Beast (Chapter 2 of 8)
Title: Beast (Chapter 2 of 8)
Author: jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG, for angst and adult situations.
Characters: Emphasis on Beast, with support from various other characters.
Setting: Mainly mid- to post-X2.
Summary: The personal journey of Henry McCoy-as a mutant, and as a man.
Disclaimer: Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. Nora is mine, and so is Kristen, who has appeared in several of my stories.
CHAPTER II
Hank was on the air that night when the news broke of Magneto’s escape from prison. From that moment on, the debate he was engaged in spun wildly out of control-and all his private speculations did much the same.
Another piece of the puzzle had appeared, but he didn’t know where it fitted, either.
Sitting still for the cameras, and maintaining his air of level grace when every instinct cried out portents of disaster, made him feel a hundred years old by the time he left the news studios that night. He collected a few essentials from his and Nora’s apartments, then stopped at an all-night grocery store. Charles had always made sure the safe house was stocked with enough non-perishable supplies for several days, but Hank bought an assortment of fresh meat and vegetables, and even a few sweets. At least for the time being, he knew of little else he could do to give the children comfort.
It was after midnight when he tapped the recognition signal on the front door of the house, then let himself in. Nora looked up from an armchair as if she had been half-drowsing there, but only a few of the older teenagers were now sprawled on the sofa and the carpeted floor. She must have put the rest of the children to bed in the house’s three bedrooms, trying to maintain some semblance of a normal routine.
“You heard?” he asked quietly, setting down two grocery bags on the table beside the door.
Nora nodded, wearily brushing strands of long brown hair out of her face. “We were watching you all evening-I guess we got the news at the same time you did. It isn’t a coincidence, is it?”
“I don’t see how it can be. Stryker was in charge of Erik’s prison facility-and Kitty also told us Charles had gone to visit him.” Hank paused. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Nora: I wouldn’t like to be Stryker at this moment. He’s already had enough to worry about, if any of the X-Men are still free and searching for him. But with Erik on the loose, spoiling for vengeance…”
“It almost sounds like he’s on our side this time,” Nora said, with the faintest shadow of a smile.
“I wouldn’t go that far. Erik always works to his own ends. If he can find some way to use what’s happened, he will.”
Hank grimaced, remembering the days when Erik Lehnsherr had been a friend-and the helplessness of watching that friend sink into depths of bitterness and hate. He had once admired Erik’s brilliant mind second only to Charles’ own, but somewhere along the way, the heart that guided the mind had become twisted. If Charles hadn’t recognized what was happening to him, surely Hank could not have; but somehow, he still felt there was more he could have done.
After a moment he shook his head, pushing away those old feelings of futility, and brought his mind back to the small things that could be done in the here and now. He glanced back over his shoulder, toward the car parked in the driveway.
“I’ll bring in the rest of the bags.”
Nora’s cooking provided the students with a fresh, hot breakfast the next morning, but many of them ate sparingly. Some were still exhibiting clear signs of shock, and the two adults handled them gently, keeping them warm and quiet and secure. Kitty and Peter shouldered almost as much of the responsibility, trying to entertain and reassure the younger children. Hank was grateful for the pair; already he could see in them the makings of future X-Men.
He spent the morning making another round of phone calls, but on this day it seemed there was even less to be learned. No one had heard from Charles and his people, or Magneto, or Stryker himself. Even Bobby had not called back. From all of Hank’s sources, and within his own heart, he felt an ominous sense that the entire world was simply waiting for something to happen.
And it happened shortly before noon, when he was halfheartedly helping Nora prepare sandwiches for lunch.
In those final moments before his life changed, he was watching with a sad and detached kind of amusement as Nora spread peanut butter and jelly. She handled a butterknife in the kitchen or a scalpel in the lab with the same deliberate precision; yet somehow, in this setting, he still found himself looking at her differently. In the past they had shared both business and pleasure, but what he felt now was something new-something so basic, so natural, that it made his heart ache. The work of protecting and providing seemed to create an almost primal bond, more intimate than anything he had ever felt before.
It’s a fine time to be playing house, Henry, he chided himself with a frown.
