Chapter 4
"Don't." Rachelle slurred around the blood dropping from her lips. "Don't, just stay back, please!"
Her dark hair was damp with sweat and blood, plastering several strands to her face. Her body heaved with each breath, struggling for whatever air was to be had.
Patrick settled his palm against the cold glass separating them. She always knew, even when she was like this, drugs pumping into her body, eyes glassy and distant, she always knew when he stirred back into consciousness.
Her eyes flickered, rolling as another wave of light passed over her. She struggled against the straps holding her in place, fighting for a way out. Most times she was delirious by the third day of treatment but she still found it in herself to command him to stay away.
She never wanted his help, never asked for it, always insisted on handling everything alone. She always intended to endure, to struggle through on her own.
He never listened, never could bring himself to leave her in that state to struggle alone.
"Patrick!" She warned, and it might have sounded authoritative if she'd been stronger.
He could not listen, could not leave her alone while she suffered. She did not deserve to be alone, in pain, blind to everything but the green light enveloping her. He could not simply sit there and watch, he couldn't!
Patrick reached, reached past the tangible, reached his mind toward hers and he dove, coiling himself about her to link their minds. As a new wave of the treatment flared, their agonized screams were joined together in the divided little room, two bodies sharing the pain of consciousness.
There was a heavy feeling to the air. Gathering to honestly plan, to talk realistically about their future was long overdue. Still, none of them had a real desire to proceed. They had become accustomed to hiding, to avoidance, to pretending nothing a wrong. Avoidance was far easier, less painful.
The other three were sitting on the couch but Hank could not even consider sitting down. He was pacing more than anything else, walking the length of the windows.
"So," Sean rubbed his hands together before dropping them into his lap, "what are we gonna do now?"
Hank took a deep breath to gather himself. "I've been working on that. I've got some things in the works."
"What kind of things?" Darwin offered him a suspicious look.
"A plane, for starters." Hank turned his eyes to the floor, "I think we are going to need to be realistic... We need to have contingency plans in place for every eventuality. They may not know where we are or who we are anymore but that doesn't mean they will never look again."
"What besides a plane are you working on?" Alex finally spoke up.
"Same sort of things as before." Hank admitted.
"Before?" Alex sat up on the couch, scooting to the very edge, "Like, which before are we talking?" He motioned his hands in a circle, "Like, jumpsuits and training, before? X-men and Shaw before?"
"Yeah." Hank tried to fold in on himself a bit. "Charles thought the best of people. He had hope. He thought we could eventually win this, have peace. He thought everything would be fine if they just couldn't find us anymore but... now he's gone. We may not have many options if they ever do find us again."
"What are you saying?" Darwin looked stricken, like he wanted the conversation to go anywhere other than where it seemed to be.
"I'm saying...we should... hope for the best, prepare for the worst."
"We supposed to go join up with Magneto's group now then?" There was heat to Alex's words, rage, resentment, but also resignation, like he might have wondered about the possibility before.
"No! No, that's not what I'm saying!" Hank rushed over his words, "I'm not saying we should go that route. Never! We're still - we're still X-men, it hasn't changed!"
"Then what are we supposed to do? With Charles..." Darwin turned his face away briefly, "Can we even keep this up without him? He was the one that found us all, recruited us, trained us!"
"I don't think we've got much choice. We have to figure it out." Hank wished he had something better.
Sean shook his head, looking at him like he'd gone mad, "Figure it out? Figure it out? We've barely been taking care of ourselves as it is, if we get caught too, without Professor X, we might as well have just gone to the front lines."
"That's not true! We can do this! Charles left us in charge! He trusted us! We are not going to let him down, we owe him that much! We will figure this out!" Hank was nearly shouting, something he rarely did.
The room fell into silence.
It took a while of searching the grounds, but eventually Hank found Sean, Kurt, Scott, and Jean. He had begun to think the worst, pondering all manner of trouble and disaster they could have begun as a group.
Nothing was burning, withering, shattered, dug up, or damaged. They were simply sitting by the lake, perched on various branches in the huge old tree. The kids loved to follow the redhead around on all manner of escapades so it was not entirely shocking. Sean was the Pied Piper without the malicious intent.
Hank jumped up onto an unoccupied branch, easing himself down. He decided to just coexist with them for a while until he could get something going or someone offered information.
He did not have to wait long.
Kurt materialized in his lap after a few minutes of the silence, "Is it true?" He asked, that little Russian accent still so pronounced even after around two years of being at the mansion, "Is Professor X really gone...forever?" That little lip began to quiver at the question.
