Chapter Text
Hank McCoy knows she’s not pretty. She never was. All babies are cute, or so her mother has begun to hint, but even as a child her intelligence always far outspent her looks. She wasn’t an ugly child – a little stocky, perhaps, but always in good health, always strong, and what parent could ask for more, on top of sheer genius? The odds of being pretty as well were slim.
When she reached her adolescence, she began to change. Mutate, she realizes now, and not just in the hormone-ridden way of her peers, who felt monstrous in a way much more largely metaphorical. Her shoulders broadened, her arms became too long for her body, her feet alarmingly large and increasingly simian. She learned to hunch in on herself, to keep her arms crossed over her chest or tucked into the pockets of her lab coat. Being plain had its uses, Hank had discovered, because no one ever really looked twice. Not at Dr. Hank McCoy, the biochemist, the geneticist, a genius with half a dozen languages under her belt, a love of literature, and politics, and music, but ultimately nothing more than a brain, a remarkable brain in plain packaging.
When the Professor accidentally outs her at the facility, she isn’t even angry. Hank isn’t the type to get angry easily – she long ago recognized the futility – and he is so genuinely apologetic, the echo of remorse reverberating around the inside of her skull, she forgives him instantly. It even feels good, momentarily, to have this group of people, of mutants just like her, wanting to see exactly who she is.
She bends down to remove her shoes, her socks. The concrete is cool under her feet, gritty, and she unbends her toes, stretching them the way anyone else would their fingers. Professor Xavier smiles at her, and his sister is practically beaming. The others look somewhere between impressed and amazed; some with the slightest hint of aversion, maybe, but can she really blame them, with such large and hairy feet on an otherwise slight and normal-looking girl?
Then she makes eye contact with the blond one.
“Totally freaky,” he declares, and her face burns, toes curling up in self-revulsion.
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Unexpectedly, almost impossibly, Hank finds a friend in Raven. Hank has never had many friends. It was difficult, when she was always years ahead in school, and even now Hank can be awkward, barely fit for conversation outside academia. It wouldn’t do to have friends, to have to demur trips to the beach, and sleepovers, or even shopping. Hank can’t even visit friends in their homes, for fear they would ask her to remove her shoes at the door.
And it’s Raven who understands this, more than anyone Hank has yet met. They wouldn’t seem to match, on the surface, because Raven seems so effortlessly beautiful, and Hank so awkward, so drab – but they’ve both been hiding for so long, Hank thinks. What they have in common is the hiding, and the ugliness under their disguises, and all the things they tamp down for fear of the world’s judgment. Raven’s true appearance is not only a revelation, but quite possibly the missing piece of Hank’s mutant cure.
She brings Raven to her hidey-hole behind the cooling system, and they eat Twinkies while Hank tells Raven of her work to isolate the mutant gene, to reverse physical manifestations in hopes of normalizing their appearance. Their hands clasp when Hank takes a sample of Raven’s blood, and Raven’s hand trembles in hers, minutely, until they smile at one another and talk of other things.
Hank talks about her father, the only person in the world who knew she was a mutant before today. Raven talks about how she and Charles adopted one another when they were children, deftly avoiding talk of any time before. She describes how they found Moira, and then Erik, and how Charles has been searching out others, stumbling over Armando and Angel and Sean and Alex –
Hank can’t help the way her face pinches at Alex’s name. Their interactions have not improved since their first meeting. It would not be too much of a stretch for Hank to say she hates him.
“He’s just pulling pigtails,” Raven says, gently, like there’s nothing else to it. And maybe there isn’t. For someone as pretty as Raven, it’s just pigtails, and when a boy like Alex is pulling them, it’s fun. They don’t know what it’s like for Hank, what it’s always been like - being intelligent, and wearing glasses, and going to college before she’d even had her first period, much less her first kiss or her first drink. Hank hasn’t had a bad life, compared to some, but it’s never been fun.
“I don’t like him,” she says tightly, “he’s uncouth.” She knows Raven is laughing at the word, but it suits him so perfectly. “He is!” she insists, and Raven leans her head against Hank’s shoulder.
“Oh Hank,” she sighs. “For all you know about genetics, there’s an awful lot you need to learn about boys.”
Hank never needed to learn about boys before. She never really thought they were an option.
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When Charles and Erik are off having their own adventures, Hank and the others have their run of the facility. The mutants are allowed in all of the common areas, plus their own quarters, and Agent Steckle hasn’t revoked Hank’s access. At Raven’s prompting, they head to the kitchen area for pop and snacks – more Twinkies, certainly – and then Sean finds beer tucked in the back of one of the cabinets. Hank, in a sudden fit of irresponsibility, decides to show the rest of the group where The Company keeps the liquor for when the higher-ups deign to show their faces.
Almost against her will, against what she assumes will happen, she finds herself having fun. She could have friends, she realizes, real friends, plural, people who could understand everything about her.
Then some of the agents – the same agents who are supposed to be watching over them, who they’re supposed to work with – come over and ruin everything.
“I didn’t know the circus was in town,” one of the agents taunts, and the laughter is like something from Hank’s nightmares. It hadn’t taken long for news of Hank’s mutation to spread around the facility like any other dirty bit of gossip. But it’s watching the light in Angel’s eyes die that makes Hank stand up and decisively shut the blinds.
“Forget them,” she says. “They’re jerks.”
The look on Angel’s face is caught somewhere between sadness and defiance. “I’d take how men used to look at me with my clothes off than how these men look at me with my clothes on.”
Hank can’t relate, exactly. Her own experience with misogyny has been the other side of the double-edged sword - men making sniggering comments on her frigidity, her plainness, her manly clothes, then turning around and doubting her intelligence, her capability, her rationality. She secretly, painfully longs for beauty, even though Angel and Raven despair of its price.
"C'mon," Raven says suddenly. "Charles and Erik are off being responsible. Let's have some fun." She looks at Hank and smiles, pointedly but happy, and it hits Hank – oh, she wants Hank's opinion. She wants Hank's support. It makes Hank smile back, reflexively. How could she not give it?
"What did you have in mind?"
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They get drunk, and they play pinball, and they dance. Angel breaks out her wings and flits around the room. Hank ditches her shoes and hangs from the ceiling, and she and Raven dance like inverted reflections of one another, while Sean jumps from couch to couch.
“You know what we need?” Sean asks, when his energy finally runs down. “We need codenames. We’re working with the CIA! We deserve codenames.”
“A perfectly sound argument,” Hank agrees. Alcohol relaxes her, makes her generous to a fault.
“I want to be called Mystique!” Raven says immediately, like she’s thought about it in depth already.
“Damn,” Sean says, grinning up at them from the floor. “I wanted to be called Mystique. I could settle for Banshee though.”
“Like the wailing spirit?” Angel says, settling on one of the couch arms. “Nice. I’ll just stick with my stage name. Kind of the same thing, right?”
“Darwin!” Armando yells, from the pinball machine, and Hank approves of the nickname entirely. She is in a room of endless forms most beautiful.
“They called me Havok, in Basic,” Alex says quietly, somehow inviting questions and discouraging them at the same time. Hank doesn’t doubt the nickname, however, considering what he did to the statue earlier.
“What about Hank?” Raven asks. “Hank needs a codename!”
“Upside-down… hanging… girl,” Sean says. “I have no idea.”
