As promised - the next part of HOD! Told you it wouldn't take as long! *grins* I *am* capable of keeping SOME promises...eheh heh...
*AHEM* Anyway - please enjoy!
Title: Into The Heart Of Darkness
Author: Stormy
Part: 7B
Warnings: Angst, sap
Pairings: Standard Stormy - if ya don't know, you haven't been reading -
for
shame!
Notes: Since they're about 15/16 yrs old in the series, I'm making them 16 in my fic. Don't yell at me about irregularities - I'm tired, my head hurts, and I'll take critism about ages as flames and have to start ranting at you, so let's leave it alone. *grins* You have been warned.
Here we go again!
Hank McCoy was tired. It was the kind of dragging, lingering tiredness that gripped one's limbs and made them feel as though thousand-pound weights had been attached when his back was turned. Images of his nice, soft, four-poster, antique - although steel-reinforced - bed flooded his fatigued mind, but he resolutely pushed the pictures aside - he was a doctor, and right now, he was on call.
" There is, as they say, no rest for the weary," he sighed, one blue-furred hand reaching up to remove his glasses and tiredly rubbing his eyes. Indeed - it seemed as though fate or some higher power then mere mortal man had decided that today would be the day that, to paraphrase his good friend Wolverine, 'the shit hit the fan'. His nerves had already been worn on the day before with his colleague Cecilia being injured - and now the boy responsible for the act itself lay in the room before him, gravely injured.
To be fair, Hank harbored no malice whatsoever towards the braided boy for what had befallen the Latino woman - Duo Maxwell was the victim of a vicious ploy, hatched by an insane madman. It was not his fault.
Still - he kept seeing an image of Cecelia Reese collapsing to the ground, blood streaming from an open head wound. That image would forever be super-imposed in his mind, imprinted by a scene from a two-inch by three-inch personal communicator.
" Such heavy thoughts Hank," came a soft, chiding voice from the doorway. Hank looked up, slightly perturbed that his keen senses had not registered the presence of the voice's owner before they had spoken. Jean nodded at him.
" I masked my approach," Jean said, giving the Beast a warm smile as she neared him. She took a moment to observe her teammate, sensing his all encompassing tiredness. " I apologize for intruding on your thoughts Hank, but to be honest - I was getting a little worried by the self-doubt I'm reading from you."
" No need to apologize dear lady," Henry returned her friendly look, before letting his mask fall slightly. " And what you are sensing is nothing more then some residual emotions from earlier."
" When Cecelia was here?" Jean asked gently. Hank nodded and let out a small chuckle.
" A note to myself, that it is extremely difficult to keep anything from a telepath."
" It's all right to feel anger Hank."
" I know that," he chided the red-head gently. " I also know that it is ridiculous for me to feel anger towards a young boy for doing something over which he had no control, and no way to stop himself from......" he stopped, a pained expression coming over his face.
" From hurting Cecelia," Jean finished for him. " I understand Hank - and I'm sure Cecelia would agree that it wasn't Duo's fault."
" I know she would," Hank agreed. He sighed, rubbing the side of his head as though trying to massage away some sudden pain that had manifested. " She's a very forgiving lady." Then his head slumped forward. " When I saw her collapse.....Jean, I....I thought..."
Jean understood what Henry had wanted to say, even without the use of her telepathy, and she came forward, wrapping her arms around her old friend in support. Hank and Cecelia had expressed a hesitant interest in each other, once upon a time, when Cecelia had still been living in the X-mansion. But there had been too much going on then, too many battles to fight, and Cecelia still hadn't completely come to terms over the revelation that she herself was a mutant. They had gone their separate ways - Hank staying on as a valued member of the X-Men, and Cecelia trying to go back to some sort of normalcy. Since her being discovered as a mutant had been so public, it had resulted in her losing her job at the local hospital. But thanks to some private funding by Professor Xavier, the fiery Latino had set up her own practice in Salem, close to the mansion, and keeping in touch with her former teammates. She and Beast remained good friends. Hank had never wanted to damage that part of his life with her and had decided to keep his fledgling feelings to himself for the time being. Seeing Cecelia lying on the ground in a pool of her own blood, gasping for his help and then not being able to do a thing about it.....
Hank returned the embrace firmly before releasing Jean. He grinned at her, a trace of his old self back in his toothy smile.
" Thank you Jean."
Jean hushed him thoroughly. " No thanks needed Hank," she said, patting his arm. " That's what friends are for. " She bit her lip, studying him thoughtfully. "Do you feel any better?"
