Work Text:
08/02/2018
Whenever Hank indulged in the naive illusion that he'd seen each and every despicable abyss of mutant world in the course of his career on various sick bays, it was usually the Brotherhood teaching him better.
He'd managed an overview of the situation in the bad lighting of the Blackbird passenger area already, sure. But his patient had seemed stable enough on the flight home from the besieged city to not want to risk treatment in passing when there was little that Hank hated more anyway. Waiting for his own healing factor to deal with all the stabs, burns, and fractures he'd earned himself in that brute force rescue operation earlier so that he could do his job with steady hands upon arrival, had seemed like a far better idea.
It wasn’t the first decision of the last few months Hank came to regret rapidly once illuminated under a sober neon spot.
"Oh my stars and garters …" Both instincts and routine took the wheel while his heart was busy fighting shock, three of his four clawed limbs getting busy, pulling Shi’ar scanner panels, trauma shears, needles, and drug bags close. Placing all equipment around and above the newly occupied patient stretcher, in between biting off his claws and pulling on gloves, Hank kept an agitated eye on the first few readings. As those were more bad news without an exception, part of him was already estimating silently how long he could realistically be wasting even more time with attempts at conservative therapy before the first necessary procedure.
As he came up with a depressingly low number of minutes, the stress hormones in his blood pumping ever faster, a choked, bright voice behind him reminded him that clearing the room was one of the parts of the emergency standard procedure that he'd not gotten around to yet.
"Hank? Talk to me?" It didn't sound like his patient's wife needed details of all flashing through Hank's mind though. He was pretty sure, helping to drag Scott out of Mystique's home, Katja had already gotten a far better look at his absurdly misshaped left arm and leg than was good for her anyway. What she did need to hear right now, Hank wouldn’t be able to tell her for hours, days maybe.
"Out, the lot of you," he huffed instead of even looking back over his shoulder to where the rest of the team and the other freed prisoner had gathered.
"Except Alison. You're not going anywhere for the night, young lady."
"Yeah. Right." Katja demonstratively leaned back against a med cabinet with crossed arms but quickly ducked away from it when Hank impatiently nudged her aside to get another badly required helping of saline.
Which incidentally also gave him a chance to grab Katja's defiantly raised chin, uncaring about the traces of red from his glove that he left behind. It was one of those days when he couldn’t go easy on that stubborn woman. Ironically, just like he had had to use all but force on her husband back then, to make Scott see reason when the roles in such an ugly scenario had been reversed.
"I need to see where else they might have touched him, Cat. Don’t make me do that with you in the room. He had that respect too when it was you on such a table."
It wasn’t entirely fair and certainly not overly tactful, the old hurt about another abysmal injustice on their archenemies' side immediately resurfacing in the shape of a haunted, shameful look in those huge dark blue eyes.
But today, the worry for Katja's husband was far stronger in her, urgent enough to even wrestle her defiant spirit and protective instinct to the ground as rationality knew damn well she'd gotten the wrong Ph.D. to be of use here for the moment. After a growl Hank's way that she could only have learned from Logan, her fists clenched, she stomped outside the examination room towards where the others had already gone, everyone standing there with tight shoulders, knuckles white around the belts of their uniforms, each with the same lost expression.
Hank wished nothing more than to be able to give them at least a soothing smile, tell them anything positive on a com line to the neighboring room he reluctantly left open for the moment. But about this part of his job, he'd never been a particularly good liar.
"Sit down until it's your turn," he sharply advised the one awake person left with him, before bending over the scanner monitor again, to keep sorting the next steps in his head.
What he saw, he liked less by the second, and if he was right about his suspicions … He hated confronting someone with them who'd already seen far too much. But Hank needed a second brain here if he wanted to have at least a shot at making good choices right now. "Do you know details about what they did?"
"I could only guess but …" Alison hesitated, glancing at the now closed door, the restless silhouettes behind the frosted glass, especially the smallest built among them. An overwhelming ocean of a bad conscience had her wringing her hands in her lap, the shock of adrenaline not remotely subsided enough yet to feel the mess that was her wrists right now.
"What Scott told me when he could talk was detailed enough for my taste."
Hank suddenly regretted, not trying to go for Mystique's throat earlier. "So he was awake and lucid for it, is that what you're saying?"
"Afraid so. She cut him up two times." With another shudder wrecking her whole sinewy body, Alison nodded at the ridiculously clean and accurately taped bandages on Scott's shoulder and hip. "After the second, he didn’t come around but that was only an hour or so before you guys came."