"How about Bigfoot?" Alex suggests, grin suddenly so bright, and Hank has a real urge to punch him in the face. He makes her regress to the third grade, and that can’t be good for her IQ. She feels her mouth tighten and pinch, and Raven reaches up to trace the line between her eyebrows, giggling.
“Pigtails, Hank,” she half-whispers, like she’s giving Hank some sort of secret knowledge. “Just pigtails.”
“I don’t give a damn about pigtails,” Hank mutters. She wants that smile off his face.
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After the attack, after Angel leaves with Shaw, after Hank’s brain just won’t stop reeling, the quiet of Westchester is the best kind of balm. It doesn't change anything. It doesn't bring Darwin back. It doesn't help Hank understand how fervently and ignorantly people hate anymore than did the riots in Notting Hill, in Sri Lanka; than the Berlin Wall or the assassination of Inejiro Asanuma. In retrospect, it seems stupid to have thought that mutants would somehow be any better.
There’s a lab set up for Hank by the time they arrive. Full of shiny metal and translucent glass and perfect, pristine machinery. Hank spends her first two days there, straight through, analyzing Raven's DNA sequence, the differences between the mutant and human genome. If she can fully understand the somatic cell nuclear transfer, if she can just make it work --
She puts that out of her head. That's the only way Hank can get through it, if she focuses on her work. Not what it means, not yet. Certainly not what it means for her.
When she notices it's light outside again, she knows it's time to take a break. She wanders until she finds the kitchen, tucked behind one of the house's many staircases. There's coffee in the pot when she gets there, and she pours herself a cup before sitting down at the table.
Eventually, enough of the caffeine hits her system that she notices everyone looking at her, Sean with a sandwich still raised halfway to his mouth. She runs a hand through her hair, hopes it isn't standing on end. Alex meets her eyes briefly, before dropping his gaze back to the tabletop.
"Hi?" she says, and winces at the way her voice cracks from lack of use. Good job trying to convince your new teammates of your general mental health. Not that she blames them. She spent the last few days subsisting on Twinkies, for God’s sake.
"Good afternoon," Erik says, something hazy lurking behind his eyes that hurts to look at.
"And how are you doing, Hank?" Charles asks. She feels a slight pressure in the front of her head that she's come to realize is Charles' concern, when he's trying not to pry but still has trouble keeping focus.
She sips her coffee. "Fine. I've been doing some research using the blood sample Raven gave me, and I just got a little focused. It can be - easier."
Erik just looks far too understanding.
"I was also trying to recreate the schematics of the Cerebro," she continues, "before I forgot too many of the particulars. It took a significant amount of time to adjust it to your brainwaves, Professor. And I assumed you might find it helpful in the coming days if I could rebuild it.”
Charles leans forwards, intent. "Do you think you could recreate it? Soon, I mean?"
Hank shrugs. "We'd have to construct a specific room for it, or alter one here dramatically. I can bring you a rough schematic later, if you'd like."
"That would be wonderful, Hank, thank you –”
“And,” she continues, and finally meets Charles’ gaze head-on. “I’ve been working on some – well, lets call them focusing tools.”
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They try Sean’s flying suit first. Sean strikes Hank as the type of person who’s up for trying anything, and a person trying to fly without natural wings would have to be fearless; Sean fits the bill.
“I feel like a flying squirrel,” Sean declares when they have him strapped into the suit. “Only, you know, not so sure about the flying part.”
“It’s scientifically sound,” Hank reassures him. “If you scream loud enough, the soundwaves you emit should become supersonic. Then you just have to catch them at the right angle, and they’ll carry you.”
“Just remember to scream!” Charles adds helpfully. “Use your diaphragm!”
“I’m trusting you here,” Sean says, looking back and forth between the two of them, and Hank’s heart flutters a bit. She smiles at him, and behind her Alex makes a choked noise.
“Are you sure that’s wise?” he asks. “Putting your trust in the mad scientist here?”
“That could be your codename!” Raven yells from the other window.
Erik laughs, and sticks his head out beside Raven’s. “It has a certain panache, Hank, you must admit.”
Hank fixes Alex with a look that plainly says she’s known pond scum with higher IQs. “The science works,” she says, and elbows him in the stomach.
Charles is watching them all with something like delight, and for a moment Hank flushes under it, and feels Alex still behind her. Why, she couldn’t quite say.
“Are we going to do this?” Sean asks, oblivious. “Hank, one of your degrees is actually medical, right, for when I fracture every bone in my body?”
Hank pats him on the back. “At this height, I think the worst we can hope for is a few bruised ribs.”
“Good to know,” Sean says, before jumping out of the window screeching – and hits the ground a prompt two seconds later.
Alex turns to smirk at her. "Guess your science was wrong."
Hank doesn’t bother trying to tell him her errors are only ever the human kind. Science has never let Hank down.
“I’m fine, by the way!” Sean shouts up at them. “Thanks so much for asking!”
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Hank spends all afternoon working on the cure, and then into the night on Sean's suit. She doesn't make any real breakthroughs, but epiphanies don't drop out of the sky, and there's always room for fine-tuning.
As a concession, she sets her alarm and comes down for breakfast. When she gets there Charles is at the stove frying up bacon, Raven at his elbow making eggs. Alex brooding over their coffee, with Sean nowhere to be seen.
He was dreaming about flying, pulses inside Hank’s head, an answer to her unasked question. No harm in letting him sleep a little longer. She and the Professor share a secret sort of smile while Erik looks on.
When Sean wanders down, his hair is ruffled, and there are creases on his face from the bedsheets. To be honest, he looks entirely too adorable for words.
"Coffee?" Raven asks brightly.
“At his age?” Charles says, scandalized. “Orange juice, I should think.”
Alex snickers at the scowl on Sean’s face. “Orange juice is fine,” head says, grumpily.
In that moment Hank realizes, belatedly, she’s adopted Sean as something of a little brother, at least in her head; from the looks on Raven and Charles’ faces, they aren’t far behind in that regard either. She should have realized sooner – he’s the smallest, and the youngest, and arguably the cutest. There were times when Hank became something of a mascot for other female students in her dorm at college, something like a pet. And while it was nice, sometimes, to feel appreciated, she makes a mental note to never dismiss Sean because of it. If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, an off-shoot might be treating others the way you once were treated and expecting them to be happy about it.
“I think you should take some time out of your lab today," Charles says, reminding Hank for all the world of her father. Take a walk outside, Hank, William Allan will still be there when you get back. Indulgent, and proud, and only slightly worried around the edges.
"Yeah," Alex says, digging into his own breakfast plate. "C'mon outside Bigfoot, and get a move on. Run with the rest of us."
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Charles has them run laps around the house while he works with Erik. Hank generally isn’t one for physical exercise and she’s momentarily tempted to slack off in big way, but when your coach could be telepathically watching you at any moment, it tends to keep your motivation up.
After a lap or two, Hank and Sean end up running together, slow and easy. He’s skinny, Sean. Fast only in bursts, not for laps and laps around the mansion. And while Hank’s legs are longer, she is woefully out of shape. Sean and Hank are nothing like Raven, who runs swift and fast, like a wild animal, like there is something that never stops chasing; and they’re not like Alex either, who’s been conditioned for it, running as secondary as breathing.
“I hate running,” Sean complains, halfway to breathless. “If you get that flying suit figured out, I’ll never run again.”
“The suit’s fine,” Hank snipes. That’s twice in two days someone has doubted her work. “Focus on your screaming.”
“Better than running,” Sean continues balefully, as Alex laps them again. “What do you bet Alex was the quarterback in high school? He’s not even winded, the bastard.”