" Indeed I do," Hank said genuinely. Knowing that Jean knew how he felt, and understood his emotions and reason for feeling that way, gave him a sort of release from the guilt he'd been harbouring about feeling angry towards an innocent. Feeling much more clear-headed, he replaced his spectacles on the bridge of his nose.
" Good." Almost as an afterthought, Jean added, " Come on in, Trowa."
A blushing Trowa slowly entered the room. Sensing the apology in his mind, and half-formed on his lips, Jean hastened to reassure the boy that he was not intruding.
" Welcome Trowa," she greeted him with the same warmth that she had used towards Henry.
"........" Trowa looked a little lost. Hank waved jovially at him.
" Hello dear boy - how might we be able to assist you?" The doctor leaned forward confidentially and mock-whispered, " Just mind the red-head - she's notorious for causing trouble."
" Hank!" Jean protested playfully and punched him lightly in the arm. Seeing them play brought a sense of familiarity to Trowa, reminded of happier times when he and his teammates acted in such a manner, and he finally smiled at the two of them. The tension dispersed, Hank nodded slightly.
" I assume you're hear for an update?"
Trowa nodded in return. " Status report?" As an afterthought, he added, " Please?"
Hank reached up and gripped the ceiling pipes. Swinging his legs upwards, his feet hooked into the rafters and he let his upper body sway gracefully towards the floor. His arms folded and he reached over for a sheaf of papers on a nearby counter, turning them so that while they made perfect sense to him, to anyone else watching, it looked as though he were reading upside down. Which he was. Trowa's eyes widened at the sight of the hulking blue man dangling upside down from the ceiling, reading medical stats. Jean smothered a chuckle, recognizing Henry's classic 'gesticulating' pose.
" He does his best thinking when all the blood rushes to his brain," she whispered to Trowa who couldn't take his eyes off the man. Trowa nodded slowly, apparently accepting the explanation.
" I heard that you know," Hank commented mildly. He adjusted his glasses - Trowa marvelled at how they seemed to defy gravity - and began reading excerpts from the papers aloud.
" For startes, your friend Quatre is fine, absolutely one hundred precent in the peak of physical condition."
" And the mental?" Trowa asked with a hint of concern still left over from the disturbing scene he'd witnessed earlier.
" Did he seem disturbed to you when you talked to him earlier?" Hank returned. Trowa shook his head - negative. " Well, there you go. I ran a few tests on him, and other then residual psy-shock, he's fine. The shock will go away - and Jean will talk to him about what he experienced, once he's regained his mental strength."
Trowa looked to Jean for confirmation. The red-head nodded solemnly at him, projecting her assent into his mind.
:: The filter is still in place for now, Trowa. I won't remove it until I talk to him and help him deal with what happened ::
Trowa thanked her with his eyes, satisfied.
" The Professor is upstairs talking with one of our friends - the confrontation coupled with all of his searching did a number on his mental reserves, so it's back to the conventional video-phone with him for a while." Beast shuffled his papers. " He'll be fine though."
" Wufei is also going to recover completely - I originally feared he had a concussion, but it turns out that aside from that bump on his head, and some other bumps and scrapes, he's uninjured. He'll just be a little stiff for the next few days."
Trowa hid a smirk at the thought of a bed-ridden Wufei - nah, he couldn't see it. The Chinese pilot was too strong, too proud to let such an insignificant injury keep him from his daily exercises, and morning rituals.
" Rogue, Gambit and Cyclops suffered no lasting injuries other then the usual assortment of cuts and scrapes. Wolverine's costume was blasted to high heaven but thanks to his healing factor, he's already back to his old habits."
" Habits?"
" I believe he's with Gambit on the balcony right now with Gambit, indulging in one of them," Hank sighed. " I thank my lucky stars and garters that the Professor declared the entire interior of the mansion to be smoke-free."
Trowa again suppressed a smile at the thankful look on Henry's face. Then he straightened, waiting for the axe to fall. Henry noticed and he too, lost the joking expression.
" Heero will be fine. I did a preliminary examination of the lad and he's healing remarkably quickly. He has told me of his enhanced abilities - not how he acquired them of course, but if mutants do not exist in your world, it only stands to believe that his DNA has been tampered with. While whoever did it should be drawn and quatered for performing such acts on a child-" Hank's lips pulled back in a soundless snarl, "-it has indeed served him in good stead. Thanks to Sinister's manipulations on your comrade Duo, I have no doubt that had it not been for that DNA tampering, Heero would be dead."
Trowa swallowed, feeling a strange tightness coiling in his stomach at the picture the doctor's words painted. " Where is he?"
