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Even if she had thought to try and pretend that she was alright, Lee knew that Tarin wouldn't have believed it. Not with what her mother had said. Not with what she had said. Not with how she had cried once they had left. In front of Kevin.

Tarin didn't beat around the bush, he came straight out and said that he knew she wasn't alright. She pressed her lips together in a line as she looked down at their hands.

But then he asked how Kevin was and Lee looked up at Tarin again. "Confused. Hurt. Upset," Lee said softly. "Doesn't know what he's supposed to think or feel about all this. But considering what happened, he's doing as well as he can be."

Of course Kevin still thought that the X-Men were cool. Lee would have been fooling herself if just that would have been enough to talk Kevin out of liking them…and probably still wanting to be one when he was older.

But, Kevin had been showing so much maturity and rational thinking recently for a 13 year old that maybe, just maybe by the time he was old enough that he could decide to join that he wouldn't just rush into situations without a thought.

Kevin seemed skeptical that the reason Tarin and Shin had talked had been because Tarin had had problems with his powers. "Everyone has problems with their powers at some point, Kev," Lee pointed out gently. "And not just when you first get them. Including me."

"Can I eat in my room tonight?”

Lee nodded, giving her son a slight smile. "As long as all the dishes come out. Tonight," Lee told him, then nodded toward the kitchen. "Go eat."

Kevin told her that it wasn't her fault that her mother just didn't stop talking and digging the hole ever deeper. Which was true; Lee didn't have a bit of control over the words coming out of her mother's mouth.

However, Lee could have dealt with things differently. She could have kicked her parents out right then and there before she had even said anything. She had kicked them out other times in the past for less. She didn't have to go into as much detail about what had happened with Kevin in the room.

Lee could tell by how Kevin's eyes widened when she made the offer that he realized just how potentially valuable the offer was. She had just offered to answer any question he wanted to ask. Without censoring the answer due to his age.

Then Kevin was asking if he had to ask right then. Lee certainly would have preferred to answer a few questions now and have it done with. That way if he came to her later with a worse question, one that had an answer she really didn't want him to know, she could say that the offer had only been on the table for right now.

Her brain wasn't working the best at the moment, and she had only had to deal with things she already knew. Things she had been forced to live with, and the feeling from them, but she had already known. Kevin had just had everything he thought he knew about his grandparents, and his mother's childhood, turned on its head. And he was already trying to figure out if he even wanted to see his grandparents the next day, or during this trip. It wouldn't have been fair to rescind the offer just because his mind was overwhelmed with everything that had happened in the last half hour.

"No Kevin, you don't," Lee ended up saying. "But, I do want to know, are you okay right now?"

The more that Lee said, the more shocked and horrified that Kevin looked. Though considering what she was saying, that was not very surprising.

Then Kevin was up and out of his chair and hugging her.

Lee was a little taken aback by the suddenness, but after a moment she wrapped her arms around her son. Resting her chin on Kevin's shoulder, Lee just sat there hugging him, her eyes closed as a couple more tears escaped.

This wasn't how things were supposed to work, though. She was the one who was supposed to be comforting Kevin, making sure that he was alright. Not the other way around. Not Kevin comforting her.

But Lee couldn't bring herself to end the hug.

When Kevin asked another question, Lee nodded but it took a couple moments for her to answer. "In part," Lee said softly. "Unfortunately, there are probably always going to be people like those kids at school, but things are getting better. It's better than when I was a kid. Things are better than they were 20 years ago. It's better than even 10 years ago."

Kevin was quiet for a little while as Lee watched him. Things had never been easy between Lee and her parents, and Kevin had probably picked up on that over the years, but she had never given him even the hint that things had ever been as bad as she had just described.

Then Kevin asked the obvious, though not necessarily easy, question in the entire situation. But before Lee had a chance to even try answering, Kevin was also asking if he had to go with his grandparents the next day.

"Not if you don't want to, of course you don't have to," Lee said. That still left Kevin's question of why.

Wiping the wetness from her eyes again, Lee scooted back slightly, closer to Tarin. "Why they did it, I'm not really sure," Lee started explaining. "But it wasn't great when my powers first started. It wasn't sudden like yours, Kev. Everyone in the family just started being more and more tired all the time. I was apparently siphoning a whole lot more back then.

"Your grandparents took us all to doctors to try and figure it out. A whole bunch of different doctors for over a year. I don't remember who figured it out first, but we finally realized I was a mutant and what was happening."

Lee bit her lip for a moment as she thought back. Things hadn't been so bad at first, but they definitely got a lot worse. "Your uncle Robert and I used to go to the movies a lot. He would be ready to take a nap after a matinee. I'm guessing they did it so they weren't exhausted all the time."

Even though she had tried wiping the tears from her cheeks, it really hadn't dried the tears and there were still a few falling, adding to the wetness. Lee had told Tarin about what things had been like when she got her powers, before she'd left for Toronto. She'd told Kevin's father. She'd even talked with Robert about it a little over the years.

Not once had she gone into the details, and re-experienced the feelings, like she had just done.

Tarin thought that she had needed to tell her parents what she had, that they had needed to hear it for years. Which, considering they hadn't figured any of it out in the over 25 years since she had gotten her powers, they probably had needed it and much sooner. But she hadn't wanted Kevin to find out, especially not like that.

'Oh god…Kevin…' Lee thought as she realized he would have heard everything.

Lee turned, still sitting on the floor, to see her son sitting in a nearby chair at the table. "Kev…I didn't want you to…Are you okay?"

There was a reason that most of Kevin's trips to see his grandparents had been with Rachel or Robert. And a reason that the few times Lee had taken him up there, they had stayed in a hotel on the other side of the city. Since the day she had dragged herself out of that house with a backpack stuffed to almost overflowing with clothes before she had even turned 16, Lee had not set foot back inside. She hadn't even been in the neighbourhood.

It had obviously been the right decision.

Tarin was getting up and making his way over to her, and a moment later she could feel Kevin getting closer, but Lee kept her eyes locked on her mother.

"I'm sorry, Lee. We should have-"

Lee didn't even let her father finish. "Get out of my home."

It looked like Lee's mother was going to say something else, but Lee's father gave her a hard look as he grabbed her arm. "Don't," he said as he started leading her out of the living room to the door.

Lee just stood there, not moving, still looking in the same place until she could feel that they were in the hallway. Only then did Lee let out a shaky breath, her eyes closing as she sank to the floor, the tears spilling over.