Chapter 5: Bluebeard
Jenna woke in a metal chamber. She guessed that they must have been moved while they slept. This was a surprise for several reasons: 1) there had only been a couple weeks between this and the gingerbread house while normally nearly a month passed between major incidents, and 2) they had not been chased or starved here but now had been transported into the trial itself. Panic clawed it's way up her body, grabbing at her throat. Change here was only ever bad.
There was one door and it was unlocked. This door led to a stone hallway lined with heavy wooden doors on each side. Walking forward, she noticed that keys stuck out of the locks of each. A familiar coat of arms decorated each door and Jenna began to feel sick. At the far end of the hallway facing her, another opened and Hank wandered out.
"Henry?" she called to him. They started toward one another but the doors closest to each of them snapped open, blocking the hallway so much that there was no way of getting past them, forcing each of them into their own room.
"Jenna!" Hank called to her, leaning around his door to look at her. "What fairy tale is this?"
Jenna swallowed hard. "Bluebeard's castle…"
"What is it that we are to do here?"
"In the fairy tale, Bluebeard has his dead wives locked behind a door…"
Hank realized the way this was likely to play out and he felt a surge of fear. "We'll just have to go through. Wait for one another in the hall, alright?"
"Of course."
And they moved into their respective rooms. The doors slammed, and there was silence.
An hour passed before Hank stumbled out of his room and collapsed in the hall. He had been trapped once again in his feline form and his friends had been shattered and torn limb from limb. He was barely able to piece them each back together with his horrible, massive hands. It had been a psychologically horrifying experience and he was relieved to see his own more primate hands once again.
A reek of incense flooded his nostrils and Jenna fell out of her door, kicking it shut behind her. She lay where she had landed, face down on the floor and breathing heavily.
"Jenna?" Hank called to her. After his own trials he could only imagine what hers must have been.
She rolled onto her side and looked at him intensely. She needed to survive this and if she did… she needed to tell him everything. Jenna hauled herself up and approached the next door.
"Come on, Henry. We can do this."
There were five doors total and each led to a personal demon that they had to face. The struggles became more and more unendurable, until they both lay in the hall recovering before their final doors. Neither had any sense of time anymore. Hank's arm was broken, and Jenna was coughing up water, half drowned.
"Jenna…" Hank murmured.
"Yes?" she rasped in reply.
"I'm afraid this may be the end."
"No…" she moaned in reply. "Not like this. I need to tell you …"
Hank's heart skipped a beat as he waited for her to finish her thought.
"I need to tell you so much."
"Jenna?"
"Yes?"
"You're incredibly important to me. You should know that."
She sat up and their eyes met.
"Come on," she said, struggling to her feet. "This is the last door."
They both entered their rooms. Darkness engulfed them as the doors slammed shut behind them.
Jenna froze waiting for a light to come on. Stumbling forward, she followed the wall on her right. It was completely disorienting, but eventually a light snapped on. Rubbing her eyes in the new brilliance, she saw Hank standing across the room from her. Her heart began to slam in her chest as she looked at him. Nothing good could come of this.
"Jenna?" he asked quietly.
"Yes?"
His expression darkened. "You are not Jenna," he growled, advancing on her with increasing speed.
Jenna tried to make up her mind about what to do as he approached her, tensing up for an attack. Could this really be Hank and would he truly kill her? She ducked around him and ran to the other side of the room they were in, though it was deceptively small. To her dismay he began to bound after her on all fours, bearing his teeth.
If she did not fight back, she would be killed (that much was clear as he flung his whole body at her, forcing her to roll away) and what then?
Jenna dogged a swipe, but his claws raked her leg and she cried out in pain.
"Hank, it's me!" she cried, hoping to gauge him or sway his course of action.A final question flashed blindingly through her brain: was it worth surviving without him?
"I don't care how much you plead or bleed. I know you are not real."
And he lunged for Jenna once again.