“Not taking that bet.” He’s too perfect, too all American, all-star. He’s even the perfect mutant -- normal on the outside, with all that power contained within.
It's not fair, Hank thinks. Not fair at all.
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Charles finds her later, of course. He sends Alex to the bunker and Sean to the field out back to practice shattering glasses, but he snags Hank before she can run back to her lab. Hank is beginning to learn you really can't run from a telepath.
"You know what your problem is," Charles says, perfectly serious. "You're entirely too intelligent to not understand."
Insecurity, she thinks, because Charles will hear it anyway. Struggling with herself, with hiding, with being a mutant. She never fit in with the rest of humanity, and she doesn't fit in here either. We ask the stars 'Why?', we questions our lot; The heavens open wide and reply, 'Why not?', she thinks. Why not, why not, why not.
"Conformity, and control. Life hasn't been easy, Hank, I know. And I don't have to look into your head to see that. But you have to move beyond that. We all do," Charles says, not unkindly. "Part of a mutant is embracing who are, what you’re capable of.”
“Mutant and proud,” Hank mutters, and looks down at her feet, still confined within her shoes. They’re just so ugly, for Christ’s sake. It shouldn’t matter – intellectually, she knows this. It shouldn’t matter when no one can see them, and it shouldn’t matter in front of Charles. But she feels like a freak among freaks every time she sees them.
"So go on then," Charles says, once again full of good cheer. "Shoes off.”
She sighs. Bends down to untie her shoes, peel off her socks. Leaves them in a pile on the side of the path. She stretches her toes, briefly, picking up the gravel underneath them, and digging down into the dirt beneath.
Okay. Okay, she thinks. This can be done, she can do this. Nothing to it but running.
"Ready?" Charles asks.
Hank takes a deep breath. Exhales. "Ready."
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They jog at first, easy and slow. And something comes over Hank. Something she doesn't exactly know how to explain; acceptance, maybe, or something beyond it. It's foolish to think her issues with her feet are gone - or her issues with being unusual, or exceptional, or a mutant, or a woman in a man's world - but she comes to the realization it's foolish to pretend her feet aren't there. It's foolish to not be able to use a tool at your disposal. And suddenly she's the one who's practically flying, running so fast she's around the house and coming up on the Professor in a matter of seconds.
She taps him on the shoulder, grinning so widely it hurts her face.
"Aha!" Charles says, startled but laughing, clearly trying to catch his breath. "Knew you had it in you."
She did, didn't she? All this time, and all she needed was a little direction.
"Nice job."
They turn to watch as Alex saunters out of one of the mansion's many entryways. Hank runs two fingers over the bridge of her nose, adjusting glasses that are no longer there. She thinks about saying thank you where Alex continues.
"Feet like those, all you need is a red nose, right Bozo?" he says, still grinning. He's always grinning, and Hank is more than well-versed in whether a smile is sincere or mocking.
"I'm headed back to the lab," she says, and this time Charles lets her go.
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Next on Hank's list is a suit for Alex.
It doesn't start out a suit. At first, Hank was thinking perhaps some kind of armlet, or gloves, or even a helmet like Shaw used. Something simple, focused. Streamlined. Then she saw what Alex did to the mannequins, not to mention the bunker. Something simple wasn't going to cut it. Alex had raw power, certainly, but no focus, no way to adjust his output. He couldn't differentiate between how much power was needed to hit a mannequin and what was needed to kill Shaw. He threw himself into things, too much and too fast. Whether Alex was physically incapable to adjusting his plasma energy or whether he was simply untrained Hank would leave to the Professor. She knows her own capabilities, and she knows she could make it easier for Alex.
The stumbling block, of course, is Alex. Hank spends the better part of two days trying to catch him in the bunker, but she's always just missing him. He fakes her out by going running first, or telling her Raven was looking for her, or by the time she finds him he's locked himself in. Charles' father was not fooling around when he made that bunker, and Hank's not about to try and blow the door up just to get to Alex, though she fancies she could do so easily enough.
On the third day she comes down for breakfast and tells the room at large she's headed to the lab, then once she's 'round the corner runs to the bunker and waits for Alex to show up. She's a genius, she can outsmart what essentially boils down to an overgrown juvenile offender.
When Alex sees her sitting on the bunker floor he groans.
"Gotcha." She grins up at him, teeth bared. "And I have to say, I don't particularly appreciate the runaround."
"Can't you take a hint," he half-mutters, then, louder: "I don't want to be part of your little experiment, okay. I don't want any part of your mutant cure, and I'm not gonna jump through any hoops for you. I've had more than enough of that on my own."
A twinge of guilt, then. Hank has a tendency to throw herself headfirst into whatever catches her attention. She doubts she ever asked Alex. Not that she could get him alone to begin with, to be fair.
"I'm not --" she stammers, "I'm not, I was making you something, like I did for Sean."
"I'm not flying," Alex says automatically, and takes a step back, like Hank is going to wrangle him into a winged suit all on her own.
"Of course not," Hank says, puzzled. Why would he think such a thing? "Your plasma energy would never generate any momentum to carry you the way Sean's sonic --"
Alex interrupts her. "Yeah, yeah, Sean is a good little test subject, and I'm the bad one, so can you just leave me alone to practice now?"
"Alex," she says, some of her frustration finally bleeding through. It's physically impossible for Alex to be walking around without a brain, so maybe he could use his. "I'm trying to build you a suit to focus your power, so the bunker doesn't look like the seventh circle of hell every time you try to blast a mannequin. I just need to get some energy readings from you, please." I'm trying to help you, she wants to yell, would you stop being so goddamn stubborn.
He looks momentarily nonplussed. Maybe it's the 'please' that finally did it. "I -- sorry, just. When I do this, bad things tend to happen." They stare at each other a moment, until Alex drops his gaze and shakes out his shoulders. "Do you have to be in the room?"
She chews on the inside of her cheek. "No, I'll just - clip it to your belt," she says, and hands it to him. Their fingers brush, briefly; Hank scurries out of the room without quite thinking about why.
The door thuds shut. The green light goes on, and Hank stares at it, mindless, until it begins to blink red, and she wrenches the door back open. There are lines of fire all along the bunker, from Alex to the now-charred mannequin. He looks back at her from over his shoulder, the glow of the plasma clinging to his arms, the shoulders of his sweatshirt still smoking. He looks like a jinn, made of concealed fire; or, perhaps, one of the burning ones, like Uriel, forver guarding the gates of Eden.
Foolish thoughts.
"Thank you," she says, and grabs the meter from his outstretched hand, and runs.
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After going over the data analysis of Alex's output - far higher than Hank was expecting; she should stop underestimating him - it takes Hank another two days to pull something together that Alex can wear.
"It's only a prototype of what I think might focus the plasma energy waves," Hank tells him. "Almost entirely theoretical, I'm afraid. Be sure to give me any impressions you might have of how your control changes, no matter how insignificant."
"Is it safe?" Alex asks, and then shoots a quick sideways look at Hank. "Not that I mean --"
"I think we can safely say you're immune to plasma energies ill effects. And the Professor and I will be waiting out of range." Hank finishes tightening one of the straps over Alex's shoulder. "I'm going to need some measurements from you, to make an actual suit." It doesn't look bad, but his shoulders were broader than she was expecting. "There are sensors to measure your output here and here," she continues, touching the space over his heart, and his stomach on the opposite side. "And the metal circle on your chest should focus the blasts, so - aim from there, if that makes any sense."