"Right what I feared." With clenched teeth, Hank hooked another needle to his patient's body, cursing for what felt like the millionth time in the last few years how much he'd had to regularly brutalize that guy's flesh to find any access at all. But if he wanted Scott on his table as soon as possible, he couldn’t wait to get enough fluids and drugs into the guy.
"We've got ten minutes or so until I have to pick up a scalpel; let's make them count. Everyone out stays out. Alison, move your chair closer. I want him to understand you’re still with him but in a different environment. If he’s panicking, that might help."
"Hank." Again, that almost eerily calm tone in a voice Hank had come to appreciate a lot from his partner in treatments in this place … at least when it wasn’t full of contempt and thirst for revenge, chilly enough even via the com line to make an ally to their team like Alison retreat even further into her seat.
"Will you kindly tell me what the fuck they did to my husband?"
There were only so many times Hank could come up with ways to dodge, especially when 98 % of his brain was busy, pondering how to help a patient whose physical and mental health was in shambles. "If the remains of formalin in Scott's blood are anything to go by? Live plastination."
Alison winced as much as Hank did when a dull thud outside and a hefty curse in a broad Canadian accent revealed, even Logan's feral instincts had been too frozen in shock at that revelation to be fast enough for a saving catch when Katja's legs had given in.
Christ, no more visitors anywhere near the damn sick bay after missions.
Even Alison as the only one to whom this atrocity hadn’t been news, looked as if she wanted to be anywhere but in here right now. "No idea how she even did that without killing him. They had some kind of antidote, I think, to whatever the fuck they gave him. What I can tell you is that neither of that stuff had any painkillers in it. Only stopped the blood flow and reduced all body functions to a minimum while that fucking blue-skinned cunt yanked out his muscles." With movements almost desperate, Alison rubbed her wrists, the bruises, cuts, and abrasions there matching the ones on her neck, from the inhibitor collar that had only come off an hour ago. Apparently, she was still not even feeling the heavy infections reddening her flesh or the swelling of at least one clean fracture.
"I tried, Henry, I swear to God. I tried so badly, every time I heard from next door …"
"Not your fault, Sparkles, so cut it out. Ain't no one in this house got time for anyone's guilt fetishes right now," Logan snarled over the radio as Scott's wife very obviously hadn’t found her speech back yet.
"What's next, Hank?"
Hank found himself unexpectedly grateful for that prying. The first unpleasant step in making all this right, somehow, was one, he might as well leave to the one who'd have no qualms, getting it done. "Next, I need you to get me some cuffs and a reversal gun, Logan, lest he might rip off his glasses and blast us all to hell before his mind can catch up. And I need him up. I need to know all she did before it's my turn to cut him open. And find out how he wants to go about this before I can …"
But that was where Hank had to pause, snorting in bitterness, braced against the door to the operating theater, staring down at the injection in his paw to start delivering those plans he didn’t even have yet. "Fuck me if I know what I'm gonna do. Knit whatever that lunatic in New York didn't butcher, I guess, before stiffening all joints. Then he's got at least a decent chance at walking."
"Gee, it would be awesome if you people stopped talking for five fucking seconds as if I wasn’t in the room."
Hank had expected to see Logan with get the desired items when the door opened again and frowned in disapproval at one of the X-Teens suddenly standing next to the med stretcher instead, borrowed uniform bloodied all over, silver earrings flashing in the glaring lighting along with those Atlantic-deep dark eyes.
Much as Hank often valued the boy's selfless streak, he hadn’t just sent out his patient's closest relative to cleanse the room of too much emotionality to now deal with someone who thought, testing their physical and power limits was a licensed depression drug.
"Bastian, come on, don’t be ridiculous. Do you even have the slightest idea …?"
Of how much that would hurt, Hank wanted to say but that wasn’t even only it. He wanted to avoid spelling that out loud to his vulnerable audience on top though. This wasn’t just about agony easily matching third-degree burns. It was about being defiled at the hands of an enemy, of all but shattered body autonomy, and about having to watch part of yourself be ripped apart right before your eyes. Again, Hank couldn’t help but notice the depressing parallels of how this day had gone to that one awful afternoon in the canalization back then when he'd been absolutely certain for a moment, Katja would be bleeding out on the ground before him, before he'd even used one fucking band-aid.
That family was a lot stronger than people gave them credit for, but this time, Mystique had gone too fucking far, and Hank wasn’t ready to even think about putting the burden of that abomination on another person on top.
