Hank hadn't left the sick bay in what felt like forever. He hadn't slept. Raven had eventually nodded off, emotionally and physically exhausted, sliding down the wall onto the floor. Her neck was bent at an uncomfortable angle, her face stained by the tracks of her tears.
Hank felt an unwelcome twinge of protectiveness for her, alleviated it as best he could by yanking a pillow off Maddy's cot and sliding it gently under her head. He brushed her red hair in passing; she murmured softly in her sleep, leaned into the touch.
He missed her. OK, he missed her a lot. Even when she was this close to him. He missed her jokes, the way she always put him at his ease, made him feel comfortable – normal – loved. He missed the admiring look in her eyes that had been there when showed off his feet.
You're amazing… You're beautiful Hank. Everything you are, you're perfect.
How could they have gotten so far apart so fast? All he wanted to do now was comfort her, protect her. But she didn't need his protection. She was Mystique now, not Raven, sweet, insecure Raven who thought he was perfect. He had nothing to offer the proud blue mutant, who intimidated him so utterly, with her wholehearted acceptance of herself. He had to move on, to try and find love with someone less intense, more accepting, someone who could make room for Hank's insecurities, his doubts. Someone kind, gentle. He thought involuntarily of Maddy's soft green eyes.
Nonetheless, his hand still lingered on Raven's shoulder – they were exactly the same shade of blue, he noticed vaguely. Then he recoiled guiltily as Madeline and Erik came into the room.
"Jesus God, Maddy! Are you OK?" he cried, shooting Erik a look of incredulous fury as he took in the cut on her forehead, already crusting over and healing. She shook her head.
"It's nothing, Hank. An accident. I fell."
She looked awful, he noticed suddenly. Erik looked even worse – while personally, Hank couldn't care less if the man dropped dead, in his professional opinion Erik looked perilously close to physical collapse.
"For God's sake, Erik, sit down before you fall down," Hank snapped. But Erik wasn't listening to him. He was looking at Charles, only saw Charles. The rest of the room didn't exist for him, except perhaps Maddy (who was, Hank noted jealously, holding his hand). She squeezed and released it as Erik walked jerkily towards the bed.
Charles's face was as white as the pillow it lay on, his red lips cartoonish and wrong against his ghostly pallor. In the frenzy of activity, no-one had thought to re-cover his feet, and they stuck out at the end of the bed like the punchline of an awful joke. Erik reached out with shaking hands, gently drew the blanket tenderly back over them.
Hank felt a stab of pity that he didn't want. Erik had done nothing to deserve it. But Hank hoped to God that he never felt the way that Erik looked right now – harrowed to his very soul with pain, with guilt.
"Charles," he whispered. His voice was hoarse and thick, as if he had a cold. "Please Charles, wake up. Please come back to me." Hank shook his head.
"He's deeply unconscious. He may not come around for days. But he's stable. You don't need to worry." Erik turned a burning look on him.
"Don't need to worry?"
"Erik."
Madeline had only said his name; but Erik seemed to check himself, dismissed Hank with a shake of his head like someone batting away a troublesome insect, resuming his vigil by the bed. He stood there, silent, swaying with exhaustion, until, four hours later, Charles woke up.
The first thing Charles was aware of was intense discomfort. He felt like he'd been in a fight – he was tender and aching everywhere, and his head hammered like a freight train.
The second thing he was aware of was Erik. He focused on the familiar face a split second before a wave of his lover's emotions rocked through him – ecstatic relief; then renewed concern; and something darker under that, an apprehension strong enough to shade to fear –
The third thing Charles was aware of was that he couldn't feel his legs. He couldn't feel his legs.
The disappointment was, if possible, worse than the shock of the moment he was first paralysed. He felt like the bottom was dropping out of his stomach, as if he was filling up with a toxic, choking cloud of grief and rage. The feeling was too big for him, spilled over into Erik via the light telepathic link they always shared. The metal bender winced, leaned over Charles. Summoning a will that he barely had, Charles quickly locked down their mental link. He didn't want Erik to feel him feeling this. A wounded look skittered across his lover's face.
