Rebecca was laid-up in her hospital bed, more rattled mentally and emotionally than anything else. She was still replaying everything back in her head. Not just the events of the warehouse, but every time she brought Aoife into her life and her family.

God, she had done just that. She let down her guard and now her daughter was back at their apartment in the Mansion, looking like a different person because Aoife lied to both of them.

Staring at the hands on her lap, she focused on what came next. The doctor came in to give Becca her lab results. It was exactly what she expected, which she knew was a foregone conclusion. She wished she could try holding onto hope, but the heroine wasn't feeling very hopeful tonight. Aoife set everything up with a purpose; everything she did to that point was a lie behind illusions, but what reason did she have to lie now that she won?

Her spouse was staying with Kalos until the girl fell asleep. Becca sat silently, knowing Gawain would pop over through the mirrors to be at her bedside for an explanation soon.

Gawain was still reeling from the events of the day. Aoife was evil. Magic was real. The cultist he had met before were not misguided mutants... but something else entirely. Including Aoife. Kalos was... not a mutant anymore. And apparently neither was Becca.

The only reason he was keeping it together was for his daughter, who looked so different in the hospital bed. He had not even recognized her first, up till the point when she spoke up, back on the roof. How did one not recognize their own kid? Kalos had... chosen this, somehow. But Becca hadn't.

The results were in, but it was not like they had been much needed to prove the obvious. Kalos' looks had never changed like this before, not even around adapteds. Becca's results had to be in too. Gawain did not want to leave Kalos alone, so he waited until she fell into an exhausted sleep.

The mirrorwalker slipped into the adjacent room, to Becca. It felt like there was a stone in the pit of his stomach. What did someone eve say...? "Becks. How are you feeling?"

Trapped in her own head, second-guessing everything, the rest of the hospital room was a dull blur for Rebecca. Gawain's voice pierced through the veil, but even that took seconds to hit her and register. She looked up to Gawain's eyes. She was lost; almost vacant.

"They confirmed it," she mumbled. "Ah knew they would. Ah could feel it. Nae X-Gene; nae e'en a remnant." After a life feeling the magnetic fields around her, Becca was blind to them. A whole sense she had lived with for a decade was gone. There was nothing to push and pull. The charges that lived in her hands had a hum to them she never noticed. She noticed their absence now, like a hollow silence. Gawain might have hoped it was temporary, but Becca knew her sister said what she meant.

Her sister did this to her. To her daughter. "Ah jist dinnae gie it. She said she forgave me for growin' up with our ma, but then she..." Her voice cracked and trailed off.

Becca pushed past her own confusion and self-loathing. "Hoo is Kalos holdin' up? Did she finally gie tae sleep?" She was lost, but Kalos was the one thing clear in her mind, even as the images of coral pink and olive brown clashed.

The look on Becca's face threatened to break Gawain's heart. Something unspeakable happened to her and Kalos, a part of them had been ripped away, and he had not been there to protect them, and there was nothing he could do to change it back now. For him, for Becca, for Kalos, their abilities had been as natural as breathing, and now it felt like there was not much air left at all. Walking over to the bed Gawain sat down to wrap his arms around his wife.

>>"Ah jist dinnae gie it. She said she forgave me for growin' up with our ma, but then she..."

She's an evil b***. Gawain felt boiling anger, thinking about Aoife. The way she had lied, and befriended Kalos, and pretended to be family... and then did something unthinkable.

>>"Hoo is Kalos holdin' up? Did she finally gie tae sleep?"

"Yeah, she's asleep" Gawain sighed. He knew this was not the time to go off about Aoife. "How are you feeling?"

No one was as proud of being a mutant or more fiercely protective of mutant rights than Gawain. Rebecca was sure he had much he wanted to say about what was done to his wife and daughter, but bless him, he said nothing about Aoife. His eyes were not as silent, but he did her the favor of keeping those thoughts within.

Rebecca leaned into her husband's arms, breathing deeply, trying to keep her composure. Becca wanted to wrap Kalos in a big hug and never let her go, but for now, she was just glad the young woman was resting. She had a long day of modeling, being charmed by a cultist, losing her mutation, and leaving an aunt she had grown to love and respect. All in all, she had to be exhausted.

