Hank was still bristling as he sat down – and not just in the literal sense, he thought cynically. Erik could always rile him, even when he wasn't in the kind of mood that he was in today. He would never understand why Charles had thrown himself in front of that bullet, taken the fate that should have been Erik's. Hank's was an orderly, balanced mind, and it offended his sense of proportion - Charles, who had so much to offer, left in a wheelchair while Erik, who was nothing but bad news in a pretty package, got to walk around upsetting everyone, manipulating people, and somehow even after everything he'd done get the lion's share of Charles's love. It just wasn't right.
Hank knew he was bitter, but he couldn't help it. So much had gone wrong in the last few months. For a brief while last year his quiet, drab life – a life spent simultaneously hiding and compensating for his deformity – had burst into spectacular colour, had seemed to bloom with possibility. He had friends who knew of and even appreciated his talents; a mentor he could like and respect; a beautiful woman had practically been throwing herself at him; and most excitingly of all, he had made a breakthrough he thought would cure him forever of the mutation that had blighted his life.
But nothing had worked out as it should have. Their nascent little family had been torn apart – Darwin's death, Angel's defection, Erik's selfish pursuit of vengeance and the result of Charles's maiming. Raven had pulled away from him when he had offered her what he had thought they both wanted – the chance to live a normal life – and now she had embraced life as Mystique. And worst of all, the serum he had thought would cure his ugly feet had instead turned him into a hairy blue freak, who couldn't even go outside without wearing a crash helmet. He couldn't stand to look in the mirror. He couldn't stand to be around Mystique, and hear her going on about being 'mutant and proud'. It was so much easier for her - she could look normal any time she liked. And she didn't have any parents.
Hank tried to shake that last thought off, to concentrate on what Madeline said. She was a dark, pretty girl with the greenest eyes he'd ever seen, peering out from under heavy bangs; but he couldn't help noticing she was missing a finger. She was smiling at him as if they were already the best of friends. It was like she hadn't noticed yet what he looked like, but Hank was well aware that was impossible.
"Dr. McCoy? Thank you so much for agreeing to tutor me. I promise, I'll learn really fast. I don't want to take up all of your time - I'm sure you have a lot of things to do."
"That's fine, really, I'm happy to. I used to work for the CIA, so I'm kind of at a loose end compared to what I'm used to. And please, just call me Hank. Dr. McCoy's my father's name." She nodded eagerly, then seemed to double-take.
"Oh yeah – the professor said you had gone home to visit your parents, that you wouldn't be back for a few days more. How come you're back so soon?"
Hank's face fell, his mouth twisting bitterly. "Yeah well, it turned out to be a much shorter visit than I'd planned." He had gone home to tell his parents what had happened to him. It had been the professor who'd advised him he should get it over with – Hank had been so stressed out avoiding their phone calls he'd started shedding on the furniture. Growing up with his feet had been bad enough – a lot of Hank's compulsion to over-achieve stemmed from a desperate desire to please his parents, to make up for the fact they had a mutant for a son. What would their reaction be when they found that through his own stupidity, he now looked like a monster from a fairy story?
Xavier had been optimistic. "Your parents love you, Hank – even if they don't always do it very well. That won't have changed just because you're a little bit – enhanced. You should try and have more faith in people. After all, they raised a wonderful son – they must be pretty decent people, no?"
So Hank had bitten the bullet, taken a motorcycle ride across the country to his parents' house.
It had taken almost half an hour to get his mom to stop screaming, to convince her that it was him. His dad hadn't been able to speak. He'd sat in his chair with a thousand-mile stare on his face, looking old for the first time in Hank's life. They'd both calmed down eventually, but it was clear how horrified they were, and Hank hadn't been able to bear the stilted conversation, the staring, the way his mother kept wringing a throw cushion between her hands as if she meant to strangle it. He had planned to stay for three days; in fact, he left the house after only three hours. He didn't think he would be going back.
His silence had obviously gone on too long. The girl was looking apprehensive, belatedly aware that she had asked the wrong question.
"Anyway…" she said, casting around for something innocuous to say. Hank decided to help her out. After all, none of this was her doing.
"Would you like to come up and see my lab? I'm kind of tired – it was a long trip – so I thought we could start formal teaching tomorrow; but I can show you around if you like, talk you through some of the work I'm doing?" She agreed swiftly, and they headed up.
Madeline followed Hank through the mansion, hoping that talking about his work would take his mind off what had obviously been a painful visit home. She wanted to ask him more about it, but her recent encounter with Erik had left her with a new awareness that not everyone was open to discussing their troubles as freely as someone like her, or Charles. She wanted to make people like her, to put them at their ease the way Xavier so effortlessly did. That wouldn't happen if she was always putting her foot in her mouth. So she kept quiet as she walked alongside Hank, taking him in – the thick muscles, luxuriant blue fur, the big, sad eyes. Unfortunately, he seemed to take her silent scrutiny for judgment.