"Sure," Alex says faintly. "Sounds good."
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When the door unlocks, Hank and the Professor step into the bunker cautiously.
"No fire," Hank says, pleasantly surprised. There's another chunk missing from the back wall, so still off-target, but at least a little less rampant destruction. The mannequin is singed and smoking, but they don't need the fire extinguisher.
"Groovy," Charles says, grinning. The word makes Hank remember the Professor is actually not much older than her; she forgets.
"A good first effort," she agrees. "Now, about the suit..."
Before she can get halfway across the room, Alex has already taken off the prototype, thrown it to the floor, and run halfway out the door.
For God's sake, she's only trying to help. "What is his problem?" she asks crossly.
Charles can't answer her. He's too busy laughing.
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Because Hank's life can't get anymore stressful, the Professor wants everyone to start learning hand-to-hand combat.
"Erik and I have been sparring," he explains at breakfast one morning, his excitement bleeding into everyone's brains like high velocity waves. "Raven and I had some training as children -"
"In this house?" Alex says, sotto voce, and Erik tucks his chin into his turtleneck to hide his smirk.
"Charles was very persuasive," Raven says, the easiest 'fuck you' Hank has heard in a long time. She doesn't like girls, not that way -- though she certainly examined the premise, having heard the jokes often enough - but Hank is still half in love with Raven. She wants to be her, she thinks, in some measure or another.
"Not very much, of course." Charles jumps back to smooth things over, the eternal peacemaker. "But Moira and Alex have both had training, and Erik..."
"Training of another sort," Erik says, just as smoothly, and the elephants in the room tramp around unabated. "Working on your mutant powers is admirable, but sometimes the ability to throw a punch is just as useful." Or the ability to use a knife, Hanks adds mentally. Erik is never without his, not even when he runs.
"Yeah, I can't," Sean says easily. "Throw a punch, I mean. I'm more the charming type." He shovels more eggs into his mouth and grins.
"Weren't you terrorizing fish when we found you?" Erik says dryly.
"Removing the competition!"
"Children," Charles says, and Raven snorts. "So. Yes. We were thinking perhaps some sort of rotating schedule of lessons."
"Yeah, I could help whip Sean and Bozo into shape." Alex grins like a shark. "I promise I'll be gentle."
“I don’t think that would be wise,” Hank says absently, already reabsorbed in her latest printouts. Now that she's successfully spliced Raven's DNA into the serum, she needs to switch from vertical to horizontal gene transfer, since it seems to be getting better results. Though she's still debating the pros and cons of gene knock-out vs. gene knock-in. For all her theorization on a mutant cure all these years, there's still entirely too much work to be done. "I wouldn’t want to hurt you."
Sean's roar of laughter makes her look up. Hank replays the last few sentences in her head, and flushes. "What I mean,” she continues apologetically, "is that I'm rather strong. I - you know, mutant strong. When I was about fourteen, I had to reteach myself to do nearly everything. I kept crushing door handles, and mangling silverware." There was an incident with the mass spectrometer her professors still think was a senior prank gone wrong.
"Really," Erik says smoothly. "How strong are you then?"
"No idea," Hank admits. "I never tested it, I just wanted to get a handle on it. Get it under control." Raven sends her a look of sympathy - control, a good disguise. It's all they've ever wanted.
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Erik makes her lift a sofa, a bed, and finally a grand piano before Charles put the kibosh on anything else.
"The baby grand must weigh nearly two-fifty kilos," he says thoughtfully. "We'll have to search out something heavier. And compact, hopefully. Lifting airplanes might alarm some of the neighbors."
"I think I've about reached my limit," Hank says truthfully. The piano wasn't impossible, but she could feel the strain of it. She rebuttons the top of her shirt.
"And just what else have you been keeping under you hat?" Erik asks. He floats her glasses back to her, helpfully polished.
"Nothing else," she says. Nothing she knows about. Maybe she has an affinity for talking to dogs, or raising pole beans. They may never know.
"Speed, strength, and smarts," Raven says, peeking around the corner. "You're so lucky, Hank."
"All that and a side of monkey feet," she says, faux-cheerful. Lucky is not the word she would have chosen.
"Well," Charles say thoughtfully. "I can see why you'd be leery of training with the others. We'll figure out something a little more hands-off."
"Mannequins," Hank says gloomily. There are so many of them lying around the exercise room and the bunker, it's like they've set up in the uncanny valley.
"Don't worry," Erik says, clapping one hand to her shoulder. "Before long, Charles here will have you moving satellites."
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One night when Hank is working late in her lab, Alex comes to see her. She's surprised, to say the least. Or she would be surprised, if she had the energy to realize how strange Alex being in her lab actually was. If she could muster up anything but a generally confused, "hey?"
"Hey," Alex says, the curve of his mouth turning up. "How's the, uh, serum?"
Hank's mutant cure is something of a point of contention among the mutants at the house. Raven is the only one who's been excited about it from the start. Sean seems interested in the abstract, the same way he's interested in supersonic waves and ultraviolet emissions and why dogs shouldn't eat chocolate, but he would never take it. Charles wouldn't, Alex wouldn't. And though Erik has never said anything to her, he's made pointed enough comments on human experimentation that Hank understands his position perfectly. She doesn't pretend they approve of her research, but she also doesn't pretend they understand. They don't. Not really. They're mutants, but they don't wear it on the outside, where everyone can see. They have to proclaim themselves to be judged. Raven and Hank have to hide, every day, not just what they do, but what they look like. What they see in the mirror every morning. It carries a price.
Hank's not saying she wants to be normal, a flatscan - she likes who she is, by and large. She only wants to normalize her appearance. To be able to walk down the street without sticking out like a sore, freakish thumb. She's okay with being strong, and fast, and whatever else might be different about her. Is it too much to ask to have just some of the things everyone else has?
That Alex asks is fairly nice of him, actually.
Hank sighs. "It's two in the morning. I'm somewhere between anger, frustration, and throwing some very expensive lab equipment at the wall." She actually broke a beaker earlier this morning, but nobody besides her nice new expense account needs to know that.
Alex leans his forearms on one of the lab tables and frowns. "I would have put you more at half-dead from exhaustion. When was the last time you slept? You’ve got bags under your eyes. And your hair is sort of..." He makes a helpful gesture that Hank can only assume means 'sticking straight up all over the place'.
Hank runs two hands through her hair and sighs. A bob seemed so sensible at the time, but she hadn't factored in her habit of literal head scratching. "Better?"
"Maybe you should just go to bed," Alex says, which is quite possibly the most tactful thing he's ever said to her.
"Maybe. Probably.” Most decidely, considering the way she can barely keep her head up. "Just waiting for the test results." Even though Raven's DNA catapulted Hank's research forward, there's still plenty of work to do. Still so many questions left unanswered. “This is important to me," she says, stubbornly. What did she spend half her life for, slogging through prep school and college and grad school and lab after unforgiving lab if not to, just once, help herself along with everybody else?
Alex nods. “It's cool, I'm not -- I just saw you light was still on, thought I'd come in. Maybe talk to you about the suit, or whatever.”