Not that he needed to, as so often, because Bastian was famously not doing a lot of thinking at all when his powers could be extremely useful somewhere.
"One fine day, McCoy, I will write you a diary about how I spent my childhood and youth as a lab rat, just so you can stop asking that question. Put him on more saline, get a couple of sandwiches in the guy, and keep the room empty, then we can start."
A sharp gesture of an entirely steady hand, a warning shift of silver in Bastian's eyes revealing that his other mutant persona was perfectly ready to switch to the surface if he didn’t get his way, not least to underline his demand with more forceful arguments, had Hank close his mouth before he'd even really opened it.
That was a battle lost, and he should be glad about it. Sometimes surrendering to the bigger picture meant testing the dotted line of his doctor's Oath a lot. But he'd long given up, trying to heal the masochists in this house from their obsession.
"We appreciate it, kid, you know that." It was Ororo, expressing what they all felt, while Logan was busy with those restraints at the stretcher that Hank had required and Katja clearly was still trying to swallow all she'd learned.
"If Bastian is really ready to take this upon himself, is there even a need for the whole bondage drama, Hank? Why not just keep him under until it’s done?"
"Because this will take weeks," Hank growled towards the door, impatiently waiting for Logan to fire the ray gun in question at their team leader as well, carefully keeping out of the bright green cloud himself until it had vaporized.
"Bastian might think he knows what is waiting for him but I don’t need to remind you, kid, that you will go through everything he has. Yes, your pain tolerance is off the charts but I promise you, you will pass out frequently anyway. You need to reenergize regularly. Eat ten meals, sleep 18 hours a day. Scott, too, will have to recover between the sessions. Rebuilding nerves and muscles won’t be any more fun than losing them. I can’t keep him in a coma for all this if his system is to actually survive the experience."
"Don’t waste time then," Logan interrupted him gruffly, with a pinched glance down at the patient's still unmoving shape. There was deep hurt twitching under his thick beard at the sight of his ever-unwavering team leader and close friend so compromised. "We’re running awfully short on that. And I'm not talking about your little science projects here. Mystique will soon be back on our asses. Bitch needs to be taken down a notch or two. But we can't and won't make the next decision about New York without Scooter."
"We can talk politics again when my husband's body isn’t crippled anymore, Claws." Katja had finally heard enough, making her way back into the room with suspiciously wobbly steps but her chin held high, her eyes all but shooting the flashes of her mutation when Alison asked her to turn back before Hank could even try to.
"For fuck's sake …"
"The scalpel wasn't how they started, Cat," Alison interrupted her, still visibly having trouble even looking her in the eye. "They went down the illusion route first to get him to talk. And whatever they showed him in his head had lots of you in it. The last thing he needs right now is to think he’s still there. Just let us wake him up. Please? Afterward, he’s all yours."
With now three strict pair of eyes aimed at her and those new details about the ordeal her husband had gone through, Katja had no more strength to resist when Ororo dragged her with her, never letting go until her friend buried her tear-streaked face against Ororo's shoulder.
Hank let out a silent breath of relief and finally threaded that new needle into one pathetically shallow and thin but somewhat still pumping stripe of blue between the knuckles of Scott's good hand.
"Alright, here goes nothing. Stay right there, Alison."
With Scott's breathing going heavier, more jerky by the second, his head turned indeed Alison's way at the initial startling up. It took only moments until he was shaking, cold sweat breaking out on his skin, the heartbeat monitor issuing a high-pitched warning.
Scott himself though wasn’t uttering a single noise. Not good. At all.
Hank rested his hand heavily on Scott's good shoulder. "It’s me, my young Captain. I need you to try and listen now. You're back at the school with us. Bastian will fix you soon. But for now, you’re in a world of pain and need all the meds for that that you can get without overdosing. We miss you ordering us around but that's not gonna happen anytime soon if you clock out on me now. I have a hundred milliliters or so of leeway left that I can put in you. So tell me right now and don’t you dare lie to me. More morphine?"
Still no words but at least a shaky nod, after a too-long moment of hesitation, an understandable one after having been drugged with far worse things by force recently.
Hank went with said 100 for the moment to test the waters, relieved when Scott's breathing became calmer right away.
"I almost forgot how good a patient you can be when you want to. Think we can run you through instant-deprogramming?"
Another of these nods. Scott's body was lying almost scarily still for the discomfort he had to be in, his eyes squeezed shut tightly even behind his glasses, his voice basically nonexistent from all that screaming. Even Hank with his enhanced senses had to bend over to him closely to catch which of those couple of questions everyone on the team and some allies had agreed on in the course of the decades, for situations like this, would come.
