CoV fic: In the Shadows - Chapter Six
Title: In the Shadows
Chapter: Six
Fandom: City of Villains
Character: Tainted Shade aka Tag van Keuren
Genre: Character origin
Word Count: 3,405
Warnings: None
Notes: What, another chapter already? Yep! And this one is a long one, my apologies. There just wasn't a good spot to break it apart, really. But stuff finally happens in this chapter! Really!
“So, what’s your favorite subject in school?”
While Dr. Lowe visited Tag to take some more blood samples and get vitals from his patient, the pair of them had been chatting amicably about various things such as soccer. As usual when conversing with an adult, Tag wasn’t surprised when the favorite subject question was invariably brought up. They always resorted to asking it. Sometimes he wondered if adults really forgot that school wasn’t the most interesting or consuming thing in a kid’s life.
“I like shop,” Tag replied carelessly, a little annoyed that an adult as apparently interesting and cool as Dr. Lowe had fallen back on the tired old question when the soccer topic ran a little dry.
“Shop, really?” Standing beside Tag’s bed, working at drawing a number of small vials of blood from the boy, Lowe glanced up at his patient with curiosity. “What do you like about it?”
“Making stuff mostly.” Not squeamish in the least, Tag watched with interest as Dr. Lowe drew his blood. The color of the fluid in the vials looked oddly off even to his untrained eye. Blood was supposed to be red and rich, wasn’t it? His looked like it was tainted with grayness. “I’ve always liked doing that. Models and rockets and clocks, an’ putting things together. Stuff like that. Mostly we’re working with wood now, and that’s pretty neat. I’m in the middle of making a book shelf, an’ I’m using the scroll saw and router to put details on it and everything. But when I get into high school, then I can take metal shop an’ I think that’ll be really really cool,” he enthused brightly.
“I’m sure it will be,” Lowe finished filling the last little vial, set it into a small rack he’d brought with the other four he’d drawn, and pressed a small square of gauze over the pinprick hole at the end of Tag’s grayed finger. He gave the boy a smile. “So, you think maybe you want to go into construction or something similar when you grow up?”
Tag resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the other stupid question adults always asked. Instead he shook his head. “Nope. I’m gonna be a hero,” he replied simply.
Lowe blinked in surprise, but covered his reaction by filling out the labels to go on the blood vials instead. “A hero? Because you may be a mutant?”
“Nah, I always wanted t’be a hero,” Tag told him seriously, but with a smile. “Ever since I was a kid. But after the Rikti attacks… you know, it all seemed a lot more important and I wanted it so bad.” The world was still slowly recovering from the Rikti Invasion, which had happened only the year before last, and from the shock of losing so many lives and heroes in the process of fighting for the planet. Even far from most of the war, watching it mainly on TV, Tag had been deeply affected by it all, and his desire to help and do good had grown that much stronger.
“Wasn’t sure how to do it, though,” he continued. “But I kinda figured that since I’m good with building things, maybe I could make stuff t’help me. Like a mech suit or something!” he grinned, still thinking that was a pretty neat idea. “But now that I’m a mutant, maybe I won’t have to.”
“Now, we don’t know for sure yet that you’re a mutant,” Lowe cautioned, though without much in the way of firmness. He was reasonably sure that Tag was indeed a mutant, all they were waiting for was a positive genetic result on one last blood test to make it official. Having finished filling out the labels, he busied himself with affixing them one by one to vials.
“Oh, I am!” the teen replied confidently. “And it’s gonna be great. I’ll get some cool powers, I bet. I hope I’m a scrapper, or a tank! And I’ll join a really awesome supergroup and fight crime an’ stuff. Cuz, you know, if I am a mutant and I do get powers, it would be a waste if I didn’t become a hero, don’cha think?” He looked up at Lowe with a questioning expression. “Helping people and protecting the world is lots more important than just building things.”
Lowe considered for a moment how he should respond to that, taking his time with putting the final label on the last vial. He frowned a bit at the color of its contents, then put it back into the rack with the others. He set them all aside and turned to face Tag directly, with a kind smile.
