OH MY GOD IT'S BEEN SO LONG!
Sorry if anyone's been waiting for this - new job and all sorts has kept me away from my writing for too long. There's a lot more still to come, but here's a bridge chapter to warm you up. Sorry for the long hiatus!
One month later
Madeline was staring listlessly out of the library window through streaking rain at a black, frozen sky. She was trying without a great deal of success to stop her mind tracking back and forth round the well-trodden maze it had been stuck in for most of the last month, ever since Erik had been taken.
Have to get him out – but how – without Charles and Hank, I'm worse than useless – unless – unless –
It was at this point she usually cut herself off, went for a run or a session at the gym or read a book or turned something mindless on the TV, anything to try and head off the end of that train of thought – only to find herself plodding futilely back through it ten minutes later. This time, she let the thought form in her mind.
Unless I drank blood. Then I would be strong, I could, I could-
But there was the rub – then she could what? Fight? Kill? She caught her own green eye in the reflected light of the window pane, imagined it ruby red, felt a memory as clear as reality of the scent of human blood that sent her whirling from the window with a choked groan. No. In that state, with no control, she'd be as likely to get Erik and herself killed as to rescue him – and that not before she had done something awful. She needed Charles. Charles could save Erik without anyone having to get hurt.
But Charles was unreachable. The boys leaving had been the final straw; he'd seen them off, wished them luck, had studiously failed to remark upon it when they both left in different cars. But then he had retreated into a bender that lasted for a week. When he emerged from his room, sweaty and pale and sour-smelling, he had officially shut down the school, sent away the last of the children who were still sheltering there.
"I can't keep on pretending I can make this work," he said flatly, when Madeline tried to reason with him. "I have hardly any students; now I have hardly any staff; and frankly, my dear, I haven't got the heart to try and do this any more." A glimmer of the Charles she loved had briefly surfaced when he put a hand on her arm and reassured her: "you know that you - and Hank, of course - are welcome to stay? I've long since ceased to think of you as students. This is your home, for as long as you want it."
Madeline had stayed, of course – Charles needed someone looking out for him, and anyway, where else would she have gone? But the longer she stayed, the more frustrated and miserable she became. Without the children, without any of her old friends left but Hank and a Charles who was a shadow of his former self, she was beginning to feel as lonely and trapped in this beautiful old house as she ever had in Fiskel's hospital.
It only took that thought to make her shudder as she remembered Erik – locked up in a secret facility, God knows what being done to him. She pressed her forehead to the cool glass, wishing like hell she had Charles's power, that she could reach out to Erik's mind, out there somewhere, tell him he wasn't alone, that she would figure out some way to-
"Madeline?" She jumped as Hank entered the room, in that apologetic way he always had when he thought he was interrupting someone's thoughts. However, these were thoughts she was more than happy to have interrupted. She smiled warmly at him.
"Hi Hank. What's up?" His blue face was glowing with excitement, she noticed now, as if lit with an inner light. He approached her with an air of shy triumph, took her hand suddenly. She quelled the surprised flinch, looked questioningly up at him. He cleared his throat.
"Maddy, listen. I know you know that I – that you know how I feel about you."
Maddy felt as if a pint of icy water had just been decanted down the back of her neck. She had known, of course, that this had been coming. But she'd hoped she would have time, time to think about how she would respond, what she could say to not hurt Hank. She remembered Raven asking her quietly to let him down gently. But the blue girl had never got the chance to give Madeline any advice as to how. She opened her mouth, waiting to see what came out.
"Hank, I-"
He interrupted her eagerly.
"No wait, please, just let me – let me get this out. I know you don't feel the same way. I know that. I mean, how could you? Just look at me. I'm not exactly a catch. But we're good friends, aren't we? And I know you care about me – you're so kind, so sweet, you care about everyone – whether they deserve it or not. You do love me in a sort of way – don't you?"