It being chance that it promptly turned out the most hurtful one of them all, Hank couldn’t even tell himself with a lot of goodwill. "Between Anderson and the Inferno, Danger Room, basketball court. I told you what happened in the night in our bedroom. What did you say?"
"To be patient instead of an asshole," Hank lied smoothly, a very weak half grin on his lips when Scott promptly frowned in disapproval, then relaxed at least a little at the realization that the first of three needed conversations was going exactly as it should.
"Of course that's nonsense," he confirmed at Scott's still slightly hesitant headshake. "What I really told you was to get Cat's and your stubborn behinds to therapy ASAP because there was no fucking way in hell you'd make that alone. Never was gladder to be wrong about anything, by the way."
Scott's head sinking back down against the cushioned surface, that painful wired look of his chest was now almost gone, the security starting to set in that, whatever mind games they'd been playing with him, no one was in his head now, probing for answers. That there were instead people present who had them already.
"Claws? Night after Anderson bit it? How did we spar?"
Hank shuddered, pausing at preparing a second stretcher for Bastian to make himself at home for the next month or so. It was a highly effective tactic for this code exchange, agreeing on shared memories of a kind beforehand that a casual telepath looking inside one's head wouldn’t easily pick up on because these were usually shoved into the darkest corner of the soul … That didn’t make it any easier though, given those memories were there in that place for a damn reason.
The fact that Logan almost forgot that Hank would neatly have cut his head off his shoulders if he actually dared to light that cigar between his fingertips in here, confirmed that this wasn’t a day, Logan liked to think back to either. "Danger room target practice. You couldn’t wait that evening to finally send my ass to Kansas with those blasts of yours."
"Which is not entirely a lie, so you're on thin ice about whether you're real or not," Scott replied, still almost inaudibly raspy but at least with a hint of humor.
One quickly drowning in a jerk going through his whole body though when Logan just briefly brushed some faded scar tissue on his bare right upper arm.
"Too bad, Darkholme didn’t go for that side. Then Bastian would have an excuse to get rid of that thing for you, too, while he’s at it. Here's the truth: We had a laser rapier duel that night, Slim. Freakiest geek show you can imagine. Thank god you never made me touch one of those again after that. You got any idea how phallic these things look?"
"You're an asshole, Howlett," Scott stated tiredly, already a good deal more grounded to Hank's relief, and with another small smile before turning to Alison last.
After an old tale of those two exchanged, about some very drunk cuddling behind some stage long before things back then had had even been official between Scott and Jean, the last of panic left Scott's expression.
This time when he turned to Hank, he finally seemed to really see him. "Out?"
"Yes. You’re out." Hank squeezed his good shoulder encouragingly, then went about opening the softly padded straps on Scott’s wrists and ankles. "We’re all home. No casualties."
With that, he injected those remaining 100 ml into the most recent IV line, to counter at least the worst of what was so brutal on Scott's body right now.
Much to his patient's confusion. "Didn’t you say …?"
"Just trying not to stuff your veins to the brim when it's not absolutely necessary," Hank gave back with an apologetic shrug. "Told you, I need your system up and running, not you hallucinating from drugs."
Scott's eyebrow went up high, slowly. "Why can’t I shoot you right now?"
"Complaining already. Welcome home." Logan briefly knocked that stretcher's mattress as an amicable salute and left for somewhere then where he could smoke his nerves back into place in peace.
Which made it Alison's job, quickly raising that reversal weapon Scott's way, muzzle turned downwards this time. "The effects will wear off soon. You probably got another five minutes without your blasts. We just needed to be sure you’re orientated enough not to send them the wrong way."
Scott acknowledged that with a stiff nod and by at least briefly pushing up his glasses but didn’t waste any time examining Alison’s expressive features with the thick blond curls, those ocean blue sparkling eyes, her fine freckles, in detail, unwilling as usual to dwell for long on the both so loved and so dreaded, so tempting effects of that weapon originating from Lehnsherr's hands.
He was scowling at the sight of Alison's wrecked wrists instead. "Hank, patch her the fuck up."
"Yeah, you definitely are feeling better." Hank took only another second to roll his eyes in mock exasperation before starting to hook Bastian to the lines necessary for a long-term treatment as well, as Alison was signaling him she still was in a state of aftershock that didn’t demand immediate attention.
