Hiya, sorry this took so long, I've just been stuck in a rut and a difficult semester at school :( Thank you so much for all of your support, it's been really helpful! Hope you all enjoy!

Charles came home a few weeks later, Laurien couldn't be sure how many, for time seemed to pass in a dark mass of nothingness until he arrived, but she knew that it was long enough that Hank had only just taken out her stitches the day before. She'd lied on Hank's workbench in the lab and had her sweater strategically raised just above her ribcage for Hank to do his work. She revealed the thick line of pink puckered skin that stretched tightly across her still bruised side as she watched Hank carefully snip away the knotted threads that bound the layers together and pull them delicately from her.

"How does it feel?" He asked, talking for the first time since she'd settled down on the bench, as he tossed the discarded pieces into the trash bin to his right after he had finished.

"Good, thanks." Laurien said, running her fingers lightly over the rippled skin before wincing as she pressed on a particularly tender patch. "Just twinges a little bit every now and then."

"That's perfectly normal." He stated as he put away his tools in the drawers of his desk.

She swung her legs over the side and sat gingerly on the bench as she pulled down the sweater over her stomach. "Have you ever gotten stitches before?"

"Yeah." Hank replied, a small smirk creeping up on his face. "I got into a bit of an unwanted scrap with some of my fellow classmates at my old school, and they busted my lip. Took a couple of stitches to patch me up."

"Ouch."

He raised a furry eyebrow in agreement before swiveling around and propelling himself on the wheels of his chair towards an oddly shaped mound that was hidden beneath a large white sheet. Laurien followed him, curiosity tugging her feet forward as she heard Hank muttering under his breath until he realized that she was next to him.

"I was meaning to show you a couple of days ago, but the circuits accidentally shorted out and I–" His voice cut out as she felt a wave of embarrassment and frustration wash over him, his mouth twitching as his explanation itched to get out.

"You…?" Laurien prodded kindly, placing a tentative hand on his shoulder to reassure him.

He sighed and finally caved underneath her soft touch. "I can't rewire the circuits. My hands," He said, his claws unconsciously flexing where they were clasped together on his lap. "They're too big. I can't fit them into the panel to fix it."

She frowned. "How did you get the wires in there in the first place then?"

"I just took it from a piece of old electric scrap, I didn't actually have to do any major adjustments inside it, but now that it shorted, I need to get in there. Do you think you can help me?" He asked, his eyes flittering towards where her hand rested on his shoulder. "They look tiny enough."

"Hey!" She exclaimed in mock offense as she playfully smacked him on the arm. "They are average, for your information."

Hank chuckled. "Fine. Can you get your average hands into the panel and fix this for me, please?"

Laurien joined in his laughter, suddenly realizing how much she'd missed it, the whole laughing thing. After the past weeks of her only managing to give faint smiles and quiet conversations with the others, it felt strange to feel the small joyous spasm that ran throughout her entire body as she giggled.

"All right, what have you been working on here?" She said, gesturing towards the mysterious lump in front of them.

Before she could say another word, Hank enthusiastically pulled off the sheet to reveal a futuristic looking shiny wheelchair that was polished with a light grey finish that reminded Laurien of the robot from the Metropolis film. With so much to look at, she found her eyes to be quite overwhelmed until they finally rested where the chair was embraced by two large wheels on either side with spokes in the shape of an X.

"Wow." She whispered breathlessly, before tentatively taking a few steps forward, coming close enough to place her hand against the smooth texture of the arm of the chair. The moment she touched it, a strong wave of iciness gripped her as the cold of the metal seeped through her skin and sunk into her bones, making her fight to quell a frighteningly strong shiver that threatened to overtake her.

"Do you think Charles will like it?" Hank asked hesitantly, his blue claws fiddling anxiously with a screwdriver as he waited for her feedback.

"Um, yes." She managed, suddenly remembering herself and her surroundings. "Perhaps not what it symbolizes for him, but I'm sure that he'll definitely appreciate the kind thought and effort that went into it."

Hank nodded solemnly, understanding what she meant as he quickly showed her what she needed to do to fix the wiring.

"Hank," She asked a few minutes later with her hands inside the panel as she was getting close to fixing the second to last wire. She was met with a small grunt from across the lab which she took as acknowledgement. "Do you think that we should build a sort of ramp?"

His yellow eyes popped up from behind a table at her, displaying a look of mild confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Well, I mean that Charles has to have some sort of way to get to the higher levels of the mansion. We can't honestly expect him to be content to just stay on the ground floor, it would be like being a prisoner in your own home, not being able to go where you want."

