Hey guys! Long time, I know. I'm sorry I've been pretty busy. Break was a break (no excuse) and this semester is hectic as all hell. Sorry this has taken so long. It's a bit of a filler, but it will explain the next chapter better... and I hope this stays in character. Thank you to everyone that has stuck with me!

Didn't realize no disclaimer yet: not mine, and my roommate refuses to let me have them because I pair Erik and Charles together and she wants Erik. Sigh.

Chapter Sixteen: Human

Hank

"Should we break it up?" Alex whispers with a smirk, leaning his head to get a better look over the banister. Anya scowls and yanks hard on his shirt to make him sit back down. Sean peers through the bars with a small grin.

"Why would you want to break up the best debate in years?" Sean asks. I sigh and lean back, watching my siblings disapprovingly. The minute that Eric and the Professor had started to gear up towards a fight, Alex had told Sean and Anya eagerly what was going on. Then it was a mad scramble as the three of them, dragging me, looked for the best vantage point to listen in. Personally I think it's odd that they want to listen in on the "parents" fight when usually the kids are frightened of that, but they're enraptured at the raised voices and borderline screams of the argument below.

"We should really give them privacy," I mumble. Alex glares at me and kicks my shin.

"Shhhhh!" Anya snaps, green eyes narrowed as she strains her human ears. "Dad is winning!"

"The Prof always wins."

"Shut it Sean!" Alex smacks him soundly across the back of the head for good measure. Anya and I meet each other's eyes and simultaneously snort at their antics. Alex will take any excuse to hit Sean.

The three of them crowd around the banister again, heads cocked to the side in mirror image poses of each other. It's a scene equal parts unsettling and amusing, really. Anya's face lights up with a grin a moment later when the words your mother drift out in a Charles' warm accent. "That was a good one," she approves. Alex snorts and ruffles her hair.

"Squirt he could have used you. You're an even better example than your grandmother." My mind blanks for a moment before I refocus, guilt and suspicion churning away at my stomach. Maybe she isn't, I think. I study her, the slender woman squished between the two men, one as skinny as herself and the other bulky with muscle. Even with the differences between the three most of the time they're mistaken as siblings - not that they're not. I frown, watching that smile so like Erik's cross her lips even as all three of them have Charles' enrapt expression when he discovers something new on their faces. Jesse Winters won't let me draw a sample of her blood. No, he won't let me examine a vial of her blood. I think about that so often, even if only subconsciously so the Professor doesn't hear. It's like a disease on my psyche. There was blood taken from the crime scene half a decade ago in Florida that come from one of the most extraordinary mutants - one he refuses to identify. Anya has no abilities, none that she's shown at any rate, but I earned my PhD for a reason; I can put two and two together at the very least.

Yet a part of me can't think of that, can't think of her as that mutant… Because if she is, then what he predicted would happen to her… No, she can't be. Something is going on with my baby sister, something he doesn't want me to see. And for once I prefer ignorance if it means that maybe, maybe it's not her.

Tricking Jesse into believing I'm truly ignorant is actually terrifyingly easy to do.

"Dude, Prof and Erik agreed that Anya's off limits ages ago," Sean smirks, hooking a fist at Alex's shoulder and jolting me out of my musings. The blonde scowls and hits him right back. I sigh and stretch out my cramped legs.

"Don't know why. Hitler Mark Two needs all the reminders he can get that he's related to humans," Anya snorts indignantly. We all freeze. I'm not even breathing. If Erik Lehnsherr ever heard her call him that… She glances at us beneath her lashes. "What?"

"Do yourself a favor, Kid, and never call Erik that to his face, okay?" Sean asks tightly, the first of us to unlock our jaws. Anya opens her mouth, then pauses when she hears Erik yell something back at Charles. She waits until the voices subside again before voicing the question we all are dreading.

"Why not?"

Alex winces and rubs the side of his face uncertainty. "It's uh… It's a bad word, okay? Just don't. Please."

Anya nods, but she doesn't promise, a passion in her expression I've seen often enough to know that she's thinking of something dangerous. I'm not sure what that means – or if I'm afraid of what she might do. Something needs to change, and soon.