"It's a lot," she admitted. "Ah jist keep thinkin' abit hoo everything played it. Hoo Ah didnae see th' signs in time. Thes is oan me. It's mah fault uir daighter isnae a mutant."

"No it's not." there was an edge in Gawain's voice even as he held her close. "It's Aoife's." And if he had anything to say about it, the deranged woman would pay dearly for what she had done. He felt a flash of rage just thinking about the depth of evil one would need to do this to anyone, let alone a family that loved her... He took a deep breath. Not the time.

"And I don't care if our daughter is a mutant or not. I care that she had been lied to, and betrayed, and... manipulated into not wanting to be one." he frowned. Kalos did not get any less perfect by losing her mutation. But what Aoife had done was wrong anyway.

"And you are going through the same. And you didn't chose this. I'm so sorry." he added. She could not take all the blame, and not deal with her own loss.

The bite in Gawain's voice when he said Aoife's name was totally justified and it still hurt to hear. For all she did, this was still Rebecca's sister. Knowing she did this and knowing how unforgivable this would be in her husband's eyes, the dreams Becca had of sharing her lost family with her found family were dead and she knew it. "Ah hink we might hae underestimated hoo much Kalos still felt insecure an' it ay place, e'en wi' us." They loved Kalos, but their daughter's lived experiences were different than their own. Becca and Gawain did not understand being a physical mutant in a world where that was an oddity. Maybe Aoife put this in Kalos' head, but it was also possible she saw and exploited an insecurity Kalos already had.

"Ah'll survive thes," she promised Gawain. She had recovered from the Ragman, but he broke her mind. Her heart might need more time to fix itself. "Ah jist wish it made sense."

She could still hear Aoife's words and see the expression she wore when she let down her mask. "She said she didnae want tae hurt me anymair. Aoife kept sayin' thes was a gift. If Ah hudnae ignored th' signs, maybe Ah couldsa shown her thes was wrong. Saved her frae whit she was taught." She wanted to believe they were working through Aoife's trauma, but they never really talked about it. If she knew how to be a sister, could she have shown Aoife the truth?

>>"Ah hink we might hae underestimated hoo much Kalos still felt insecure an' it ay place, e'en wi' us."

"You and me both" Gawain sighed. Becca was carrying the weight of her guilt, but at least for that part, he blamed himself too. Kalos chose to give up her mutant powers. Aoife might have manipulated her, but she had something to play on, something Kalos had carried over from Atlantis, and did not unlearn in New York either.

"A lot of people have told us that losing our powers would be a gift." Gawain frowned. It was something mutants heard a lot, and it ranged from genuinely, idiotically well-meaning to downright evil. And there was, as it turned out, nothing genuine about Aoife.

"You can't put this on yourself, Becca. She was too good at pretending. And you can't save someone from a cult if they don't want to be saved." Real magic or not, what Aoife was involved with was not okay. In Gawain's mind, magic was not supposed to be used like this, just like mutant powers weren't meant to hurt people.

Her husband had a point; many people believed, either maliciously or with misplaced sympathy, that a mutant cure would be a gift to those who struggled to live as mutants in a society that wasn't always ready to accept them. People saw the mutants as the problem, giving a free pass to society. Her sister was one of these people, and she had the power to make it happen.

"Ye dinnae know she's beyond savin', Gawain. Cults exploit people an' fill their heads with terrible things. Ye know ye can dae terrible things if 'at's all yer taught." She was not going to deal any low blows, but Gawain knew what it was like to have family in a shady organization warping their morals.

Cults found their power by exploiting people with trauma with no place to go, and that was how Aoife ended up where she did. ""She'd planned tae jist gie revenge oan me, bit Ah hink her time wi' us was changin' her. She coulds hae left me powerless an' broken bit she didn' dae it. She..."

Right. With everything else they went through, Becca forgot the other big change. The way the hairs on the back of her neck were still standing on end. "She thought she made me better coz they fucked up mah sister's head. It's... it's sad," she admitted, knowing Gawain wouldn't see it that way.