"Ah. You're right." Hank sighed, his voice drifting to her ears as an echo rebounding off of the walls. "But with the slope of the stairs being that steep, I doubt that there would be any possible, or for that matter, even safe way to get the wheelchair moving up that drastic of an incline, even if it's electric."

Laurien frowned; searching her head for an answer until one finally came to her. "An elevator then."

"That could work, but how would we install it?"

"I don't quite know," She said, shrugging her shoulders noncommittally. "But I wouldn't feel comfortable doing any modifications without Charles' input. Maybe we can ask him when he gets back."

"Won't have to wait too long," Hank commented, a hint of a small smile lacing his voice. "He's coming home tomorrow."

"Wait, what?" She asked, before yelping as she accidentally shocked herself with the wires in her surprise. "When did you hear this?"

"Yesterday. Moira called from the hospital while you guys were wreaking havoc in the common room."

Laurien couldn't help but snort, because what Hank had described as them 'wreaking havoc,' was actually them moving the furniture around to make an admittedly poorly-crafted fort.

It had been Sean's idea, but prior to that they had all been watching a rerun of The Twilight Zone on the small television in the common room at Hank's askance. Laurien couldn't be sure what the episode was about, as the howling of the mysterious man in the show was so loud, to the point that it was deafening, and she couldn't hear much else besides the sound of his cry ringing eerily in her ears, but then again, that could have just been because of her recent dose of painkillers half an hour earlier.

Sean had apparently gotten bored from the lack of his new favorite program, 'The Nurses,' which was on at the same time and complained that Hank was hogging the television. Laurien didn't mind missing the medical show; it had a decent plot with mediocre actors and actresses, but of course, she surely doubted that it was the storyline that Sean was interested in.

He eventually stopped badgering Hank to change the channel when he perked up after getting an idea and jumped to his feet. He startled Laurien by sweeping her off of the couch and placing her gently on the carpeted floor before unceremoniously booting Hank off as well.

"What are you doing?" Laurien asked in exasperation, wondering if this was another tactic to annoy them until they conceded and watched his show instead, but her voice faltered as Sean threw off all of the cushions, jumped over the back of the couch and practically sprinted down the hallway. Laurien and Hank looked over questioningly at Alex who sat silently in a nearby armchair, reading a Fantastic Four comic book, paying no mind to his friend's eccentricities.

Sean returned swiftly with a jumble of mismatched-looking blankets clutched tightly in his arms and dropped them in front of their feet. His wild orange hair was a complete mess as the curly strands stuck out at odd angles from the static, his eyes shimmering with excitement. "Let's make a fucking fort!" He exclaimed, his eerily wide smile verging on an exact impression of a character that Laurien had seen in one of Alex's comics.

Laurien couldn't help but stare at the strange creature in front of her. She didn't recall ever witnessing Sean move that quickly in all the time that she'd known him, and his expression was far more animated than the casually stoned look he usually had on his face. His emotions were infectious though, and she soon found herself getting giddy as well. She smiled and hurried away to grab a roll of string and some tape and returned to start on the fort with Sean and Alex, the latter of which had abandoned his comic and was dragging a mattress from one of the unoccupied bedrooms. In their child-like chaos, they had neglected to hear the ringing of the telephone that Hank eventually picked up, seeing as The Twilight Zone seemed to be a lost cause for that night.

"And you didn't think to tell the rest of us?" Laurien said as she got to her feet and padded toward where Hank sat, hidden behind a table littered with copious amounts of blueprints for the wheelchair.

He simply shrugged. "It was supposed to be a surprise."

She frowned. "Then why did you tell me?"

"I'm bad with secrets." He admitted, wincing comically in shame. "Which is ironic, considering the one that I've been keeping since my birth."

Charles did, in fact, come home the very next day. He rolled up with Moira in a taxi and they met them at the iron gates of the property. Laurien smiled brightly as one of the car doors opened to reveal a healthy Charles, very different from how he looked back in Florida. His cheeks were rosy and his crystal blue eyes lit up in delight to see them all again. He was wearing an ill-fitting blue suit, as the hems of his pant legs were too short, and the length of his sleeves too long, but he didn't seem to notice. Laurien became aware of the way that Moira held Charles' bag tightly with a white knuckled grip, looking on with anxious brown eyes as Hank helped Charles into the newly fixed wheelchair that Charles thanked him graciously for. Laurien watched the other woman carefully, though admittedly kept her distance, as the other woman's restless waves were nipping at her nerves and putting her on edge. She feared that perhaps Moira still blamed herself for what had happened to Charles, despite all of their repeated attempts to ease her conscience.