XXX-XXX

The lab is quiet for once. Anya's off somewhere with Jesse and Maxine, and Alex and Sean are being Alex and Sean far enough away from me that I don't hear them. That's good. That's very good. Because if I can't hear them then they can't hear me.

Slowly, I decant the last few CC's of the latest serum into the needle. Hiding this from nosy siblings has been a chore the past few weeks. The Professor knows, of course. He always does. He just paused once during a long discussion about books and told me to be careful. His exact word was careful. But he doesn't tell me to stop, or to reconsider. He always knows. And he always stays silent unless he can't anymore.

I have to shave off another patch of fur on my leg, somewhere that my brothers and sister will only see if they insist on sticking me in a pair of swim-trunks and throwing me in the pool - again. Thankfully the pool has been closed off due to the ice covering every flat surface around. With a deep breath to steady my hand, I jab the needle into my leg and depress the plunger. The clear liquid inside disappears into the pale blue flesh. I pull out the needle and wait.

I don't have to wait long. It's not painful. I expected it to be, but it's not. Slowly, the fur around the puncture point disintegrates. The skin below it seems to bleed of all color, becoming snowy white once more. The pale skin spreads, growing out from my leg, spreading up my thigh and down my calf and between my toes. I watch it until a Caucasian human leg is left before holding my arms out in front of me. The left arm is first, the paleness sweeping through my arm and along my fingers. The claws retract, the black dissipates, and clean human fingernails are left. Something about seeing the keratin coating the ends of my fingers - translucent white with pink veins beneath them - is absolutely enrapturing to me. I am beyond fascinated, even more so than seeing the fur vanish and my skin return to a human hue. I lift my other hand and watch that too, eager for that moment - yes. The claws are gone. Gone like they never existed in the first place. I know, distantly, that the fur on my chest and neck is disappearing. But I can't help but look at my hands. The broad palms with the crooked and skinny fingers, and the nails.

Nice, clean, human nails.

Eventually I raise those nails to my face, scraping lightly across my cheeks. The skin catches on the edge of my nail - not a claw! - and burns. Skin. Not skin impeded by fur, not coated skin, not hidden, but bare and white and clean of any mutations. Just skin. I trace up over my cheeks, feeling the ridges of my brow - no more bushy eyebrows - up up up my forehead into hair. Dark hair, thick and wild from not being cut for so long, but hair. Not fur.

God I can't get over not having fur.

My heart thumps in my chest. My normal, non-barrel shaped, human chest.

I sit here for who knows how long. Touching my face, gradually moving down to my arms and my legs. It's like a dream. A very vivid dream. I know I should look into a mirror but… But what if it's not real? I worked for years for this. I could be hallucinating right now. This might not even be possible… I sit here until my terror loses to the need to see.

The nearest mirror is in the bathroom. Walking on hardwood floors sans thick calluses after five years with them is a bizarre and painful experience. My feet are back to the normal thickness on the heels and balls, but compared to the extra-heavy skin being an animal lent me, they are paper thin. I can feel the cracks in the wood and the little pebbles of dirt from our shoes tromping around inside wedging between my toes. It's unpleasant physically but I grin and wiggle my feet, just to feel them dig deeper. Human calluses, not a beast's. Human, human, human. Erik can scoff at the words all he wants, but I have never felt freer than now thinking it. Human.

The mirror is big, and slightly grimy from several people brushing their teeth in this bathroom. Cautiously I brace my arms on the sides of the sink and look down into the drain. Dark hair flops in front of my forehead in thick clumps. Dark. Not dark blue, just dark. I look up.

A pale face, made paler by nerves. High cheekbones. Slanted eyebrows that Alex and Sean always made fun of. Uneven red lips, the bottom one slightly too big. And blue eyes. Big, cartoonish, blue eyes.

My laughter echoes across the bathroom, bouncing off of the walls and through the vast corridors of the mansion.

I sink to my knees, still laughing, a bit hysterically maybe. I don't care. I'm laughing, without a growl, with a human throat, and human skin, and human eyes and human hair and human lungs and human feet and human fingernails and human human human human! I grab my ears, round and warm and not hidden by fur, and tug and giggle and can't stop. I don't want to stop.

