Chapter 1: Accepting

                "I'm not going."

                Hank sighed and sat down on the end of his bed. "Why not?" He had a feeling he already knew the answer.

                It had been almost two months since Amanda had moved into the mansion. The X-Men had done their best to make her feel welcome, but she still remained for the most part shy and introverted. She spent most of her time down in the lab, working with her virus, trying to find a way to reverse the transformation, but so far hadn't had much luck.

                They had both just been invited to the annual genetics conference in Bern. Xavier, Hank, and Amanda had gotten their invitations through the mail just that morning. Hank had taken Amanda upstairs to pack.

                Now here she was refusing to go.

                "I am not going." Amanda kicked her suitcase back under the bed, then blocked Hank's attempts to pull it back out. "Practically everyone there knows me. They'll stare at these…things…" she flexed her iridescent wings, "…and they'll wonder what happened. I don't feel like trying to explain what happened." She laughed bitterly. "What would I tell them anyway? 'A super powered mutant named Magneto injected me with my own reovirus and turned me into a ugly freak?" She shook her head. "I'm not ready to face all those people yet."

                Hank stood and walked over to her, wrapping her in his arms and hugging her gently. "Yes, they'll stare. Yes, they will talk. But Amanda, I do not believe anyone will think you ugly. If you could just see yourself…"

                "Yeah, yeah, you keep saying that." Amanda crossed the room and stood in front of the mirror on the wall. "You think I'm pretty. I don't think so. Hank, look at me! I look like a rag doll that someone ran through the wash and bleached all the color out of! Look…look…" she fumbled with the tie holding her cottony white hair back in a tight, severe bun, and shook out the long curls. "Look at this. I used to love my hair. Now it's all silver, like an ugly old woman, and I hate it!" She closed her eyes briefly, as if the sight of herself made her ill, and quickly bundled her hair back into its bun. "And these damned ugly useless things sprouting from my back are just a nuisance. They don't serve any purpose that I can see." She reached out and turned the hanging mirror around to face the wall. "And I'm so skinny I look anorexic…"

                "You would not appear so if you consumed meals regularly," Hank pointed out. "You lost a lot of mass during your transformation, and you have not yet gained it back yet because you don't eat."

                "I can't eat!" Amanda yelled, clenching her fist. "Just thinking about the way I look is making me feel sick!" She stormed out of the room and almost ran into Xavier out in the hallway. With a muttered "Excuse me," she brushed past him and vanished down the stairs. Probably on her way downstairs to the labs, Hank surmised.

                Xavier sighed and watched her go. "She still hasn't accepted the changes?"

                Hank sighed too, and folded another shirt into his own suitcase. "No. Charles, I feel so helpless. There is nothing I can do, is there?"

                Xavier shook his head. "Just be there. She is going through much the same thing you did; and if I recall it was months before you would set foot outside the labs. You went through all the same things she is currently going through; just give her time, and be patient. She can't see herself right now the way we all see her; she can't see the beauty in her physical changes, because she still has the image in her mind of what she used to look like. Once that image fades a little, she may begin to see herself differently."

                "I hope so." Hank zipped up his suitcase and set it down on the floor. Then he picked up Amanda's suitcase and carried it through the door that adjoined his and Amanda's room, dropped the suitcase on the floor and pushed it under the bed, and walked back out, closing the door gently behind him.

                Xavier studied the door thoughtfully. "Is she still having nightmares?"

                Hank nodded and sat down on the end of his bed. "I would not call them nightmares anymore, though. They are more like bad dreams of the memory of the pain she experienced when she went through the transformation, not nearly as bad now as it was formerly, though. I still wake up some nights to hear her crying." He shook his head as if to clear the vision from his mind. Still, it persisted.

                They had started soon after Amanda had moved into the room. Hank had been dryly amused when he discovered Charles had put her in the room adjacent to his, but the amusement had evaporated when she began having bad dreams. He had woken up one night to hear her sobbing in her room, and he had gone to her. She had been curled up in a tight, miserable ball in the middle of her bed, crying in her sleep. He had slipped into the bed next to her--thanking Charles's wisdom in selecting a bed for her that would accommodate his weight as well—and held her. She had curled up against him, tight to his side, and cried herself back to sleep. It had happened night after night. Charles had known about the bad dreams; how, Hank didn't know, though he rather suspected the X-Men's founder had been 'listening' telepathically…and one afternoon when he returned from a shopping trip to purchase some supplies for his lab, he found that Xavier had a door installed in the wall between his and Amanda's room. It made going to her room at night much easier and more discreet than going through the hall. Although, from the smiles Jean gave him whenever she saw the two of them together, everyone knew about him and Amanda's unique relationship.