Laurien bent down as Charles approached her and hugged him gently, grinning as the heat from his hand on the back of her neck radiated contentment. In her rapidly growing joy, she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek.

"We missed you." She whispered softly in his ear.

"I counted on it." He chuckled before she released him to greet the others.

Soft moonlight drifted through the window of the common room, casting faint shadows upon the deep red wallpaper that coated Laurien's surroundings. She stared unseeingly at the ceiling before raising her arms experimentally, a small smile tugging at her tired face as she made a dark shadow bird flap its wings momentarily against the light before she dropped her arms back down to her sides.

She looked around the common room in disinterest, the snores of the boys next to her cutting through the silence engulfing them. They were asleep inside the fort that they had created, like children would at a sleepover, after they had all found that they didn't want to sleep anywhere else. So there they all were, huddled together, protecting each other from the cold of the outside world.

They hadn't exactly gone outside that much since Charles had come back home to the mansion a few days ago, as the weather had recently taken a nasty turn, which did nothing to help anybody's mood. The temperature had plummeted and the wind howled eerily like a pack of starved wolves against the walls of the mansion, bringing back memories of her childhood days in Alkmaar when she would hide beneath her covers in fright at the sound, her young imagination running away from her.

That night was a welcome exception though, the winds had died down and a soft silence had fallen over the house, though Laurien found it harder to fall asleep than ever. Recently, she found that every time she closed her eyes, she imagined Erik's coin forcing its way into Shaw's head, the sickening crunch of his skull ringing in her ears as she buried her head into her hands and pressed her fingers hard into her temples, willing the sound to disappear.

She would finally relax and roll over onto her good side on one of the mattresses that Alex had dragged in. Her mind unconsciously drifted back to earlier that night when they'd played Truth or Dare, which had almost ended prematurely following Sean's fall when his sore arm gave out after Alex had dared him to do a handstand on the back of the couch.

"Okay, Sean, truth or dare?" Laurien asked slyly before she threw a Sweet Tart into the air and caught it in her mouth.

"I think he's only allowed to do truth now." Alex chuckled as he tilted his head toward the couch.

"Aw, you guys are complete buzz kills!" Sean pouted.

Alex held his hands in surrender. "Look man, I'm all for seeing someone hurt themselves as much as the next guy, but we don't need any more injuries in this house, all right, bud?"

Sean finally conceded and settled for truth, allowing Laurien to ask when he'd had his first kiss.

"Judy Larson, first grade." He blurted without any thought, surprising the rest of them with his prompt response.

"Okay, your turn, Laurien." Hank said after taking the lollypop out of his mouth, leaving his tongue a bright red. "Truth or dare?"

"Uh, truth." She decided, smiling against the nervous excitement that plagued her whenever she played the game.

Hank looked at her for a while, choosing his question. From the look in his eyes, she should have known what was to come. "Do you still love Erik?"

"Hank." Alex's low voice warned, as Laurien's smile disappeared.

Her stomach plunged, a wave of startling heat washed over her as she felt all their eyes turn to her. The air was suddenly thin, but it didn't seem to matter, because she had forgotten to breathe in her horrible surprise.

Hank must have finally realized his mistake, and quickly backtracked. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have, I-"

"No, it's all right." She started timidly after she finally found her voice, though it was quiet and hoarse. "It's just that the truth is that…" She took a deep breath, her eyes flitting down to her hands. "I don't really know."

It was the truth. In all the time that they had spent together, it had only been a month and a half that she'd known Erik. In her opinion, it was too short a time to fall in love or even develop serious feelings, and Laurien didn't believe in the myth of love at first sight. Despite this, she still found herself not wanting to say yes or no, as if her tongue couldn't get its way around forming the words that expressed how she really felt.

Laurien quickly got bored of squeezing her eyes shut and begging for sleep, so she carefully lifted herself up from where she was wedged between Alex and Sean, and proceeded toward the hallway that led to their actual rooms. She turned the switch to the lamp in her room, only to frown when it remained unlit. Reminding herself to replace the bulb in the morning, she stepped blindly across the floor of her bedroom until she was met painfully in the stomach by her bookshelf and cursed. She heard the sharp sound of glass shattering as something toppled onto the hardwood.

"Just perfect." She mumbled, groaning as she bent down and felt around for what had broken, her anxiety growing along with the multitude of curse words in her head as she knew that she was bare foot and surrounded by broken glass in the dark.