Nora noticed his troubled expression, and her lips twitched in bemusement. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh… nothing.” Hank smiled solemnly. “I was just thinking… that you’re very beautiful.”
The pensive curve of Nora’s lips began to resolve into a faint smile. She reached for his hand-a movement that was checked when they heard first one cry of alarm, and then another, and another.
Their startled eyes met for only an instant before they rushed into the living room, to find the children clutching at their heads and crying out in pain.
Incredibly, impossibly, their mutations seemed to be turning back upon themselves. Peter lay groaning on the floor, random patches of his skin shifting rapidly between its normal and armored states. Kitty clawed for a handhold she could not grasp, as she helplessly phased in and out of solidity. The lights and television flickered in time with the seizures that gripped Jones. All of the children, in their own ways, were suffering the same torment.
Before Hank could comprehend what he was seeing, he felt it himself. He felt the power that reached deep into his brain, clutching, squeezing, twisting it-the power of a mind whose touch, after so many years, he could easily recognize.
“Charles…!” he gasped, with the last of his breath.
Suddenly the pain in his head was overtaken by an astonishing new agony. It shot through his body and pitched him to the floor, wracking his whole powerful frame with spasms so violent that Nora-the only one of them unaffected-could not come close to him. He distantly heard her call his name, but he could not answer her.
His hands felt strange and heavy, and through his convulsions, he stared at them in frightened bewilderment. He watched the flesh of his palms turn hard and rough, not unlike the paw pads of an animal; he watched his fingernails grow longer and darker, curving into short, pointed gray talons.
A shocking blue pigmentation began to spread across his skin. It came on like a burning rash at first, pinpricks joining together into spots, and then blotches, until every inch of him had been consumed by the color-and as quickly as those vivid patches seared through his flesh, they sprouted shafts of coarse blue hair that lengthened and matted into a dense coat of fur. Beneath it, his muscles rippled and bulked with sudden, painful violence, splitting the seams of his shirt.
He cried out, and the sound was an animal’s tortured howl, his lips drawn back from canine teeth that had grown long and sharp.
Somehow the pain in his head had ceased, but the very different pain of metamorphosis continued. Beneath fur and flesh, all his insides seemed to writhe, bones and sinews twisting themselves into new arrangements. His facial features grew harder and sharper, deepening into half-simian crags that bore only the faintest resemblance to the face he had once possessed.
Finally, mercifully, it ended. His convulsions stilled; the burning pain faded, leaving only the dull twinging of stressed muscles, and the itching irritation of fur freshly broken through skin. It was over… but for the moment, he could do nothing more than lay dazed and gasping after that cataclysmic exertion of his body. A manifestation that should naturally have taken hours or days had occurred in mere minutes, and every fiber of his being was brutally spent.
At some point in the terror he had closed his eyes tightly, but after a long moment, he felt Nora moving to his side-and he felt her hesitation, just for a heartbeat, before she touched his face. Her voice cracked as she whispered his name, her hands slowly moving downward to rest over his heart. She moved with the numb mindlessness of shock, smoothing the new fur beneath the tatters of his shirt, as half-wordless murmurs of comfort fell from her trembling lips.
A part of Hank wanted to turn away from her, but he merely lay still, paralyzed by exhaustion and pain.
The students were slowly recovering from their own trauma. Hank reluctantly opened one eye and glimpsed a few of them, still unsteady and trying to catch their breath, even as they stared at him in fearful wonder. With a shudder he retreated once more into the darkness behind his eyelids. He was all too aware of the emotions that caused the tremor-emotions unworthy of the children’s presence. No one could understand better than they what he had just experienced.
But he was still only human. If he had not felt that first instinctive upwelling of revulsion and shame within him then, perhaps he would not have been.
Beside him, he heard Nora gasp sharply.
His eyes flew open in time to see her slim figure wrench back from him, her hands gripping her skull as if to tear out a thing that had invaded it. The nearest students flinched away as she crumpled to the floor beside Hank, sobbing and writhing in a weak, impotent human equivalent to the torture they had suffered only moments before. This time they were unafflicted; only Nora felt it now.
