TM-194: Vanish
"The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place." The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon.
Hank McCoy had a round face. It wasn’t an ugly face, or a particularly handsome one, but it was round, and jovial-as round faces tend to be-while somehow still conveying the intelligence of a much more angular countenance.
He had his mother’s eyes, which, aesthetically, was a good thing, because they were deep and brown and flecked with mischief. Practically, they weren’t so beneficial; Hank’s parents discovered his farsightedness when he was barely five years old. But the glasses suited him, almost as well as the eyes did, and Hank never found reason to complain.
His nose was his father’s, straight and Roman and a little overlong. His lips, too, were his father’s, full and well-shaped, and he also shared Norton McCoy’s eyebrows, heavy and expressive. But Hank’s hair was all his mother’s - the sort of thick, dark, slightly wavy locks that had made his father fall for a young woman once called Edna Franklin.
When the X-Men had just been founded, and only five confused adolescents ran through the hallways of Charles Xavier’s childhood home, the professor took a lot of pictures. Like a proud father, he wanted to document the coming-of-age of the five students he loved so dearly, and he filled a dozen photo albums with his posed and candid snapshots. Now those albums sit on the bottom shelf of a certain bookcase in one of the Institute’s common rooms, battered and singed from so many attacks on the building but still extant after all these years. And sometimes, when there’s a quiet moment, Hank likes to look through the pictures.
As he turns the pages, Hank smiles, a little sadly, at grinning pictures of Scott and Jean, hand-in-hand; he laughs, fondly, at pictures of Bobby making faces, and Warren posing like a Teen Beat poster boy. But mostly, as he’s glancing through the photographs, he looks at himself. He looks at that long Roman nose and those brown, bespectacled eyes and that dark hair, and then he closes his eyes and quizzes himself, like a high school student all over again, flashcards in hand.
Just how full were his lips? And just how heavy were his eyebrows? Hank knows he should remember these things. But after so many years with a different face-two different faces, at this point-there are times when Hank can’t honestly remember. Like a woman who’s dyed her hair so many colors that she can no longer describe the original, Hank has lost track of the way his eyes used to crinkle when he laughed, and the way his ears burned red when he was embarrassed, and the way his cheeks were dotted with sparse freckles. And so he looks at the albums, and studies, and pretends that studying is as good as remembering.
But someday, these albums will burn. Some villain will attack, and the common room will catch fire in the chaos of crumbling walls and bursting gas lines. As the fire licks closer to the pictures, Scott and Jean’s hands will curl apart, and Bobby’s funny faces will twist into painful, grotesque shapes, and Warren’s smile will melt away. And one by one, Hank’s human features will be eaten up and turned into oily blue-black clumps, unrecognizable.
And when that happens, and he scans the wreckage with heartbroken yellow eyes set in a face of blue fur and whiskers, Hank’s honestly not sure he’ll be able to prove that they ever existed at all.
Hank McCoy had a round face. It wasn’t an ugly face, or a particularly handsome one, but it was round, and jovial-as round faces tend to be-while somehow still conveying the intelligence of a much more angular countenance.
He had his mother’s eyes, which, aesthetically, was a good thing, because they were deep and brown and flecked with mischief. Practically, they weren’t so beneficial; Hank’s parents discovered his farsightedness when he was barely five years old. But the glasses suited him, almost as well as the eyes did, and Hank never found reason to complain.
His nose was his father’s, straight and Roman and a little overlong. His lips, too, were his father’s, full and well-shaped, and he also shared Norton McCoy’s eyebrows, heavy and expressive. But Hank’s hair was all his mother’s - the sort of thick, dark, slightly wavy locks that had made his father fall for a young woman once called Edna Franklin.
When the X-Men had just been founded, and only five confused adolescents ran through the hallways of Charles Xavier’s childhood home, the professor took a lot of pictures. Like a proud father, he wanted to document the coming-of-age of the five students he loved so dearly, and he filled a dozen photo albums with his posed and candid snapshots. Now those albums sit on the bottom shelf of a certain bookcase in one of the Institute’s common rooms, battered and singed from so many attacks on the building but still extant after all these years. And sometimes, when there’s a quiet moment, Hank likes to look through the pictures.
As he turns the pages, Hank smiles, a little sadly, at grinning pictures of Scott and Jean, hand-in-hand; he laughs, fondly, at pictures of Bobby making faces, and Warren posing like a Teen Beat poster boy. But mostly, as he’s glancing through the photographs, he looks at himself. He looks at that long Roman nose and those brown, bespectacled eyes and that dark hair, and then he closes his eyes and quizzes himself, like a high school student all over again, flashcards in hand.
Just how full were his lips? And just how heavy were his eyebrows? Hank knows he should remember these things. But after so many years with a different face-two different faces, at this point-there are times when Hank can’t honestly remember. Like a woman who’s dyed her hair so many colors that she can no longer describe the original, Hank has lost track of the way his eyes used to crinkle when he laughed, and the way his ears burned red when he was embarrassed, and the way his cheeks were dotted with sparse freckles. And so he looks at the albums, and studies, and pretends that studying is as good as remembering.
But someday, these albums will burn. Some villain will attack, and the common room will catch fire in the chaos of crumbling walls and bursting gas lines. As the fire licks closer to the pictures, Scott and Jean’s hands will curl apart, and Bobby’s funny faces will twist into painful, grotesque shapes, and Warren’s smile will melt away. And one by one, Hank’s human features will be eaten up and turned into oily blue-black clumps, unrecognizable.
And when that happens, and he scans the wreckage with heartbroken yellow eyes set in a face of blue fur and whiskers, Hank’s honestly not sure he’ll be able to prove that they ever existed at all.