Hank took a step back from the lab bench, breathing hard. It had been an accident – a simple sample mix-up – but what he saw now in the bottom of his test-tube changed everything.

He had put aside his work on Madeline's blood, the experiment with camouflaging its mutation with host blood and returning it to the host environment, at least for the time being. They had managed to reproduce the results at the cellular level, so he no longer had to juggle pigs' hearts at least – but it was very dispiriting that in all these months, they had moved no closer to proving whether the same effects it produced in humans would work on Charles.

What they really needed was further samples from the telepath, but in his present state, both he and Maddy had agreed it would be the height of cruelty to tell him about their possible cure for his paralysis, only to disappoint him if it didn't work. Short of siphoning blood off while he slept – which would probably be about fifty per cent alcohol nowadays in any case – there was nothing to do but wait until something changed.

So Hank had returned to his own personal obsession – manipulating Raven's DNA to try and restore him to his former state, or if possible, to a fully human appearance. Although he had made no practical progress as yet, he found it hard to abandon his certainty that her unique ability to control her appearance would eventually hold the key to his salvation. He knew it wasn't just him who would benefit; there had to be other mutants who found the idea of 'mutant pride' little more than a cruel joke, who would jump at the chance to be normal. Not all of them would be like Erik; like Raven; like Maddy.

Hank had grown contemplative at the thought of the green-eyed girl. In so many ways, she was what he was looking for to help him move on from Raven – which basically boiled down to being everything that Raven wasn't. She was gentle, cautious, collaborative, thoughtful, normal, her mutation both invisible and useful– until she had ingested human blood. Then she became someone he hardly knew, someone who acted on impulse, someone with drives and desires he couldn't understand, someone dangerous, someone manifestly not human. Someone like Raven.

It was in this distracted frame of mind that he had absent-mindedly performed his current experiment using Maddy's sample instead of Raven's, using the DNA from her blood to create a clear serum he had theorized, but not truly hoped, would suppress the mutant gene in his own sample.

His theory had been predicated somewhat on the results of cloaking Maddy's blood in the blood of her human host – he had thought that if he could somehow cloak Raven's DNA within his own and then use the combined results on himself, perhaps his own mutation wouldn't fight back to knock hers out, enhancing its own manifestations in the process. He had already tried the experiment once, without success, but he was a scientist – every experiment had to be repeated, to ensure that consistent results could be confirmed. So, his heart still throbbing with disappointment and his mind wandering, he had dutifully replicated the process. With the wrong DNA.

He fully expected to see the mutant cells in his own sample start popping like fireworks on the introduction of the masked mutant DNA, bulging and reproducing wildly until the foreign mutation had been engulfed. Instead, they behaved the way human cells did when Maddy's blood was introduced to them – they began repairing themselves at an unprecedented rate. He realised his mistake at once, then knocked the microscope over when it dawned on him what it meant. Maddy's mutation, cloaked in his own DNA, provoked no immune response, and instantly overran his own, shutting down the mutant X gene. Making it… human, to all intents and purposes. And appearances.

He barely had time to get his head around this when the girl herself burst into his lab, crying heartbrokenly.

"Madeline? God, what happened?"

She flung herself into his arms, and he realised she still had blood in her – for one thing, she was usually far more reserved with him; for another, her grip nearly broke his ribs, even as strong as he was. He gently extricated himself, held her shoulders.

"Tell me. Is it Charles? Has he done something-"

She was shaking her head.

"It's Raven. She's leaving, Hank. Everything is falling apart! I can't lose her too!" She dropped her head onto his chest and sobbed. He put his arms around her almost absently, this girl he had been shyly pursuing for the best part of a year, his mind blown by what she had said – that the other girl, the one he had been trying to put out of his mind and heart for the same amount of time, was now walking out of her own accord.

"What do you mean, leaving? How can she be leaving, now? Where would she go? With who?"

"With someone who values me for who I am. To a better future. No more hiding."

Raven walked into the sick bay, followed by Azazel. He nodded apologetically at the distraught Maddy, held out his hand to Hank.

"Comrade."

Hank sprang away as if he had one of those wicked curved swords in his hand. The last time he had been in a room with Azazel had been in the hospital reception where the red man had dumped them after the Cuban beach. But he hadn't been this close to him since they were locked in mortal combat, the teleporter's sharp tail tip waving teasingly above Hank's eye.

Azazel didn't seem to take offense at his reaction, merely stepped back and leaned against the doorjamb, clearly attempting to be as inconspicuous as a six foot bright red assassin dressed like James Bond could. Far from appreciating his discretion, Hank took it for condescension, and growled low in his throat. Raven stepped between them, her golden eyes – so like his own – ablaze.

"Knock it off, Hank. He's only here to pick me up."

Realisation dawned on Hank. His lips curled in contempt.

"So he's Erik's messenger boy now? Some sweetener he's sent to persuade you to betray your brother."

Azazel grunted derisively, but didn't respond. Raven looked at Hank with a strange expression – disappointment so heartfelt it was almost tender. He felt an obscure sense of shame.

"You'll never understand me like he does in a thousand years. Because you'd rather be deaf and blind before you'd see that we – you, me, Azazel, Erik – are more of a kind than any human. That we are one. That we must fight as one. You'd renounce the one thing you should be most proud of – your mutation. That's why we could never-" She cut herself off, glanced at Azazel, who was listening to her with an expressionless, watchful look.

"It's why you'll never be happy, Hank. Why you'll always be alone. Until you accept who you are, you're just a ghost."

It was the pity in her voice that rekindled his anger, ignited it into a helpless spite.

"We're not all as alike as you think, Mystique. We're not all so easily fooled by Erik's supremacist horseshit as you and loverboy here. He's just Shaw recycled, you do know that? He's not the chosen one. But he's ruined you, made you into something you're not, he tried to do the same to Madeline, filling her head with all this blood power crap-"

Raven broke in with a harsh laugh, that contained a dark undercurrent of pain.

"Man, Hank, you are a paradox, aren't you? You've got a total bone for powerful women – but only as long as you can keep us tame. Madeline's blood powers are what make her special, make her strong– just like my mutation. And that just scares the hell out of you, doesn't it?"

She took a step back, looked at him as if bewildered.

"I must have been crazy to ever think you and I could have been anything to each other at all."

She turned her back on him with a finality that hit him like a fist, lodging a panicky feeling in his gut. She had turned to Madeline, who had watched their exchange with tears still streaming down her face. Now the two girls joined hands, drew close, heads bowed, foreheads pressed together.

"Listen to me, Maddy, OK? You take care of Charles for me. He trusts you. And you know what he needs. And what you need. Don't listen to – to anyone, OK? Follow your heart."

Maddy couldn't seem to speak, just gripped desperately at Raven's hands as she gently pulled away, went to stand beside Azazel, took his hand.

"And never forget," she said – to which of them it wasn't obvious. "Mutant – and proud."

With that, she nodded to Azazel, and with a puff of red smoke, they were gone.