Hey all. Trying something new today. This time, it's from X-men. The movies, not the comic books.

First off, I don't own any part of any of the X-men. I apologize to the people at Marvel and any X-men experts for any inconsistencies or inaccuracies throughout the fic – I am a lowly fanfic writer, and unfortunately am not as well-versed in the series as I would hope to be. This is why you are here; feel free to criticize any part of it, since it is only through criticism that I will improve. But be nice to it; this one is my baby, since it is the one I've worked the longest on thus far. One more thing before you get on to the story: It takes place during and directly after X3, and quite a bit is actually lifted from the movie, although I'm not sure all the quotes are exactly right (God knows I've tried), and it's told from a different perspective. Sorry Brian Singer, Brett Rasner, and all the other guys involved in the production of any of the X-men movies for any problems. Not that they are ever going to read this, but there it is.

Thanks for putting up with me. And now for the feature presentation:

Belonging

I ran to the bathroom and locked the door. I had to get rid of these…things. How did this happen? I was supposed to be normal, not some freak! I opened the cabinet and took out the box of tools I had hidden there a few days ago. I selected the most promising one, a bowie knife, and brought the blade to one of the offending appendages that now sprouted from my back. I began to cut, trying to get rid of them as fast as I could. The blood flowed thick and fast, way more than I had anticipated. And the pain…I could barely hold back the tears that flowed and made it even harder to see what I was doing. Feathers flew, sticking in the pools of clotted blood on the white tile. Suddenly there was a knocking on the door. "Warren, open up. It's been an hour. What are you doing in there?" I could hear the concern, but I couldn't open the door, not yet. What if he saw? I began to gather the tools and hide the damning evidence as the knocking became pounding and the voice grew more worried. "One minute!" I cried, trying to stall for as much time as I could. But it was too late. He opened the door, and saw what I was doing. His expression was one of confusion, hurt, anger, and fear all at once. "Warren. Warren!

WARREN!" I sat up, confused.

"I'm sorry…" I mumbled. I looked around to see Ororo, who was looking at me confusedly. "What are you sorry about now?" She asked, exasperated. "Honestly, Warren, I've never met someone so apologetic. You're even sorry when you wake up." She smirked.

I shook my head, attempting to clear it of the memories the dream evoked. "No, I was dreaming. Sorry."

"Stop that!" Oh, right. "So what was your dream about that you felt a need to apologize after I woke you up?"

I hesitated, ruffling my feathers in uneasiness. Storm was one of those people who felt mutants should be proud of what they are, not ashamed of it. I still hadn't gotten quite used to it, and figured that telling her the details of my dream would only end in another "it's a gift, not a curse" speech, which I had heard enough of in the few days since I got here to last me a lifetime.

She sensed my hesitation, and drew the right conclusion. "Let me guess; getting your wings?"

Damn. Why did she have to be so good at that? Then again, it was part of her job description, I guess. "Yeah," I said in a small voice. Here comes the lecture…

But for once I was surprised. "I get how embarrassed you were, and still are, about it, I really do. It gets better, I promise. I mean, you have wings. Not all mutants are so lucky; I once knew a guy who had the ability to shoot spaghetti out of his fingers. Talk about useless…"

I laughed. In light of that, I guess wings weren't so bad. At least they actually served a purpose.

Storm interrupted my train of thought. "So, now that we've had a laugh at poor Dane's expense, what about the dream had you so wound up? I don't think I've ever heard someone apologize when being woken up. Yelling, sure. Logan does that quite a bit, and scares the hell out of the younger kids. But apologizing?"

Since she was the kind of person who wouldn't let anything go, I bit the bullet and told her. "You know my father, right?" She nodded. "Well, he's never really been a fan of mutants; thinks they are a disgrace to the gene pool. Imagine his surprise when I started sprouting wings at 13. Actually, he didn't find out until he walked in on me trying to cut them off." She frowned. "I gather he didn't take it well?"

"No," I said, waiting for what I knew was coming.

"Warren, why would you try to cut your wings off?" No surprise there.

"How would you feel if your father taught you from a young age that mutants were disgusting, and then one morning you woke up and discovered that you had things sticking out of your shoulder blades? It wasn't like I grew up in a household that was very accepting of things that don't conform to the norm; I mean, my father is about as conservative as they come. So when the feathers started coming in, it really sunk in that I was a mutant, and since I had this stupid thing about wanting to be what my dad wanted me to be, I freaked out and tried to cut them off. And by the way, I only say 'tried' because they grew back after a few days." She stared at me for a few minutes in disbelief. "Come on, you don't mean to tell me that you've never regretted being a mutant. You were never teased about it? Never ignored by your own family? Never wanted to get rid of it for good?" Blank stare. Great. Now I felt like a complete idiot. Granted, it wasn't a new feeling, and was becoming increasingly familiar as the days went on, but I still hated it.