"Oh. Oh!" Hank launches herself off the lab stool and across the room. "Here, I have some... drawings, of what I was thinking." She pulls a sheaf of papers out from under a box of Langmuir probes she may never get the chance to use and sorts through them rapid fire - half-remembered bits of Cerebro, renderings of Sean's suit, speculation on Shaw's helmet, pages of Raven's DNA results. "Here, this," she says, spreading the picture flat on the table. Alex is looking a little wide-eyed now - she probably looks every bit of the mad scientist he accuses her of being. "I’ve been working on better sensors, since I think we've got the aiming issue down; the suit's already about ten times more accurate than just using your arms."
"At least," Alex agrees easily. "I never - I never used it on purpose, so I never really thought of trying to focus it through something."
"The suit will be even better than the prototype - better centered, better fitting. I'm still having a little trouble with the sensors. Plasma potential isn't particularly difficult to measure - lightning counts as plasma, stars are made of plasma, we even create it artificially for neon signs. It's not like there isn't some research on the subject."
"Just not coming from a person."
"Basically. And you're..." Hank shakes her head. "Considering your immunity to the plasma waves, it might be possible for you to absorb or give off other kinds of energy."
"Like what?"
"Heat. Radiation. Who knows?" The possibilities are practically infinte. “It's just a theory."
Alex shuts down, suddenly and obviously. "You want to - run some tests."
Hank's too tired to be irritated, or defensive. "I’d like to, yes. But there's a reason I didn't ask," she says simply. "If you want a trial by fire the next time we run into Shaw's merry cabal of misfit mutants, its no skin off my nose.”
They’re silent for a moment. Thinking about what Shaw is capable of, what he did to Darwin. That Angel, who they might have counted as a friend, stands now at his side. The all too real possibility that when they do meet Shaw again, it might be a great deal more than skin off of somebody's nose.
“I'm going to bed," Alex says abruptly. "And you should too."
"As soon as the test results are done," Hank says, more absently. There's something puzzling her. Fits of split-focus hit Hank when her unconscious has picked up on something her conscious mind isn't quite able to articulate. Sort of like a word being on the tip of your tongue, but in Hank's whole brain. "Why were you on this side of the house?”
“What?”
“Your room,” Hank says. She's missing something. “It’s on the other side of the house. It's two in the morning. What were you doing on this side of the house?"
Alex looked back down at the suit schematics. "I was restless. Took a walk."
He's lying, Hank realizes. Though she still has no idea why.
"Oh," she says. "Well, I'm almost always up. If you're restless."
"Thanks," Alex says softly, and then practically bolts for the door.
She's starting to think his mutant power is running.
| |
The third suit works, it works perfectly. Alex decimates a mannequin from two-hundred feet away -- nothing but the mannequin, not himself, not the Professor, and not Hank, most importantly.
“Mad scientist my ass,” Hank says, satisfied.
“You’re still a mad scientist,” Alex says. “But nice job…“ His eyes are serious, and the smile on his face is smaller and softer than his usual. “Thank you. Really."
Hank smiles back. It's easy, in these moments. Alex still calls her mad scientist, and Bozo, and geek, but sometimes at night he sits in her lab while she calibrates and measures and splices. He brings her coffee (cream, no sugar) and boxes of Twinkies. It's a puzzling sort of détente - one Hank doesn't entirely know the terms to, but she's game enough to go along with.
She's happy here, happier than she's been in her entire life. More - complete. More than just a brain, and more than just her feet, even if those are still the most noteworthy things about her.
Well done indeed the Professor pushes into her head, and Hank's smile becomes a dazzling, unhidden thing.
| |
"Come running with me," Alex asks one day.
Hank squints at him. This sounds like a recipe for disaster on so many levels.
"You should get out of the lab," he says earnestly, ignoring the look Hank gives him. Alex has a face built for angelic facial expressions, and he's taken to applying them to get whatever he wants. "I'm sure the Professor would agree."
The Professor definitely would. He'd already given her a gentle mental nudge this morning. Wasn't it enough that she'd gone down for dinner last night? Like she doesn't know the answer to that question already.
"Fine," she says shortly. "Give me ten minutes to finish up here."
Alex's grins. "Meet you at the main staircase in fifteen."
"Twenty!" Hank yells at his rapidly retreating figure. "Make it twenty!"
| |
When they leave it's raining slightly, a light kind of mist. Hank doesn't mind. The heat has been oppressive lately and its nice to feel the rain on her face, especially since she left her glasses safely tucked away in her room. She left her shoes there too, but the only thing Alex does is call her Bigfoot when he greets her.
They run around the grounds five times, a not-quite-leisurely jog, and when they stop to rest Alex stretches, rotating his shoulder with a studious intensity that makes Hank think he must have injured himself at some point or another.
"I love the rain," he says abruptly. "In prison, I had three hours of rec time, right, each week. Always in this old training room. And I didn't care on the sunny days so much as the rainy ones."
They all knew the Professor found Alex in prison - Hank was the one who translated the coordinates from Cerebro, and the idea of anyone keeping a secret in the Mansion is laughable* - but its the first time he's ever mentioned it to Hank, even off-hand.
"Don't know why," he adds, and goes back to stretching.
"I like the rain, but I can't wait for the snow," Hank says. She's from Illinois, and Virginia just didn't cut it as far as the seasons went.
Alex smirks. "I'm surprised you can find boots for those monsters."
"Plenty of people have big feet," she says primly. Like she hasn't been special ordering her shoes since she was twelve.
He snorts. "Come on, Bigfoot. Race you back to the house."
The look on his face when she wins is worth every stupid nickname.
| |
Hank's never been a fan of the military. She isn't a pacifist, by any means, and considering now only the current political climate but the history of the modern world she's not going to argue for the abolishment of a military force, but she's known a number of military men in her time, and she can safely say she's liked none of them. Five-star generals checking up on their government contracts, the nameless soldiers at the facility who only looked at her when she wasn't looking at them, the blank-faced agents attempting to recruit her by offering carte blanche - a prospecting appealing and appalling in equal parts - whoever it is, something about them always rubs her the wrong way.
When she heard the Professor found Alex in a military prison, she didn't think well of him. She likes to think she didn't, that's she's openminded and that she only started to dislike him when he called her a freak, but it's not true. She can count on one-hand, on one finger, the number of people who accepted everything about her up until this point. She's cautious by nature and she's cautious by experience. She was inclined to dislike him and she knows now he'd grown to understand the best defense was a good offense.
They're like water and sulfuric acid, she thinks. Put them together and you'll get a reaction. Do it wrong and you lose some skin; do it right and all you get is a little heat.
| |
She's got it.
Hank blinks. It's the more exhausting side of midnight. She hasn't left the lab in a good twelve hours, not since the news report, and she was sort of hoping Alex would bring her a cup of coffee so she wouldn't have to get it herself.
She doesn't know how long she sits there, just looking at it. At the perfectly normalized cells. It's what she wanted, right here on the slide. Black and white, so to speak. A perfect reaction.
She looks up only when Alex comes in the door.
"Hey," he says. In one hand he's holding a coffee mug, the other tucked into his jeans. "You're planning on sleeping at least some time tonight, right?"
"Yeah," Hank says, faintly. Her mind's whirling. The center of the storm - the cure, the cure, the cure, normal, normal, normal.
"Big day tomorrow."
Like she could ever possibly forget. "I remember. I just - it's finished," she blurts out. "The cure."
For a long moment they look at each other. Not saying anything.
"Congratulations," Alex says, finally. His tone is flat, to the point of anger. A lot like when they first met. It doesn't feel much like a commendation.