"I'll have time for nice again once we'll have emptied that damn city of all intruders," Scott gave back harshly, as harshly as one could be with so many painkillers clogging the cells. The tiredness growing, he only now saw Katja standing at the door yet again, now that it was safe.
Suddenly, there was a suspicious fragrance of salt coming from two sides in the air.
For seconds, the two of them just looked at each other silently before Scott gritted his teeth and pulled his glasses on properly again.
It wasn’t something Hank was seeing for the first time, and much as his heart was aching for this still so young man who hadn’t been given a damn rest in life since he'd been twelve years old: Right now there wasn’t even time to acknowledge that compassion.
From the corner of his eyes though, he was pretty sure he could see Bastian suddenly looking exceptionally thoughtful.
That was at least before Bastian reached out to place his hand carefully on the ruin that was Scott's left arm and let out a little undignified shriek. With a grimace, he rubbed his elbow as his powers apparently went for smaller damage of his target first to replicate them on his own body before letting them vanish on them both for good. "What the fuck, man, are you using? What have you done to your veins?"
Hank allowed himself the satisfaction of a very distinctive clearing of his throat Scott's way when he saw his team leader blush just the slightest bit.
There was no more reason for amusement though as Hank then had to shove Katja out the door once again, this time entirely unapologetic, as the screaming started at last.
The first 24 hours were exactly the hell Hank had predicted. Scott and Bastian were taking turns slipping into - fortunately always brief - bouts of coma and burned through Hank's morphine stash the rest of the time so quickly that Hank had to send Andréo off flying for supplies not one but two times.
But when Hank returned from a badly needed nap to relieve Katja from her shift of sitting around outside a certain sick room, he found her back in the latter instead. Since he'd made sure before leaving that only the two patients themselves and him could open that door, that hopefully meant some positive progress.
"Feeding hour." Just a little too loudly, Hank set down the tablet with what felt like half of a KFC kitchen and a Dunkin' Donuts shop window and enough soda for two diabetes diagnoses at once on the table at the stretchers' head ends. A surefire way to wake his two patients from that deep focus they'd lost themselves in, or from them maybe actually sleeping for once, with Bastian's hand loosely resting on the middle of Scott's chest where Hank actually couldn’t remember a particularly bad injury save for Mystique's unnerving fetish for cracking ribs.
Only when he went to check Scott's vital signs, Hank's eyes widened, as he was suddenly met with a breathing rhythm stronger and deeper than he was pretty sure he'd heard since that guy had stopped smoking as a teenager. "Needed a break from tissue regrowth, huh, Bastian?"
Bastian followed Hank's sympathetic look at what was left of his own arm at this point and shuddered, quickly reaching for a huge cornflake donut with the other. "It will pass, you should know that by now. I just need to refuel. Lungs are always a stubborn bitch. No offense, Professor Summers, but your barking in class has been getting on people's nerves for the last 18 years or so, I've heard. Just doing everyone a favor really."
The boy visibly fought to keep his curiosity at bay when Scott's smile came pretty wry, Scott gratefully nuzzling his cheek against Katja's hand when she leaned over him for a kiss. That confrontation on the Scapels moon wasn’t something either of them was thinking back on happily, and there'd been far worse damage than in Scott's lungs coming from it, in the end.
Which didn’t mean Bastian didn’t deserve a medal for doing such a thorough job. And while Scott was still noticeably struggling with any comment that even came close to how visibly grateful he was for all that kindness, Bastian already dropped the next bomb, even while busy with half a mouthful of chocolate cream. "You can lose the glasses now too, just for the record."
The jumbo cup of coffee Scott had just been going for promptly shattered on the ground, both Katja and him staring at the boy as if they'd just seen a ghost.
"Oh, you have to be kidding …" Since Hank conveniently just had gotten a manual scanner from the cabinet anyway, he aimed it at the back of his team leader's head instead of his arm. He had to try hard not to drop that thing too when the Shi’ar's instant analysis tool dutifully noted that the scarring that, along with a good deal of mental trauma, had been responsible for Scott not being able to control his optic blasts, was entirely gone.
"Christ, Bastian." After all this time, it really shouldn’t come as a shock anymore what some mutations could do but for a second, even Hank was struggling with words.
Scott wasn’t exactly eloquent either with one of the biggest grievances in his life gone from one moment to the next, all without fancy alien tech, some miraculous rebirth, or experimental surgery that he'd always even refused to think about. Only thanks to some snotty teenager, happily munching on a load of carbs next to him, fiddling with his phone to change the Aerosmith tune playing in the background, entirely unfazed by all eyes being on him.
