Hopefully, I'll Be Nothing Like Him (a UA Fanfic)

VII

Luther woke up at once, looking at his hairy hands. He was confused, he wasn't this hairy or this muscular before. Why does he change?

"Luther!" Grace called him. He looked at his mother in surprise.

"What happened to me?" Luther asked, looking at his hairy body and touching his newly-existent beard, his lips trembling. He touched his belly, not feeling any bump or life at all. "What happened to the baby?"

"You died in the previous mission," Grace told him. Luther looked up to her, grief and disbelief evident in his eyes. "Sir Reginald tried however he can to save you, but you couldn't be saved."

"So, am I dead?"

"Sir Reginald injected a serum to your body, a serum designed to alter your dying DNA with live ape ones so that the live ape ones will protect your dying DNA, reliving it," Grace explains.

"So, I'm not human anymore?"

"Not fully," Grace corrected. "Your human DNA is still there, but altered a bit."

"And what about the baby?" Luther asked, holding his belly. "Why can't I feel anything? There was a little bump just there!"

"The serum instantly killed the foetus," Grace answered, looking away. "Sir Reginald took the foetus out of your uterus, and to ensure the serum settles in completely, he performed a complete hysterectomy on you. You won't be able to conceive again."

Luther held his breath as he slumped, staring at the space in front of him. Grace took this opportunity to take the new picture of the USG and the tube containing the dead foetus.

"I printed another picture of your USG from the last test," Grace said, handing him the picture. "I also ran a CVS test on the dead foetus, finding out the potential hereditary disease the foetus will have and the sex. Flip it over to see."

Luther furrowed his brows as he turned the picture over, seeing the writings The foetus tested positive for Tay-Sachs disease, unknown from which biological parent. The foetus' sex is female.

"What's a Tay-Sachs disease?" Luther asked.

"It's a rare inherited disease, progressively destroys nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord," Grace explains. "The development of infants would appear normal at first until the age of 3 to 6 months when their development slows and muscles used for movement weaken."

"Weaken in what way?" Luther asked, still staring at the picture.

"Affected infants lose basic motoric skills like turning over," Grace elaborated. "They will also develop an exaggerated reaction to loud noises. As time goes on, they will experience seizures, vision and hearing loss, intellectual disability, and paralysis." Luther turned his head to look at her in disbelief. He'll cause the kid to suffer like that in the future? "Children with Tay-Sachs don't usually live past early childhood."

"I-" Luther started to talk, only to close his mouth again, not sure what he'll talk. What does he have to say, anyway? He's sorry that his genes are faulty?

"I don't know for sure if that'll happen, I'm saying that there's a chance," Grace corrected, seemingly to read her son's mind. "Would you like to see the foetus?"

Luther isn't sure when did he started nodding, but he did. Grace took out the tube containing the dead foetus and handed it to Luther's trembling hands. Luther inspected the foetus inside the clear glass tube, too early to say which part looks like whose, covered in drying red blood. It looks more like a baby than an alien-human hybrid it was last week. "There she is."

Luther stared at the foetus, his daughter. His dead daughter. Without realising, he blinked off tears from his eyes but more kept coming. Luther's chest feels full as intense grief struck him, and he was full-blown crying. Grace pats his back gently, rubbing circles to comfort her son as he's crying over her would-be granddaughter. Grace handed him a couple of tissues to wipe his tears and snot with.

"I think-" Luther wiped his tears and snorted. "I think I would've named her Katrina. Katrina Luisa."

"Katrina Luisa Hargreeves, such a beautiful name-" Grace nodded, patting her son's back as he kept crying.

"How did-" Luther snorts again. "How did Dad react?"

"Do you want an honest answer?" Grace asked. Luther sighed immediately as he heard that, it probably means he didn't react the same way as him.

"Just- yeah."

"I tried to stop him from injecting the serum, it would've killed the foetus," Grace retold the story. "But Sir Reginald insisted, saying that your foetus is already dead either way. So he injected the serum into you and then removed the foetus, with Pogo and me helping."

"Pogo knows?" Luther asked, facing his mother, his brows furrowed.

"Pogo knows everything Sir Reginald does-" Grace nodded. "He knew about all the punishments Sir Reginald did to you, he knew about everything."

"Will Dad punish me for last mission?" Luther asked. "I failed, didn't I?"

"On the contrary, you succeeded the mission," Grace corrected. "The task is to destroy the factory by all means necessary, and you did. You succeeded in destroying the factory, but you failed to remove yourself from harm's way."

"But there's still 'fail' in there, I still made him do more work than necessary," Luther fought. "Will Dad punish me like he did when Ben died?"

"In that view, no-" Grace shook her head. "He'd opinionated that your body mutation and you losing your baby are enough of punishments."

"Can we-" Luther looked away as he wiped his tears. "Can we have a funeral for Katrina? Dad doesn't have to attend if he doesn't want to."

"Of course, I'll talk about it with your father-" Grace nodded. "I'll attend too."

"Thanks, Mum," Luther looked down, staring at the tube again, imprinting the image in his head. Luther touched the glass, the very spot where one of Katrina's hands lie, touching her little fingers. In a way, he's holding her fingers. Oh, what he'd give to hold her right now, to feel her right now.

"I think it's enough," Grace said as she tried to take the tube out of her son's hands, her son persisting in keeping the tube with him. "Let it go. The foetus won't live again, you need to rest."

Luther sighed defeatedly as he lets go of the tube, Grace taking it away from his hands to place it on the ground.

"Mum?" Luther called.

"Yes?"

"Can you finish what Dad did?" Luther asked. "Perform the whole FtM bottom surgery on me."

"I surely can."