"Thanks," she says, and her voice is small. "I -- I realized what I was doing wrong, all of a sudden -- " and she's about to tell him about the trouble she was having with mRNA transcription, that she's finally solved the issue with the binding sites, when Alex slams the coffee cup onto the lab table.
"Awesome," he says savagely. "Just fucking awesome." And he turns around and storms out before Hank can say anything else. Anything at all, really.
It sours something in her stomach. She doesn't - she knew he didn't care about the cure - he didn't have to care, he looked normal, didn't he? - but she didn't expect this sort of reaction. He'll have to come up with a different nickname for her, without the feet, she thinks bitterly. She supposes she's stuck with the mad scientist now. Maybe she'll get it printed on her lab coat.
But forget him.
She's going to go find Raven.
| |
An hour later, ensconced in the lab, Hank blinks away the bitter sting of tears. She knew, deep down, it was always going to end this way. She was never fit for a girlfriend. She bungled it, somehow – she’s not even sure what she said, only that it was wrong. Looking at things too unemotionally, too focused on the results she wanted. But it's hard to take Raven telling Hank she's beautiful, when Hank's the one who's stuck, and Raven can look like whoever she wants. It's not hypocritical, per se, but Hank can't call it exactly fair.
She's alone, in her lab. She's almost always alone. The cure is weighing heavily on her mind, and right now all she can see is the positives. So Raven's abandoned her, and decided Hank's beautiful just the way she is. So Alex judges her, and probably Erik too. They don't understand. They haven't had things the way she has - always outside, always ignored. Never good enough even when she's the best.
Forget them. Forget all of them. This is Hank's decision, and Hank undertook this for a reason. Hank made this cure for a reason. And if they don't want it, that's their choice, but they can't make it for her.
She puts the needle into her anterior tibial vein and pushes. It stings, and she wriggles her toes - watching, amazed, as her toes shrink, and come together, five little pink phalanges, all in a row. She cries a little, again, for a different reason than before, and there's a moment, a brief, beautiful shining moment, when everything is right. Just for this moment, on the cusp of war, a human war and a mutant one - everything is perfect.
And then something goes wrong. She feels it before she sees it, like a twinge, from her toes on up, and suddenly they're growing again, as big as before, separated, and all up her legs too, there's something pulsing, and stretching.
"No," she hears herself saying, over and over, harsh and panicked. She worked too hard, she's been waiting so long - the pain builds until she screams, and it echoes in the room, off the glass and the metal, coming back to her in triplicate.
Later, Hank will look back on this moment with a crystal clarity. The dizzying high and the stomach-clenching low. The moment she made herself a monster.
| |
She leaves them a note. It's cowardly, in a way, and she knows this. But she can't face them right now. Not that the extra hour is going to give her much time to pull herself together, but she'll put it off as long as she can. She'll put off the questions, and with any luck they'll be so focused on Shaw and on the missiles that she won't matter, at least for a while.
There's a moment where they all concentrate on the Blackbird, on what they're going to do, on their suits - Hank is particularly proud of those, especially considering she had to pull her new one together last night after her rage through the lab - but finally, someone notices she's not there, and Sean asks, "Where's Hank?"
"Here," she says, taking one last deep breath before stepping out from her hiding place. She steels herself, the way she used to when she had to go to a professor's office hours, hallways away from any other women, or venturing into a new lab, shiny new ID card pinned to her breast pocket, never quite sure of the reception she would receive, but always braced for the worst, considering that was what frequently occurred.
No one can quite contain their shock at her new appearance, not that she would expect them to. It took her nearly an hour to look at herself in the mirror after the transformation. It was more leonine than she expected. No horns. Her teeth appear hominid, at least above the gumline. Her hair is wilder, longer than her sensible bob, but not quite a mane. She's taller, heavier, and absolutely outrageously blue.
"I tested my cure," she explains, miserable. "But it didn't attack the mutant cells. It accelerated them." She can feel her ears droop a little, which is so - so patently ridiculous she starts swinging back to hopeless anger again. "It didn't work."
"Yes it did, Hank," Raven says. Her eyes are shining - her yellow eyes, in her blue face. "Don't you see? This is who you were meant to be. This is you. No more hiding."
Hank takes a deep, shuddering breath. Hide. As if she could ever hide like this! As if she could ever consider it. Oh, maybe if she ran away to join the circus, she thinks, and from the strange twitch that passes over Charles' face he maybe picked up on that particular train of thought.
"Never looked better," Erik says cheerfully, and before Hank can even properly think it through her hand is around his throat.
"Don't make fun of me," she growls -- a growl, guttural and harsh, almost sub-vocal. She hears him gurgle, and gasp, and the Professor yelling at her to put him down.
Stop, she thinks. Stop. She's strong now, she's always been strong, but she's stronger, stronger than Erik, than all of them, and it would be so easy to bruise his larynx, to fracture his hyoid, the thyroid, compressing them into his cervical vertabrae. She could kill him. She could kill him so easily, when her hands are so large she can barely feel the beat of his pulse against the skin of her palm.
It's that thought that makes her step away, that shocks her so badly she lets Erik go, lets him drop to the floor when she wasn't even conscious of lifting him off the ground. She didn't even know she was capable.
"Ho-ly shit," Sean drawls, and beside him Raven stifles a laugh. Charles glances at Erik, an under-his-eyebrows glance, clearly rummaging around in his head.
“You need a new codename,” Alex says, and on the peripheral of her vision she sees Raven nod, Erik's fingers still resting lightly below his Adam's apple.
Jekyll, Hank thinks. Or maybe Frankenstein is more appropriate. After all, she made herself a monster.
"Beast," Alex announces, like it's something she should be proud of.
| |
Hank's right, in a way. There's no time for questions, not now. They speed away to Cuba. They stop a war. They drop Sean out of the Blackbird to find Shaw. They watch, amazed, as Erik pulls the submarine out of the water and drops it on the beach, and Charles is the only one who doesn't look surprised. Bringing the Blackbird down is a tricky landing, to horrifically understate it, but the Blackbird is Hank's invention. She knows exactly what it's capable of, and what she's capable of doing with it. These are her friends, and she won't allow it to be her fault that any of them are hurt.
Erik takes out the mutant who makes whirlwinds before ducking into the submarine, and Alex and Hank are left to deal with Azazel and Angel on their own. Azazel's power makes him extremely difficult to get a handle on - though if Hank had time to study his preferred pattern of movements, maybe she could get a jump on him - and Angel, despite her defection, is still something of a friend; no one wants to hurt her, though she doesn't seem to have the same compunctions about them.
She has to, Hank thinks. She will if she has to. There are a lot of things she's found herself doing, lately, she never would have thought she was capable of. But she is. She's always been capable. She's just beginning to learn exactly how much.
| |
There's really only one moment where she thinks she's going to die. One awful moment where she can visualize herself hitting the deck of a ship from half a mile in the air. The velocity of a falling object - at their height, the time it will take them to hit the deck.
She thinks, it would be worse without Alex's fingers curled around her wrist.
And then she digs her rather formidable nails into Azazel's chest, piercing flesh and muscle, and she feels him flinch under her hands. She enjoys it.
"We go," she snarls. "And you go too." His eyes seek out hers, and he knows that she means it. That he won't be able to shake her off.
Azazel drops them mere feet off of the deck. They have the soldiers to deal with, then, but considering she and Alex aren't a pile of biohazard right now, she feels like she can take on the world.
| |
"No, my friend," Charles whispers. "You did this."