"Why …? What are you even doing, Bastian? Why are you putting yourself through all this?"
With a heavy sigh as if that topic was incredibly boring to him, Bastian turned Steven Tyler's orgasmic screaming down a notch.
But when he turned his attention back to his current personal patient, there was something in those dreamy big eyes that Hank hadn’t seen since the two of them had gotten rid of these Clean Mankind for God assholes together. "Because one life counts too. It was you who taught me that, remember? And because you didn’t give up on our cause when far too many others left to live in Mystique's paradise of lies. None of us has a right to throw less in the ring than choosing the hard path when necessary. They need you for that more than ever right now. And not the Zombie version of you, with whatever you had going on with all that painkiller stuff in the last few years."
"Pot, kettle," Scott returned still with that incredulous look, a quick nod at the three drips at once hooked to Bastian's arm and leg. But then he reached over to the neighboring stretcher for a long, firm shake of the boy's hand that made long speeches unnecessary.
"Retrain those muscles, once we're done here, you’ll have to yourself though I’m afraid," Bastian announced, back to texting some fellow X-Teen already. "There’s stuff even I can’t fix."
"Want to join me?" Scott had the same look on his face Hank had seen on dozens of patients whenever Bastian had volunteered in these rooms in the past. One that Hank couldn’t shake himself usually. Especially not at times when some particular damage copied on Bastian's body couldn’t just be mended within seconds by his gift.
Bastian scrunched his nose at that currently entirely useless limb resting on his stomach. In spite of the occasional trip to the field in emergencies, he still wasn’t too hot on the whole battle thing. Plus, by now everyone in the house had come to understand that the boy could make himself of far better use elsewhere anyway. But the latest crises didn’t leave even someone cold who'd been completely pacifistic just a year ago. "Fuck it, why not. Might help lose some aggression. You finally gonna look at me now or what?"
"I was just about to ask the same," Katja remarked, audibly still quite taken aback but with a broad, expectant smile on her full lips that Scott very obviously wanted to see without a disturbing haze of red.
"You didn’t need to do that, Bastian, you know," he sheepishly murmured, his fingertips still a little unsure on the edge of his glasses before he gave himself a push and dropped them beside him, a suspicious glistening back in those narrow, sky-blue pupils as he couldn’t take his gaze off his wife even for a second.
Bastian just snorted. "Yeah, right."
"I'm serious. Might not have been such a good idea."
Scott left an apologetic kiss on Katja's hand, seeing her disappointment and confusion about his missing enthusiasm. "Breathe, guys. I wasn’t trying to give the gift back, okay? Just feeling a little lost here. Before, I knew how to control it."
"No, you didn’t." Hank demonstratively reached for those glasses now no longer necessary, at least not for waking times of full mental control, and swirled them on one claw. "And what you still lack, you can learn. Now you got the chance. And I know some guy up there in space on your father's ship who'll be very happy to help."
Scott rubbed his eyes with a groan, in a gesture that would definitely still be second nature for a while. "Let me get used to no longer being handicapped, Henry, before I need therapy right again for having to deal with my family, okay?"
"Your family is here," Katja reminded Scott not unkindly but very firmly, before a long, almost a little too involved kiss, to underline that statement.
"You guys can go back to that when we're done here." Bastian looked almost more tortured than at the first healing yesterday. "Speaking of it, Professor Summers: If you want another kid, now would be the time, too."
When Scott gaped again, clearly having just as little a clue as Hank had had at first what that innuendo was about, Bastian shuddered a little and demonstratively gave his own bony hip a light slap. "That, I didn’t need to do. A little heads-up would have been nice. I didn't know until the pain started and then couldn’t stop or that would have been messy."
"What? Want to tell me you forgot you're sterilized, my young Captain?" Now Hank had to suppress a grin, too. "Why ever you felt the need you had to ask someone other than me whenever you got that done ... Sorry about that again, Bastian. At least not exactly the size of kidney stones, but I didn’t know myself until the clips were extracted last night."
"I didn’t know." Scott's suddenly very low growl along with the dumbfounded look on Katja's face froze Hank's guts.
"I didn’t go see anyone. I have no idea what you two are talking about. Except now we know why it never worked again, I guess." When his gaze turned back to Katja, that beaming smile from earlier was gone.
Katja crossed her arms in defense when Hank bared his fangs at her in disapproval. "Save it. I would have come to you for tests if we'd wanted it that badly. But honestly, it was always just a vague idea. More of a case of If it happens it happens. We were perfectly happy with having Saskia. Still, it was … weird."