The realization of what this means hits me. No more hiding. No more having to avoid bringing people back to the house. I can meet Anya's friends. I can go bar hopping with Alex and Sean. I can get a job, not just work in the lab. A real job, maybe teaching or working in a big corporate lab or hell, retail if I want. I giggle again, thinking about me working in a store. I'd be terrible at it. The giggles fade. No, but I can go to a store. I can go to a park. I can go to a library. I can walk down the middle of the street in New York City and look like everyone else.

I can see the world outside of these walls. I can go with my family.

I think that's when the tears start trickling down my face.

XXX-XXX

The Professor is rubbing a hand over his face and gripping the edge of his wheelchair in a tight grip. I forgot for a moment he and Erik had been fighting this morning. He looks worn out and a little angry still. I almost back away, skittish and shy. He's upset, maybe I shouldn't -

"Dr. McCoy." I silently berate myself for the hesitation when I step into the room. Charles' red lips pull into a delighted smile when he sees me for the first time in five years. "It worked."

"Yeah," I say, shifting from foot to foot and unable to meet his eyes suddenly. "I um… I wasn't sure if…" He wheels closer to me and takes my forearm in one of his pale long hands.

"I am so proud of you," he murmurs. I feel my lips pull up into a smile, reassured. "Is this permanent, or -"

"No. If it worked, I'm still Beast, I'm just… me too." The Professor's answering frown is more than a little pained.

"You were always you, Hank," he says softly. His grip tightens on my arm. "I'm sorry. I failed -"

"Charles don't," I respond. "You didn't. Not by a long shot." He smiles but it's subdued, uneasy, and barely present in his large cerulean eyes. I hadn't meant to do that; the very notion that he could fail me - fail any of his children - is absurd. "How is Erik going to take this?" I finally ask.

The Professor lets out a snort of frustration. "We won't know that for at least a day, I'm afraid." He rubs a hand through his hair and sighs. "I said some things that were… rather harsh. Much as I regret them I believe they needed to be said." I can't help my wince then. Charles was never one to willing hurt another person. Erik must have pushed him pretty far for him to snap like that. "He's off somewhere. He'll come back once he calms down." I don't point out that he sounds almost like he's reassuring himself. His smile is back within a heartbeat. "Come. I'm sure your family would love to see the progress you've made."

He wheels beside me, a happy grin lighting his face. I feel more nervous than I want to admit. I didn't do this because I hate myself. I can shift back… I just…

My brothers and sister are playing a bizarre card game with Jesse and Maxine. I know for a fact that Alex and Sean made it up because no other way possible would they be able to win such a complex game every time the prodigy children play. Even Jesse can't figure it out and the boy cheats at everything. As I watch Anya pokes Sean in the head to knock him off of the couch, a disgruntled expression on her face. Maxine laughs from where she's perched on the armrest, glancing over at the boys on the couch to see if they're watching her. Jesse just smiles and looks over at me with blind eyes that are eerily accurate. I fidget under his scrutiny. The smile softens and he nods once.

Guess that's a good sign.

"Darling, what have I told you about harassing your brothers?" Charles chides gently as he wheels into the rooms.

"Probably the same thing you tell me about not fighting in school." She smiles, angelic as always. Alex snorts and kicks her ankle. She pulls her shoe off and mimes throwing it at him to make him duck under the table. The Professor sighs in exasperation.

"Children…" he says wearily. Anya smiles a little sheepishly, dropping the shoe and crossing her legs. Alex sneers at her for the move but also gets back up meekly onto the couch.

"So, what's up Professor?" Maxine asks cheerfully, her bat wings crooked over her shoulder. Charles smiles again, pleased once again. My stomach is doing somersaults.

"Hank… well, Hank managed to do something rather remarkable," he starts, gesturing back to me. "Hank? Why don't you show them?" he coaxes. With a sigh, I walk into the room.