“I can tell that’s what you really want to do, Tag, so yes I think it would be a waste if you developed powers and didn’t use them to help others. But you know, there’s no law that says you have to become a hero if you’re a mutant. Most mutants live normal lives, doing the things they want to do. And it’s just as high a calling to build the things that people need, like houses, and car engines, and rockets, as it is to be a hero.”
Tag frowned a little, considering that. “I know them things are important too. I didn’t mean to say they wasn’t, but I wanna to be a hero if I can. I think it would be very cool.” He then rubbed the back of his neck in a gesture of discomfort. “Besides, all my rockets blow up before I can launch them,” he admitted sheepishly. “I think it’d be safer for other people if I was a hero.”
Lowe laughed at that, which caused Tag to grin easily and laugh as well. The sparkle in the teen’s lightening eyes was bright and dancing with amusement and that was something Lowe was pleased to see. Having a good sense of humor and a sunny disposition would go a long way toward helping Tag make the adjustment to being a mutant, and hopefully the boy’s positive attitude would help to cancel out his parents’ negativity.
As if he had summoned them with his thoughts, the parents arrived right then, while Lowe and Tag were still laughing. The frown on Theresa van Keuren’s face was as plain as anything, as was her displeasure at finding the interloping specialist being affectionate with her son. The father of the family seemed as neutral as always, though there was a hardness around his eyes that spoke of irritation.
“Hi Mom!” Tag greeted happily and warmly. “Hey Dad!”
“Hello Tag, sweetie,” Theresa stepped close to the bed to give her son a kiss to the cheek which appeared to embarrass him a great deal, if the little face he made was any indication. “How are you feeling?”
While Tag assured her that he was fine and tried to ward off her attempts to fuss over him, Dr. Lowe decided it would be a good idea to get these blood samples down to the lab and keep appropriate distance between himself and the van Keuren parents, since it was pretty obvious that they didn’t care for him. He didn’t doubt that Theresa was somehow projecting this uneasy situation onto him, mentally dubbing it as his fault for daring to even utter the word mutant. And while Kurt was mostly unreadable, Lowe wouldn’t have put bets on whether or not the man wanted him anywhere near his son.
So he offered a vague farewell that was ignored by everyone in the room, except for the boy, who smiled after him, even as he was protesting his mother’s efforts to straighten his pillows and bed sheet.
He had only just closed the door behind him, when Dr. Evenston met him in the hallway, a medical file folder in his hand. He looked grave, and Dr. Lowe didn’t even have to guess why.
“Are Tag’s parents here?” Evenston asked.
“Yes, they’ve both only just arrived.” Lowe looked pointedly at the folder, knowing it contained information that the van Keuren parents didn’t want to hear. That poor kid. Lowe hoped once again that Tag’s optimism would be enough to counter Kurt and Theresa’s disapproval of mutants. “Let me drop these samples with the nurse,” he indicated the vials of blood he was carrying, “and then I’ll join you to give them the news.”
When they returned to Tag’s room, they opened the door to find Kurt van Keuren sitting in a chair by the window, looking out at the fall afternoon with no indication of interest in the conversation that was taking place between his wife and son. Theresa was in the process of gathering up Tag’s comic books, her movements quick and fussy as she hurriedly collected them into a haphazard pile.
“Why can’t I read ‘em?” Tag had a puzzled frown on his grayed face as he watched. “I ain’t got nothing else to do in here!”
“Tag, how many times have I told you that it’s not polite so say ‘ain’t’?” Theresa scolded, holding the pile of comics and glancing around as if she were looking for a wastebasket, but she apparently realized that if she threw them away, Tag would just fish them out of the trash after she was gone. She instead shoved them into the purse she had brought. “And you can’t read them, because it’s about time that you learned the difference between fantasy and harsh reality.”
“What?” Tag was simply bewildered by that statement, but he didn’t have the opportunity to question further, because Dr. Evenston then cleared his throat to let the family know that he and Lowe were there.
“Sorry to interrupt, Theresa, Kurt,” the elderly doctor said apologetically as he and Lowe stepped into the room. “But, I’m glad you’re both here. We’ve gotten the results back from that final genetic test, and Dr. Lowe and I would like to discuss them with you. Please, Theresa, have a seat.”
