X-Men: Beast (7/8)
Jan. 31st, 2009 11:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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prose_alchemistTitle: Beast (Chapter 7 of 8)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG, for angst and adult situations.
Characters: Emphasis on Beast, with support from various other characters.
Setting: Mainly mid- to post-X2.
Summary: The personal journey of Henry McCoy—as a mutant, and as a man.
Disclaimer: Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. Nora is mine, and so is Kristen, who has appeared in several of my stories.
The two-mile drive from the safe house to the school was a nervous experience. Although it consisted entirely of wooded back roads, and the few local residents were most likely either in bed or in church at that hour on a Sunday, Hank traveled the entire distance with nerves on edge. The letter of the law still gave him the same rights as anyone, but visibly mutant drivers were too often brought to grief by paranoid or simply spiteful humans—and if he did find himself facing a traffic cop, explaining the photo on his license would be an awkward proposition. I’ve only looked like this for two weeks, officer was hardly a persuasive argument.
For that matter, he was aware that the rough, leathery pads of his hands had altered his fingerprints, and his fangs would bear no comparison to his old dental records. Simply reclaiming his identity on paper was going to be a challenge, much less rebuilding it in reality.
On this morning, at least, his quiet anxieties proved to be unfounded. They arrived at Xavier’s School without passing another living soul. He slid his car into a discreet corner of the sprawling garage, then gathered the bags and led the children inside.
The school lay in an unaccustomed quietness, its usual noisy vibrancy still subdued by a sense of mourning and uncertainty. As they moved deeper into the heart of the mansion, they saw no one—but they found ample evidence of the carnage that had taken place. Bullet holes in the walls, patched but not yet cosmetically concealed. Long stretches of floor bereft of carpeting. A shattered window boarded up.
And in many places, triads of long slash marks, gouging deeply through wood and metal and concrete.
At Hank’s side, Kristen let out a faint whimper. He reached down and very gently took her hand in his, without turning his eyes away from the tragic story scrawled upon the walls. They had been washed with pungent cleansers; but Hank smelled blood.
He was angry.
He was angry that children were forced to witness this terror. He was angry that such brutal violation had happened before, and would happen again—if not here, then in other places, to other children. He was angry that he felt so powerless to make it all stop.
And more than he wanted to admit, he was angry that people who once accepted him would now bear him that same malice, simply because he no longer looked like them.
Kitty Pryde suddenly popped through the wall, apparently just passing through. She and Hank both gave a start at seeing each other, and the teenager’s eyes widened in surprise. “Doctor McCoy!”
“Ah. Good morning, Kitty.” Hank recovered his self-possession, exiling his storm of feelings to a dark place within him that he sincerely did not want to contemplate. “We haven’t seen anyone. Where are your classmates and teachers today?”
“Miss Munroe is at breakfast with the rest of the students. Mister Summers is… um.” Kitty’s gaze fell. “He… hasn’t come out of his room very much lately.”
Reminded more painfully than ever of the loss of Jean Grey, Hank felt a deep pang of sympathy—but he was guiltily relieved at the thought of avoiding both Scott and Ororo. To face Charles alone was more than enough pain for one day.
Kitty continued. “The Professor is in his study. If he knows you’re coming, I guess he’s waiting for you.”
“Thank you.” Hank nodded toward the five children clustered around him. “Will you take them to Miss Munroe?”
“Sure.” Kitty took the children’s baggage, then gathered them to herself and began to herd them away. “I guess… we’ll see you later, Doctor?” There was a distinct questioning note in her voice as she looked back at him over her shoulder.
Hank smiled ruefully. “Sometime you will. But… first, I need to see the Professor.”
When Kitty had disappeared down the hallway with the children, Hank continued to stand still for a moment, his furious frustration mingling with a far more empty, despairing emotion. Perhaps it came from the new harshness of his instincts. He wanted to fight—not in some idealistic, intellectual way, but somehow physically. Yet for now there was nothing he could strike out at, leaving his rage to simmer down into a sense of bleak futility. In his mind he knew there were other, more important ways to wage this battle, but the thought of them gave him no satisfaction or reassurance.
At last he let out a deep sigh, and reluctantly turned his steps toward Charles Xavier’s study.
The signs of damage decreased as he made his way down the hall, the nauseating scents of blood and burned metal fading behind him. Stryker would not have been likely to find any students in this part of the school at night, and it was obviously not the scene of warfare that the more populous areas were. At last Hank could smell the quiet fragrance of old wood and old roses, the elegant atmosphere that saturated the entire mansion. He had always known it, always felt it conjure fond memories and warm feelings each time he bothered to notice it. Now he breathed a richness and depth he had never known in it before… and yet that living essence was more familiar to him than ever.
