Part Nineteen
A/N: Sorry, short chapter. But an important one!
Oh, and points for anyone who recognises what comic Bobby's reading.
Scott joined them in Hank's lab. Since the revelation of Bobby's affliction he'd been more awkward than usual, and his friends recognised it as a sign of how hurt he had been
by all the secrecy. This was the four of them: the first four X-men. Even Jean had come later. Bobby, completely iced up, found himself thinking that no matter how many fights or how far apart they were, nothing would be able to destroy that unique bond. Not even death.
Bobby was sitting on the bed. His legs were crossed at the ankles, and for once he wasn't swinging them back and forth like a bored school boy. He was wearing an old uniform, a very old uniform: a pair of small black shorts. Hank was at his equipment, rerunning tests he'd already done many times over. He still doubted, despite his confident assertions that had led them all here, the evidence before his eyes. Warren was standing next to him, pretending he wasn't watching each repeated experiment over Hank's shoulder. He looked a little pale, but whether it was from the blood he had given up or the tension that pervaded the room Bobby couldn't tell.
Scott was visible nervous, which Bobby found soothing, in an odd way. He'd been so bad at interacting with the others except in combat situations when they were younger. Skinny and twitchy and shy, overshadowed by Warren's self-confidence and egotism, Hank's intelligence and amiability, even Bobby's juvenile humour. And they'd loved him for it, and loved each other. Here he was, too shy to voice his pain but demonstrating with his presence that despite his discomfort he was here for Bobby.
Hank turned around, frowning and smiling simultaneously. Bobby wondered which of them would feel the greater failure if this didn't work. Hank would blame his skills as a physician, and Bobby and Warren would blame themselves, blame their biology. Hank could do more research, read more texts and consult more experts, but Warren and Bobby couldn't do a thing.
"I suggest, Robert, that you de-ice as far as is possible," Hank said, breaking a silence no one had even noticed. "We will be able to discern the effects that way."
Bobby nodded and took a deep breath, and concentrated. There was a mirror leaning against the wall, so he might see the effects, if there were any, for himself. He hopped off of the bed and walked over to it.
It was not a promising sight. His chest was completely ice and mostly translucent, only ghosts of a few organs remaining, deep in the centre of his body. Three fingers on his left hand were ice, as were both ankles and one foot. He couldn't blink properly because of the ice around his eyes, and even some of his hair was permanently ice now. He raised one of his few living fingers to touch the lobe of his left ear, also still flesh and... and water. Not blood.
He was still holding his breath, fighting to force his lungs to flesh again. Clumps of cells tried to do their job, but his heart was frozen and no blood was pumping. Pain clutched his chest, and Bobby realised with a shock that he was killing the few organs he had left. He didn't need his lungs to breathe: he absorbed oxygen with the water from the air. Of course, that didn't mean he wasn't still quite attached to them.
"Quickly," Bobby said, ice vocal chords producing crystalline tones.
Hank handed him the beaker of faintly pink liquid. Bobby held it, stared at it, mind blank. He couldn't for the life of him think of how to absorb it. It wasn't usually a conscious decision. What if he absorbed the water and not the blood? What if he turned it to ice?
Hank reached around him and looped a label around the beaker, letting it rest on Bobby's fingers. It looked like a gift label, white and pentagonal, tied on string. Bobby turned it over. It read: Drink Me.
"Are you sure I won't suddenly grow huge, and start chatting to caterpillars?" he asked, grinning broadly.
Hank held up a small cupcake, also pink, with Eat Me in icing on the top. Bobby laughed, throwing his head back. He showed the cupcake to Scott and Warren. Head still back, Bobby raised the beaker, toasted the room briefly, and threw the contents down his throat in one go. He screwed up his face and stuck out his tongue, wringing another laugh from the nervous crowd, and stuffed the cupcake into his mouth, swallowing it almost whole.
He lowered his head and met his eyes in the mirror. He could see both the bloody water and the muffin. He wondered if that had had blood in too.
"How do we know if it works?" Bobby asked. "I'm guessing it will take a while, and a bunch more doses, right?"
"Almost indubitably," Hank said. "My experiments have shown that the healing blood of our wingéd wonder removes the virulent strain in your own. At the very least, it should prevent any further progression."
Bobby stared at his reflection and wrapped his arms around himself. He knew that that was Hank's most pessimistic outcome, knew that the formula would probably do far more, but he still felt a burst of anger. It was too late for simply halting the disease! Why hadn't Hank tried this earlier? Why had Warren been so petty?
Bobby forced himself to lower his arms, and braced himself for hours of observation.
"Jean Paul Beaubier, B E A U B I E R." Jean Paul sighed and leant back in his chair. "I have rented from your company before."
Annie grabbed the back of his chair and forced it upright. Jean Paul hadn't even been aware he'd been tilting backwards. His feet were on his desk, resting on a phonebook. Papers were left ungraded, currently stacked on the floor. Lesson plans were two or three bullet points, involving videos, textbooks or worksheets Jean Paul had photocopied from a textbook. The door was still open to students, and certain nurses, but no one stayed long.
Annie walked around and sat on the desk, willing to wait patiently for Jean Paul to finish his call. Willingness that was not shared.