Kurt had stood, and Theresa sank into one of the chairs, her expression wary, but expectant. Lowe got the feeling that if she didn’t hear what she wanted to, it was going to be very uncomfortable for them all. He looked at Tag, trying to offer the boy a kind smile to preemptively counteract what was coming.
Tag didn’t fear what the doctors were going to say. He already knew, and his heart was racing excitedly. They were going to say that he was a mutant! He knew that they were! It was everything that he had wanted, and made all the discomfort of his body changing absolutely worth it. Anticipatory happiness making him oblivious to his mother’s growing distress as Dr. Evenston discussed the particulars of the genetic test, Tag sat up straight and leaned forward eagerly. And he could barely contain a happy exclamation when Evenston finally disclosed that the test had come back positive. The genetic markers in Tag’s DNA indicated that he was indeed a mutant.
“Yes!” Tag whooped, with a little accompanying fist pump.
Lowe had looked at Tag again, and the boy could see in the man’s expression, even subdued as it was, that he understood and shared Tag’s elation. “In fact, you’re the first documented mutant in Western Michigan.”
“I am?!” Tag was so pleased he couldn’t keep still and squirmed in his place. This was awesome! He couldn’t wait to tell Jason…
Unfortunately, the happiness Tag felt over this incredible announcement was whisked away almost immediately as his mother broke down in tears.
As soon as Evenston had said her precious boy was a mutant, she’d gone pale, and stared at Tag incredulously as he celebrated. How could he be so happy? It was a disgrace! She still didn’t want to believe it, her baby couldn’t be a freak! But Evenston said it was so, and then Kurt was reading over the results of the test, looking tightly angry, while that horrible Dr. Lowe encouraged her son’s foolishness, and Theresa just could not take it anymore. It was all too horrible. Her baby was a mutant! The only thing she could do was cry angrily at the unfairness of it.
Tag was startled and, frankly, frightened, as she buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “No!” she protested, choking around her tears and words. There was fury in the sound of her voice, like Tag had never heard before, alongside the obvious grief. “He can’t be a freak! He can’t!”
It was like a sick weight was thrown into the pit of Tag’s stomach. Freak? She thought he was a… Hearing that, Tag wanted to start crying himself. His eyes felt hot, and there was a sob stuck in his chest that he valiantly tried to keep forced down. He was thirteen years old and he was a boy; he couldn’t cry! Especially not once he noticed his father giving him a stern look. Tag swallowed it down, but it hurt to do so. Both physically and emotionally. His mother thought…
“Mom…” he said weakly, sitting forward a little more in an attempt to get a little closer to her, but his IV line prevented that, and Dr. Lowe came and put a reassuring hand on Tag’s upper arm to keep him still. “Mom, I’m not a freak.” Tag was trembling from the intensity of the anguish his mother was displaying. He felt like he’d somehow done something horribly wrong, if his mother was reacting like this.
“Of course you’re not,” Dr. Lowe said kindly, rather shocked himself at Theresa’s dramatics.
“He’s a mutant!” she looked up sharply and accusingly, anger directed straight at Dr. Lowe. As far as she was concerned, the two words were synonymous. “Your horrible tests prove it! Oh…” she shut her teary eyes, and pressed her fingers to her forehead as if in pain. “What are people going to think? This is awful…” Her tears started over fresh, though with less anger in them.
Lowe’s surprise at her outburst quickly turned to disgust. Tag was still sitting there, upset and confused, looking like he was ready to cry himself. His mother’s reaction had obviously come as a shock to him, she had called him a freak, and now he was hurting. It was plain to see in the broken expression on his grayed face. His mouth was trembling and his hands shaking. Neither parent had offered him comfort. Theresa was too mired in her own selfish worries and prejudices. And Kurt hadn’t seemed to have reacted at all. He didn’t look at his wife, and his gaze only briefly met Tag’s wounded one before he looked away.
Kurt cleared his throat, as if it were dry, and addressed the doctors, “Alright. What do we need to do to fix him?”
