Memories
Bad Patient
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Akira lay on the bed, with the bandages strapped around her eyes.
"Dr McCoy, I assure you that I am fine. I am disrupting the neural signals that make me feel pain and I really want to talk to Dr Banner."
"Absolutely not, my dear girl. You've suffered a great deal of blood loss and your brain is still adjusting to its new, rather spectacular method of input."
"But I wanted to talk to Dr Banner about wave-particle duality!"
Beast sighed and quickly injected something into the drip that led into Akira's arm. She paused, her head tilted slightly and then she slumped backwards and her head hit the pillow. Beast sighed.
"You, my dear, are going to be a difficult patient, I can just tell."
That was when Zillah's determined attempts to get into the medical bay paid off and she jumped in through the window.
"Akira, I'm here!"
Beast groaned and sat down.
"Scratch that. You and your friend are going to be very difficult patients and visitors and my fur will go grey again."
Zillah staggered up and raised a hand.
"I'm here…"
And then –due to her having not slept for eighteen hours and having used her head as a battering ram to get into the medical bay with the anti-teleportation shields up- she flopped over onto her face. Beast picked her up and quickly put her on the bed next to Akira, before sticking an ice-pack on her head.
"You, my dear, are very much like your mother."
Pleased to hear it.
He whipped around. There was a figure made of fire and she was standing just that little bit too close to Kurt's bed.
"I must make the request that you step away from Nightcrawler, Madam Hamavet."
The black flames twitched and the angel of death took three steps away.
Is this far enough?
"Not exactly. Now would you care to tell me why you're here?"
Oh, officially, I'm here to pick up a couple of ants from the garden. What? They deserve personal attention too! But I thought I'd drop in to say hello and that I wasn't too badly damaged in the fight with Dark Dragon. Also, you may be interested to know that Mr Wagner appears to have vanished from my files.
Beast blinked. Etana –the Malach Hamavet –whatever she was- was leaning against the wall and seemed rather too relaxed.
"What would that mean?"
For all intents and purposes, he's immortal. He can't die.
Hank's fur bristled.
"That's not living! He can't respond to anything, Etana! If he's going to be like this forever, then what's the point of me even keeping him on the ventilators?"
A wry smile slid across the face and there was a flash of white, like teeth.
I wouldn't give up hope just yet.
And then she vanished, but not before leaving a small silver coin, emblazoned with a winged sword and the words Noli Timere Mortem. Beast's Latin came back to him. Fear Not Death. He brushed a finger over it and little fiery words appeared.
To call the Malach Hamavet, apply one drop of blood. Three uses.
He moved over and pressed the intercom to Logan.
"We've just had a rather deathly guest, Logan. She's left you a present."
Death glowered at Phoenix and the masked woman, neither who could quite bear to meet her eyes.
"You knew! All this time, you've known she's been going behind my back! Helping them! Why…! Why…! I'm going to have to promote her again, aren't I?"
Phoenix giggled.
"And she'll hate you for it."
Strange leant back.
"It's a rather interesting little trinket. It already has all the spells to bind her to the coin and simply requires the blood sacrifice of the actual ritual. The ritual has been started three times, hence the limit."
Logan frowned.
"So what will happen if…?"
"If you give the blood sacrifice? Well, according to all the books, she should appear, be bound to the coin until you see fit to release her and will be forced to answer any and all questions honestly."
"And? What's the catch?"
"This is the Malach Hamavet we're talking about. The angel who appears behind the magician to go "Boo!" I doubt she'll allow you to summon her so casually. In fact, there are probably hundreds of safeguards built in to prevent such a thing happening."
Logan groaned.
"This is Etana. Make that a few thousand safeguards."
Strange sighed.
"I wish I had got to know her. From what I gather, she had a rather interesting relationship with many prior Sorcerer Supremes."
"You mean she was the one who rammed their heads through a wall if they turned bad? Yep."
"I refer more to the fact she had a repository of ancient books, including Merlin's Ironbound Book of Skelos."
Logan paused.
"Would that be a great big book, in black metal, with an odd white seven-point star on it? Great big clasps? Padlocks?"
Strange slowly nodded.
"Have… Have you seen it?"
Logan nodded, his face beginning to split into a huge grin.
"For at least the last hundred years, it's been used as a doorstop in Etana's Eyrie."
The look on Strange's face, captured forever on security videos, was voted the Avengers Funniest Reaction of All Time.
Death waved a hand, causing the images to stop. Then she laughed.
"Can you frame that for me? Morty would love it."
"Oh yes. I'd forgotten his and Stephen's little rivalry."
Zillah was discharged the next morning, when she was proved free of concussion but laden with a week of detention and a lecture from both Beast and Logan. Hank's had been in the vein of "You could have severely injured Akira in your foolhardy attempts to get into the Medical Bay" and was essentially a guilt-trip. Logan had resorted to threats. It was under question which had been more successful.
Akira, on the other hand, was still under general anaesthetic. Hank was trying everything, even going so far as attempting to grow clone eyeballs, but every time he brought the transplants within a foot of her face, they exploded into a cloud of what spectroscopy revealed to be helium. Somehow, even while unconscious, Akira was responding to the attempts to heal her with a certain level of unhappiness. And then Beast paused from his attempts to create the third set of eyes.
Akira's powers had been killing her. She'd not been able to understand the level on which they worked. And now she did, although at the cost of her own sight. She wasn't going to be killed by them anymore…
Hank put down the petri dishes. And then he moved over, removed the bandages and began cleaning the ripped skin of the eyesockets. Then he'd need Pym Particles to get down and do the work really neatly and Akira's eyes would be similar to Blindfold's. Empty indentations, but not tatters of flesh. Cosmetic, mainly but it would make life a little easier for the girl. Little easier! A joke! She was a mutant, therefore a target. She was possibly one of the most powerful mutants ever born, therefore an even bigger target. And she would never fight back, therefore the target on her was so huge, it dwarfed her.
He sighed as he continued his work. Maybe, when Akira was older, humanity would be able to give her the recognition he himself had been denied as a scientific thinker. After all, his generation wasn't very good when it actually came to fixing problems. Hopefully the next, lead by Akira and the Cho boy, could change that.
"Yes, Reed and the others were pretty useless when it came to actually solving the world's problems."
"Sorry, they had to deal with Dr Doom and the like every other day!"
"So did Thinktank, and they still revolutionised human understanding of the universe."
"You're just proud because they're your little pet project."
"And rightly so, Phoenix. In five years, the Thinktank Project almost doubled the human understanding of quantum mechanics, probability theory, the building blocks of life and the applications of coffee in a scientific environment."
"Death, you always take her side!"