He gazed down at her beseechingly with those lovely golden eyes, and Madeline wished with all her heart for a moment that she could love Hank the way he wanted her to. He was a good, kind, gentle man, a brilliant man, with amazing gifts. She would be a lucky woman. But it was as impossible to change the nature of her affection for him as it would be to suddenly decide to hate him. She shook her head, squeezed his hand.
"Hank, you know I love you. You've become my dearest friend. But I-"
"No, wait. Just wait. I understand. But I've found a solution. I've been working on this secretly – I didn't want to make a big deal of it until I was really sure – but I've tested and re-tested, and it works, I know it does. I can be what you want now. Madeline. I've done it. I've found a cure."
Madeline stared at him, bewildered by this sudden change of tack.
"A – a cure? For what? Hank, I don't understand." He gabbled on excitedly.
"For my condition. I've fixed the mistake I made with Raven's DNA – and it's all thanks to you. The cure for my disease lies in your mutation. If I create an envelope of my tissue to disguise yours, it fools the immune response, and allows your mutation to knock mine out – at least temporarily. It lets me become human, Madeline! I've been perfecting the formula, and this week I finally did some tests, and it works! I just have to take an injection, and – well, watch!"
Hank dropped her hand, fumbled in the pocket of his lab coat, withdrew and uncapped a small syringe full of a clear serum. Madeline watched uneasily as he plunged the needle into his forearm, prepared to depress the plunger.
"Hank, wait! Is it safe? Are you sure?" He smiled eagerly.
"I've done a test run. It's so incredible Madeline – I looked like me for the first time in months. And even my old weird feet are suppressed – they just look like normal human feet. Just like I always dreamed." He hugged her with one arm impulsively, enveloping her against his broad chest, surrounding her with the rich warm scent of his blue fur. "I can't thank you enough for making this possible. Now look!"
And without further ado, he pressed the plunger down.
A look of pain crossed his face, and he sank down to his knees suddenly. Maddy gasped, tried and failed to hold him up.
"Hank?" He shook his head, patted her hand.
"I'm fine, this is normal. It doesn't last lo-arrrgh!"
He hunched over, his back corded with tension. Tears of fright started in Maddy's eyes.
"Hank!"
And then he began to convulse; the blue fur pulled back into his skin, which was turning sallow in the firelight. He visibly shrank before her, hunched in on himself with a whine of pain. And then he stood up.
If she hadn't seen him change with her own eyes, she wouldn't have believed that it was Hank. She didn't recognize this skinny boy with mild blue eyes, his clothes hanging off him. But when he smiled reassuringly at her, the spell broke. It was still Hank, just in a different skin. She put her hand out tentatively, brushed the mousy hair off his forehead.
"Are you OK?" He grinned.
"I'm better than OK. I'm normal."
Maddy felt a twinge of unease.
"But – it will wear off, right? It's not permanent?"
Hank frowned.
"No, I can't seem to achieve that yet – just like your blood working on humans, eventually it burns itself up in the process, and the effects reverse. Of course with humans, the healing's done by then so it makes no difference to the object – with mutants, the healing is an incidental effect – it's blocking the host mutation that's the goal, and that's what goes when your material runs out. I think if I can just isolate the-" Hank paused, smiled again.
"But it's OK – I have synthetically replicated the DNA responsible, so there's a limitless supply of this serum. As long as I take regular doses, this can be permanent to all intents and purposes. I can be human, thanks to you."
Thanks to me, Maddy thought grimly. Thanks to me, he can choose to turn his back on his mutation, his uniqueness, his strength, his strange beauty, can choose instead to hide in the skin of a diffident boy. She could only imagine what Erik's reaction would have been. She looked into his new, elated face, tried to smile.
"If this is what you really want, Hank, I'm happy for you. Truly I am." He grinned and grabbed her hand again.
"For us. I can be what you need now, Madeline." Her eyes went wide with shock. She fought the urge to pull her hand away, instead took his in both of hers.
"Hank. You have to know, this doesn't make any difference to me. It's never been about the way you look – I like the way you look! Looked. But I'm not in love with you, Hank. I could never be in love with you."