                "She will be fine," Xavier said, smiling at Hank. "Just give her time."

*                                                              *                                                              *

                Amanda ran down the halls to the labs. She understood what Hank was saying; but she just couldn't see herself that way. She couldn't see herself as pretty.

                She'd never considered herself pretty. Her eyes had been an uncertain grayish-blue, a neither-here-nor-there color, her skin was too pale, and her lips were too wide. The only thing she had liked about herself was her hair.

                Now that was gone too. She looked like a washed-out, faded, bleached version of her old self, and she hated it. She had tentatively considered buying dye and dying her hair the color it had been, but had decided that the color would be too sudden, too startling, against her white skin. She had tried using cosmetics like concealer and foundation and stage makeup to cover the pale skin, but when she really had tried it, she had come away looking unnatural.

                She misjudged the angle around the doorframe to the labs and her lefty wing slammed into the wall. She bit her lip as she regained her balance and reached over her shoulder to rub the aching spot.

                She had found out that the wings, though for the most part an iridescent crystal color, did have a few nerves running down its white veining. It hurt when she bumped them; it hurt when she rolled over at night and accidentally crushed them. She could even feel the heat from her showers on them; she had discovered that they were waterproof, and she could bathe and shower without having to worry about them becoming wet. That had been an immense relief.

                She had wondered whether they were just decorative or if they were functional as well; but she had been reluctant to try it mostly because she was afraid of heights, and also partly because she was determined to find a way to reverse her transformation and she didn't want to get used to using them. She had seen Hank's friend Warren jump out of his third-floor window with his wings outspread and fall a dizzying few feet before he got enough momentum and air under his white feathered wings to pull out of the freefall. She had no intention of flying off the top of the mansion like that.

                She closed the door to the labs and buried herself back in her work, and didn't emerge until some time later. Lunch was being served, she could tell as she passed the kitchen and the informal dining hall, but she turned away from the sound of silverware and dishes clattering. She didn't want them to stare at her; she would get something to eat later. She climbed the stairs to her own room, closed the door, and pulled her sewing basket out from under the bed.

                She was in the middle of sewing a zipper into the back seam of her shirt when the door opened, and Jean stuck her head inside. Amanda bit her lip, and forced a smile to her face; she liked Jean as a person, but had to fight to suppress a surge of envy every time she saw the redhead. Jean was so perfect. Too damn perfect. She had the face, height and figure of a supermodel, the hair to go with it, and an air of self-confidence that Amanda wished she had, and to top it all off she had what Amanda had always secretly wished for; the perfect chest. Amanda was a modest B; Jean had to be a C or D. And to top it all off, she had a mutation that didn't affect the way she looked. Jean was just too damn perfect. Envy sharpened Amanda's voice as she said, "Is something wrong?"

                "Oh, no, I was putting my things in the dryer and I found this still in it. I think you left it in there by accident yesterday." Jean came in and handed Amanda her green sweater. "I know I ask this all the time, but are you sure you won't come down and join us girls in the laundry room? We'd love to have your company."

                "Thank you for the sweater, but no, thank you, Jean." Amanda got up and opened her drawer, folding her sweater and tucking it into its drawer.

                Jean sat down on the end of the bed. She knew why Amanda didn't like her; Amanda thought she was too perfect. Jean suddenly wished, impulsively, that their powers were switched. Then Amanda would be able to see what she looked like to others, and maybe she wouldn't feel so upset about her appearance. "Amanda," she said, unsure how to broach the subject, and deciding to start the conversation with something different, "Are you sure you won't go to the conference with Hank and Charles?"

                "Yes," Amanda said firmly, not looking at Jena. "Yes, I'm sure."

                "Why?"

                Amanda stared at the ceiling for a moment. "I explained to Hank, I don't feel like trying to explain to everyone why I suddenly have these damn wings," she said. "Everyone's used to seeing me the way I used to be. How do I explain why I suddenly look like an ugly freak?" Jean winced at the anger in her voice.