Tag felt sick. His stomach was queasy, and his chest felt like something iron was wrapped around it. He didn’t understand his mother’s angry and grief-stricken reaction at all. And while his father had remained silent, Tag could at least hope that he didn’t feel the same way. But apparently he did. He was asking the doctors how Tag could be fixed, like he was something wrong or broken. The boy slowly sank back down, resting his head in his pillows as he listened to Evenston offer treatment options. There was a new pain within him, something that hadn’t been there before and didn’t seem to have anything to do with the changes taking place in his body.
Evenston explained the particulars of some experimental drug therapies, that had so far only been tried when mutations were potentially fatal, but he was optimistic that Tag would respond well to them. This caught Theresa’s interest, cleared up her tears in a hurry, because there was apparently hope yet. It was just as Kurt had reassured her on the car ride over to the hospital. They could fix Tag, get his spikes removed, and no one would ever have to know that their son was one of those awful mutants.
Lowe stated, for the record, that he didn’t think the therapies were medically necessary in Tag’s case, which prompted a round of righteous indignation from his mother. Nor did she seem swayed in the least by his argument that the drugs could even prove to be harmful in the long run to her son’s health. In order to suppress his mutation, he might have to be on them for the rest of his life, and there would be side effects.
Theresa dried her tears and asked when they could get startled.
Tag watched and listened in a painful haze, feeling keenly alone. The adults weren’t paying any attention to him. No one had asked him what he wanted. They were just deciding for him, talking about giving him drugs to suppress his mutation. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. In fact, it scared him, especially the thought that he might have to take them for the rest of his life! He didn’t want to take them in the first place, because he wanted to be a mutant! Tag didn’t understand why his parents had reacted as they had, why his mother had been so distraught. Why she had called him a…
“Well,” Evenston’s words were delivered with obvious resignation. “We’ll have to order a supply, because the exact combinations are not something we keep in stock here,” he explained to Theresa, and presumably to Kurt as well, though the man looked like he wasn’t listening. “But, we should have them in a day or two, and then we can attempt a preliminary test, see how he reacts to them.”
“I don’t want them!” All of the adults in the room were startled as the patient in question suddenly protested. Tag sat up again, his confusion and fear giving way now to his own anger. He glared at each of them in turn, hoping one of them would listen and take him seriously. “I don’t wanna take drugs, I don’t need to be fixed! I wanna be a mutant!”
Evenston and Lowe certainly looked taken aback. His father seemed as unresponsive as usual. But Tag’s mother’s expression darkened, as if a storm was moving over her features. It was unsettling to the boy, because he had never seen his mother look like that before. She stared at him hard for a long moment, before her face softened, and she apparently remembered that her son had a right to his own opinion on what was going to be done to his body.
“Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry,” Theresa said apologetically, quickly skirting around the end of his bed, so that she could sit beside him. She reached out and lovingly brushed some of his tousled bangs away from his eyes and the bandage on his forehead, her touch caring. The gesture helped to soothe Tag’s anger, as she reverted back to the doting and fussy mother that he was so familiar with. “You must be so confused, and we haven’t discussed this with you at all yet,” she smiled sadly and pressed a small kiss to his temple.
“Yeah, I am confused,” Tag admitted, fingers tightening into the material of his bedclothes. He looked at her, blue eyes mirroring all of the questions that he wanted to ask, and reflecting the hurt he felt when she had called him a freak. At least she was acting more like his mother now, but he wasn’t going to forget that pain quickly.
Theresa patted his back and looked to the doctors. “If you could excuse us for a few minutes, doctors?” she requested politely. “I think we need some time to talk about this as a family.”
“Of course, Theresa,” Doctor Evenston was relieved that the woman’s emotional outburst was now in the past, and he hoped having a little time to discuss the situation would make this all go better for Tag. Perhaps the boy could even dissuade his parents from insisting that he undergo the drug therapies.
Lowe was hoping the same thing. But as he followed Evenston out of the room, he looked back once to make sure Tag was alright, and briefly caught Theresa’s eye. Though her expression was soft for her son’s sake, Lowe could see a hard determination in her gaze which told him she wasn’t about to change her mind.