Her fingers finally met something other than shards and grabbed it, letting out a small exclamation of triumph. From the feel of its rectangular shape and the glass, she knew that it was probably one of her picture frames and grumbled in annoyance as she used her powers to sweep the shards into a neat pile somewhere to her left. Now able to walk around freely, Laurien padded back toward the dim glow of the hallway and once the light hit the picture, she bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.

Her siblings, Bastijn and Roosje, stared back at her with enthusiastically sparkling eyes from within the black and white scene, their delightfully crooked smiles as radiant as the sun. The then-eight-year-olds stood side by side, each holding an item that made Laurien long for home; Roosje held a heavy wheel of fresh Gouda that almost dwarfed her, while Bastijn had a bouquet of bright tulips clutched in his hands.

Laurien smiled, silent tears rolling down her cheeks as she pressed her fingertips gently against the glossy surface of the photograph. She remembered the exact events at the festival that had surrounded the moment that she'd taken the picture with her father's camera; her siblings had been fighting over who got to hold the cheese for the photo, because Bastijn refused to hold something as quintessentially feminine as a flower. He ended up getting a lecture from their father and was afterwards forced to hold the tulips.

Laurien remembered how it had all worked out in Bastijn's favor in the end, as he had given a girl standing next to him in line for poffertjes one of the yellow tulips. She'd kissed him on the cheek three times, as the Dutch traditionally did, leaving Bastijn completely smitten, and from then on, in love with tulips.

She hadn't seen them in years, she thought, unconsciously fiddling with the stray caramel strands of hair that had fallen out of her messy bun as a wave of despair shot through her veins. She felt a sob rising in her throat, but she forced it down and dragged her sleeve across her tear-stained face. Her mind was suddenly set and she started toward Charles' study, picture frame in hand.

She hesitated before the door to the study, her knuckles just an inch away from the solid glossy wood as she thought it through, wondering whether or not she should just drop her hand and return to the fort. She finally turned around to head back, but a voice entered her mind.

"Come in, Laurien." It told her.

She took a deep breath and spun around, pushing the doors open to reveal where Charles sat in his wheelchair by his desk, his dusty brown hair a perfectly tousled mess, but his eyes as tired or, if possible, more tired than they were when she'd first met him.

"Sorry to bother you, Charles." She started, but he stopped her quickly with a wave of his hand.

"No bother at all, dear." He said, hitting the control to spin his wheelchair around, but he accidentally misjudged the distance and bumped into the side table. "Whoops, excuse me." He exclaimed, patting the table in an apology.

Laurien smiled as she sat down on one of the many armchairs, but it quickly ebbed away as she attempted to say what was on her mind. "Uh, I don't know how to say this, but-"

"You want to go back home." He finished for her.

Her eyes widened in panic, as she tried to clarify her meaning. "Just for a little while, to get some closure, I guess, but I don't have to if you need me to be here. I could just–"

She saw the amused look on his face and quickly shut up. He grabbed her hands and squeezed them tight as she felt his reassurance flow through her. "You go do what you need to do, and we'll be right here when you return."

Her chest swelled up and she didn't know what to say, but she eventually managed to say something. "Thank you so much."

He smiled and was about to let go of her hand when something suddenly dawned on him and his smile disappeared. "Erik came to visit you, didn't he?" He asked seriously, though gently. She nodded and he raised his hand near his temple. "Uh, may I?"

She nodded again and watched as his hand touched his temple. She felt his comforting presence searching through her mind until he eventually latched onto the memory of Erik's visit. Laurien heard the sound of the metal bender's voice in her ears and the sensation of his fingers on her skin, but she winced and pushed the reminder away as she felt Charles pull away from her mind.

She met his gaze and he looked back at her with quiet, reverential eyes. Uneasiness settled in her stomach as she felt his apprehension at letting her go, but she grabbed his hand and leaned in close. "If he comes looking, please don't tell him where I've gone."

He nodded slowly in understanding before squeezing her hand again.

This chapter took forever, so I do apologize. I did a lot of research for this chapter, including the TV channels in the US in the 60s. They only had three channels! NBC, CBC, and ABC, I think. Can't wait for the story to get on in the time line, Hogan's Heroes, Batman, M*A*S*H*, and many more honorable mentions to come! In other news, don't look up a pneumothorax procedure on Youtube... Yikes.

I heard something on the net that Michael Fassbender performed an improv scene in Apocalypse that had everyone on set in tears. Can't wait! Thanks again, please review!