Things were never black and white, really, but right now it was hard not to see it that way. Someone had hurt his family, and Gawain was having a hard time giving them any kind of benefit of the doubt that they meant well. Aoife might have been mentally broken, but that did not excuse what she had done. She was Becca's sister, someone who had earned her trust and betrayed it. It made sense Becca would look for kinder explanations. Gawain didn't. Also, Becca was worrying for Kalos, and Aoife, and basically everyone else but herself right now.

He sighed, touching her cheek gently. "Becks, look at me. How are you feeling?"

Becca recognized she was not going to convince Gawain to give Aoife the benefit of the doubt, because honestly? Even she was struggling to believe her sister deserved it. What she was willing to do, and what she was planning to do before Kalos wormed her way into the witch's heart were both unacceptable. Still... this was her sister. Her sister who was abandoned and taken in by zealots.

They were better off not talking about Aoife. That wound was too raw for everyone. Pushing that aside, Becca had to consider how she was feeling. What was that, besides numb?

She gave it some quiet thought. "... Confused. Loch Ah'm a stranger tae myself. Mah heart hurts," she admitted. "I feel guilty five different ways an' angry at least seven."

And then there was the tingling. Did Kalos say anything yet? Did she really know what was going on? ""There's... somethin' else. Somethin' that happened after the elder removed mah X-gene."

Confused, hurt, guilty, angry. Gawain could feel all of those, but he knew they did not even compare to what Becca must be going through. He wrapped his arms around her again. It would take a long time to come to terms with all of it.

"Something else?" He pulled back to look at her, concerned. It would be just like Becca to hide something because she was feeling guilty, or because she was worried about Kalos. "What happened?"

How did she bring this up? What she went through was traumatic in its own right. She was robbed of her mutant identity, which was undeniably a major part of what the lovers bonded over initially. She did not want to act as though a new identity thrust upon her changed who she was, and she knew Gawain would not care. But there was that irrational fear that this would change things anyway.

"Ah said Aoife wanted, at first, tae leave my powerless. Noo 'at she convinced herself she was daeing thes for us, she tried... weel, convincin' us tae join her."

Becca was not going to write out the runes she still had clearly in her head, but there was something small. She knew it in the way you knew how to crack your knuckles or wink.

She held up two fingers like a V set at an angle, then put her middle finger down and raised her index finger straight up simultaneously. She took in a breath, then offered her air, passing out through her lips. As it brushed her fingertip, a small flame, like a candle, sparked to life, flickering delicately atop her finger. "Ah still dinnae gie it aw, an' it disnae make whit she did better, bit... it's magic. She gae me magic. Weel, Kalos an' I."

Aoife had done things from some misguided, messed up sense of helping Becca and Kalos. It did not excuse her; in fact, it was somehow worse than her trying to straight up hurt them, like she had planned to do originally. Gawain frowned again, feeling the dread of what Becca was going to tell him next. What else had that woman done?...

Magic. Somehow, she had...

Gawain's eyes widened as he looked at the flame. It was nothing a mutant power had not done before, but... Becca was not a mutant anymore. And yet, she had powers. She had magic. Gawain opened and closed his mouth, not even sure what to say. It was clear Aoife had been dealing with magic, actual magic, not a mutant's simulation of it. But she had... also given it to Becca. He stared at the flame.

"I... what?!"

"RIGHT? That's whit Ah thought!" Really, it was the only word to feasibly fit the realization that you accidentally spawned a magical defense bubble. Becca could sympathize with the sheer stunned surprise.

"They hae some kind ay ritual. There was a fountain, or a well, or somethin'." They called it a well, and it was hard to argue when they were apparently Master mystics and she'd been a witch for two hours. "It wasnae filled wi' water, it was jist... Energy? Magic."

The experience sounded exciting, but Becca remembered it being properly terrifying when her agency was stolen. "The old man, he had a way tae keep mah arms and legs from movin', sae they pushed me in. It was... surreal. And then it happened." She held the detail that she drank from the well. She did it off her own power, but they had pushed her to the point where it was her only option.

"Ah think they were going tae take us, but Ah panicked and mah magic kind ay... triggered." That was the easiest way to phrase it, knowing nothing else about how this all worked. "There was this snap, then a flash. And when Ah opened mah eyes, runes were burned into the ground and there was a bubble aroond Kalos and Ah."