Chapter: Six
Fandom: City of Villains
Character: Tainted Shade aka Tag van Keuren
Genre: Character origin
Word Count: 3,405
Warnings: None
Notes: What, another chapter already? Yep! And this one is a long one, my apologies. There just wasn't a good spot to break it apart, really. But stuff finally happens in this chapter! Really!
“So, what’s your favorite subject in school?”
While Dr. Lowe visited Tag to take some more blood samples and get vitals from his patient, the pair of them had been chatting amicably about various things such as soccer. As usual when conversing with an adult, Tag wasn’t surprised when the favorite subject question was invariably brought up. They always resorted to asking it. Sometimes he wondered if adults really forgot that school wasn’t the most interesting or consuming thing in a kid’s life.
“I like shop,” Tag replied carelessly, a little annoyed that an adult as apparently interesting and cool as Dr. Lowe had fallen back on the tired old question when the soccer topic ran a little dry.
“Shop, really?” Standing beside Tag’s bed, working at drawing a number of small vials of blood from the boy, Lowe glanced up at his patient with curiosity. “What do you like about it?”
“Making stuff mostly.” Not squeamish in the least, Tag watched with interest as Dr. Lowe drew his blood. The color of the fluid in the vials looked oddly off even to his untrained eye. Blood was supposed to be red and rich, wasn’t it? His looked like it was tainted with grayness. “I’ve always liked doing that. Models and rockets and clocks, an’ putting things together. Stuff like that. Mostly we’re working with wood now, and that’s pretty neat. I’m in the middle of making a book shelf, an’ I’m using the scroll saw and router to put details on it and everything. But when I get into high school, then I can take metal shop an’ I think that’ll be really really cool,” he enthused brightly.
“I’m sure it will be,” Lowe finished filling the last little vial, set it into a small rack he’d brought with the other four he’d drawn, and pressed a small square of gauze over the pinprick hole at the end of Tag’s grayed finger. He gave the boy a smile. “So, you think maybe you want to go into construction or something similar when you grow up?”
Tag resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the other stupid question adults always asked. Instead he shook his head. “Nope. I’m gonna be a hero,” he replied simply.
Lowe blinked in surprise, but covered his reaction by filling out the labels to go on the blood vials instead. “A hero? Because you may be a mutant?”
“Nah, I always wanted t’be a hero,” Tag told him seriously, but with a smile. “Ever since I was a kid. But after the Rikti attacks… you know, it all seemed a lot more important and I wanted it so bad.” The world was still slowly recovering from the Rikti Invasion, which had happened only the year before last, and from the shock of losing so many lives and heroes in the process of fighting for the planet. Even far from most of the war, watching it mainly on TV, Tag had been deeply affected by it all, and his desire to help and do good had grown that much stronger.
“Wasn’t sure how to do it, though,” he continued. “But I kinda figured that since I’m good with building things, maybe I could make stuff t’help me. Like a mech suit or something!” he grinned, still thinking that was a pretty neat idea. “But now that I’m a mutant, maybe I won’t have to.”
“Now, we don’t know for sure yet that you’re a mutant,” Lowe cautioned, though without much in the way of firmness. He was reasonably sure that Tag was indeed a mutant, all they were waiting for was a positive genetic result on one last blood test to make it official. Having finished filling out the labels, he busied himself with affixing them one by one to vials.
“Oh, I am!” the teen replied confidently. “And it’s gonna be great. I’ll get some cool powers, I bet. I hope I’m a scrapper, or a tank! And I’ll join a really awesome supergroup and fight crime an’ stuff. Cuz, you know, if I am a mutant and I do get powers, it would be a waste if I didn’t become a hero, don’cha think?” He looked up at Lowe with a questioning expression. “Helping people and protecting the world is lots more important than just building things.”
Lowe considered for a moment how he should respond to that, taking his time with putting the final label on the last vial. He frowned a bit at the color of its contents, then put it back into the rack with the others. He set them all aside and turned to face Tag directly, with a kind smile.