Blank incomprehension, bewildered injury, filled Charles's heart. Completely out of character, he didn't wait to be told what had happened, rifled unasked inside the nearest mind to hand – Hank's – for an answer to the burning question: why?
He saw in Hank's mind the cells of Maddy's mutuation seeking out his own, being violently repulsed. Felt Hank's panic when he realized what was wrong, felt him gathering his professionalism to himself like a shield, allowing him to do what he had had to do to save his patient's life. Saw his, Hank's, hands holding a comically large syringe, draining the site of Charles's surgery. Charles jerked away from the memory, saw Hank wince as he roughly left his mind.
No-one had spoken. Erik looked like grim death, Charles noticed. He saw Raven waking up in the corner, looking at him in joyful disbelief.
"How long have I been asleep?" he asked. His throat was like sandpaper. Erik was already holding a paper cup of water up to his lips. Charles tried to find a smile for him, couldn't.
"About eight hours since you – got sick," Hank supplied awkwardly. Charles closed his eyes. There were things they wanted to say, all of them – he could hear the thoughts beating against his pounding head, demanding admittance. Hank wanting to rehearse the details of what had gone wrong, to explain it in a way that Charles, and he, could accept; Erik desperate to say something to comfort him, drawing a total blank; Raven wanted to ask him if he was alright, knew how utterly futile it would sound; and Madeline.
She hadn't said a word, hadn't approached the bed. She was looking at him with a numb pity that he almost couldn't stand. But guilt was radiating off her too. She blamed herself completely; not fair. But again, he found he didn't have it in him to disagree with her, to try and set her at her ease, to find the words to take away her pain.
It didn't work. It didn't work. You're never ever going to walk again.
He squeezed his eyes shut tight, too late to catch the hot tears that welled up, that ran down his temples, into his ears. He heard Erik catch his breath, felt him snatch up Charles's hand. Charles jerked away, felt an instinctive need not to be touched – he felt that if he was, he might dissolve into a thousand filaments.
"Get out."
Was that his voice? It didn't sound like him, so rough, so raw with pain.
"Charles-" Erik's voice didn't sound like his either. But then, Charles had never heard him beg before.
"All of you, get out." Charles took a deep, shuddering breath. "Please."
Raven made a sound of protest, was overruled by Hank, who all but manhandled her out of the room. Slowly, Charles felt the mental noise recede. He opened his burning eyes, and saw he had been left alone. He reached out gently with his power to be sure; only Erik was anywhere nearby, waiting irresolute out in the hall, torn between his desire to give Charles whatever he had asked for, even solitude, and his creeping suspicion that what he wanted and what he needed were far from the same. Charles was sure that his lover's tendency to confront troubles head on would bring him back over the threshold before too long. But not yet; please, not yet.
Alone in the sick bay, Charles sat up awkwardly, every muscle in his torso protesting, but the site of his surgery typically numb. He leant forward, and pulled the blankets back from his feet. He remembered with crystal clarity how it had been, to see them move, to feel them move. And even though he knew it was futile, he desperately tried to move them again. His mind was so, so powerful; how could it be unable to triumph over a few severed nerves? He stared at his toes, willing them with all his being to move.
He stared, and stared. Eventually, he wept.
"Madeline?"
Hank had followed her up to her room.
She was tempted for a moment to ignore his soft knock, his quiet call, to stay here in bed and pretend she was already asleep, to leave his questions, his worries, his need, until she had been able to deal with her own.
"Madeline, please. I need to talk to you."
She sighed, pushed away the covers. She owed him better than that. And while the world was falling in around them all, wasn't it all the more important to be kind to one another?
With this in mind, she reluctantly opened the door, just as he was about to turn and go. He came in, looking awkward, obviously embarrassed to have sought her out like this. At her invitation, he sat down hesitantly on the bed.