For a moment the chaos behind him was forgotten, as a powerful sense of homesickness welled up in his heart.
Upon reaching the door of the Professor’s study, Hank hesitated for a moment, collecting his courage. Charles would certainly know he was there—and would be unable to help sensing the anxiety he was broadcasting. However, the telepath was by necessity an extremely tactful man, and he would always wait for others to approach him on their own terms.
It was not so much his own feelings about his new form that gave Hank pause. It was his concern for what it would mean to Charles, as the unwitting instrument of the change.
At last, knowing he would never be any more ready to face the encounter, he knocked gently on the door.
“Enter,” Charles’ voice called out from within the room, promptly and patiently.
Hank did not enter. Instead, he opened the door only a few inches. He stood where Charles could not see him from the desk, with his left hand resting on the doorknob, and his right hand almost reverently pressed against the smooth varnished wood.
“Charles, it’s me. Henry.” He tried and failed to suppress a faint quiver in his voice. “I’m sorry I’ve put you off for so long… but something has happened. I wanted to allow time for things to settle here, before I brought my own situation to you.”
From the other side of the door, the older man’s voice took on the same note of concern Hank had heard over the phone. “Henry…”
“Please listen, Charles.” Hank sighed, desperately plumbing the depths of his eloquence. “Knowing what’s happened in other cases… you may have suspected the truth already, after the way I’ve behaved. I’m sorry to have left you wondering and worrying—but I appreciate your giving me distance until I was prepared to discuss it.”
He paused, taking a deep breath, and then plunged into the heart of the matter.
“I was affected during the recent crisis. Affected physically… and I’ve changed, Charles. In a rather dramatic fashion.”
Behind the door, he heard the Professor catch his breath. “A secondary mutation?”
“Oh yes.”
There was a long and heavy silence. Then Charles said, softly but firmly: “Please come in.”
For a moment more, Hank hesitated; then he stepped into the room. He closed the door behind him, and slowly moved from half-shadow into the relentless morning light that spilled through the windows.
Charles sat perfectly still behind his desk. His expression was carefully controlled, but Hank had known him long enough to read the glimmer of quiet shock in his gray eyes. For a brief instant, he even felt Charles’ telepathy brush against his mind—as if the Professor instinctively sought to reassure himself that the creature who stood before him was truly Hank McCoy.
Hank did not begrudge him that reaction. Even for a man who knew every form and facet of mutation as well as Charles Xavier did, it could not be easy to see a friend of so many years changed beyond recognition—especially in the circumstances under which it happened. Undoubtedly the thought of his own role in this development was already on Charles’ mind.
“Henry,” the Professor breathed.
With a melancholy half-smile, Hank stepped closer to the desk. “In the flesh… and in the fur, now.”
The lightness of those words was almost an afterthought, a little bit of his old personality reasserting itself. For his own sake, a part of him was glad to hear and feel it, but he knew it did nothing to soften this moment for Charles.
“Tell me everything,” his mentor said faintly.
“There really isn’t very much to tell.” Hank shrugged, carefully settling himself into the chair that faced Charles. He considered for a moment… and then he calmly reduced his experience of life-altering pain and shock to sterile scientific facts.
“When—the event happened, certain previously unrealized complexities of my X-gene were obviously stimulated. No doubt a natural defensive response to the trauma, like many cases of secondary mutation. I still have earlier samples of my DNA at the Lef… I’m very interested in making a comparative study. Until then, there’s little else I can say with certainty about the change itself.” He paused, his expression darkening faintly. “Except that it was… much more rapid than any ordinary manifestation of such an extensive degree.”
The dispassionately clinical summation failed to deceive Charles. Gazing at Hank with dark eyes, he observed, “And much more painful.”
Hank grimaced and stared down at his clasped hands, studying the points of his claws where they pressed against his knuckles.
“I won’t lie to you, Charles. It was… difficult. It still is.”
Charles swore softly and lowered his head, resting it against his hands. “I’m sorry, Henry. I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. Whatever consequences all of us are living with now, they were Stryker’s crime—not yours.” Hank gave a small shrug. “Besides… I’m nothing more or less than the product of my own DNA. You know as well as I do, this must have been latent in me all along. If the psychic shock hadn’t prompted my mutation to run its full course, something else very likely would have, sooner or later.”
“Or you might have lived out the rest of your life as you were.” The Professor slowly raised his eyes. “It was my power that robbed you of that life.”
