Cold Comfort, Part I: Beginnings
Webster's Dictionary:
cold comfort
quite limited sympathy, consolation, or encouragement
Six Years Old
The boy marked his color-testing page with the yellow-orange crayon. Nope, that wasn't it. Furrowing his brow, he dug through the colors again. Hmmm, mac and cheese. He liked mac and cheese but doubted the color would be right. Marking the test page again, he nodded. His suspicions were confirmed. That wouldn't work, either. Another forage through the shoe box of crayons produced burnt orange. That sounded perfect! The test was disappointing, though–too brown. The boy rubbed the tip of his nose before scrounging though the colors again. A flash of bright orange caught his eye and he pulled out a flame orange triumphantly. His eyes lit up as he marked the test page. Perfect!
He bent over the page he was coloring, frowning in concentration, the tip of his tongue sticking out of his mouth. The only things left on the picture were the flames and he wanted them perfect, like the rest of the picture. He carefully streaked in the orange color over the yellow and reds he'd already laid down.
The fire emanated from a ferocious dragon. He'd colored it dark green and black with red-orange eyes and blood staining one claw. He knew that St. George defeated the dragon (of course he did, he was the knight), but figured the dragon had been fierce and would've drawn blood at least once before his destruction.
On the other side of the flames was St. George–a strong-looking knight with bright silver armor, holding a large shield in front of him that the fire licked against in an effort to destroy the hero. The boy impatiently brushed a strand of brown hair out of his eyes and added another streak of orange in the center of the flame.
This was one of John's favorite stories. St. John was his full name but he'd never liked it. It reminded him of the old, gaunt-looking men in the pictures at church. Weak and sickly-looking, he thought. And then Grandma sat him down one day (was he 3 at the time? musta been 3 or 4) and read to him the story of St. George and the dragon. St. George, the hero. He was proud of his name after that, never dreaming that saints could be so...you know, cool.
They'd gone onto other stories after that–King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, and Merlin the magician. He always thought his father must be a knight of some sort. Maybe he disguised himself in suits and ties but surely he was a knight underneath it all.
He told his Grandma that one day when he was four, sitting on her lap after hearing about the Lady of the Lake. She laughed that crackly but wonderful laugh that John loved. It sounded even better knowing he'd been the cause. A cocky little grin lifted the corners of his mouth, which seemed to delight his grandmother even more. When she finished laughing, she explained to John what daddy did. He worked in a laboratory with chemicals and spent his time figuring out how to make medicines that would help people get better, among other things.
"Potions!" John exclaimed, bouncing on grandma's lap. She smiled at him, watching his precocious mind put this new information together. It clicked.
"He's like Merlin!" John said excitedly, his eyes bright as he considered how awesome it was to be a wizard. "Can daddy do magic?"
The last streak of orange had been added and the colored picture was complete. Daddy was going to love this. John smiled smugly, then his face clouded as he thought of Grandma. He'd gotten the coloring book last week for his 6th birthday. The next day, Grandma went to the hospital. No one said much to him about her but he could tell it was bad. Maybe he should give her the picture. It might make her feel better.
John chewed on his bottom lip while contemplating his problem. Daddy would be home very soon and he may not see Grandma for a couple of days, but he just knew that if he could give her a pretty picture like this, it would help her feel better and remember to fight. His face cleared as he figured out the solution. He would give this one to Daddy since he would be home soon and make another one to take to Grandma at their next visit. With that decided, John stood up just as the door opened and his father walked in.
"Daddy!" he shouted, excited. Still clutching the crayon, John ran towards his father to give him a big hug.
Almost immediately, his father shouted, "STOP!!" putting a hand up, as if to fend him off. John froze in shock, his eyes wide. He'd been in trouble before, had his father yell at him but never like that, in a voice that seemed to be saying so much more than the simple word conveyed. Something stirred in the pit of his stomach and John held his breath, waiting to see what would happen. His mother came into the living room from the kitchen, the scent of some delicious supper following behind her through the door. Her steps faltered as she looked intensely at his father.
"Did you get it?" she whispered, a look of dread on her face. His father nodded curtly, his face grim. Setting down his briefcase, he pulled out a folded paper from his inner jacket pocket and handed it to her. She glanced at John briefly before slowly opening the folded paper and reading it. John heard his mother's sharp intake of breath and watched as she seemed to read over the page several times before her hands dropped in front of her, still clutching the paper.
When he couldn't hold his breath any longer, John started breathing as quietly as possible, still hoping he wouldn't attract his parents' attention. This was huge, whatever it was, and very bad. John could tell that is was bad by the ugly feeling in his stomach. Neither of his parents would look at him. His mother was staring at a point on the wall behind him and father was staring at her.
John looked back and forth between his two parents, trying to put it all together without enough information. Something was wrong. Something was wrong with him. A scary thought struck him–what if he was sick? His father worked making medicine for sick people. What if John had a sickness that couldn't be cured? What if he could make other people sick by touching them? That would explain why his father had yelled at him when he came home. Then the scariest thought of all hit him–what if he couldn't ever touch his parents again?
His heart began to race uncomfortably and his breathing became shallow. "Mommy?" he whispered timidly.
His father just looked at him sharply and turned back to his mother, putting his arm around her shoulders.
"Could this..." His mother faltered, then cleared her throat and started again, stronger, "Could this test be...wrong?" she ended in a whisper, tears filling her eyes.
His father shook his head firmly and said a terse, "No," his jaw clenching as he looked over the top of his wife's head. "The genes don't lie. The test is accurate, as well. We've performed it on a number of proven cases. Once we recognized that it was paternal, it didn't take long to produce a method for determining whether a man carried the gene or not. I definitely carry..."
But she never let him finish his statement. John flinched as his mother raised her fist and hit his father on the chest. Then again with the other fist, the crumpled paper barely missing his father's chin. She kept hitting him over and over and yelling at him all the while.
"Make it go away! Fix it! This is what you do at work all day–research this problem..." she spat out the word "problem" as if it tasted bad, "...and figure out how to fix it. So FIX IT!!" She screamed the last so loudly that John involuntarily stepped back, flinching again, his little stomach tying into knots. His father grabbed his mother's hands, finally stopping her from hitting him more.
"We're working on it!" he said, still struggling a little with John's mother as she tried to strike him again with her fists. "But there's nothing we can do right now. There are at least four facilities worldwide working on this and ours is just one of them. We'll figure it out eventually."
"Eventually," she hissed at his father, her eyes narrowed in anger. "Eventually is too late. We're already stuck with that!" she said wildly, vaguely waving her hand toward John. John caught his breath and held it again. Not understanding what his mother was saying, he glanced back fearfully, half-expecting to see some kind of monster behind him. There was nothing there but the wall. What if the monster were inside of him? He felt the darkness inside stir again, something black and cold and scary.
Shivering, he turned back as he heard his mother wail, "We'll never have a normal child, will we?!" before collapsing into his father's arms, sobbing.
His father finally looked at him and John felt like he'd been punched in the gut. The look on his father's face was anger, disgust, and...fear? As if John had suddenly turned into that ferocious dragon and would start spitting fire at them at any moment. As if John was the monster.
John stood transfixed, his eyes still wide, heart pounding and breath ragged. His father turned away and led his mother from the living room and down the hall, neither of them looking back even once.
The flame orange crayon dropped to the ground and rolled across the floor, coming to rest gently beside a crumpled up piece of paper.
A/N: I've got the greatest betas ever!! Thanks to Calibama and schwimmschik for making me look good.
Disclaimer: As I matter of fact, I do own X-men. And little gnomes come and dance in my room every night by the light of the moon. Dance, little gnomes, dance.