Names were harder to choose than she'd thought they would be.

With Logan as her father, her last name was set in stone. But her first name was a mystery to her. How did she choose? There were so many of them out there. Did she go by sound or meaning? Length or ethnic group? So many options presented themselves to her that she began making lists and narrowing them down to a hundred per letter. Military training kicked in and she began to systematically narrow the lists.

Anything hard to pronounce was passed over. She didn't want to be eternally saying, "No, it's not that," her whole life. Nothing impossible to spell was even considered. Why would someone spell a straightforward name like Abigail Ahbeeghaill? It made no sense to her. Arabic names were out, given the country's reactions to the Middle East lately. Nothing religious, because she didn't even begin to grasp religion. Nothing longer than seven letters, since X-23 wasn't used to the idea of nicknames and full ones either. She just wanted a name of her very own.

Nothing with X. She threw the whole list away. Nothing with numbers. She crossed out anything with even a remote number meaning. Nothing to do with blood, violence, death, darkness, war. A lot of the 'edgier' names Rogue had suggested went out the window with that decision. Nothing that reminded her of Hydra stayed on the list. A lot of names left with that, because of all the time she'd spent there, but she just couldn't take anymore reminders of what had happened.

Oh, for cryin' out loud, it was one name. One. She had seen Hydra staff pull operation names and classifications out of thin air. How could this be remotely hard? This was one, not a dozen. She began crossing names off the list out sheer annoyance. No, too long, too short, too cold sounding, too official sounding – off they all went. Soon she had abandoned logic and military training and just crossed off everything that came to mind. Annoyed, she crumbled them all into balls and restarted from the beginning, scribbling down a hasty top ten and going off in search of her father. He narrowed it down to three, handed it back to her and went on his way. Helpful, if a bit abrupt. Certainly it was nice to have it down to choices that could be counted on one hand.

She mulled it over as she walked the halls that night, a habit ever since that fateful night. Pausing at the Professor's door, she wondered if she was awake. Should she bother him? Would he welcome her company at this hour? Would such a strange question annoy him? She was truly beginning to think in terms of what made him happy now. Love TV and magazines said it was a good thing, the sign of a strong bond, but at moments such as these it made her hesitant, something she'd never been before. Finally she knocked, and he let her in. He was in his bed, reading something on genetics, a thick book he gladly set aside to give her his full attention.

"Ah, yes, the infamous list." He grinned good naturedly at her. "The other students have been quite interested in your endeavors. I suppose they'd all given you their suggestions?"

She nodded, drawing a little closer and gingerly sitting on the edge of the bed. Stressed, she ran a hand through her hair. "I've got it down to three. I just can't get past this. And I need a name, a real one, not X-23. Can you help me?" she held the list out to him.

She was asking him to name her. The weight of such an action made him raise his eyebrows. She wanted and valued his opinion above that of her own father. She trusted him to pick the right one even though she didn't know enough about the world to know what a right name was. Smiling gently at her, he took the list in his hands. Logan had hastily crossed out seven, some more than others. He particularly decimated the Japanese names. Sighing, Charles looked it over. The names meanings were alongside them. Selene, moon. Given her tendency to be a night person, it made sense. Jaden, from jade. He frowned. The reference to her being jaded was sharp and half witty, half self-deprecation. It was a cold, empty, depressing idea, to name one's self something that had such reminder of the past. Granted the girl probably thought it was too pretty of a name to resist given its popularity lately, but he still wouldn't ever recommend it to her. The third was one Logan had clearly crossed out and begrudgingly erased. Aiko. From 'ai', love, and 'ko', child. Charles looked up at her.

"If you're asking me for my opinion, Selene is alright, although a bit overly feminine. Jaden is too much a modern this-year name, however. I think I prefer Aiko over the others." He handed it back to her. "It is your decision ultimately, though. I won't push you for one over the other."

"But Aiko has love in it," she objected, and without meaning to, she blurted out, "Can I even feel that after how I grew up?"

Startled, he raised his eyebrows, for once truly caught off guard. "Of course you can… Do you feel that you can't –"

Suddenly she turned to him, tears in her eyes. "I did terrible things. I didn't care. I tried to kill Logan. I couldn't stop myself. Sometimes I get so angry I just can't stop." The urge to harm herself went through her, but she fought it off by laying her head on his shoulder. "I was a monster. And I don't feel things like they do."

"Like who does?" he asked quietly.

"Them. Normal people. Other students. Teenagers." She closed her eyes tightly, fighting down tears because she had sworn to herself never to break down again. "I try so hard, but somedays I just feel nothing deep down inside. What if I'm too messed up to have real feelings?"

In spite of himself, he wrapped an arm around her. Her startled forest colored eyes opened as he leaned into her, holding her closer than they'd been since when he discovered she hurt herself. For a moment she tensed, before forcing herself not to. It was hard to let herself be so much as touched after so many years of pain and abuse. There was a part of her that wanted to bolt out of the room, to unleash her claws, to cry. She fought it all down and laid her head back on his shoulder, relaxing slowly.

"Do you see what you just did?" he whispered to her. Charles gazed at her seriously. "You can change. These days without feeling will pass, as all things do. Those days where you hurt people are behind you already. You are a person, and you can be anything you want to be – you can feel anything you allow yourself to feel. Don't you understand that?"

"I do now," she whispered back, and looked down seriously at the list in her hands. "Aiko. At least now you'll have something to call me." As if just now realizing her proximity to him, she pulled away abruptly, searching his face for disapproval. She found none, as unbeknownst to her he knew enough about psychology to expect such a thing. "Why didn't you ever call me X-23?"

"X-23 is a classification, a number. This is not Nazi Germany and I will never treat a person like a numbered object, Aiko." The name sounded unfamiliar to her, but infinitely better than what she'd had before. "People are always people, for all the evils they commit and the hardships they endure. To me, you will always be a close friend first and a name second. It's how I learned to think of people when my powers first manifested: their feelings and emotions were how I recognized them somedays, not their faces."

"You didn't call me X-23… because you don't believe in military names?" she paused at the door, face scrunched slightly in thought. "All these things you're telling me – is that why we didn't kill Seven?"

Charles nodded, looking far away for a moment. "To me she isn't Seven. She's a misguided girl who loves her father very, very much. She meant nothing by it. People will do things under love's influence they would never ordinarily conceive of."

Aiko sensed he was referring to more people than just Seven, and asked, "Professor?"

But he shook his head and sent her off without another word. Whatever his train of thought was, he was keeping it to himself for now. She quietly went to her room, letting the idea of having an actual name to answer to wash over her. A name. Because she was a person, not a weapon. She was a human being. And although she didn't understand the way she felt towards the Professor, the way her spirits soared when he was happy and her heart sank when he was in danger, she knew at least they were feelings. If she was capable of feelings, then she could love. Somehow just knowing she had the capacity was like having a weight lifted from her shoulders; she slept soundly that night for the first time all week.

And so, Aiko found out names weren't so hard to come by after all.