“I’ve lost nothing that was ever worth having, Charles… and I suspect I’ve gained much more than I yet realize.”
In his logical, measuring mind, Hank sincerely believed those words, even if in his heart he still struggled with his new reality. Yet as he spoke, he sensed Charles was no longer really listening. The older man’s gaze had turned inward… and his eyes reflected a memory of suffering that frightened Hank to the depths of his being.
“I didn’t know, Henry. I couldn’t see. Lost—trapped inside my mind, with him—with Jason whispering, manipulating. I could feel the pain I was causing—so much pain—but I couldn’t stop—”
The gradually rising note of strain in Charles’ voice broke sharply, and he buried his face in his hands, shaking with grief.
Almost instantly, Hank was kneeling at his teacher’s side, to draw him close and hold him as gently as if he were a child. With his head cradled against Hank’s shoulder, Charles wept deeply and wretchedly, while on his lips the words I’m sorry were repeated almost soundlessly over and over again. His raw emotions were laid bare as only a telepath’s could be, seeping through his weakened mental barriers, until Hank could feel a chilling shadow of that shame and guilt and violation.
It was only the faintest glimpse, but even that much was impossible to fathom. Linked to all humanity through Cerebro, Charles had felt the torment of an entire planet—and now he lived with the knowledge that he had been its source.
Hank knew then how correct he was in his judgment of who had suffered more.
“It’s alright, Charles,” he said softly, covering the Professor’s trembling hands with one of his own. “It’s alright.”
In a quiet corner of Hank’s mind, the memory stirred of a hospital room, years earlier. Still dazed and awkward from the much lesser changes he had experienced then, he himself was the bearer of guilt and tearful apologies. Crippled for life by his terrible mistake, his mentor’s broken body lay amid a tangle of intravenous tubes and EKG leads, too weak and overwhelmed by pain to speak; but in his mind, Charles had answered him with the very same words. It’s alright, Henry.
Now, at least for the moment, Hank felt a strange gratitude for the course of events he himself had endured. He welcomed his turn to deny the impulses of bitterness and self-pity, and try to face his own challenges as nobly as Charles had. It was his chance to repay, in some measure, the kindness and courage he had sought to be worthy of in all the years since.
It’s alright.
And this time, somehow, he felt that it would be.
© 2009 Jordanna Morgan
Author:
jordannamorganArchive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG, for angst and adult situations.
Characters: Emphasis on Beast, with support from various other characters.
Setting: Mainly mid- to post-X2.
Summary: The personal journey of Henry McCoy—as a mutant, and as a man.
Disclaimer: Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. Nora is mine, and so is Kristen, who has appeared in several of my stories.
The two-mile drive from the safe house to the school was a nervous experience. Although it consisted entirely of wooded back roads, and the few local residents were most likely either in bed or in church at that hour on a Sunday, Hank traveled the entire distance with nerves on edge. The letter of the law still gave him the same rights as anyone, but visibly mutant drivers were too often brought to grief by paranoid or simply spiteful humans—and if he did find himself facing a traffic cop, explaining the photo on his license would be an awkward proposition. I’ve only looked like this for two weeks, officer was hardly a persuasive argument.
For that matter, he was aware that the rough, leathery pads of his hands had altered his fingerprints, and his fangs would bear no comparison to his old dental records. Simply reclaiming his identity on paper was going to be a challenge, much less rebuilding it in reality.
On this morning, at least, his quiet anxieties proved to be unfounded. They arrived at Xavier’s School without passing another living soul. He slid his car into a discreet corner of the sprawling garage, then gathered the bags and led the children inside.
The school lay in an unaccustomed quietness, its usual noisy vibrancy still subdued by a sense of mourning and uncertainty. As they moved deeper into the heart of the mansion, they saw no one—but they found ample evidence of the carnage that had taken place. Bullet holes in the walls, patched but not yet cosmetically concealed. Long stretches of floor bereft of carpeting. A shattered window boarded up.
And in many places, triads of long slash marks, gouging deeply through wood and metal and concrete.
At Hank’s side, Kristen let out a faint whimper. He reached down and very gently took her hand in his, without turning his eyes away from the tragic story scrawled upon the walls. They had been washed with pungent cleansers; but Hank smelled blood.
He was angry.
He was angry that children were forced to witness this terror. He was angry that such brutal violation had happened before, and would happen again—if not here, then in other places, to other children. He was angry that he felt so powerless to make it all stop.
And more than he wanted to admit, he was angry that people who once accepted him would now bear him that same malice, simply because he no longer looked like them.
