Charles said nothing else for a while. Instead, he gathered her up in both arms, looking at her intently--but gently, too, with nothing piercing about it. He had never been afraid of her, or disgusted.
But then again.
She was hurt by what Hank had said, obviously, and the happiness she had tried to show him just then had been pained and false. And Erik had said that she was beautiful, and that he wanted her to see that she was beautiful--like this. Charles had never said that. All these years she had asked him to find a way to fix her he had gone along with the idea she ought to be fixed, as if this form was the aberration to her otherwise lovely mutation. A cosmetic disfigurement that, while harmless, still ought to be corrected, like those birth defects that left a child with a normal brain but a deformed face.
Charles couldn't make the full realization of the wrong he had done Raven in a moment, but the fact that she was hurt was enough. He was suddenly ashamed to remember when she had asked if he would want her blue, a shame that was currently formless but still churned in his gut.
"If this is what you want, if you're sure, then..." Charles turned Raven's chin to look at him, meeting her brilliant yellow eyes if she'd let him. "I love you no matter what you want to look like. Blue, rainbow--paisley might be nice, or a fetching argyle. We'd look smashing, wouldn't we?"
He kissed her on the forehead, lightly, where the texture of her scales was fine and smooth as a snake's, and hugged her a bit tighter. "You should fit in the way you are, no one ought to tell you how to be. Not Hank, not me, not anyone. I never--thought of you as a pet, Raven. I never would. I won't lie to you, it's--a change, and it might take me a while to get used to it, but--if you're patient with me, I will. I promise you."