There's silence for a whole minute. Everyone stares until I turn red - that's a sensation I haven't felt in a long time - and wish I was anywhere but under their shocked gazes. Then the room is in uproar, everyone scrambling to their feet to fall on top of me. Alex is rubbing a knuckle in my hair, Sean is thumping my back so hard I'm falling over, Maxine is hanging off of my neck and yelling in my ear so loudly that I'm about to go deaf, Charles has a hand on my arm and is laughing more brightly than he has in a long time, Jesse's calling my name and -

"What the hell is this?" Everybody subsides a little, each of us giggling and snorting. Erik has a look on his face I have rarely seen before, which makes the laughter come back. "What have you done to yourself?"

"Erik," Charles says sharply. The laughter gradually ceases, the Professor's reprimand ringing in our ears. Charles has gotten upset, Charles has gotten angry, but never has he sounded like he was on the verge of losing his temper. Erik just glares right back before pointing a finger at me.

"What has he done to himself?" he reiterates. Charles' eyes harden. We take a couple of steps back, watching as Erik meets his stare without flinching. Anya makes a move like she's going to step in front of me, but Jesse pulls her back with a shake of his head. She wrenches her arm from his grasp and scowls at him. "He doesn't need to look like that Charles." I'm not sure how to feel at that remark to be honest. Charles' lips tighten slightly.

"He just wants to be able to go out," Maxine mumbles. Her blue lips pull into a frown. "I can sympathize." Erik's green eyes flicker to her.

"You shouldn't have to apologize for what you are. They should apologize for being -"

"Erik, much as I would like to agree with you, much as it pains me that my children," no one misses that pointed remark, and Erik rears back as if struck, "have to hide who they are, what do I have to ask of them? That they stay shut up in the mansion forever?"

"They should be proud of who they are!" Erik bellows. Everyone flinches back, the Professor included. "They should not have to answer to the close-mindedness and viciousness of those animals!"

"Erik -"

"Don't Charles. Don't say again that they can learn, that they want to. Humans are nothing but inferior, sniveling, greedy -"

BANG! The door slamming shut makes everyone in the room jump. Maxine runs to the window, biting her bottom lip and hunching her shoulders, wings slightly tilted upwards as her dark eyes track something outside. I ease over next to her, grateful that my human body is so slim I can peer around her without smashing her into the window. All I see is a flash of red disappearing into the woods. Then nothing.

Anya.

"Alex, she's headed towards the river near that bridge. Could you…?" Charles asks softly. Alex nods and takes off at a sprint, slamming the door behind him almost as hard as our sister did. Sean hesitates for less than a second before bolting after him. Erik looks comically startled, mouth moving but no words coming out. Charles sighs and rubs a hand over his face.

"Want me to help him find her?" Maxine asks kindly, wings arched and to the ready. Charles gives her a nod and she leaves too, leaving me by the window. Out of the corner of my eye I see Jesse plops down onto the nearest sofa and tilts his feet over the edge with a smirk. I ignore him when his blind eyes tilt towards me. Little brat.

"Don't drag me into your fight with the Professor," I say to Erik without turning away from the window. Jesse's smirk slowly fades to a sad little smile. "You act like I did this for them." I finally turn around and glare at him, daring to meet his eyes. Erik's face… "I didn't. I made myself into a beats trying to make myself normal, whatever the fuck that means." Charles looks taken aback at the language, but on seeing Erik's tightened jaw he gives a small smile. Must mean I'm doing something right here. "I did this for me. Because I want to be able to leave this house and see the world and be with my family. If this is what I have to do right now to have that, fine. The day it's acceptable for people like me and Maxine to walk around in public is the day that I give this up. Do you hear me?" I swallow hard, not sure if I'm making much sense. But Erik just tilts his head to the side, watching me. His green eyes are rather unsettling when they actually see - I've never noticed the difference until now.

Funny, but Anya's and the professor's eyes look like that almost all the time. Like they are peeling back the layers to the soul beneath.

"So just don't," I conclude, breaking my thought train and coming back to the moment firmly. "Okay? This has nothing to do with shame or what the normal people outside these walls think and everything to do with the world we live in now."

The room is silent for a very long time. Eventually Jesse, sardonic jerk he is, starts a long and slow clap. "Bravo Hank," he says softly. For once the smirk is surprisingly absent.

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