Kitty Pryde suddenly popped through the wall, apparently just passing through. She and Hank both gave a start at seeing each other, and the teenager’s eyes widened in surprise. “Doctor McCoy!”
“Ah. Good morning, Kitty.” Hank recovered his self-possession, exiling his storm of feelings to a dark place within him that he sincerely did not want to contemplate. “We haven’t seen anyone. Where are your classmates and teachers today?”
“Miss Munroe is at breakfast with the rest of the students. Mister Summers is… um.” Kitty’s gaze fell. “He… hasn’t come out of his room very much lately.”
Reminded more painfully than ever of the loss of Jean Grey, Hank felt a deep pang of sympathy—but he was guiltily relieved at the thought of avoiding both Scott and Ororo. To face Charles alone was more than enough pain for one day.
Kitty continued. “The Professor is in his study. If he knows you’re coming, I guess he’s waiting for you.”
“Thank you.” Hank nodded toward the five children clustered around him. “Will you take them to Miss Munroe?”
“Sure.” Kitty took the children’s baggage, then gathered them to herself and began to herd them away. “I guess… we’ll see you later, Doctor?” There was a distinct questioning note in her voice as she looked back at him over her shoulder.
Hank smiled ruefully. “Sometime you will. But… first, I need to see the Professor.”
When Kitty had disappeared down the hallway with the children, Hank continued to stand still for a moment, his furious frustration mingling with a far more empty, despairing emotion. Perhaps it came from the new harshness of his instincts. He wanted to fight—not in some idealistic, intellectual way, but somehow physically. Yet for now there was nothing he could strike out at, leaving his rage to simmer down into a sense of bleak futility. In his mind he knew there were other, more important ways to wage this battle, but the thought of them gave him no satisfaction or reassurance.
At last he let out a deep sigh, and reluctantly turned his steps toward Charles Xavier’s study.
The signs of damage decreased as he made his way down the hall, the nauseating scents of blood and burned metal fading behind him. Stryker would not have been likely to find any students in this part of the school at night, and it was obviously not the scene of warfare that the more populous areas were. At last Hank could smell the quiet fragrance of old wood and old roses, the elegant atmosphere that saturated the entire mansion. He had always known it, always felt it conjure fond memories and warm feelings each time he bothered to notice it. Now he breathed a richness and depth he had never known in it before… and yet that living essence was more familiar to him than ever.
For a moment the chaos behind him was forgotten, as a powerful sense of homesickness welled up in his heart.
Upon reaching the door of the Professor’s study, Hank hesitated for a moment, collecting his courage. Charles would certainly know he was there—and would be unable to help sensing the anxiety he was broadcasting. However, the telepath was by necessity an extremely tactful man, and he would always wait for others to approach him on their own terms.
It was not so much his own feelings about his new form that gave Hank pause. It was his concern for what it would mean to Charles, as the unwitting instrument of the change.
At last, knowing he would never be any more ready to face the encounter, he knocked gently on the door.
“Enter,” Charles’ voice called out from within the room, promptly and patiently.
Hank did not enter. Instead, he opened the door only a few inches. He stood where Charles could not see him from the desk, with his left hand resting on the doorknob, and his right hand almost reverently pressed against the smooth varnished wood.
“Charles, it’s me. Henry.” He tried and failed to suppress a faint quiver in his voice. “I’m sorry I’ve put you off for so long… but something has happened. I wanted to allow time for things to settle here, before I brought my own situation to you.”
From the other side of the door, the older man’s voice took on the same note of concern Hank had heard over the phone. “Henry…”
“Please listen, Charles.” Hank sighed, desperately plumbing the depths of his eloquence. “Knowing what’s happened in other cases… you may have suspected the truth already, after the way I’ve behaved. I’m sorry to have left you wondering and worrying—but I appreciate your giving me distance until I was prepared to discuss it.”
He paused, taking a deep breath, and then plunged into the heart of the matter.
“I was affected during the recent crisis. Affected physically… and I’ve changed, Charles. In a rather dramatic fashion.”
Behind the door, he heard the Professor catch his breath. “A secondary mutation?”
“Oh yes.”
There was a long and heavy silence. Then Charles said, softly but firmly: “Please come in.”
For a moment more, Hank hesitated; then he stepped into the room. He closed the door behind him, and slowly moved from half-shadow into the relentless morning light that spilled through the windows.
Charles sat perfectly still behind his desk. His expression was carefully controlled, but Hank had known him long enough to read the glimmer of quiet shock in his gray eyes. For a brief instant, he even felt Charles’ telepathy brush against his mind—as if the Professor instinctively sought to reassure himself that the creature who stood before him was truly Hank McCoy.
