Chapter 4
He barely had any clear memory from this time, the more he retrieved it from his brain, broken pieces, by broken pieces, he still couldn't believe it had happened. He always thought he exaggerated, that his mind had worked his way around to make it far darker in an attempt to explain and cope from the trauma.
Because clearly, he should have been dead. No human would have survived that. Even if he always remembered clearly enough some moment after, how his dislocated shoulder felt the next week, how his ribs were painful, staying sensible for months, years after, he didn't fake that. Nor how his mother took care of him over and over until he healed. This was real.
As real as his father repeating that he healed way too fast, and at the time Bruce had no idea how fast his injuries were supposed to heal.
Rebecca always said it was because the wounds were superficial. She told her husband that since he was drunk he didn't hit hard enough to make permanent damage or to actually kill him. Brian didn't believe it, but he was not sure. With what he had put this son through, he shouldn't be alive, so how could he, be alive ? Mutant or not Bruce should have died. So maybe, just maybe if he wasn't it was because Brian didn't put enough into it.
It had always confirmed Bruce idea of how his brain darkened the reality, when actually it wouldn't have been that bad.
How wrong he had been. His brain lightened his memory, he didn't make it darker.
At the instant he started to rethink his past this memory had been around, too blurry to actually offer him a real answer. So he asked the Professor X his help get this particular memory right and clear, he needed it. Charles accepted, understanding the quest Bruce recently took. So he did, he brought Bruce back at the root of the memory before it got altered by trauma and time.
Now what the physicist had in mind was cold hard fact, and clearly he should have died this time, there were no ways a human would have survived with what his father had put him through.
Humans couldn't survive to this kind of injury, a mutant with an appropriate mutation could have. He wanted to call the luck argument, just to fight the idea, but it was pointless and he remembered how Charles looked at him at the end. He understood, they both did know what this memory implied. And his eyes were a mix between apologize, sadness, hope and opening. Something Bruce couldn't accept at the moment.
This single memory was a sufficient proof of his mutant statute.
And it made Bruce feel awful.
He had made a safe retreat to his room and didn't get out since. A knock on the door caught his attention. He recognized Hank voice.
« Sorry to bother you, I heard that Charles helped you to go back on a memory. So I've taken the initiative to make a list of things you told me about you that were weird enough not to be human. Good night Bruce. »
He left after sliding the paper under the door. Bruce took it, but didn't read it.