Acknowledgements:

This is for Kael, for being an incredible and kind beta, for being her incredible and kind self, and for just generally being, and being so good at it. Also because she's one of those people I love knowing.

And also:

To my mom, who would probably still smile at me at family dinners - if somewhat worriedly - if I underwent plastic surgery to implant a horn on my forehead and announced I was founding the National House of Orgies, and to my dad, who doesn't consider telling me about his various emotional discoveries and new relationships overshare. They are in no way perfect, but they really don't deserve the kind of parental characters their daughter tends to make.

Feedback: I can but beg.

Warning: There be lots and lots of Bad Words. Children, beware.

Disclaimer: One night, I dreamed Marvel was mine. Then I dreamed that Professor Xavier showed up on my doorstep wearing underwear over his head and demanded some answers, and woke up, covered in cold sweat.

The moral of this little story: The universe isn't mine. Not the one out there, nor the one in here. I'm not making any money, sadly enough, from either.

The TCP concept, however, belongs to Kielle and Fill Foster.

Or:

**And Nothing But**

A TCP

It was a warm summer's evening when Kim Wilkins told her parents her most hidden secret.

"Kimberly Ann!" Her mother was shocked; devastated. "How could this happen?"

Kim shrugged, and forced herself not to look away. "It's no big deal, mom." But her voice wavered.

"Of course it's a big deal," her father said. Kim finally did look away, couldn't bear not to, when he covered her more delicate hand with his warm large one. The initial shock was still there in his gaze, but he smiled at her gently when she looked at him. "I'm so glad you felt you could tell us, honey."

"Hank!" her mother looked like someone had just beaten her over the head with a two-by-four. From both sides.

"She's our daughter, Mary," he said quietly.

The chair's clatter was as loud as two thousand mouths screaming when her mother pushed it back and it fell to the floor, forgotten. "I can't believe this," she exclaimed as she stood up, staring at them both with more bewilderment and shock than honest anger. "I can't -- you two -- I don't want this!" And then she hurried out of the room, and the front door slammed closed behind her.

Kim didn't feel the tears coming until one dangled from the tip of her nose, then dropped to rest on her upper lip. She reached up a hand to wipe at her eyes, but it was no use. They just kept on coming.

"She'll come around," said her father. But he didn't sound nearly as sure in the cliche as she'd like him to be. "Your mother just doesn't do well with change. You know she can be old-fashioned sometimes. But once she's had some time -"

"She's completely Fifties is what she is," she said, with the venom that came of all the hurt and pain of not being approved of. "Somebody should *tell* her it was *dead* before she was even born." The sob that escaped was only an indicator of the many still held in. "Do you know the kind of guts I had to work up to tell you two? Do you? She cares more about what the neighbors'll think than she does about me."

"Your mother loves you," he said, reproachfully. When she just shrugged and looked away, he sighed. "She does, Kimmy. You know she does. It's just - this is hard for her. But she'll... she'll get over it. Because she does *love you*. More than anything. It's difficult for you to accept, right now, but you know that."

"This is hard for you too," she said, and the tears broke every possible dam, until she had to press her palms to her face and they still sipped out between her fingers. "But you don't act like it's something horrible. You didn't - walk out on me."

Her father drew a small, painful breath, and reached out to hug her. Her voice was muffled against his shoulder, with pain and cloth and tears. "It's who I am, papa."

"I know," he said, futilely.

She kept on like she hadn't heard him, or like she couldn't stop. "This *horrible* thing, it's *me*. It's not something I chose. I don't want her - I don't want to hate myself."

His shirt was rapidly becoming damp. He just held her tighter.

"We're the goddamned middle class of goddamn middle East-coast America," she said, her voice becoming more quiet, like the swear words should have lent it the missing force and failed. "You're not supposed to --like anyone who isn't white and and rich and goddamn *wholesome* -- like anyone who looks different or has an extra gene or believes in something too fucking *radical*, like we're some terrible unfortunate *accident*..."

"Kimmy," he said, and pulled away a little so he could look at her face. "She doesn't think that."

"But she *does*," she said, painfully. "There's always these degrading little remarks - because it's not *hip* and *PC* to be racial, but you *know* they're just not *like* us, and homeless people are on the street because they won't work, and just what kind of woman would get pregnant without a husband, and, and..." another sob escaped, and she fought to check it and speak again. "And the way she looks at that woman down the street, the one with the blue marks on her skin who people say can breathe underwater... like she *hates* her just for *being* there and reminding her there even *are* people like that..."

And then she tore away, startling him, and sat up to stare at him with eyes blazing a fury that was only marginally directed at him.

"Well I'm not so goddamned *normal*. I'm a fucking *freak*. I'm in love with a woman and if she wants to hate me for it, if she wants to act like I'm not her daughter, then she *can*. It's her goddamned loss."

He wanted to deny it all again, but the words wouldn't go past his lips.

"Yes," he said, quietly. "It is."

********************

It was a dark summer's night when Mary Wilkins took her first look in three decades at her most hidden secret.

The wings came out like it had been no more than a day, and she remembered the few times she had used them, at the beginning - with joy and the false freedom of youth, before the horror of their being overcame her and she hid them forever.

Now she flew with desperation and anger, and bone-deep fear. And because she couldn't help herself.

It was like a curse.

She flew through the skies, safe in the dark and silence of Weschester County very late into the night. It felt like being born again, like rediscovering herself.

When she landed, she tucked her butterfly wings inside again, and prepared herself fully for another thirty years in hiding.