Charles had picked the boy up, flew over oceans to get to him without telling anyone why. He'd raced to the boy like all of existence depended on it.
The moment Hank stepped off the jet and got a look at the little boy with blue hide and a devil's tail, he supposed he knew why. A mutant that looked like that little boy was as good as doomed.
Still, he occasionally wondered why Charles had seemed so desperate, so utterly frantic even during the plane ride, he'd been beside himself. He'd never quite been able to tell what the function of that place they found the child in had actually been but it seemed like a money laundering place. He often wondered if they made the kid steal for them with his vanishing talents.
Charles did not approve, whatever the case. After all, without a seconds hesitation, he had frozen an entire building full of people so they could walk in unhindered or questioned. He had not even been able to stop that many people since he lost his legs and began the serum, so seeing him do so then was more than slightly shocking.
The second Charles saw the little thing he'd scooped him up off the ground like he was afraid the very earth might open up and take him away. There were tears in those wise, knowing blue eyes as he held Kurt so close, so openly protective, so emotional as he whispered assurances and promises into pointed blue ears. It was made abundantly clear that Charles loved that little boy right from the start, and Kurt, unused to being loved and cherished the way a child should, practically became medically un-detachable from the telepath for quite some time.
It made Hank wonder if life had been that horrible for the little boy or if there was something else Charles alone knew.
Regardless, no one had taken Charles' absence as hard as Kurt but now...
"You don't have to worry, Kurt. Everything will be fine! You have a whole family here, the school is your home forever. We're all going to stick together and we'll all take care of each other."
"That's a yes." Scott whispered, looking away, hiding his eyes.
Kurt's red eyes widened, moisture spilling out of the corners, "Foreve'?!" His accent grew instantly thicker, "But v'hy? Did... did v'e do som'sing v'rong?"
"No! No one did anything wrong. He would come back if he could. He loved each one of us very much."
"He loved us so much..." Sean broke his silence, voice watery but clear, "that he did things, dangerous things, to make sure we were safe. That's why he can't come back, because he did too many of those dangerous things."
"He promised he would come back!" Jean suddenly snapped, fists balled up, brows turned into a deep frown, red hair almost seeming to spark in the sun for a moment, "He promised!"
"He tired to keep his promise Jean," Hank told her gently, tucking Kurt's head under his chin, "He wanted to come back and he did everything he could to get back... He just couldn't."
"Sometimes adults make promises they aren't strong enough to keep." Sean said, "They want to keep them, they fight to keep them, they just lose."
Sean was terribly gentle when the two of them carried the tearful children back to the house. Something had changed in Banshee and he seemed so much older, world weary behind the eyes. A lot of his playfulness was gone and Hank never thought he would say it, but he missed Sean's antics.
Seven months later the news again came alive. There was panic, there were theories, and there were several assassinated officials. The humans were worried. With reports running wild, each station tripping over each other to scoop the rest, there was a wealth of information being broadcast. Watching the information travel by, at first they all put money on it being Magneto, that is until a short reel of footage was released by some anonymous employee looking for money and glory.
The low quality surveillance footage clearly showed a busy hallway, seconds later, people were rushing for an office door, presumably after the shots. Someone in a full mask rushed out the doors, firing multiple shots both into the air and at a few of the people. Without warning or explanation the entire room of people frozen in place like they had been turned to stone.
The shooter was long gone even then but a separate figure in a long black coat, and a scarf, but no mask, rushed past them all in pursuit of the first person. The news instantly assumed it to be mutant involvement, potentially the Mutant Brotherhood.
Hank and the others though, were utterly certain it was Charles the second they witnessed the act. There were only particular mutants capable of acts like that, not to mention the figure moved like him, had the same posture. It was Charles.
Around the table, teachers sat at attention, tense as a bow. This time the meeting was with more than just Hank, Darwin, Alex, and Sean; Clarice Fong, John Proudstar, and Piotr Rasputin were also in attendance since they had been present during the broadcast. Every one of them was about to boil over. Hank had not even tired to turn himself back after he transformed with the amount of stress they were all under.
Alex pounded the dining room table with both firsts, "They've had him this whole time! It's how they got Magneto out of prison! The Brotherhood kidnapped him and has been using him, forcing him to do their bidding somehow!"
"Magneto never did like Moira!" Sean hissed, right beside Alex. "He probably killed her right after they broke him out!"
"I doubt it was the Brotherhood." Hank countered, "All the leads pointed to Trask."
"Maybe the Brotherhood found him, raided some Trask property and found him there." Clarice Fong put in, tossing her lush purple hair off her shoulder. "They would want to keep him around once they found him."