" With Duo, where he's been since they arrived." Hank shook his head. " I didn't have the time to fight with him over his presence in there, but it was a new feeling indeed to have a sixteen year old boy in an operating room watching your every move, one who seemed totally unfazed by the blood, and the cutting I had to do to reach the bullet, and the stitching up afterwards."
" I guess after setting your own leg, routine surgery is kind of tame," Trowa offered awkwardly. Hank eyed him nervously.
" Please tell me you're joking."
" He's not," Jean answered, noticing the look of relief in Trowa's eyes as she deflected the doctor's questions. " I have a feeling they've done this before anyways - after all, they are fighting in a war, in their own dimension."
" I...suppose," Hank said. Trowa looked up at him, eyes dead serious.
" And Duo?"
Hank let out an explosive sigh this time, placing the papers back down on the counter. From his dangled position, he could look Trowa directly in the eye.
" Physically, Duo will recover. He was in the best shape I'd wager he's ever been in when he took that bullet. All that battling he did, as I understand, inflicted only minor wounds to him. The bullet was the most severe, and that entered his right side. Luckily, it exited as well, tearing a large hole, but ultimately a clean one - it missed all of his vital organs. The most danger he was in was from shock and blood loss - and I replaced that as soon as he arrived here, setting him up with an IV. I was hesitant to use our blood - different dimensions and all that - but fortunately, Heero is a compatible match."
_Maybe in more ways then one_. Trowa noticed his evasion of the 'shock' part. " And the rest?"
" Well, the body is one thing - the mind is another." Beast folded his arms again. " I want to wait until he's recovered some of his strength before I attempt to remove the bug that Sinister implanted in his mind. From what I've seen, that shouldn't take too long."
Trowa quirked an eyebrow.
" Apparently Sinister did to your friend what had been done to Heero - the bug in his mind not only made him loyal to Sinister, it also heightened his abilities, increasing his agility, his stamina, his speed and his strength."
" How do you know for sure?" Trowa asked, somewhat puzzled by the doctor's deductions.
" When you all first arrived here in such a state of shock, I ran some tests on you to learn a bit about you before I started with the dispensing of various medications and such. Shi'ar technology is such a wonderful thing." Hank smiled dreamily at the images of all his pretty mechanical toys, just waiting to discover new, prize-winning discoveries. He shook his head, returning to the business at hand. " Anyway, I recorded all that I learned, and I compared the latest result's from Duo's testing to the originals and there were some significant changes."
" Such as?" Jean asked curiously.
" For one thing, his lung capacity has expanded, allowing for a greater intake of air at each breath, increasing one's stamina. His bones are lighter, the muscles longer and more elastic then normal - this would explain any increase in speed and flexibility."
" I thought the bug was simply a method of mind-control, Hank," Jean protested. " That's what it did to Morph, after all."
" Indeed - but it also gave Morph increased control over his shape-shifting abilities. He went from being able to only to change appearance, to being able to alter his scent, and DNA enough to fool even Wolverine's senses. Remember what Wolverine said when he chased after him when Morph left?"
" He said it took him a while to register Morph's scent, even when Morph had been in the bar with him," Jean said slowly. " He'd never been able to block Wolverine before - scent or no scent - Wolverine was his best friend. They were too close as friends to be able to hide from each other."
" And yet he could," Beast nodded. " What I'm seeing here with Duo confirms it - that bug, if left implanted for any length of time, not only changes a person's mind, but their DNA as well."
" So Duo's like Heero," Trowa noted. His brow furrowed. " But is he Duo?"
Hank understood the somewhat convoluted question.
" That, we won't know for certain until the boys awakens. But from what I understand, he beat the bug, if even only temporarily, when he pushed Heero out of that bullet's path. That speaks volumes for Duo's strength of mind and determination of will."
" If that bug is beaten by mind power, Duo's going to be fine," Trowa said calmly. Inwardly, his mind reeled at the information being shot at him, and he closed his eyes for aminute, letting it all sink in. Duo was in for a rough time of it, he could tell. Not for the first time, he thanked the powers that be that it wasn't Quatre going through all of this. then he immediately felt guilt towards feeling that way.
:: Stop it Trowa :: Jean's 'voice' told him sternly. :: I just went through something similar with Hank. It's natural for you to be thankful it wasn't Trowa - that doesn't mean you're GLAD it happened to Duo, right? ::
:: No :: Trowa sent back vehmenently.
:: I rest my case :: Jean said, somewhat smugly.
Trowa blinked at her, apparently accepting her logic. Then something else occured to him.