“I can tell that’s what you really want to do, Tag, so yes I think it would be a waste if you developed powers and didn’t use them to help others. But you know, there’s no law that says you have to become a hero if you’re a mutant. Most mutants live normal lives, doing the things they want to do. And it’s just as high a calling to build the things that people need, like houses, and car engines, and rockets, as it is to be a hero.”
Tag frowned a little, considering that. “I know them things are important too. I didn’t mean to say they wasn’t, but I wanna to be a hero if I can. I think it would be very cool.” He then rubbed the back of his neck in a gesture of discomfort. “Besides, all my rockets blow up before I can launch them,” he admitted sheepishly. “I think it’d be safer for other people if I was a hero.”
Lowe laughed at that, which caused Tag to grin easily and laugh as well. The sparkle in the teen’s lightening eyes was bright and dancing with amusement and that was something Lowe was pleased to see. Having a good sense of humor and a sunny disposition would go a long way toward helping Tag make the adjustment to being a mutant, and hopefully the boy’s positive attitude would help to cancel out his parents’ negativity.
As if he had summoned them with his thoughts, the parents arrived right then, while Lowe and Tag were still laughing. The frown on Theresa van Keuren’s face was as plain as anything, as was her displeasure at finding the interloping specialist being affectionate with her son. The father of the family seemed as neutral as always, though there was a hardness around his eyes that spoke of irritation.
“Hi Mom!” Tag greeted happily and warmly. “Hey Dad!”
“Hello Tag, sweetie,” Theresa stepped close to the bed to give her son a kiss to the cheek which appeared to embarrass him a great deal, if the little face he made was any indication. “How are you feeling?”
While Tag assured her that he was fine and tried to ward off her attempts to fuss over him, Dr. Lowe decided it would be a good idea to get these blood samples down to the lab and keep appropriate distance between himself and the van Keuren parents, since it was pretty obvious that they didn’t care for him. He didn’t doubt that Theresa was somehow projecting this uneasy situation onto him, mentally dubbing it as his fault for daring to even utter the word mutant. And while Kurt was mostly unreadable, Lowe wouldn’t have put bets on whether or not the man wanted him anywhere near his son.
So he offered a vague farewell that was ignored by everyone in the room, except for the boy, who smiled after him, even as he was protesting his mother’s efforts to straighten his pillows and bed sheet.
He had only just closed the door behind him, when Dr. Evenston met him in the hallway, a medical file folder in his hand. He looked grave, and Dr. Lowe didn’t even have to guess why.
“Are Tag’s parents here?” Evenston asked.
“Yes, they’ve both only just arrived.” Lowe looked pointedly at the folder, knowing it contained information that the van Keuren parents didn’t want to hear. That poor kid. Lowe hoped once again that Tag’s optimism would be enough to counter Kurt and Theresa’s disapproval of mutants. “Let me drop these samples with the nurse,” he indicated the vials of blood he was carrying, “and then I’ll join you to give them the news.”
When they returned to Tag’s room, they opened the door to find Kurt van Keuren sitting in a chair by the window, looking out at the fall afternoon with no indication of interest in the conversation that was taking place between his wife and son. Theresa was in the process of gathering up Tag’s comic books, her movements quick and fussy as she hurriedly collected them into a haphazard pile.
“Why can’t I read ‘em?” Tag had a puzzled frown on his grayed face as he watched. “I ain’t got nothing else to do in here!”
“Tag, how many times have I told you that it’s not polite so say ‘ain’t’?” Theresa scolded, holding the pile of comics and glancing around as if she were looking for a wastebasket, but she apparently realized that if she threw them away, Tag would just fish them out of the trash after she was gone. She instead shoved them into the purse she had brought. “And you can’t read them, because it’s about time that you learned the difference between fantasy and harsh reality.”
“What?” Tag was simply bewildered by that statement, but he didn’t have the opportunity to question further, because Dr. Evenston then cleared his throat to let the family know that he and Lowe were there.
“Sorry to interrupt, Theresa, Kurt,” the elderly doctor said apologetically as he and Lowe stepped into the room. “But, I’m glad you’re both here. We’ve gotten the results back from that final genetic test, and Dr. Lowe and I would like to discuss them with you. Please, Theresa, have a seat.”