By a raw effort of will, Hank rose to his knees in a sudden upheaval, gathering Nora into his arms. For that moment there was no hesitation. He cradled her shaking body against his blue-furred barrel chest, staring up toward the ceiling in helpless rage.
“No, Charles, no!”
The voice was not his own as he had known it, and his futile protest trailed into the roar of something inhuman.
His plea was not answered instantly… but it was answered. In a few more moments, Nora’s desperate thrashing ceased, and her cries fell silent as her breathing grew more steady. He felt one final shudder pass through her, and then her body relaxed.
At first her stillness almost frightened Hank. Then she turned her head slightly, burying her face against the solid bulwark of his shoulder, and he felt the warm dampness of tears soaking into his fur.
He let go of her abruptly, almost pushing her away, and sank back brokenly into a half-shadowed corner of the room.
Abandoned in the middle of the floor, Nora curled into herself, her head lowered and her arms wrapped around her knees. For a time there were no words spoken. Hank’s heavy, aching breaths, and the quiet sobs of Nora and a few of the children, were the only sounds to be heard.
Naturally and understandably, it was the children who began to break the silence first.
“M-Miss Tanner?” It was the child who had slept on Nora’s lap the day before. She inched across the carpet, hesitantly touching the elbow of her trusted guardian, and her voice quivered with the tears she bravely held back. “What’s going on? What happened to us?-What happened to-?”
Nora raised her head sharply enough to make the girl flinch, but her expression softened as she wiped her eyes and clasped the small hand that lay on her arm. “I don’t know, Kristen.”
“I know what happened.”
Hank was faintly surprised to hear coherent words formed by the deep and unfamiliar voice that was now his own. Some purely clinical part of his mind was still thinking-with a strange and perfect clarity. He felt every gaze in the room turn toward him, and impulsively looked away from their wondering eyes with a grimace.
“You said… Charles,” Nora said haltingly, shifting a little closer to him. “You mean… Professor Xavier?”
“I see it all now. That was what Stryker wanted at the school. It wasn’t enough just to take Charles; he had to have Cerebro.” Hank reluctantly turned to meet her eyes. “Somehow… somehow he used Charles, just now. Used him to attack every mutant on the face of the earth…”
A few horrified gasps escaped from the older students, who understood what this meant. Nora drew a breath to respond, but Hank went on.
“Something went wrong. Someone interfered, or Charles fought back, and for a moment his mind was turned against ordinary humans instead… like you, Nora.”
Her eyes filled with pain and bewilderment, Nora swallowed hard. “But… but you, Hank…”
“A latent secondary mutation.” His voice became dull and toneless. “You’ve seen it in some of our patients. The emergence of an additional power or change is often brought on by a shock of some kind. Whatever happened, it’s only triggered what was in my DNA already… and if I’m right…”
He hesitated. Then, closing his eyes, he concluded in a deep sigh.
“I won’t be the only one.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Kitty suddenly pushed herself up from the floor where she had been kneeling, and went to the television set. It had gone black at some point during Jones’ convulsions, but it came to life when she turned the power on-and a live news report was unfolding on the screen at that very moment. The facts filtering through from a pale and shaken news anchor supported every word Hank had said.
Simultaneously, across the world, a mysterious and painful assault upon mutants… and then humans. Reports of new mutations manifesting, or of secret existing mutations being suddenly exposed-witnesses could make no distinction, and certainly there had been countless instances of both. And perhaps worst of all, news of deaths from heart attack and stroke and organ failure, when ordinary humans with health conditions were overcome by the telepathic attack.
For a long time, the students and their two guardians sat or sprawled wherever they were, listening in horror and grief as the true scope of the tragedy became clear. The rational part of Hank’s mind that could still function was torn between the fear of another attack, and the hope that its interruption meant the X-Men had intervened; but for his own part, he knew he could do nothing now. Even if he could think of some useful action to take, he was in no condition for it. His transformation had burned every ounce of energy he had, and it would be days before he fully recovered-physically, at least.
As for reaching out to his sources of information… at this point, he couldn’t even think about the task of convincing them that this animal hulk was the Henry McCoy they had known.