Only ten minutes later, Jenna stood over the corpse of Hank McCoy and debated plunging the knife into her own chest. It had been sheer luck that she had been the one with the knife when they had been trapped here and more luck still that she had beaten Hank at all. Their fight had been too close. She was only now regaining her hearing after a slap in the head that burst her eardrum and she had bite marks healing along the back of her neck, just to name a few of her injuries.
Tears welled up in her eyes as she thought about how she needed to explain — bear her soul — to Hank. If she had killed him…
She had to drag the body away from the door to leave the room. There was no one in the hall. The door slammed shut behind her and she pounded on it for several minutes to no avail. The silence in the hall was horrifying and her ragged breathing was deafening.
Sliding down the wall, she felt her legs giving out. There was nowhere to go and no further threats would arise. She slumped over and fell into a deathlike sleep.
Hank opened the door into the hall an hour later to find a scene very similar to the one he had left behind. While his ordeal had been a bit more involved, it had ended with the same central conflict: killing Jenna. This would have been simple had he not been suffering a broken arm and facing someone he cared deeply about; he had prayed it was mere illusion but she was so convincingly like Jenna. And now to see her lying prone in the hall like this… They had survived time and time again, but Hank never took for granted the fact that he could turn his back or fall asleep or look away for a moment and in that moment she would be dead.
Jenna woke to someone shaking her desperately. Eyes focusing on Hank's battered face, she threw herself into his arms and held him tightly. Hank sank down beside her, pulling her into his lap with his good arm. Jenna felt hot tears pouring down her cheeks and realized after a few moments that Hank was crying as well. He would not meet her eyes, and she was filled with an emotion somewhat foreign to her.
Hank's lip had been split open in the second to last door and Jenna leaned up and pressed her lips to the injury. Hank froze, uncertain of how to respond. Once again, he knew what he wanted, but this time he was not physically capable and his emotional fragility frightened him. When her tongue traced his lip, he closed his eyes, biting back a moan.
Jenna felt him freeze up and knew this was the worst time for such a big risk. Once his lip had healed she pulled away and got to her feet, helping him up as well.
A door opened at the far end of the hall and they stumbled toward it, injured and half dead with exhaustion. They found themselves in the basement of a castle and made their way up and through the stone halls, until at last they found an enormous bed. They collapsed in it together, falling asleep instantly.
Hank woke gradually, realizing he was deeply hungry. His arm was outside of the covers and bore a scar from a knife wound; the bone hurt but was set, so he imagined this was Jenna's doing.
Jenna. Where was she?
He snapped his eyes open and saw her writing at a nearby table, wrapped in a thick smoking jacket that was almost comically big on her. She had healed nicely, though he could see ragged teeth marks on her neck that were too alarmingly similar to his own. He concluded, correctly, her own final trial must have been the same as his. Hank pushed the meaning of this out of his brain, not wanting to be the scientist in these matters.
Jenna looked up and smiled brilliantly at him. "Good evening, Henry. You've been out for two days."
He sat up and patted the bed beside him; she climbed into bed with him and they curled themselves around one another. Jenna grew soothingly warm as he held her.
"It's how I heal," Hank answered her. "Deep, regenerative sleep."
"Hungry?"
"Starving." Then he laughed cynically.
"What?"
"When I was younger, my grandparents would scold me for saying I was starving. They remembered the Depression and they told me I should never say such a thing, that I would never be starving. Do you think I've earned the right yet?"
Jenna disentangled herself from him and looked him in the eyes. She wanted to tell him that she had starved in so many ways for so much of her life, but she needed to wait, to tell him once and with everything in order.
"I'll bring up some food. There doesn't seem to be any threat here right now."
They ate in silence, sitting across from one another at the desk, and Jenna worked her way through three glasses of wine in fifteen minutes before Hank cut her off.
"I need to tell you about myself. I need you to know," Jenna said, slurring slightly. She could only get buzzed if she drank fast otherwise her body fought it off, and she needed all the help she could get for this.
"Are you sure?"
"I wrote it down, Henry. I want to read it to you."
Looking over at the pages she had written while he was sleeping, he realized he had never before seen her handwriting; there was so much he did not know about her, and he wanted to know.