"Yes," she said, when I was beginning to think she wasn't going to answer. "When I was a teenager, when I gained my gift, at first I was afraid of it. My family feared me, my friends feared me, and everyone I knew and loved suddenly weren't there for me anymore. But it made me stronger; I realized that they didn't need to accept me so long as I accepted me. And that's all that is important, Warren; that is what I am trying so hard to teach you. Even though your father can't accept your gift, it doesn't mean that you can't." This is what I had been expecting, and secretly hoping to avoid. It was one thing to talk about accepting it, another thing entirely to do so. Sure, it was cool; who wouldn't want to fly? But the years of whispered arguments between my parents for years about what to do with me, and the secret glances and stares I got from my parents and the people in the labs, weren't overcome that easily. It was going to take time. Granted, I had the time now that I was among people like me, but it still wasn't going to be easy.

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Two weeks earlier……..

Entering the building my father works in filled me with the old, familiar dread. After years of poking and prodding by my father's employees in an effort to figure out what exactly I was and how I had gotten that way, it's really no wonder why I hated going in there. All the tests, the measurements, the questions; who wouldn't hate it? I understand the reasons for it; they were just trying to understand something they had never encountered before. But that doesn't mean they had to make me feel like a lab rat.

As I approached the elevator, my nervousness increased. Any enclosed space where I can't spread my wings makes me incredibly claustrophobic, and elevators are no exception. But I got in, and tried to think about what was about to happen.

After my father discovered my secret, he began to use his influence to try to engineer a cure for mutantcy. Ten years later, after many failed attempts, here we are, with a cure. And that was what I was here for. Not that I wanted it one hundred percent, but my father wanted it for me, and after the thousands of arguments, I finally gave in. At least now the looks would stop. I ruffled my feathers in discomfort. And no more harness. That was one thing I would never miss.

Finally the elevator stopped. I left it, and proceeded to the room where the injection was supposed to take place. One more needle, and then I would be normal again.

I entered the room, and my father immediately stopped his conversation with one of the techs to come over to talk to me. "Good morning, Warren," he said, "How did you sleep?"

The look I had seen in his eyes almost every day for the past ten years was gone. Although he had made an effort to play the normal loving father, today he seemed almost sincere. It all seemed so surreal; I was actually going through with it. I mumbled a "good," more for something to say than as an actual response. In reality, I had been up most of the previous night trying to determine if I was making the right decision. But he didn't need to know that.

He took off my long coat that concealed my wings while I unbuttoned and removed my shit, trying not to concentrate too much on what I was about to do. My dad steered me over to the upturned exam table, where Moira McTaggert, my father's assistant, was standing. A few of the techs stood by as we approached the table, trying to determine if I would bolt or not. As I was backed against the table, I couldn't help feeling like and animal being herded into a cage. My glance to the nearby surgical stand and subsequent viewing of the needle and restraints didn't help. The restraints were attached to the table where my wrists and ankles would be, and the needle seemed to be attached to a rudimentary gun. Not the most comforting of sights, I can tell you. Moira caught my panicked look, and attempted to ease my quickly escalating uneasiness. "The change can be a bit…jolting." It didn't help. I could feel the adrenaline pumping through my system, and as the techs began to fasten the restraints around my wrists, I knew there was only one choice open to me.

"Dad, can we talk about this?" I asked, hoping for an easy way out of an increasingly bad situation. I knew my decision, and it had nothing to do with being normal. Normal is overrated.

"Warren, we already have."

As the needle approached my arm, I began to struggle. I hate needles. Always have, always will. Especially this one. The needle came closer, and I struggled harder. If I could only get enough room to move my wings, I could snap them open and get the hell out of here…

"I can't do this," I said. Why wasn't he stopping her?

"It's okay, Warren. It'll be over soon," he said. Not soon enough, I thought.

I pleaded to make the needle stop, but no matter how much I told him this wasn't a good idea, he didn't stop the needle's progression, and kept trying to get me to calm down. Hah. Like that would ever work. There was only one way this could end, and if I had anything to say about it, it wouldn't involve the cure.

With one final push, I got enough room to snap my wings open, giving me the force I needed to break the restraints. I knocked a few guys over in the process, but I didn't really care; I was free at last. My father gave me a pained look.