Kurt had stood, and Theresa sank into one of the chairs, her expression wary, but expectant. Lowe got the feeling that if she didn’t hear what she wanted to, it was going to be very uncomfortable for them all. He looked at Tag, trying to offer the boy a kind smile to preemptively counteract what was coming.
Tag didn’t fear what the doctors were going to say. He already knew, and his heart was racing excitedly. They were going to say that he was a mutant! He knew that they were! It was everything that he had wanted, and made all the discomfort of his body changing absolutely worth it. Anticipatory happiness making him oblivious to his mother’s growing distress as Dr. Evenston discussed the particulars of the genetic test, Tag sat up straight and leaned forward eagerly. And he could barely contain a happy exclamation when Evenston finally disclosed that the test had come back positive. The genetic markers in Tag’s DNA indicated that he was indeed a mutant.
“Yes!” Tag whooped, with a little accompanying fist pump.
Lowe had looked at Tag again, and the boy could see in the man’s expression, even subdued as it was, that he understood and shared Tag’s elation. “In fact, you’re the first documented mutant in Western Michigan.”
“I am?!” Tag was so pleased he couldn’t keep still and squirmed in his place. This was awesome! He couldn’t wait to tell Jason…
Unfortunately, the happiness Tag felt over this incredible announcement was whisked away almost immediately as his mother broke down in tears.
As soon as Evenston had said her precious boy was a mutant, she’d gone pale, and stared at Tag incredulously as he celebrated. How could he be so happy? It was a disgrace! She still didn’t want to believe it, her baby couldn’t be a freak! But Evenston said it was so, and then Kurt was reading over the results of the test, looking tightly angry, while that horrible Dr. Lowe encouraged her son’s foolishness, and Theresa just could not take it anymore. It was all too horrible. Her baby was a mutant! The only thing she could do was cry angrily at the unfairness of it.
Tag was startled and, frankly, frightened, as she buried her face in her hands and sobbed. “No!” she protested, choking around her tears and words. There was fury in the sound of her voice, like Tag had never heard before, alongside the obvious grief. “He can’t be a freak! He can’t!”
It was like a sick weight was thrown into the pit of Tag’s stomach. Freak? She thought he was a… Hearing that, Tag wanted to start crying himself. His eyes felt hot, and there was a sob stuck in his chest that he valiantly tried to keep forced down. He was thirteen years old and he was a boy; he couldn’t cry! Especially not once he noticed his father giving him a stern look. Tag swallowed it down, but it hurt to do so. Both physically and emotionally. His mother thought…
“Mom…” he said weakly, sitting forward a little more in an attempt to get a little closer to her, but his IV line prevented that, and Dr. Lowe came and put a reassuring hand on Tag’s upper arm to keep him still. “Mom, I’m not a freak.” Tag was trembling from the intensity of the anguish his mother was displaying. He felt like he’d somehow done something horribly wrong, if his mother was reacting like this.
“Of course you’re not,” Dr. Lowe said kindly, rather shocked himself at Theresa’s dramatics.
“He’s a mutant!” she looked up sharply and accusingly, anger directed straight at Dr. Lowe. As far as she was concerned, the two words were synonymous. “Your horrible tests prove it! Oh…” she shut her teary eyes, and pressed her fingers to her forehead as if in pain. “What are people going to think? This is awful…” Her tears started over fresh, though with less anger in them.
Lowe’s surprise at her outburst quickly turned to disgust. Tag was still sitting there, upset and confused, looking like he was ready to cry himself. His mother’s reaction had obviously come as a shock to him, she had called him a freak, and now he was hurting. It was plain to see in the broken expression on his grayed face. His mouth was trembling and his hands shaking. Neither parent had offered him comfort. Theresa was too mired in her own selfish worries and prejudices. And Kurt hadn’t seemed to have reacted at all. He didn’t look at his wife, and his gaze only briefly met Tag’s wounded one before he looked away.
Kurt cleared his throat, as if it were dry, and addressed the doctors, “Alright. What do we need to do to fix him?”
