. She should have gotten half, but she got less than a quarter. I was keeping that, and George's other foibles and felonies, in reserve right then, but Daenne would, I trusted, be most grateful to me when I restored it to her. When my brother and Isabelle were in prison—yes, Isabelle was involved, too—Daenne would have the Neville directorship. I would have her support when the time came. But some of my reasons were personal too.

The first and most pressing for me, was, quite frankly, sex.

Before I had myself remade, various factors had prevented me from having a satisfactory sex life with anyone, including myself. During the three years of intensive work, given all the surgery, pain and medication, I had rarely thought about sex. My physician had advised me against any major self-improvement measures in that area until after I was done with the other work, for as my general health improved, so too, might my sexual drive and functioning. She had been right. Around the time that I was ready to leave the hospital and begin a year of monitored normal living, I realized that my engine, which had previously only turned over weakly and reluctantly, had been completely rebuilt. Now something much more powerful was under the hood. I went out on the town, but I found out I didn't like casual dating.

Marrying Daenne would, I hoped, be a solution. I wasn't choosing her because she overwhelmed me, but she was attractive enough. As it turned out, we were not that sexually compatible, but anything is better than nothing.

Next, I wanted to reassure my family as to my basic normality. I would be married, like Edward and George, and settled into a life—and a wife— that they could understand. My wife would be from a family they had known since forever, and one of the Directorship families, at that. She was even an in-law already. Daenne was sweetly pretty, had been raised in my mother's faith, was adequately educated, had good manners, and knew how to fit in. If she wasn't precisely brilliant, well, neither was most of my family.

Lastly, I had a score to settle with Daenne herself. As I said before, she had been home-schooled with us, and had taunted, insulted and mocked me without mercy. Her little pink tongue has always had sharp edges. I vividly recalled how she had once said that the thought of kissing me made her want to throw up. It would amuse me to remember that every time we had sex.

I was confident of success. Daenne was divorced and in debt. She was currently working as an assistant manager in a kitchen goods store. Most of her friends in our circle, the children of A.L.-Bion directors, had dropped her; they had money, she didn't. I had money. Marrying me would restore her to her former way of living. And I would adore her.

At least temporarily. I had no intention of growing old with her.

I dropped into the store where she worked, making sure to wear an expensive watch and expensive sneakers with my basic white t-shirt and blue jeans, just to say hi. Saying hi segued into asking her to lunch. She accepted. Soon we were getting caught up over inferior deli food. As we chatted, I took note of where her eyes went. She kept looking me over, looking at the new me. I knew then that I looked better than just acceptable.

She would ask me about it. I bided my time. I told her about my new apartment, and how I was now working for A.L.-Bion, and how strange it was to be working a regular schedule after taking so many years off. "Oh! Why did you stop in the first place?" There it was. She probably thought herself subtle.

"Medical reasons," I said, with my best wistful grin. Boyish charm, that would go over well, I had thought. The t-shirt and jeans were part of it. Appealing, even sexy, but nonthreatening, and familiar.

"You mean…corrective work?"

"Yes."

"Isabelle cliked me...But I thought she… You look great, Richard. You really do. Like a whole different person. Do you mind if I ask about it?"

"No. Not at all."

"Did you—have anything done to your face? Because I can't tell."

Because you never looked at my face, only at my defects, I thought, and told her the truth. "No." and then I made up a reason. "I wouldn't feel like I was looking at myself in the mirror if I did." None of her business.

"Well—you're really a nice looking guy, now."

"Thank you. That means a lot. Especially coming from—you," and I was off and running. Within the space of that lunch, I let her know, without coming right out and saying it, that I had loved her all my life, and had endured everything, all the agony, only that one day, perhaps, she would… I sent out all the signals. It was beautiful.

I walked her back to her store, bid her farewell, and said, a little sadly, "It was nice seeing you…Do you ever spend time at George and Isabelle's?"

"Sometimes…Um, can I have your e-dress? I'd clik you when I'm going over there, if you want."

"Yes…and can I have yours?"

A couple of days before the wedding, I got a call.