"It's not weird, it’s ridiculous. As a STEM teacher of all people, my young Captain, you should have realized two years in that you're living a statistical improbability." Hank started to pace the room, his throat suddenly tight with the implications in the air. Whatever had happened here: If Scott hadn’t even known … Just the mere possibility that this might not be an individual case, that there might be places – perhaps even fucking medical institutions – where such sickening methods were practiced, had his blood boil. "How …? Who …?"
"Well, whoever it was, they did it after Jean was no longer with us." Even with all that time gone, there were still days when Scott didn’t manage to keep the hurt out of his voice at the mention of the X-Men's greatest loss, especially at memories of the far closer relationship he'd once had with that woman than before her death. "When she and I were still thinking about these kinds of things, I got checked more than once because of her partial infertility. And Saskia was conceived naturally."
"Uh. Yeah. About that." No one had really registered that someone had joined the conversation almost entirely silently until Logan suddenly cleared his throat, standing leaning against the doorframe and looking more mortified than Hank had ever seen him in his entire life.
Immediately sensing the same, Scott turned his head to his old rival as if in slow motion, his eyes narrowing to a point where Hank almost expected him to try out the brand-new control of his powers next.
Logan raised both hands in defense, his cigar hanging unlit from the corner of his mouth. "Look, that subject was on for days back then after the Scapels moon. At some point, I got really tired of discussing your fertility, Slim. All I can say is what Jeannie told me on the Shi’ar ship at that time. Which is, she gave you two a little help that night, to make things happen that might not have otherwise, in case you wouldn’t come back from space, Slim. So Cat wouldn’t be alone. She didn’t want you guys to know she was there though, so she made you forget afterwards. She wanted the memory of your wedding to be flawless for you. But she did say it was difficult even for her enhanced telekinesis at that point, to make sure that bum was actually in the oven. So …"
"Between Liberty Island and the Scapels moon then," Katja threw in, somewhat recovered from that new shock, and only mildly ready to throw herself between her husband and Logan as so often, to end a tiring argument about long spilled milk before it could even begin. She was surely a good deal too pissed to handle too much testosterone in the room right now, too, her jaw grinding in a never-forgotten anger. It was probably a very good thing, Lehnsherr wasn’t anywhere close. "There wasn’t an awfully huge selection of enemies we faced at that time."
Scott buried his good hand in his hair, more distraught by the minute. "One of the two Genosha captivities."
Hank gave the little pile of shards on the ground an aggressive kick with one of his claws, tempted to save one of them for a certain fight soon. "It matches their MO; that much is for sure. And if they did this to you, Scott … Then maybe you weren’t the only one. We need to talk to Remy and to Bobby Drake."
"Those two never wanted kids. They probably never realized." Katja's voice sounded just a little too quiet.
Hank swallowed his hate to go and stand behind her, resting a hand on her back. "Well, for the two of you, it's not too late yet."
"Remind me of that again when we found a way to tell the world, they've been living under a mutant in disguise instead of a US president for the last 18 years," Katja returned with a frustrated sigh.
"Which is not gonna happen as long as the Boss Man got a broken wing and drumstick." Bastian inhaled the last of his donuts and demonstratively cracked the knuckles of his good hand. "So everyone mind getting the fuck out again? I assure you, the noises we're making here really don't sound sexy."
No one was in a position to disagree.
"Illyana Rasputin, I told you a thousand times to stop doi…"
That was as much as Katja could get out before the surprise guest in her apartment grabbed her by the hand, entirely unfazed, and pulled her right into that huge glowing disc on the bedroom ground with them. Silently cursing the young woman to Mars and back, Katja quickly closed her eyes, knowing from unpleasant experience that her stomach wasn’t a huge fan of phasing of any kind. At the same, she was trying in vain to steel herself for whatever emergency Illyana was dragging her off to here without a warning.
Piotr's baby sister was just as little a fan of many words as Piotr himself. So when she showed up at Mutant High, using her powerful gift for one of her rare involvements in battles outside of Europe, it was always anyone's guess if they were about to end up in some dysfunctional spaceship, headed for the next sun, in the middle of a shootout to protect some helpless mutant child, or if Piotr and Kade had just forgotten to send out an e-mail invitation for an X-Men reunion lunch in their cozy little Siberian home.