It's the truth, but the look on Erik's face is like watching his heart break in slow motion, and Hank turns away.
| |
Years down the line, Sean, Hank, and Alex will refer to the day on the beach as The Divorce. It's so much more and so much less than what happened. It isn't what any of them expected - it is, and it isn't. That Erik would kill Shaw was never really in question. Perhaps it was for Charles, but even Hank could see the validity of what Erik felt. Though Erik never really spoke of himself or his past, he never hid his tattoo. He made his feelings on politics, on war, and on humanity very clear, and his feelings on Shaw even clearer.
Killing Shaw, Hank expected.
Trying to kill everyone else - that was the surprise.
The biggest surprise is not knowing how she feels about it. Not the killing part of it, of course - it isn't a war yet, and it doesn't have to be. Neutralizing the missiles would go a long way in regards to good will towards mutants, and if Erik is so powerful he could steal more whenever he damn well pleases. But what Erik says - what Erik believes is coming for them - somehow becomes so seemingly possible. Hank's never thought of being a mutant from a political standpoint, from a human rights standpoint. She's barely moved beyond thinking of herself as a singular freak, much less counting herself amongst a growing minority. And, suddenly, there was so much to think about, so much about the world she had to consider. Suddenly she was doubting which side she was on.
Not Erik's, she doesn't think. She's not ready to damn homo sapiens in favor of homo sapiens superior, and she's certainly not going to single-handedly wipe them out. But as much as she's grown to love the Professor in these past months, she knows he's too idealistic. She knows the transition will never be as smooth as he hopes. They will be feared, they will be hated. They will be demonized, and they might be segregated, or identified. They will be made out as less than human when she knows they are equal. Not better. Not inherently. Shaw was not better. Mutants will have their heroes and villains the same as anyone else.
The tragedy, she thinks - the very Hegelian tragedy, is that realism and idealism so very rarely exist in the same time and place. Somehow, Charles and Erik were the only ones who'd fooled themselves into believing it would ever end any other way than this, in blood and tears and the brink of war. Hank doesn't believe in fate, but she does believe in inevitability. In laws. Gravitational force. Linear momentum. Charles and Erik were doomed to collide, and their problems were never going to be solved over a chessboard.
The worst of it is - the worst of it, the absolute worst - is that it's only politics. Politics that keeps Charles from Erik's side. Politics that keeps Erik from doing what he wants in favor of what he thinks is right. The bullet wound is not the most painful thing that happened to Charles Xavier that day, and crippling his friend is not the biggest betrayal Erik will ever commit. Hank's not precognitive and she knows that. They love one another too much to really stop, even after the beach. They're not on the same side, but they'll never really be enemies.
The Divorce, Hank and Sean and Alex will whisper. They'll talk about it now and then, years and years in the future when they are teachers at the Mansion, full-fledged members of the X-men. And while dozens of their students will know Magneto and Professor X were once friends, they'll never understand how much more than that it ever was.
| |
It's almost anticlimactic after that. Raven goes with Erik, which isn't - which isn't the surprise it could be. If she still looked like Raven and less like Mystique, Hank would perhaps think there was more of a chance. Her brother's been shot in the back, but Charles urges her to go, and he's selfless to the point of martyrdom.
They don't realize how much so until Azazel teleports everyone away.
| |
Hank, though not prepared for every eventuality, was prepared enough for at least the aftermath of this one - the cockpit of the Blackbird detaches to form its own transport, and though it's a tight squeeze, she flies Moira and the Professor to Miami for medical treatment. Hank goes back to pick up Sean and Alex, who have decided the better part of valor is hiding in the rainforest until someone comes to look for them.
"Is he - " Sean asks, fearful, and Alex's eyes behind him are wounded, and wet.
"In surgery," Hank says. Through a combination of Moira calling in some favors, and the Professor's surprisingly still adept use of telepathy. That's the difficulty with gauging the extent of Charles' power - most of the time its impossible to know he's even used it. The thought makes her shiver, a little. "He'll be --" fine, she wants to say, but that's not entirely true. "Alive," she decides. "He's alive. He's going to pull through this, it's." She takes a deep breath. "It's easier, now that the bullet's out."
"His legs," Alex croaks. "Will he --"
"Paralysis is often temporary in spinal cord injury," she says, because it's not untrue, and herds them both towards the mini-Blackbird. Being a doctor, Hank can do. Being - removed, and talking about facts. She'll look at what the tests say
thoracic
she'll look into treatments
T11, specifically
and physical therapists
complete
and remodeling the Mansion, if it comes to that. She'll make him a wheelchair, and - and bionic legs, like Steele suggested. She'll figure out a way to repair his spine. She'll do it right this time, not like her cure. She'll do field testing, and she'll take her time. It'll work.
She feels Alex's hand on her knee - digging his fingers in tight, not possessive, but holding onto her like she's falling away. And she realizes she's crying.
| |
The Mansion feels like a mausoleum now. There are no daily runs. No explosions from the bunker, no screams as Sean flies around the grounds. Meals are quiet affairs, if they are shared at all. Even Moira is gone now, which Hank understands the necessity of, if not the mechanism.
The worst of it is Charles. Not only the hospital stay, or the surgeries, or the physical therapy; not even having to hear, over and over again, the thoughts of every nurse and doctor brought in to see him - never walk again poor boy poor thing so young - but the gap that Raven and Erik left behind. That's the one thing Hank just doesn't know how to fix. She doesn't even know if she could, if anyone could - maybe it's the sort of thing you try and get used to instead, until the pangs of want are just background, a strangle little rhythm you set your life to. Hank doesn't know.
She's been sticking to her lab - though when doesn't she stick to her lab is probably a more interesting premise - because she has a lot of time to make up for. Cleaning up the mess she made during her transformation and subsequent rage takes a few days on its own. And there is so much to do now; Cerebro must be rebuilt, and refined. She'd like to figure out a way around Shaw - Erik's - helmet, perhaps even producing one herself, or modifying it. And once there are more mutants here, she's going to have even more to do, putting all her degrees to good work. She never expected this is the work she'd end up doing - she'd certainly never she expected she'd be blue while doing it - but something about it feels right. Puts her on the path to peace.
| |
The next time Hank looks up from her work Alex is shuffling through the plans she has for the bunker. If Charles is serious about bringing more mutants here, they're going to need someplace to practice their powers, particularly the more showy or destructive ones like Alex's.
"Pretty cool," he says. "Can we do moving targets?"
"Sure. Targets, hostages, weather simulations; tailored to whatever situation we might face. Maybe something that simulates other mutants' powers."
Alex is looking at her a little bit like Christmas has come early. Boys and their destructive tendencies. Not that Hank hasn't felt the urge to rip off one of the mannequins' heads now and again. "You can do that?"
Well. "Theoretically. It would be a lot of work. For now, I'm going to concentrate on making it everything-proof. Fire, water, bullet -"
For a moment they're both quiet.
"How's Sean?" Hank asks finally. She isn't sure exactly how close Sean and Alex are, but she knows that there's something of a code amongst men even here. What Sean might not tell her, he might tell Alex.
Alex dutifully follows the subject change. "Okay. He's - disappointed? With Erik mostly, but he's angry at Angel too, I think. Not sure how much you saw, but she was kinda out for blood."
Hank's attention was mainly on Azazel, and for good reason, but she saw enough. "Nobody on Shaw's side was pulling their punches, despite their pro-mutant rhetoric."