Hank did not begrudge him that reaction. Even for a man who knew every form and facet of mutation as well as Charles Xavier did, it could not be easy to see a friend of so many years changed beyond recognition—especially in the circumstances under which it happened. Undoubtedly the thought of his own role in this development was already on Charles’ mind.
“Henry,” the Professor breathed.
With a melancholy half-smile, Hank stepped closer to the desk. “In the flesh… and in the fur, now.”
The lightness of those words was almost an afterthought, a little bit of his old personality reasserting itself. For his own sake, a part of him was glad to hear and feel it, but he knew it did nothing to soften this moment for Charles.
“Tell me everything,” his mentor said faintly.
“There really isn’t very much to tell.” Hank shrugged, carefully settling himself into the chair that faced Charles. He considered for a moment… and then he calmly reduced his experience of life-altering pain and shock to sterile scientific facts.
“When—the event happened, certain previously unrealized complexities of my X-gene were obviously stimulated. No doubt a natural defensive response to the trauma, like many cases of secondary mutation. I still have earlier samples of my DNA at the Lef… I’m very interested in making a comparative study. Until then, there’s little else I can say with certainty about the change itself.” He paused, his expression darkening faintly. “Except that it was… much more rapid than any ordinary manifestation of such an extensive degree.”
The dispassionately clinical summation failed to deceive Charles. Gazing at Hank with dark eyes, he observed, “And much more painful.”
Hank grimaced and stared down at his clasped hands, studying the points of his claws where they pressed against his knuckles.
“I won’t lie to you, Charles. It was… difficult. It still is.”
Charles swore softly and lowered his head, resting it against his hands. “I’m sorry, Henry. I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for. Whatever consequences all of us are living with now, they were Stryker’s crime—not yours.” Hank gave a small shrug. “Besides… I’m nothing more or less than the product of my own DNA. You know as well as I do, this must have been latent in me all along. If the psychic shock hadn’t prompted my mutation to run its full course, something else very likely would have, sooner or later.”
“Or you might have lived out the rest of your life as you were.” The Professor slowly raised his eyes. “It was my power that robbed you of that life.”
“I’ve lost nothing that was ever worth having, Charles… and I suspect I’ve gained much more than I yet realize.”
In his logical, measuring mind, Hank sincerely believed those words, even if in his heart he still struggled with his new reality. Yet as he spoke, he sensed Charles was no longer really listening. The older man’s gaze had turned inward… and his eyes reflected a memory of suffering that frightened Hank to the depths of his being.
“I didn’t know, Henry. I couldn’t see. Lost—trapped inside my mind, with him—with Jason whispering, manipulating. I could feel the pain I was causing—so much pain—but I couldn’t stop—”
The gradually rising note of strain in Charles’ voice broke sharply, and he buried his face in his hands, shaking with grief.
Almost instantly, Hank was kneeling at his teacher’s side, to draw him close and hold him as gently as if he were a child. With his head cradled against Hank’s shoulder, Charles wept deeply and wretchedly, while on his lips the words I’m sorry were repeated almost soundlessly over and over again. His raw emotions were laid bare as only a telepath’s could be, seeping through his weakened mental barriers, until Hank could feel a chilling shadow of that shame and guilt and violation.
It was only the faintest glimpse, but even that much was impossible to fathom. Linked to all humanity through Cerebro, Charles had felt the torment of an entire planet—and now he lived with the knowledge that he had been its source.
Hank knew then how correct he was in his judgment of who had suffered more.
“It’s alright, Charles,” he said softly, covering the Professor’s trembling hands with one of his own. “It’s alright.”
In a quiet corner of Hank’s mind, the memory stirred of a hospital room, years earlier. Still dazed and awkward from the much lesser changes he had experienced then, he himself was the bearer of guilt and tearful apologies. Crippled for life by his terrible mistake, his mentor’s broken body lay amid a tangle of intravenous tubes and EKG leads, too weak and overwhelmed by pain to speak; but in his mind, Charles had answered him with the very same words. It’s alright, Henry.
Now, at least for the moment, Hank felt a strange gratitude for the course of events he himself had endured. He welcomed his turn to deny the impulses of bitterness and self-pity, and try to face his own challenges as nobly as Charles had. It was his chance to repay, in some measure, the kindness and courage he had sought to be worthy of in all the years since.
It’s alright.
And this time, somehow, he felt that it would be.
© 2009 Jordanna Morgan