                "You're not ugly," she tried to say, but Amanda whirled on her and cut her off.

                "It's easy to be patronizing when you're the perfect one, huh? Perfect face, perfect figure, perfect hair, perfect attitude, everything is nicely in place. I've heard of the Greys, your parents. Everything is so perfect for you, living here, everything you want, married to a man who worships the ground you walk on." Amanda bit her lip. She hadn't meant to lose her temper like that.

                "I'm not perfect," Jean said to her. "Far from it. I'm human, just like you. And if you could only see yourself, Amanda, the way we see you, maybe you'd agree. Look at you, Amanda. You've got hair like a cloud on a summer day. You have skin like the finest china, and such a slim figure you could pass for a supermodel. And the wings! I can levitate myself in the air using my telekinesis, but I'll never fly like I think you can with those wings And have you noticed how pretty they are? Crystal clear, with rainbows on them. Look." Jean reached over to the dresser and picked up the gift Hank had bought for Amanda; a crystal butterfly on a back-lit base.

"Hank chose this because this is what you look like. Like a crystal butterfly. When the sun hits your skin, you seem to glow just like this butterfly. And when the sun hits your wings, they turn into sheets of rainbow fire. You're so lucky to look so beautiful," Jean put down the butterfly. "And the best thing of all is that you don't have any pesky psionic mutations to get in your way. You're the same inside as you were before; nothing changed, except for your appearance." Jean sighed. "Amanda, I was twelve when my telepathy manifested. And it happened because a car hit my best friend and killed her, and I felt her die in my arms. It sent me into a catatonic state for two years, and when I 'woke' up, I was in an asylum with a whole bunch of other crazy people. I was lucky Charles sensed that I was a mutant and brought me here, or I would eventually have gone crazy myself.

"Amanda, all you have to deal with is the way you look outside; you don't have to deal with the weight of thousands of minds pounding down on yours. And people who are your friends, real friends, won't look at your exterior. Hank doesn't see a mutant when he looks at you; he doesn't care that you don't look the same. He loves you for who you are on the inside, just like you love him even though he's big, blue, and furry. And in the end, Amanda, that's all that matters." Jean got up. "Now, if I'm not mistaken, Hank and Charles are about to leave for the airport to catch Charles' private plane, so if you want to say goodbye, you'd better come down."

Amanda sat for a moment, hesitant and undecided. The sound of voices in the downstairs hall filtered up to where she sat, and she suddenly realized Hank would be gone for two weeks. Two weeks without seeing him!

Hank was loading Charles' regular wheelchair into the back of the van that would take them to the airport when he saw Amanda appear on the steps leading up to the front door. She saw him, and walked out from the shadow of the doorway into the sunlight of the front drive, and he caught his breath. She was so beautiful. Her wings waved gently in the warm April breeze as she ran down the steps toward him. "Hank!"

He hugged her as she ran to him. "You have changed your mind?" he asked her.

She shook her head. "No, I'm still not ready to face everyone," she whispered. "I just wanted to say goodbye." She gave him a kiss on the cheek as she slipped a tiny package into the pocket of his jacket. He didn't feel it.

She stood with the others, waving goodbye until the van disappeared down the drive, then turned and wandered down to the labs.

Jean watched her go. When the girls were all back downstairs in the laundry room getting ready for another game of Monopoly, she said to Ororo, "We should probably be seeing more of Amanda now that Hank's gone. She won't have him to bring her dinner anymore down in the labs, and unless she plans to not eat at all for the next two weeks, she'll have to run into all of us at some point."

Hank got out of the van at the airport, unlocked the trunk and started to put the keys into his pocket when he felt the tiny paper-wrapped package. Xavier watched, equally curiously, as he opened it.

Inside was a tiny tie-pin, gold with four tiny diamonds bunched together in the center of it. Xavier examined the piece of jewelry as Hank read the note scribbled on the piece of paper the tack had been wrapped in. "Hank: I love you. I'm sorry I didn't come with you this time. Maybe next time? Your butterfly."

Xavier smiled. "Apparently she's beginning to accept what she's become," he said. "These diamonds make a butterfly."

Hank smiled, slipped the note and the jewelry into his inner coat pocket, and bent to help Xavier out of the car.