"I didn't always look like this, you know," he said a touch defensively. "I used to be mostly normal." He thrust an old ID into her hand, and she saw a skinny, bespectacled boy with a shy smile. She almost couldn't believe that it was the same person – except for that same sadness in the eyes.
"What happened?" she asked, forgetting her newly-minted resolve to ask fewer questions until she was better equipped to judge how they would be received. But Hank seemed keen enough to talk, in much the same way someone with a recent wound can't help picking the scab.
"I made a stupid mistake. I had these – weird feet. Quite useful in their own way, but – deformed. I just wanted to look normal, to be normal. Have you met Mystique?" He looked surprised when she grinned at the mention of her friend.
"I have; she's been so kind to me. She even gave me some of her old clothes." Hank blinked, then shrugged.
"Well I guess she hardly needs them these days. Back then, she used to feel like I do – she wanted to be normal, too. I figured if anybody's mutation had the key to controlling appearance, hers would. I took her blood and studied it, tried to isolate the transformative mutation into a serum. I thought it had worked. I was about as wrong as I could be. Her mutation just aggravated mine – it went into overdrive, and this is the result."
Madeline was staring at him, unease starting to flutter in her heart. All this talk of blood samples, experiments, trying to isolate the mutant gene – Hank seemed like a nice man, but he was sounding just like Fiskel. Fiskel had always been infuriated by his inability to work out what it was that made her blood special. If he could have synthesized it, his income could have increased almost without limit, without the necessity to keep her healthy and whole. She suddenly wasn't so sure she wanted to be tutored by McCoy. Charles had said he was a genius; what if he worked out her secret, working in close quarters with her every day? He was a doctor too; what if he, like Fiskel, wanted to unravel the mystery of her mutation, decided that the greater good that knowledge could do outweighed her right to make her own free choice?
Hank stopped so suddenly she almost walked right into his broad back.
"Here we are! I've not got many active studies on the go just now, I'm afraid. I've been – adjusting. And ordering a lot of larger equipment." At this, he held up his massive hands with a game attempt at gallows humour, undermined by the way the corners of his mouth pulled down. He sprang across the room and indicated her to look down a microscope. "But there are a few things you might find interesting. I've been working on my own new DNA, of course – I managed to make myself look this way, so it stands to reason there might still be a way to undo it. More testing next time though, I think. And then I'm still looking at Raven's mutation to see if it could be manipulated into a cure for paralysis. And over here…"
"As she watched him move from project to project, losing the sadness in his eyes as he got caught up in his enthusiasm for his work; describing project after project with the obvious aim of improving the lot of his fellow man, human and mutant alike, a little of her panic began to ebb. This friendly, overgrown, brilliant boy was no Fiskel – surely he would never hurt her? And hadn't the professor promised that no-one here would betray her? She tried to still her pounding heart, to summon up a smile for Hank. And then he threw open a door in back of the lab, and her stomach dropped down into her toes.
"And this is the sick bay. Nobody here right now – we don't have very many students yet, and anyhow we mutants seem to suffer less from the usual coughs and fevers – our ailments are rarer, but generally far more spectacular." Hank ushered her into the hospital room. There was the adjustable bed, the trolley with its eager array of instruments, the monitoring equipment with its flashing lights and trailing tubes. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the horribly familiar smells of boiled cotton, sterilized steel, rubber gloves and – underneath it all – the ghost of blood. She lurched backwards against the door as if she had been struck; her vision darkened and swirled and she bent double, trying to breathe, just to breathe. She could almost feel the anaesthetic coursing through her veins, paralyzing her, sucking her under, making her powerless…
And then she was being lifted up, put down in a sitting position up against the wall back in the lab, her head gently pushed between her knees. A huge hand rubbed soft circles on her back, and a voice murmured "You're alright, you're going to be alright, everything's fine…"
Her vision cleared; her ragged breath slowly came back under her own control. She realized she was going to be sick only a second before she was, but Hank was ready, thrust a kidney dish under her chin, pushed her bangs back from her cold, sweating face as she retched miserably into the bowl.
Almost immediately she felt better; then utterly embarrassed.
"I'm so, so sorry," she choked out. "I don't know what just happened-" she broke off. Of course she knew. But how could she explain?
"Looked like a panic attack to me. Have you had one before?" Hank's voice was soft, concerned, but calm – a reassuring, bedside manner voice. He was hunkered down in front of her, his massive paw on her back again, patting soothingly. All her limbs were trembling weakly, but his hand on her back felt good. She shook her head. It was the truth; she'd never had a panic attack before. The hospital had been her life – it would have been like being afraid of the air when there was nothing else to breathe. But now she had known something of the world outside – had felt freedom, slept in a real bed, had conversations with people who might become her friends – the thought of going back to that was indescribably awful. The smell had brought it all back to her, the powerlessness, the exhaustion, the total isolation. How could she make Hank understand without giving herself away? She opened her mouth to try to speak -
And suddenly, was pervaded with a sense of calm. Her pulse stopped humming, her mind calmed and cleared, her breath came easy in her chest. Charles Xavier rolled into the room, and she noticed for the first time he was in a wheelchair.