Author: jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: Mild PG, for angst and adult situations.
Characters: Emphasis on Beast, with support from various other characters.
Setting: Mainly mid- to post-X2.
Summary: The personal journey of Henry McCoy-as a mutant, and as a man.
Disclaimer: Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. Nora is mine, and so is Kristen, who has appeared in several of my stories.
CHAPTER II
Hank was on the air that night when the news broke of Magneto’s escape from prison. From that moment on, the debate he was engaged in spun wildly out of control-and all his private speculations did much the same.
Another piece of the puzzle had appeared, but he didn’t know where it fitted, either.
Sitting still for the cameras, and maintaining his air of level grace when every instinct cried out portents of disaster, made him feel a hundred years old by the time he left the news studios that night. He collected a few essentials from his and Nora’s apartments, then stopped at an all-night grocery store. Charles had always made sure the safe house was stocked with enough non-perishable supplies for several days, but Hank bought an assortment of fresh meat and vegetables, and even a few sweets. At least for the time being, he knew of little else he could do to give the children comfort.
It was after midnight when he tapped the recognition signal on the front door of the house, then let himself in. Nora looked up from an armchair as if she had been half-drowsing there, but only a few of the older teenagers were now sprawled on the sofa and the carpeted floor. She must have put the rest of the children to bed in the house’s three bedrooms, trying to maintain some semblance of a normal routine.
“You heard?” he asked quietly, setting down two grocery bags on the table beside the door.
Nora nodded, wearily brushing strands of long brown hair out of her face. “We were watching you all evening-I guess we got the news at the same time you did. It isn’t a coincidence, is it?”
“I don’t see how it can be. Stryker was in charge of Erik’s prison facility-and Kitty also told us Charles had gone to visit him.” Hank paused. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Nora: I wouldn’t like to be Stryker at this moment. He’s already had enough to worry about, if any of the X-Men are still free and searching for him. But with Erik on the loose, spoiling for vengeance…”
“It almost sounds like he’s on our side this time,” Nora said, with the faintest shadow of a smile.
“I wouldn’t go that far. Erik always works to his own ends. If he can find some way to use what’s happened, he will.”
Hank grimaced, remembering the days when Erik Lehnsherr had been a friend-and the helplessness of watching that friend sink into depths of bitterness and hate. He had once admired Erik’s brilliant mind second only to Charles’ own, but somewhere along the way, the heart that guided the mind had become twisted. If Charles hadn’t recognized what was happening to him, surely Hank could not have; but somehow, he still felt there was more he could have done.
After a moment he shook his head, pushing away those old feelings of futility, and brought his mind back to the small things that could be done in the here and now. He glanced back over his shoulder, toward the car parked in the driveway.
“I’ll bring in the rest of the bags.”
Nora’s cooking provided the students with a fresh, hot breakfast the next morning, but many of them ate sparingly. Some were still exhibiting clear signs of shock, and the two adults handled them gently, keeping them warm and quiet and secure. Kitty and Peter shouldered almost as much of the responsibility, trying to entertain and reassure the younger children. Hank was grateful for the pair; already he could see in them the makings of future X-Men.
He spent the morning making another round of phone calls, but on this day it seemed there was even less to be learned. No one had heard from Charles and his people, or Magneto, or Stryker himself. Even Bobby had not called back. From all of Hank’s sources, and within his own heart, he felt an ominous sense that the entire world was simply waiting for something to happen.
And it happened shortly before noon, when he was halfheartedly helping Nora prepare sandwiches for lunch.
In those final moments before his life changed, he was watching with a sad and detached kind of amusement as Nora spread peanut butter and jelly. She handled a butterknife in the kitchen or a scalpel in the lab with the same deliberate precision; yet somehow, in this setting, he still found himself looking at her differently. In the past they had shared both business and pleasure, but what he felt now was something new-something so basic, so natural, that it made his heart ache. The work of protecting and providing seemed to create an almost primal bond, more intimate than anything he had ever felt before.
It’s a fine time to be playing house, Henry, he chided himself with a frown.