"No, I will not hold," Jean Paul snapped, and slammed the phone down.
"It's so hard to find good help these days," Annie sighed, rolling her eyes.
Jean Paul didn't seem to appreciate the joke.
"I wish to be away from here as soon as possible," he said. "This institute depresses me! It is bad for my health. I shall take your earlier advice, my friend, and travel to some exotic island overflowing with nubile young men, and I simply will not come back."
"I'll miss you," Annie offered.
Jean Paul sighed heavily. "And I you," he said with a dismissive wave, leaving Annie feeling slightly insulted. "I just can not bear to be here any longer."
"You're running from Bobby," Annie told him. "You can't deny that. Don't even try."
"Of course I am," Jean Paul said. "But," and he held up a finger, "I was contemplating leaving long before I even began dating him. I was contemplating leaving from the moment I arrived. I was guilted into starting here, manipulated with the death of a child. I ask myself: is that the sort of institute I wish to work for? Are the sort of people who employ that sort of tactic the people I wish to associate myself with? Non, Annie, non. There are a few people here, a very few, whose company I have not only tolerated but sought out. And I will continue to seek out," he finished, finger dropping and shoulders drooping. "I shall really, truly miss you, Annie."
Annie leant over and gave him a one armed hug, trying not to fall off of the table. Jean Paul helped her balance again.
"Where are you going to go? What are you going to do?" she asked, trying to make sure it sounded like curiosity and concern, rather than an attempt to dissuade him from leaving.
"I shall first, if the universe permits, find an apartment, a modern penthouse with beautiful views and a minimum of two guest bedrooms, somewhere in Quebec. I am struggling to care where any more," he said, gesturing towards the phone with an expression of disgust. "I shall contact Alpha Flight, though I have no intention of rejoining. However, it will give me an opportunity to reconnect with some old friends. And then, chere, I shall find my sister."
"It's a good plan," Annie said, keeping the defeat from her voice.
Jean Paul picked up a pen and began doodling circles on the open phone book. "No, it is not," he said. "It is a way of avoiding Bobby. It may accomplish a few good things, but nothing I could not accomplish without leaving here. And, I will be lonely."
"You have plenty of friends in Canada, Jean Paul."
"No, I do not. I have burnt many bridges. Some simply by moving here. I have acquaintances, and with work I could reform friendships, but with my moods and feelings now I shall be quite incapable of that, as you well know. I shall snap and snark and be cruel to everyone until my misery is quite justified. Which is why," he said, pulling the phone book towards him and scribbling over the companies he had already tried, "I must have the most perfect apartment. I must have a new and beautiful car. Expensive clothes that make me look even more beautiful than my car. I must have substitutes!" He threw the phone book across the room.
"You don't have to go," Annie told him, climbing off of the desk to give him a proper hug. Jean Paul pulled her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her waist. "You can cope with this, Jean Paul, I know you can. I know you will be healthier for it in the long run, too. It is possible to survive having your heart broken. I'm here for you. I love you."
"I love you too," Jean Paul said, pressing his head against her shoulder. "But I can not stay. I can not sit and watch him die, Annie. I have watched too many people I love die."
Annie squeezed him tightly. She had no argument for that.
Bobby was flipping through an old comic book Scott had brought for him, complete with ice-powered chicks. A superhero team visiting hell, a fiery female dooming her ice maiden friend by looking back. Bobby could feel the eyes of his friends on him.
"Shouldn't he have digested it by now?" Warren asked for the seventeenth time. Bobby ignored him. He had retreated to a chair in the corner of the room, no longer able to look at his reflection. He could still see his 'meal' sitting in his stomach, a trail of pink down his chest and a faint blur in his abdomen. There was the occasional promising tendril, but nothing had changed in hours.
"If we base Bobby's absorption rate on a human biological model," Hank began, like he had the last four times. Bobby figured he was just trying to irritate Warren now. "... then yes, he should have."
That was new. Bobby's head snapped around. He stood up, leaving the half read comic in his seat. He stepped towards Hank, as did Scott. Warren didn't move, but his attention was a lot more focused.
Hank had apparently prepared himself for this level of attention. His shoulders were thrown back and his posture reminded Bobby of the human Hank, star quarterback rather than science geek. Bobby could feel reactions drilled into him more than a decade ago try and take over, waiting for the ball to come hurtling his way.
"Even if we base it on convection rates and the absorptive properties of impure ice, well," Hank spread his huge paws. "I believe the effects should be manifest by now."
"So why aren't they?" Bobby asked plaintively.
Hank tapped his claws on the table. Warren stepped forwards then, almost a blur, and went for Hank's paw. He pressed it flat on the table and glowered at Hank, who returned the look with a predatory smirk. Warren withdrew his hand quickly.
"Maybe they are," Hank said, turning to Bobby. "You do not absorb non-aqueous substances particularly well. Some of the tests we have been doing recently showed that quite definitely. I suspect the suspension has not been absorbed past the closest cells."
"So..." Bobby waved a hand. He stood in front of the mirror again, staring at the pink shadow of his digestive system. Was this it? A pink shadow?
"So," said Hank slowly, "looking at all of the available evidence, and working with current theories...That colour, dear Robert, is not the suspension at all. Those are your cells, returning to life."
"Woohooo!"