Tag felt sick. His stomach was queasy, and his chest felt like something iron was wrapped around it. He didn’t understand his mother’s angry and grief-stricken reaction at all. And while his father had remained silent, Tag could at least hope that he didn’t feel the same way. But apparently he did. He was asking the doctors how Tag could be fixed, like he was something wrong or broken. The boy slowly sank back down, resting his head in his pillows as he listened to Evenston offer treatment options. There was a new pain within him, something that hadn’t been there before and didn’t seem to have anything to do with the changes taking place in his body.
Evenston explained the particulars of some experimental drug therapies, that had so far only been tried when mutations were potentially fatal, but he was optimistic that Tag would respond well to them. This caught Theresa’s interest, cleared up her tears in a hurry, because there was apparently hope yet. It was just as Kurt had reassured her on the car ride over to the hospital. They could fix Tag, get his spikes removed, and no one would ever have to know that their son was one of those awful mutants.
Lowe stated, for the record, that he didn’t think the therapies were medically necessary in Tag’s case, which prompted a round of righteous indignation from his mother. Nor did she seem swayed in the least by his argument that the drugs could even prove to be harmful in the long run to her son’s health. In order to suppress his mutation, he might have to be on them for the rest of his life, and there would be side effects.
Theresa dried her tears and asked when they could get startled.
Tag watched and listened in a painful haze, feeling keenly alone. The adults weren’t paying any attention to him. No one had asked him what he wanted. They were just deciding for him, talking about giving him drugs to suppress his mutation. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. In fact, it scared him, especially the thought that he might have to take them for the rest of his life! He didn’t want to take them in the first place, because he wanted to be a mutant! Tag didn’t understand why his parents had reacted as they had, why his mother had been so distraught. Why she had called him a…
“Well,” Evenston’s words were delivered with obvious resignation. “We’ll have to order a supply, because the exact combinations are not something we keep in stock here,” he explained to Theresa, and presumably to Kurt as well, though the man looked like he wasn’t listening. “But, we should have them in a day or two, and then we can attempt a preliminary test, see how he reacts to them.”
“I don’t want them!” All of the adults in the room were startled as the patient in question suddenly protested. Tag sat up again, his confusion and fear giving way now to his own anger. He glared at each of them in turn, hoping one of them would listen and take him seriously. “I don’t wanna take drugs, I don’t need to be fixed! I wanna be a mutant!”
Evenston and Lowe certainly looked taken aback. His father seemed as unresponsive as usual. But Tag’s mother’s expression darkened, as if a storm was moving over her features. It was unsettling to the boy, because he had never seen his mother look like that before. She stared at him hard for a long moment, before her face softened, and she apparently remembered that her son had a right to his own opinion on what was going to be done to his body.
“Oh sweetheart, I’m sorry,” Theresa said apologetically, quickly skirting around the end of his bed, so that she could sit beside him. She reached out and lovingly brushed some of his tousled bangs away from his eyes and the bandage on his forehead, her touch caring. The gesture helped to soothe Tag’s anger, as she reverted back to the doting and fussy mother that he was so familiar with. “You must be so confused, and we haven’t discussed this with you at all yet,” she smiled sadly and pressed a small kiss to his temple.
“Yeah, I am confused,” Tag admitted, fingers tightening into the material of his bedclothes. He looked at her, blue eyes mirroring all of the questions that he wanted to ask, and reflecting the hurt he felt when she had called him a freak. At least she was acting more like his mother now, but he wasn’t going to forget that pain quickly.
Theresa patted his back and looked to the doctors. “If you could excuse us for a few minutes, doctors?” she requested politely. “I think we need some time to talk about this as a family.”
“Of course, Theresa,” Doctor Evenston was relieved that the woman’s emotional outburst was now in the past, and he hoped having a little time to discuss the situation would make this all go better for Tag. Perhaps the boy could even dissuade his parents from insisting that he undergo the drug therapies.
Lowe was hoping the same thing. But as he followed Evenston out of the room, he looked back once to make sure Tag was alright, and briefly caught Theresa’s eye. Though her expression was soft for her son’s sake, Lowe could see a hard determination in her gaze which told him she wasn’t about to change her mind.