Nora noticed his troubled expression, and her lips twitched in bemusement. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh… nothing.” Hank smiled solemnly. “I was just thinking… that you’re very beautiful.”
The pensive curve of Nora’s lips began to resolve into a faint smile. She reached for his hand-a movement that was checked when they heard first one cry of alarm, and then another, and another.
Their startled eyes met for only an instant before they rushed into the living room, to find the children clutching at their heads and crying out in pain.
Incredibly, impossibly, their mutations seemed to be turning back upon themselves. Peter lay groaning on the floor, random patches of his skin shifting rapidly between its normal and armored states. Kitty clawed for a handhold she could not grasp, as she helplessly phased in and out of solidity. The lights and television flickered in time with the seizures that gripped Jones. All of the children, in their own ways, were suffering the same torment.
Before Hank could comprehend what he was seeing, he felt it himself. He felt the power that reached deep into his brain, clutching, squeezing, twisting it-the power of a mind whose touch, after so many years, he could easily recognize.
“Charles…!” he gasped, with the last of his breath.
Suddenly the pain in his head was overtaken by an astonishing new agony. It shot through his body and pitched him to the floor, wracking his whole powerful frame with spasms so violent that Nora-the only one of them unaffected-could not come close to him. He distantly heard her call his name, but he could not answer her.
His hands felt strange and heavy, and through his convulsions, he stared at them in frightened bewilderment. He watched the flesh of his palms turn hard and rough, not unlike the paw pads of an animal; he watched his fingernails grow longer and darker, curving into short, pointed gray talons.
A shocking blue pigmentation began to spread across his skin. It came on like a burning rash at first, pinpricks joining together into spots, and then blotches, until every inch of him had been consumed by the color-and as quickly as those vivid patches seared through his flesh, they sprouted shafts of coarse blue hair that lengthened and matted into a dense coat of fur. Beneath it, his muscles rippled and bulked with sudden, painful violence, splitting the seams of his shirt.
He cried out, and the sound was an animal’s tortured howl, his lips drawn back from canine teeth that had grown long and sharp.
Somehow the pain in his head had ceased, but the very different pain of metamorphosis continued. Beneath fur and flesh, all his insides seemed to writhe, bones and sinews twisting themselves into new arrangements. His facial features grew harder and sharper, deepening into half-simian crags that bore only the faintest resemblance to the face he had once possessed.
Finally, mercifully, it ended. His convulsions stilled; the burning pain faded, leaving only the dull twinging of stressed muscles, and the itching irritation of fur freshly broken through skin. It was over… but for the moment, he could do nothing more than lay dazed and gasping after that cataclysmic exertion of his body. A manifestation that should naturally have taken hours or days had occurred in mere minutes, and every fiber of his being was brutally spent.
At some point in the terror he had closed his eyes tightly, but after a long moment, he felt Nora moving to his side-and he felt her hesitation, just for a heartbeat, before she touched his face. Her voice cracked as she whispered his name, her hands slowly moving downward to rest over his heart. She moved with the numb mindlessness of shock, smoothing the new fur beneath the tatters of his shirt, as half-wordless murmurs of comfort fell from her trembling lips.
A part of Hank wanted to turn away from her, but he merely lay still, paralyzed by exhaustion and pain.
The students were slowly recovering from their own trauma. Hank reluctantly opened one eye and glimpsed a few of them, still unsteady and trying to catch their breath, even as they stared at him in fearful wonder. With a shudder he retreated once more into the darkness behind his eyelids. He was all too aware of the emotions that caused the tremor-emotions unworthy of the children’s presence. No one could understand better than they what he had just experienced.
But he was still only human. If he had not felt that first instinctive upwelling of revulsion and shame within him then, perhaps he would not have been.
Beside him, he heard Nora gasp sharply.
His eyes flew open in time to see her slim figure wrench back from him, her hands gripping her skull as if to tear out a thing that had invaded it. The nearest students flinched away as she crumpled to the floor beside Hank, sobbing and writhing in a weak, impotent human equivalent to the torture they had suffered only moments before. This time they were unafflicted; only Nora felt it now.