When Jenna saw he was not going to argue with her, she settled back and began to read.
"I grew up in the Church of Humanity."
Hank leaned forward.
"My father was a deacon and then a priest and finally drew so much attention that he was offered the position of Purifier. We moved to one of their Arizona camps when I was in seventh grade. You can imagine my surprise when I began to prove capable of healing beyond what was normal, beyond what was human. It was credited to divine causes because it was thoroughly useful, but I knew what I was when I stopped feeling hot or cold. Why would God give such a pointless gift?"
She took a deep breath and turned the page over, her hand shaking so much the paper rattled loudly.
"I was pulled out of school. To this day I only have an eighth grade education; everything else I know has been self-taught. I was pulled out of school and placed as a permanent healer for the military troops of the Purifiers. When they were brought back after campaigns against my own kind, I was to heal them. I did so, hoping that healing them would put to good use the abominable corruption in my genetics that I had been cursed with, that maybe God would forgive me for being a mutant if I helped His servants. I was in eighth grade and I healed men who had been shot, cleaved in the face, burned… I quickly learned my powers did not extend to the dead. Mercifully, I had been spared the ability to resurrect or I would have shot myself in the head."
Hank felt himself holding his breath as she read and told himself to exhale.
"I wanted to leave, but my whole family was there and I did not know any other way of life. I loved my family and they had raised me in this world. I now realize this was a cult, but I truly believed that we were the only ones holding back the darkness. I had been told about how those who left would fall to their doom and I had seen how those who tried to escape were punished…"
Hank watched as she began to cry. He could not imagine how this could possibly get worse but he knew it must; he remembered the scar and the stretch marks.
"When I was twenty, my family told me that as the oldest I needed to set a good example and marry well within the Purifiers. I thought that maybe a good marriage could save me from my private hell, bring me someone who I could turn to. I had always wanted a family…" She broke off, her voice cracking too much to speak for a few minutes. Finally, she continued: "The man was twenty-eight and… sexually experienced. I was a virgin and knew nothing about sex; our marriage was the worst part of my life to date, including this nightmare. He impregnated me as soon he could though he had no success for over two years and cursed and hit me for it regularly; I was relieved that the pregnancy gave me some respite from his advances and made him somewhat more tender toward me. Stupidly, I believed that maybe a child could bring us together and save me."
Hank's heart broke as he watched Jenna stop reading entirely and cover her face with her hands as she cried. For the second time, Hank began to cry as well.
"I lost my baby boy," Jenna finally continued. "He was fine and then he was dead. I had never known a baby could just die in the eight month like that. I went to the hospital and when they induced, my uterus ruptured. They controlled the bleeding and my body healed itself, but I never wanted to hurt that deeply ever again. They knew where I was from and they could see the scars on my palms; they wanted to save me in the only way they were able and so I had a hysterectomy. My husband saw no further use for me if I could not bear children and when we got home he tried to beat me. I grabbed a knife and swore I would kill him and there would be no one to heal him or save him if I did. He knew I was serious and since we could not divorce we lived completely separate lives. He had open affairs, bringing women home in front of me, and my family refused to speak to me any longer. From their perspective, my life had fallen apart and it was my fault."
The worst over and the wine wearing off, Jenna dried her eyes and continued.
"The day I turned twenty-five, after my husband slept off yet another affair, I stole his uniform and left the compound. I made it to Tucson and shaved my head and left my birth name behind. This started my era of what could informally be called going batshit crazy. I hitchhiked around the country, waitressed to pay for booze, and slept with anyone who would show me the kindness my life had lacked for so long. Magneto found me bar-keeping at a club in Manhattan; he proposed I join them, promising a life among my own kind, and I accepted and never looked back."
Jenna let the last sheet of paper fall from her hands to join the others on the floor. "By the time Jono spoke to me, I had realized that Magneto was only shades better than the Purifiers. The X-men came for me at night and took me to the school. And the rest is history."