All the joy and exuberance drained from his face. The guilt nearly floored her, the desire to say something, anything, to take back the blow she had just dealt him. His face shuttered, and he pulled his hand from between hers. But he didn't turn away, fixed her with a penetrating stare.
"Why? If it isn't the whole, the whole Beast – thing – then why? We could be good for each other, Maddy. So why not me?"
She could tell what it had cost him to ask that. She spread her hands wide helplessly.
"Hank, I don't know. I'm sorry. But I can't. I don't know very much about love. Almost nothing, if it comes to it. But what I do know is that right and reason do not have a thing to do with it. If it did, would Charles still love Erik?"
Hank's expression darkened.
"So it's about him. I should have guessed. It's not just Charles who still loves Erik, is it?"
She flushed, turned away. But he reached out to her once again, the earnestness returning to his voice.
"I understand, Maddy, better than you know. How it is to still feel drawn to someone against your better judgment. But you have to face facts. It could never happen between you two. Even if he wasn't in jail, even if he wasn't hell bent on getting himself killed, even if it wouldn't just about kill Charles-"
She wheeled away from his words as if they were blows, huddled against the hearth.
"I know all that, damn it!" she cried, ashamed to hear tears cracking her voice. She heard Hank approach her, smelt his new, pale, human scent – milk and book dust. She felt him put a hand gently between her shoulders.
"So let him go. Put the feeling aside. It's the only course of action that makes any sense. You've learned enough biology to know that vestigial organs only make trouble in the body; it's the same with vestigial emotions. You have to cut them out, or eventually they'll just poison your life." She shook her head stubbornly, swallowing her tears. "It's the only course of action that makes any sense. If you could look past him, maybe you could see me – really see me."
She sighed, turned to look at him.
"It doesn't work that way, Hank. And I think you know that too. I know you care about me; I care about you too, believe me. And I know you're lonely. So am I. But you're not in love with me Hank. You're in love with Raven."
He jerked, shook his head sharply.
"It could never have worked between Raven and I. We've always been too – different. She's so volatile. And now, what she's done, going off with Azazel-" he stopped short. "It doesn't make any sense for me to love her. You and me, helping each other, working together – that makes sense. For both of us."
Maddy shrugged sadly.
"It's not about what makes sense, Hank. If it was, you wouldn't be so jealous of Azazel. You wouldn't flinch when anyone so much as mentions her name. Maybe you can lie to yourself, but I sure can't."
She took a deep breath, finally said the words.
"I'm in love with Erik. It's pointless and stupid and I wish I wasn't, but I am. Until that runs its course, I can't love you or anybody else. And it wouldn't be fair to either one of us for me to try."
Hank sat down hard on the sofa by the fire, stared wordlessly into the flames. His shoulders slumped, and he put his head into his hands. Maddy hovered helplessly, wringing her hands. She wanted nothing more than to comfort him, but she knew any comfort she offered would only reignite his false hopes. She reached out, stopped just short of touching his shoulder.
"I'm so sorry."
His jaw worked for a moment, then he swallowed hard and bounced to his feet. He shook her proffered hand briskly, as if accepting a job offer.
"It's fine. Really. I'll get over it. Just forget I said anything." The stiff, stilted tone of his voice sent a chill of panic through her, as she felt another of the few remaining pillars of her life start to crumble. She clung onto his hand.
"Hank? We'll still be friends, won't we?"
"Of course we will," he replied briskly. But he didn't meet her eyes as he awkwardly disenganged his hand and made for the door.
"Hank-"
"I should go and see Charles. My cure, the serum – it was him that I was designing it for, really. So he can use your power to cure his legs. If we can smuggle your mutation into him, disguised in his own cells, it might have the same effect – knock out his mutation, allowing yours to heal his spine."
The enthusiasm he was trying to inject into the words rang synthetic and hollow in Madeline's ears. And she found her own triumph felt strangely thin. They had done it at last – found the solution they had both worked so hard for – but neither of them could take any joy in it at that moment.