By a raw effort of will, Hank rose to his knees in a sudden upheaval, gathering Nora into his arms. For that moment there was no hesitation. He cradled her shaking body against his blue-furred barrel chest, staring up toward the ceiling in helpless rage.
“No, Charles, no!”
The voice was not his own as he had known it, and his futile protest trailed into the roar of something inhuman.
His plea was not answered instantly… but it was answered. In a few more moments, Nora’s desperate thrashing ceased, and her cries fell silent as her breathing grew more steady. He felt one final shudder pass through her, and then her body relaxed.
At first her stillness almost frightened Hank. Then she turned her head slightly, burying her face against the solid bulwark of his shoulder, and he felt the warm dampness of tears soaking into his fur.
He let go of her abruptly, almost pushing her away, and sank back brokenly into a half-shadowed corner of the room.
Abandoned in the middle of the floor, Nora curled into herself, her head lowered and her arms wrapped around her knees. For a time there were no words spoken. Hank’s heavy, aching breaths, and the quiet sobs of Nora and a few of the children, were the only sounds to be heard.
Naturally and understandably, it was the children who began to break the silence first.
“M-Miss Tanner?” It was the child who had slept on Nora’s lap the day before. She inched across the carpet, hesitantly touching the elbow of her trusted guardian, and her voice quivered with the tears she bravely held back. “What’s going on? What happened to us?-What happened to-?”
Nora raised her head sharply enough to make the girl flinch, but her expression softened as she wiped her eyes and clasped the small hand that lay on her arm. “I don’t know, Kristen.”
“I know what happened.”
Hank was faintly surprised to hear coherent words formed by the deep and unfamiliar voice that was now his own. Some purely clinical part of his mind was still thinking-with a strange and perfect clarity. He felt every gaze in the room turn toward him, and impulsively looked away from their wondering eyes with a grimace.
“You said… Charles,” Nora said haltingly, shifting a little closer to him. “You mean… Professor Xavier?”
“I see it all now. That was what Stryker wanted at the school. It wasn’t enough just to take Charles; he had to have Cerebro.” Hank reluctantly turned to meet her eyes. “Somehow… somehow he used Charles, just now. Used him to attack every mutant on the face of the earth…”
A few horrified gasps escaped from the older students, who understood what this meant. Nora drew a breath to respond, but Hank went on.
“Something went wrong. Someone interfered, or Charles fought back, and for a moment his mind was turned against ordinary humans instead… like you, Nora.”
Her eyes filled with pain and bewilderment, Nora swallowed hard. “But… but you, Hank…”
“A latent secondary mutation.” His voice became dull and toneless. “You’ve seen it in some of our patients. The emergence of an additional power or change is often brought on by a shock of some kind. Whatever happened, it’s only triggered what was in my DNA already… and if I’m right…”
He hesitated. Then, closing his eyes, he concluded in a deep sigh.
“I won’t be the only one.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then Kitty suddenly pushed herself up from the floor where she had been kneeling, and went to the television set. It had gone black at some point during Jones’ convulsions, but it came to life when she turned the power on-and a live news report was unfolding on the screen at that very moment. The facts filtering through from a pale and shaken news anchor supported every word Hank had said.
Simultaneously, across the world, a mysterious and painful assault upon mutants… and then humans. Reports of new mutations manifesting, or of secret existing mutations being suddenly exposed-witnesses could make no distinction, and certainly there had been countless instances of both. And perhaps worst of all, news of deaths from heart attack and stroke and organ failure, when ordinary humans with health conditions were overcome by the telepathic attack.
For a long time, the students and their two guardians sat or sprawled wherever they were, listening in horror and grief as the true scope of the tragedy became clear. The rational part of Hank’s mind that could still function was torn between the fear of another attack, and the hope that its interruption meant the X-Men had intervened; but for his own part, he knew he could do nothing now. Even if he could think of some useful action to take, he was in no condition for it. His transformation had burned every ounce of energy he had, and it would be days before he fully recovered-physically, at least.
As for reaching out to his sources of information… at this point, he couldn’t even think about the task of convincing them that this animal hulk was the Henry McCoy they had known.