Their eyes met and Jenna began to panic. Maybe that was too much; maybe this was the sort of thing no one should ever know.
Slowly, Hank walked around the desk and took her hands in his, gently pulling her to her feet; Jenna stood in front of him and he took her chin in his hand.
"I'm so sorry," he breathed, his voice rough with raw emotion. "I don't even have the words…"
Jenna felt relief flood through her, combined with exhaustion. She leaned against him and Hank picked her up and carried her to the bed. He gently tucked her in and then climbed in next to her. Jenna rolled over to face him, her brilliant green eyes searching his face.
"Just sleep," Hank murmured. "I am not going anywhere." Then he leaned over and kissed her gently at the corner of her lips.
Jenna burrowed into his arms and fell deeply asleep.
Hank's attitude toward her went from playful and close to explosively intimate. He understood her so much better now and he admired her even more than he had before. Jenna noticed that he joked with her on a deeper level — making playful jabs at some of the things she had told him — and that he held her more often and stayed with her almost all of the time. She felt closer to him than ever before. Jono knew she had grown up with the Purifiers, but knew nothing of her marriage or her baby. She had never confided these things in anyone before and Hank had not rejected her.
And Beast reciprocated. He told her of how he and Abigail had met, and his epic failure in following Abigail into space. All Jenna had known, as she had made clear in their early fights, was that he had been dumped by a chick with green hair when he was living in space.
"You mean," Jenna asked skeptically, "that you moved into space for your hook up?"
Hank blushed but was determined to be as honest with her as she had been with him. "Yes. Which makes it no wonder that we did not work out. But…"
Jenna had already heard about Trish and she had been able to extrapolate from there. "But that isn't how you really do relationships, is it?"
"No," Hank agreed, looking her deep in the eyes. "It's not."
Jenna blushed and looked away. She knew where they both wanted this to go, especially now, but it was terrifying.
About two weeks after Jenna told Hank her past, they were both curled up in the castle library, where they had made a nest of blankets and pillows from the other rooms.
"You sure you don't need a shorter book?" he teased her gently as she worked her way through Jane Eyre. She threw a pillow at his head and grinned.
"Anything you can read, I can read faster," she teased back.
"You do have an incredible reading speed…" Hank agreed. "They teach you that in eighth grade?"
Jenna laughed aloud. She had never been able to make these jokes before, to tease and be teased about the things in her life that were truly absurd. She leaned against Hank, and he pulled her into the basket of his crossed legs, wrapping himself almost completely around her.
Their eyes met and Hank's heart skipped a beat. She could laugh with him, even in all this misery; she had fought beside him for almost half a year now and had saved his life more times than he could count; she was tough and sharp with a softness that belied a huge heart. Hank felt his heart expand to encompass everything about this moment.
"I love you…"
He didn't realize he had said this until the words were out of his mouth.
They both froze.
Neither breathed.
Jenna's mind had shut off the moment the words made their way to her brain. She felt, above all, betrayed. She had relied on Hank to be a safe place for her; he had always been her haven from the constant struggle and turmoil of their lives. But now he had complicated everything with those words. Jenna had not thought of love in a long time. Hank's expression was now openly horrified as well, making it unclear how he himself felt about what he had said.
Jenna needed to react, so she simply got up and walked away.
Hank waited until she left before he calmly walked down into the basement. He found a room, closed the door, and began smashing everything he could lay hand to. How could he have said that?! His horror at saying this had consumed him almost instantly. He did love her but to blurt it out like that?! To drop it on her like a guillotine?! About the only thing he could have done that would have been worse would have been to propose during sex!
He paused in what he was doing. He did love her. Hank had not realized how much so until now, and now he wished he had told her differently. He could not have chosen a worse time if he had tried; he feared this could look horribly calculating after she had made herself so vulnerable to him. But it had welled up out of him so naturally it had been like saying the sky was blue…
That night they ate together as usual and completely ignored what Hank had said. Things carried on much as they had before; they needed one another deeply and neither would let anything come between them, not even something as honest as a declaration of the love that clearly flowed between them.