"The only person in the world who would send me a dozen live butterflies on my birthday is you," said Primavera.

"Were they yellow?"

"As any lemon peel."

"Then it was me. I'm glad you're speaking to me again."

"I'm still angry, and I haven't forgiven you, but my boredom is worse than my anger."

Before I knew it, it was two hours later, and we were beginning to wind it down. She admitted that her current work situation was less than ideal, and I broached the idea of her coming to work for A.L.-Bion. I explained about George and the state of chaos the consortium finances were in, and what I planned to do about him and to him.

Her response? "So he's managed to seriously endanger the continued income and employment of hundreds of people? Take no prisoners. Nail him to the wall by his ears," and offered a few refinements to what I already had in mind. Then I dropped the news and told her about Daenne.

Silence. Then, "Richard. You don't love her, or you wouldn't have waited two hours to tell me about her. Whether she loves you or not, it's not fair to her. Nor is it fair to you. My anger now exceeds my boredom again. Goodbye."

The vow of silence was back in effect. It was just as well. I had learned that I couldn't bullshit her, and there was no truthful way I could justify my intentions toward Daenne to the woman I really wanted.

Yes. Primavera Visconti. Why her?

Daenne was 'attractive enough', but I found Primavera extremely attractive, and on many levels, too. I could go on about how her wit is like extra brut champagne, which is the driest and most sparkling, or bring up the subject of her smile or her figure, but I won't. And I don't say that she's beautiful, because that's just a matter of opinion. I am aware that my tastes may differ from those of another man. I have heard others describe her as 'striking', which is entirely true, and she scares the shit out of most men—I don't get why that should be—and raises the hackles of most women. To each their own; she suited me.

Anyway, I think my libido imprinted on her years ago.

The real factor was entirely emotional, beyond any consideration of physical or even mental attributes. I mentioned my brief spell of casual dating. After a short 'kid in a candy store' spree, which ended when I realized I was acting just like Edward did, I had reassessed what I wanted of life and of relationships, and started looking for a woman with whom I could have something that lasted a while. I didn't find one out there.

Once matters started to assume any depth whatsoever, I could not get beyond a hostility toward women so profound as to border on misogyny. It disturbed me; I thought I was attracted to nothing but shallow, vapid cows and castrating, vitriolic harpies. It took me a shamefully long time to realize it was more me than it was them. I was rejecting them first.

Before I was remade, I was frustrated, bitter, and resentful. I suppose I had expected all that to evaporate once I could actually get laid. It hadn't, and I realized I doubted and distrusted women.

Because not one of those women I had dated would have gone out with me before, and if I had gotten into conversation with one of them, before, she would have spent the whole time staring, or worse, very obviously not staring.

It didn't matter how sympathetic she might be, when I told her about my past—and she might even try to make it up to me in an intense and immediate physical way—I knew she would have been just the same as any other. I could not escape that knowledge, nor could I keep from feeling like I was putting something over on her.

I couldn't believe in or trust any of them.

I could believe in Primavera.

So why was I marrying Daenne instead, a woman who I didn't love, trust, believe in, or like? A woman for whom I even felt contempt? Besides that I was being an asshole, that is? Why was I not marrying Primavera?

Once a woman says, "Can't we just be friends?", even the friendship is over. I was not about to risk hearing that from Primavera.

So I married Daenne. I wasn't unkind to her; I just had trouble remembering her. Our likes, dislikes and interests were so different that we hardly spent any time together except in bed. We soon had separate bedrooms because she said I kept having loud nightmares. If she had had the sort of life or the amount of surgery I had, maybe she would have understood. I tried, in the first few months of that marriage, to use what I had learned about being a good lover— to pay attention, ask and take directions, be gentlemanly (ladies first, and never slam the door in her face), but Daenne let me know that I really needn't bother on her account. I slipped into doing what I so often do with people, which is to go through the motions and not think hard about it.

She didn't hang a sign on her door saying, "You are now cut off," but she might as well have. On the other hand, my money and status were quite acceptable, so the stream never dried up completely. Indeed, that marriage was not fair to either of us.