"Warren, you don't have to do this. It's a better life. It's what we all want."

"No, Dad," I said sadly, "it's what you want." And with that, I turned and left. Well, jumped through the window is really a better way to put it, but somehow saying that ruins the moment.

After I left, I flew around for a while trying to clear my head. I forgot how much fun flying was, the wind on your face and the world rushing by below you. Man, I'd have to be crazy to want to give that up.

Once I calmed down and the adrenaline wore off, all the old fears came back. What if someone saw me? Where would I go? I couldn't go home, since that road would only lead to the cure. Then I remembered hearing about a place, somewhere in New York, that was a safe haven for mutants. I'd head there, then sort out what to do next.

A few hours later I landed at "Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters". Yes, that was the actual name of the place. "Gifted". I guess that's one way of describing it.

I walked inside, and immediately felt lost. It was huge! The first room I came to seemed to be a living room of sorts; there was a TV and couches, most of which were occupied by morose students. I learned later that the previous head of the school, Charles Xavier, had been killed earlier that day, which explained the looks on the faces of the kids I saw now. A few of the kids looked up, and most of them stopped whispering, to see if I was going to say anything. I looked around self-consciously; most of them looked normal, but every now and then there was a kid with a lizard tongue of yellow eyes, or something else that wasn't quite normal. This was definitely the place.

"Umm…can anyone tell me where to find a teacher?" I asked.

"Down the hall, third door on your right," the kid with the tongue said. With a muttered "thanks," I left the room and headed back down the hall.

When I got to the door, I paused. What if they told me to leave? What if they said there was no room for me? The years of ostracism had made it virtually impossible for me to accept that there were people out there who wouldn't care that I had wings. I knocked on the door, and after a call of "come in," from inside, I opened it and went in.

The first thing I noticed was a man entirely covered in blue fur. He was in a suit, which looked a little odd, but over the past ten years I've built up an acceptance of anyone, no matter what they look like, do I didn't think twice about it. After all, this was a school for mutants, so there were bound to be some that didn't look…conventional. Next to him was another man who was much less hairy bit looked just as much like an animal. He looked at me intently, but it was more in curiosity than with any malice. The third person in the room was a woman, with dark skin and snow-white hair. When I entered the room she had been in an argument with the blue-furred man, but now she looked at me, expecting me to give a reason for my intrusion.

"I'm sorry," I started. The vibe in the room was decidedly uncomfortable. Whatever they were arguing about, it was serious. I almost didn't want to continue; I thought about telling them that it was nothing, I'd just leave, but she kept staring at me, and although I fully expected to make things worse by giving them something else to worry about, I knew they wouldn't let me leave the room without a real reason for my being there. "My name is Warren Worthington. The third," I said, almost apologetically. I knew I was going to make things worse; after all, my father was responsible for the Cure that was going to affect every single mutant in the world at some point or another, whether they wanted it to or not. Now they all were staring at me. Damn. I thought that after ten years I would get used to those kinds of looks, but I wasn't counting on being stared at by mutants. I continued, hoping the vibe would get better. "I was told this was a safe place for mutants."

"It was, son," replied the blue-furred man apologetically.

"No, Henry," snapped the woman. "It is." She shifted her attention to someone standing behind me. I turned to see a kid standing there, looking slightly embarrassed at being caught. "Bobby," she said to him, "show Mr. Worthington to a room." I breathed a sigh of relief. They were going to let me stay.

The kid, Bobby, gestured for me to follow him as he walked down the hall and up a flight of stairs. He found an empty room and ushered me into it. "Might not be what you're used to," he said, equal parts apologetic and snide.

"It's perfect," I assured him. And it was; it was small and empty, but it had everything I needed. Even though I could get everything I wanted at home, I never really took advantage of that; I'd never really gotten into the whole "material goods are the only thing that's important" thing. Plus, it gave me a place to think.

"Yeah," Bobby said, almost as if he could read my mind. "No parents."

I learned from the other students about the people I had met earlier. The blue-furred man was Hank McCoy, codename Beast, and he was the secretary of Mutant Affairs. It was his job to make sure we were fairly represented, or at least that was the intention. The other man was Logan, codename Wolverine, but he wasn't very forthcoming about what he could do. In fact, he wasn't very forthcoming about anything, limiting his responses to one- or two-word phrases. The woman was Ororo Monroe, codename Storm, and she was the one in charge. She could control the weather, which became apparent almost immediately; when she became upset the sky darkened and only cleared up again when she was calmed down.