"Shit," Alex says. "After Darwin, you think that would have been obvious." His jaw tightens. "It's one thing - when Angel left before, you know? It's another after Shaw killed Darwin. Fuck."
Hank doesn't know what to say. She's absolutely terrible at coming up with what to say, actually. She really needs to work on her diplomacy.
Next to her, Alex makes a noise not unlike a sigh. "You know he won't stop playing country music? Sean, I mean."
That ... was not something Hank was expecting. "Really?"
Alex smirks. "I love Patsy Cline as much as the next guy, but if I hear Walkin' After Midnight one more time, I'm going to melt his record player."
They snicker a little, together, and it feels good to laugh. None of them have been doing much laughing lately. Hank looks down at her hand, fuzzy and blue, the skin of her palms and fingertips thick and coarse.
"I-" Alex makes a sour face, like he can't even believe he's going to ask. "Are you okay? I mean, considering."
"Considering what?" Hank asks lightly; she can't quite believe Alex asked her either.
Alex shrugs. "Raven? The Professor? Erik going dark side? Nearly being killed by missiles sent by our own fucking government? Man, pick one."
A fair enough point. "I'm not sure. The United States' actions were... disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. Erik was right, in some measure. I always knew that." Hank is a student of many things, history being one of them, and a powerful new minority is never well-recieved. "And the military typically prefers a blunt approach."
"Don't I know it," Alex mutters.
"And Raven - Mystique..."
Alex ducks his head, and sits at the lab bench next to her. "I know you two were close."
"She was my best friend," Hank says, without thinking about it. Raven was quite possible the only best friends Hank ever had, and it hurts to have had her and lost her, and not from any fault of Hank's own. Raven's last words to her were "mutant and proud," but Hank isn't feeling the correlation. "I - I miss her, but I." She stops.
"You hate her for leaving," Alex says, wearily. He leans towards her, until their shoulders touch. He looks so tired, she thinks, but like he's made his peace with it. Like being tired is something he's used to.
"Not for leaving, exactly. For leaving - with Erik, that way. Leaving Charles. And, yeah, leaving me. I am angry." That's the part of Hank's mutation that frightens her the most - the depth and alacrity of her anger. She doesn't just look like an animal, she feels like one. When she thought Erik was making fun of her, when she thought Azazel was going to kill them - the things she could have done in those moments make her shudder. "I can't stop being angry. I can't even think about her." She feels the growl building in her throat, her chest. It feels like her whole body vibrates with it, from her bones on out.
Alex sets his hand carefully on her shoulder. His fingers on her lab coat - special ordered in size gigantic - while his thumb rests, briefly, on the short blue fur near her neck. "You have to. You have to, even though it makes you angry. 'Cause if you don't, you'll end up pushing those memories of her away for so long, they won't be worth anything to you by the time you get around to dealing with them. It'll be way too goddamn late." She's staring at him, she knows, and he drops his eyes to the ground. Tucks his hands back into his pockets. "I know what I'm talking about, for once."
She know he is. She's never doubted Alex has a sort of emotional-social intelligence she lacks. She's seen him turn on the charm, or put up an aloof front, or a dangerous face. He's adept at getting what he wants, or protecting himself from what he doesn't. Hank is paranoid but thin-skinned, equally baffled for all occasions; she usually hides and hopes that will do the trick.
"There was a moment I thought you were going to go with them," Alex admits after a moment. "Erik and Raven, I mean."
"The freak going with the other freaks?" she finishes, and her smile is pointed, pointed. Sean and Charles and Alex; they'd be pretty as a picture, the three of them, as long as no one asked Charles to stand up. She knows she doesn't exactly belong, but she could slot in between Raven and Azazel and no one would bat an eye.
"No!" he shouts, and he seems genuinely horrified. "No, I - I thought. Because of Raven, maybe. Or because of Erik. He's not - he's not Shaw, you know? He's not as easy to hate. And some of what he said was true. I thought maybe you were done with being hated because people don't understand."
Because you're ugly, Hank hears. Because you can't hide.
"The easy road isn't necessarily the right one," she shoots back hotly. "And what's right for me might not be right for Raven or Erik, or vice versa. I want to be here, even if you don't think I belong."
"Of course you belong," Alex says, frustrated. "Jesus, Hank, the whole fucking point is that everyone belongs here, isn't it?" They're standing nose to nose now, or very nearly; Hank has more of a snout these days. "I just meant - you and Raven fit like, fucking perfectly, and I haven't always been the greatest to you, alright? We both know that. And I'm sorry, I didn't..."
"You didn't what?" Hank asks softly, and dangerously. Her heart is pumping in her chest, ramped up, and she's not sure why she's reacting this way. She's trying to keep her hands off of him, to stop herself from putting her fingers around his throat the same way she did to Erik. Two minutes ago they were having a perfectly civilized conversation, and now --
"I didn't mean to be mean," he spits out, flushed along his cheekbones and the tips of his ears. "Except - fuck - obviously I did, I just... I couldn't stand if I was the reason you left."
How is nothing Alex says ever what she expects to hear? "Then why did you do it?" she roars - Christ, she roars now, Sean can probably hear it in his room over all the Patsy Cline. "Why were you so -" Awful. Cruel. Careless.
Alex tries to meet her eyes, but she can't quite meet his. "Because I'm stupid. Because I'm afraid. Or I was, anyway. I got used to being mean and - and ugly to everyone who tried to get close to me. To people who fucking looked at sideways. And the more I - the more I liked you, the worse it got."
"Liked me," Hank repeats, like something from a foreign language. "Liked me." Jesus Christ, maybe Raven was right about the pigtails after all.
“You’re beautiful,” Alex says, so simple, so blunt, like he's amazed she needs to hear it; she could never believe it was a lie. And where the hell does he get off, teasing her, bothering her, calling her Bigfoot and bozo and mad scientist, and now he calls her beautiful? Now, furry and blue, a monster, he calls her beautiful. It makes her angry - so angry she feels the edge of the lab table crumple under her hand. This isn't a fairy tale. He is not the good prince, and Hank knows of no kiss in the world that would turn her back, that could make her human again, and the thought makes her eyes water.
"Go away," she says, horrified that her anger has so suddenly dissolved to tears. "Please, just --"
Somehow, Alex chooses this moment to stand his ground - no, to press forward - and in a fit of absolutely ridiculous bravery, he kisses her.
Hank isn't so socially inept that she's never been kissed. She was often an outsider, but there were others like her - those who didn't play by the rules, or who couldn't fit into them even if they'd wanted to. And there were bars, of course; alcohol makes Hank laugh, makes her want to be sociable. Makes her a little more forgiving, a little less paranoid. The kissing never went anywhere, really. She could never forget herself that much.
And that's the thing - Alex makes her forget. He makes her forget the sharpness of her teeth, the yellow of her eyes. He makes her forget that she's taller than him, now, larger. Strangely graceful, but still huge, hulking, so unfeminine that Hank, who never put much stock into such things, feels doubly awkward. He makes her forget herself, and that's no small feat. She forgets what it means, Alex kissing her; and she's left with only knowing what it feels like.
It is like a fairy tale, she thinks wildly, maybe not how Villeneuve or Beaumont would have written it, but in some ways the metaphor still holds. The whole thing is unbelievable, archetypal, with a moral sewn into it somewhere. She might play the noble savage, he may yet be her spoiled prince, and they probably both have their lessons to learn.
She has a lot of things to learn, she's beginning to understand.
"Hank," he says, smiling, and she knows he's looking right at her.