" Who's the Professor talking too?" he asked curiously. What could be so important that the man was actually foregoing rest and recuperation for conversation? While it could be innocent, Trowa couldn't help but feel that familiar sense of paranoia creeping up around him again - was this person trustworthy? Would the Professor mention his...unusual, guests? The urge to stake out a computer and do background checks came up and hit him with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer between the eyes. Jean chuckled at the mental image and sent a rush of calming, soothing words. Trowa relaxed slightly.
" He's speaking to a colleague of ours - Moira McTaggart," Beast explained. " She's one of the Professor's oldest and dearest friends - and a brilliant scientist."
That was not comforting to Trowa, who knew first hand, what 'brilliant' scientists were capable of.
" Moira is completely trustworthy," Jean said resolutely. " And she's the only one with the backup information on the dimensional warp hole Beast had been studying - all the equipment that had been stolen from us."
" She has the same stuff?" Trowa's eyes grew even larger then before.
" Not quite, " Beast said somewhat mournfully. " What she has, is every note, test result and drop of information that I had about the matter container, and the experiment's I had been conducting with it."
" Is that safe?"
" It's a actually a standard procedure for us," Jean informed him. " And it's justified - if we hadn't begun our practise of making backup copies of everything we do and sending it to Muir Island, we wouldn't have anything to work with, and you'd be stuck in our world for the rest of your lives."
" Miss McTaggart has her own experiments and problems that she spends her time on - but she does the same thing. I have, in our safe, the copies of everything she's done." Beast grinned. " It's a safeguard for when things like Sinister showing up and robbing us happen."
" I guess," Trowa conceded. " Where's Muir Island?"
" Across the Atlantic," Jean supplied. Trowa blinked.
" Yeah, I guess that would be enough distance between the two facilities to minimize joint threats," he mused, reverting into tactical ops mode. Jean and Hank exchanged concerned looks, and Jean just sighed. From her talks with this somewhat reticent young man, and Quatre, she knew what they both had gone through - it didn't seem unusual for Trowa to think about things like placement and attack procedures, if you ignored the fact that the person in question was a sixteen year old.
Trowa nodded, as though coming to a decision within himself, and then looked up.
" May I see Duo and Heero." Politely worded, nevertheless it was more of a statement then a request. Hank nodded, pointing towards an door that was half-way open, across from his laboratory.
Trowa walked the length of the room, pulling away from the two observers. Stepping up to the door, he slowly and silently peeked around the edge.
The room was dimly lit, the faint light casting its shadows around the room. Trowa's eyes immediately picked out Duo, lying prone and motionless on the bed.
The American was deathly still, so still that for a moment, Trowa forgot the reassuring words of the doctor and had to force himself to breathe. _He's alive, you idiot_, he told himself sternly. No. Even as Trowa's eyes roved over the sheet-covered form, picking out the IV lines from the tangle of wires and monitors, he knew it wasn't Duo's physical health he had to be concerned about. Briefly, he wondered what would happen if Duo never regained his own personality, or worse - if he was permanently warped from his experiences. Trowa couldn't remember a time when the braided one wasn't doing his best to lighten a tense situation, and he shuddered at the thought of Duo turning into a shell of his former self.
Or worse - turning into someone like HIM.
Trowa forced that thought back into the corners of his mind, and firmly locked it in place. No sense in making problems now - they'd have plenty of real ones when Duo woke up.
His eyes then noted the still form next to the bed. Heero Yuy sat in the reclining chair, half slumped over, head tilted downward on his chest, arms folded. His whole body had shifted to face the doorway - even while sleeping, Heero was watching out for his partner. Staring at the protectiveness of that stance, Trowa wondered what was going through Heero's mind. Was it concern for a friend? Worry about a partner? Did Heero blame himself for not watching Duo's back? After all, they had been the ones taking out the lab that had eventually started all of this - and it would be just like the Perfect Soldier to blame himself. Trowa snorted - he knew he would. Was that what made the Japanese pilot scowl in his sleep so? Or was it something else entirely?
Only Heero knew that answer, Trowa decided finally. Part of him wondered why Heero hadn't yet sensed his presence. He should have been waving a gun in his face by now, threatening to kill him or something.
:: I put him to sleep :: Jean said, somewhat apologetically. :: He had been awake since early this morning - and he hasn't really slept since you've arrived here and Duo was found to be missing. He was asleep on his feet - he just didn't know it ::
:: And here I thought he was losing his touch :: Trowa sent back in a rare moment of levity. He felt Jean laughing mentally and he smiled. Backing away from the door, he turned and faced the two across the room. Walking by, he paused, turned and bowed lightly.
" Thank you," was all he said, before leaving the room. Henry's eyes met Jean's and he sighed once again.
" Children," he mumbled sadly. " Remarkable."
End Part 7B
Stormy
Please send comments to: dingostorm@hotmail.com