I was informed that this building was indeed a school, and had all the trappings of your typical private school; students were required to attend classes a few hours each day, where they learned things like math and science and how to use your abilities ethically. Since I was a little old to still be attending school I was not required to take classes, so I spent my time trying to learn my way around the building and basically trying to blend in, which was much easier in a place where everyone was a mutant. I didn't even bother to attempt to hide my wings anymore, instead cutting holes in my shirts to accommodate them. After a while I became less self-conscious about it, and actually resumed my practicing of flight maneuvers outside, which had previously been limited to flying around in the emptied basement of Worthington industries, which, while huge, had no comparison to the sky.

A few days later I heard Logan and Ororo talking with Hank about going to Alcatraz, where Worthington Industries had been relocated to in order to accommodate the demand for the Cure. They were talking about freeing a little kid named Leech, who was the one that made the cure possible. I decided that I would follow, and try to help to repay their kindness of letting me stay. Plus, I had some things to resolve with my father.

I waited for them to leave, then quietly opened my window and followed. It wasn't too difficult; although they were fast, I was able to stay in their plane's wake, so the flying was actually a lot easier. Once we go to Alcatraz, I remained hidden, since I didn't know how I could help quite yet. Instead, I watched from the rooftop as hundreds of mutants approached the building. The security guards, along with numerous local police officers, opened fire with guns that held darts filled with the cure instead of bullets. As soon as the darts found their target the mutants were sitting ducks; without their abilities they had to rely on conventional weapons, and were easily taken out. This wasn't a fight; it was a slaughter! The mutants I had followed were evening it out a little, but not enough. At least I knew Logan's ability now; he had managed to protract metal claws out of his fists, and was eviscerating anyone who stepped in his path. After a few minutes of this, I couldn't watch anymore. I felt sick. How could it have gotten to this point? I could feel everything I had eaten in the past few hours, quite a bit considering my metabolism and how much I needed to eat, churning in my stomach, and suddenly my stomach rejected it all. I'm not sure how long I sat on the roof on my hands and knees puking my guts out, but eventually my stomach was empty and all I could do was sit on the roof, shivering and sweating, wishing I was anywhere but here.

After a few minutes I was awakened from my shock by a scream as someone was forcibly pushed out a window. I looked, and was startled when I saw my father falling through the air. I may not have liked him, but that didn't mean I wanted him to die.

I launched myself from the roof, going into a stoop in an effort to reach him in time. I pulled my wings in as tight as they would go to get as much speed out of it as I could. I grabbed him about halfway down the building, then snapped my wings out to pull out of the dive as fast as I could to avoid hitting the ground and making my effort pointless. It hurt, mainly because my father weighed more than I had anticipated, but I made it in time and climbed to get as far away from the fighting as I could.

Once he caught his breath and realized he was flying (kind of), my father turned around the best he could to see who his rescuer was. Imagine his surprise to see me! He opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off with a glare and a slight shake of my head. I was tired of his excuses, and wasn't much in the mood for talking.

I landed in a field a few miles from the fight. I didn't see how I could be of any help, and my father was a more pressing issue at the moment. I kept silent, waiting for him to predictably try to fill the awkward silence.

I wasn't disappointed. "I'm sorry, Warren," he began. "I didn't realize where this would lead. I only wanted what was best for you."

"Maybe this is what's best for me," I said. "I'm sorry I can't be the son you wanted anymore, but why can't you just accept what happened?"

"How was I supposed to? Walking into a bathroom and seeing your son covered in his own blood because he's cutting off wings that are growing out of his back doesn't exactly promote the most accepting of feelings!" He was starting to get annoyed, and his voice rose.

"Well, you could have handled it better!" I retorted. I wasn't about to let him get off easy. "I thought parents were supposed to support their children, not make them feel like they need to change to be accepted!" All the feelings I had been repressing over the years came flooding back; inadequacy, inferiority, awkwardness, all of it. "After my wings grew in, I never felt like I belonged, and that's because your only response to it was that they had to be hidden because they meant your son was a freak and if anyone found out your career would be ruined!"

My father was speechless. I had never had an outburst like this before, and quite frankly I don't think he knew how to react to it. When he finally spoke, it was much quieter, and his voice was filled with regret.

"Warren, I'm sorry. Truly sorry. I know I was never the best father after your change, and I apologize for taking out my fear and frustration on you. I didn't know how to act. It was a shock, and I reacted badly. I'm sorry."

Well, that was probably the best I was going to get. As long as he actually meant it, which I think he did, I would forgive him. And I did. There was some awkward hugging, which was to be expected, and after that there was a lot more acceptance on his part, which was all I really wanted anyway.