"I thought we ought to talk. You're not still blaming yourself for this, are you? What did Erik say to you?" She bit down her irritation at this. He's only trying to look out for you.
"He didn't say anything to me Hank, not like you mean. Can't you see that he's half out of his mind with worry over Charles? He's not looking around for somebody to blame." To her surprise, Hank snorted derisively at this.
"Erik's never been the selfish sort, not where suffering is concerned; he spreads it around with a big shovel." She sprang up, angry now, opened the door.
"Hank, if you've just come here to run him down-" Hank held up his hands placatingly, shaking his head.
"I'm not, I'm not. I'm sorry. I'm tired, you know? Let's leave him out of it." She hesitated; then she thought back to the two of them working side by side to save Charles's life; how readily he'd trusted her to help him; how hard he had tried. How could she not forgive him after that? She sighed, shut the door, sat back down.
"He doesn't blame me Hank; or you. He's just devastated. He invested all his hope in this. I really don't know how he's going to bear it now." Hank shrugged.
"It's Charles that I'm worried about. And you. Maddy, you do know this isn't your fault?" She bit her lip. "You did an incredibly noble thing; you were willing to go through that again, to help somebody get their life back." She wrung her hands.
"But Hank, it didn't work!" He reached out tentatively, took her hands between his own blue paws.
"Only because Charles is a mutant. You've still helped so many; your sister; all the others you saved. Maddy, when I was performing the procedure today, I saw your scars." She blushed, knowing how Hank felt about deformity, imperfection. But he hurried on. "I realized that every one represents a life you have saved. That is amazing, Madeline. The things you've done; the things you still might do…."
He tailed off, looking at her with awe. She blushed. He hurried on, his words tripping over themselves in their hurry to be said.
"There's no need to give up on this just because of what happened with Charles. Your gift could still do so much for so many people." She flinched away from him, a growing sense of betrayal blooming in her chest.
"You want us to keep on doing procedures. For humans." It wasn't a question. Hank nodded, not picking up on her reaction in his eagerness to persuade her.
"Not like before, of course not like before. Not for profit, obviously. And you'd be in complete control." He saw her wavering, then played his trump card. "And if we keep on researching, using data from trials with human recipients, keep on trying to isolate the gene… there's still a chance –a slim one, but a chance – that one day we could figure out how to make your blood work on mutants, on Charles."
She hesitated. After the total failure of today's procedure, she didn't think she had the stomach to consider more. But Hank was so eager, and he had virtue on his side – how could she callously refuse to help innocent people struck down in the prime of their lives, through no fault of their own?
She was too tired to think about this. She stood up, opened the bedroom door.
"I'll think about it Hank, OK? Right now, I just need to sleep for about a year."
Looking chagrined, he sprang up and made for the door.
"Of course, sorry. I'll see you tomorrow?" She nodded. Hank hesitated in the doorway, then jerkily bent down and kissed her. She ducked her face so that his lips just grazed her bangs. He blushed.
"Sleep well Maddy." And he was gone.
Maddy realized even more than sleep, she needed to be clean. She made for the bathroom, shrugged off the hospital gown she hadn't realized she was still wearing. As she turned on the bathroom taps, stood in the clouds of rising, scented steam, she caught sight of herself in the mirror – small, lean, covered in scars. For once she gave herself more than a cursory inspection, running her eyes, her hands, over her body, taking inventory of every scar.
Every one a life saved.
Maddy had never got the chance to meet any of Fiskel's customers. She was always out cold before they were wheeled in and brought back round after they'd been wheeled out. Fiskel couldn't risk them seeing her, or God forbid talking to her. Not, she supposed, that many of them would have cared that their miracle came at the cost of her freedom.
Now she remembered Charles's smile, Erik's converted face, when Charles had been able to move his toes. Imagine if each scar had meant a smile like that; but a smile that stayed? Would it have made her suffering worthwhile, make every scar a mark of pride rather than a tattoo of servitude?
It was a thought.