She had been the very last mutant Charles and Moira rescued. Trask's people had already been chasing her and if the two had gotten to her a few moments later, Trask would have synchronized the net he had around her. If they had pulled the car up minutes after, none of them would have met Blink at all. Though she had not known them more than a few days she had been almost as broken up about Charles and Moira as those who had known them for years.
Darwin shook his head, almost too upset to speak, "Or maybe he hasn't been out long. Maybe he hasn't come back yet because he's trying to stop whatever they are up to now."
"Actually," Piotr Rasputin spoke up, the skin of his fingers turning sliver before he relaxed his posture, "for all we know, that was them freeing Charles from some Trask project! Perhaps he will find his way back to us now?"
"If he was free, he would be here by now!" Alex snapped, "Or he would have let us know!"
"I agree," Sean was nearly as worked up as Alex, "He would at least find a payphone and call! He wouldn't let us keep thinking he's dead if he could help it!"
Clarice rubbed her fingers under her big green eyes, "Unless they brainwashed him or something, convinced him to go along with some kind of plan he didn't want us involved in."
"He'd still call!" Sean argued, "And Magneto couldn't convince Charles to breathe if the professor didn't want to!"
"What about the sister?" Clarice cut in, "Maybe she convinced him. Weirder things have happened. Maybe that's who he was chasing! That could easily have been a woman that killed those people."
"It doesn't matter." Hank lifted his voice enough to catch the attention of the rest of the teachers. "That was Charles! We all know it was, and that's what we've got to focus on. Clearly, whatever is happening, he is going to need help getting out of it."
"There is no way we can find him on our own. We couldn't find him when we had some idea where to look! How are we going to find him now?"
"I don't believe the Brotherhood has him, I'm sure it's Trask. If it is, we're going to need some help." Hank left distinct punctures in the armrests of his chair as his claws dug in, already dreading his own words.
"Some help?" Alex asked incredulously, "We need an army to go up against Trask!"
"Then I guess we find the Brotherhood." Hank announced.
"Wait, what?" Darwin snapped to his feet. "The Brotherhood?"
The entire room seemed to be crackling now.
"Alex has a point. We need an army, we need more people, more eyes, more skills. There is only one place, one group like that we even have a shot with." Hank knew they thought him utterly mad. Every eye was on him, wide and incredulous.
"What makes you think Magneto will lift a finger for us?" Alex growled.
"We're all mutants. This kind of thing is up their alley." Hank was perfectly calm, he'd never been more sure about a choice in his life.
"You want to team up with terrorists? The same people that left us to die the last time we trusted them?"
"This is our only chance. We ignore it and we may never see Charles again! We let him down, let him be stolen before, we failed him! I'm not willing to do that again, so yes! If it means making a deal with the devil, fine!" Hank didn't mean for the rumble to leave his throat, it sounded animal, dangerous.
"If it's tracking down the Brotherhood... I can help you with that." For the first time since the conversation started, John Proudstar spoke up, rubbing a hand over his square jaw, "As most of you know, I'm a tracker. I also have the best chance of getting in of anyone here since they tired to recruit me once already. Mystique already knows me so I could pretend I had a change of heart and scout it out. If they do have the professor, I can find out. If not, we know it's Trask."
Everyone starred at John, struck dumb by the suggestion. John had not been at the school more than a four months. He was the only mutant that came to them on his own, without Charles.
Mystique had apparently infiltrated the army for a time, intercepting Trask and his kidnapping of mutants supposedly being shipped home. John had been among those she saved. While tree Brotherhood attempted to bring him into their circle from there, as they often did after Mystique rescued them, John refused.
Instead, he came looking for them.
His plan could actually work. It would give them just about everything they needed. If John could pull that off they would not only know if they had Charles, they would be able to track them.
"Do you really think you can do that?" Hank leaned his elbows on the table, studying the younger man. He was strong, capable, nearly indestructible.
"Hey, don't underestimate John just because he looks good in a man bun." Clarice looked at Hank, then shot John a side glance.
"Thank you, I think?" John offered her a crooked smile.
She shrugged, "It's a stupid and dangerous idea, but it's probably one of the best options."
Hank found he could not disagree with her there. There were probably plenty of mutants in tree Brotherhood capable of killing Thunderbird. He hoped it never came to that. He hoped John was a good enough actor to avoid suspicion. He hoped they didn't end up losing yet another person.
"I'll go with you." Clarice offered, "The only thing worse than doing something stupid and dangerous is doing it alone."
Hank was not encouraged.