It turned out to be none of that this time. Given the date – an anniversary Katja had never put a lot of value into –, it probably shouldn’t surprise her that much, being kidnapped to literally the other side of the world. Her enthusiasm was limited though. Having just come from a riding lesson with a group of pupils, the last thing Katja was dressed for right now was 40 degrees Celsius, salt and waves, and probably too many mosquitos to count.
Not to mention that with Scott still on bedrest in the sick bay, as Bastian's and his common healing process was not even half-finished, some kind of surprise party held little to no appeal.
"Illyana …" Her slightly too shrill voice once she was back on solid ground should warn her silent travel guide to not try and vanish right back through that stepping disc alone as so often. At least not without another detour back to Mutant High for something as mundane as clean clothes and sunscreen.
But Illyana interrupted Katja surprisingly gently for her usual no-nonsense-attitude, by putting a finger to her lips, an amused sparkle glistening in wide-set eyes under a thick fringe as she nodded toward a spot somewhere behind Katja. And with that, the young woman was indeed gone again already.
Katja forgot to be annoyed about it for longer than a split second when she followed the silent hint, finally realizing where she actually was …
And that the only person waiting for her, with his back to her, at what had been her dream destination for thirty years or so, was her husband. Her husband, standing there on the sun deck of a hut in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, tall and straight in spite of the traces of re-growing muscle still visible to the plain eye, drinking in the view of endless turquoise floods right before their eyes. A beauty that Scott could finally, after all this time, behold in all its glory, with his glasses nowhere in sight.
Katja wondered, only vaguely aware that she wasn’t breathing, how it could even be possible to fall in love with the same person all over again every day anew.
Her heart suddenly feeling as if it would burst out of her chest, there was only brief disappointment flickering in it when Scott reached into the pocket of some mouthwateringly tight swimming trunks to produce the protective shield Katja had just wondered about, slipping it down his forehead in a movement trained for decades that wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon, before finally turning around to her. Katja had witnessed this kneejerk reaction often enough in the last few days, whenever someone without healing powers, including herself, had entered the sick bay, so she wasn’t too crushed. No, except for rare precious moments in between, she still didn’t get around to seeing Scott's eyes a lot. Not as long as he hadn’t had a chance yet to even start practicing, testing the scope and limits of this suddenly newfound control. And living with this man for almost 20 years, Katja was too perfectly aware of how much he needed control to not even dream about pushing him.
He would drop the glasses when he was ready. There was no rush. Thanks to another surprising side effect of the healing sessions with Bastian coming to light in the last few days, they'd have even more time to enjoy the gift Scott had been granted after escaping the hell that had been Mystique's lab, than they'd ever dreamed about.
"You know, between Jean and me, people will think you have a fetish for older-looking women." Katja wrapped her arms around Scott's shoulders, carefully, since she had no idea how much morphine or not he was on right now. She could hear it herself that there was a tightness in the shallow joke, something stupid clenching inside her, especially given the date Scott had chosen for this wonderful surprise. Being a couple of years younger than him, age had never been something Katja had given thought to.
But seeing her husband in the bright afternoon light of a glaring sun now, that revealed in all clearness all those traces not only of injury but also time gone from his skin, from around his eyes, his beautiful full lips ... This was downright batshit crazy, and it was nothing Bastian could control or even stop. There was no reason to do so, either.
Except maybe for an immature paranoia that Katja had actually thought to have left behind after Jean's first death for good. The fear that there would ever come a moment when she couldn’t be enough for her husband anymore. Even if was only for the merciless reason of her own body eventually reaching its limits while Scott would probably still be out there kicking the bigot assholes in this world in the ass.
She didn’t realize their link had flared to life, revealing all these infantile considerations to her husband as if she'd been an open book, until Scott put both hands around her face, his lips tight. A fleeting brush of one fingertip on a too-tight smile chased it away, reminding Katja that there was no need to pretend, to hide anything. Not from the person who knew her inside out anyway and had long learned to accept her with all her weaknesses and flaws, instead of only the lovable things.
Someone who, on top of that, also loved a lot of the stuff Katja didn’t even really notice herself or always had a hard time comprehending, until Scott looked at her like this, with this brilliant wide smile of deepest affection. "Just a week in, and you're already forgetting I was literally physically unable to fall in love with your looks only back then." That soft tone in his voice, so far from the orders he barked out in the field and the cool distance he kept to most of his environment, never failed to make Katja's heart flutter, even when it uttered a well-deserved reprimand. "I want you for what you are, not for the view, Katja. Always did. But just for the record: Now that I am finally getting all of you to behold, you can bet your sexy little ass, I'll spend the rest of my life doing that, no matter the details. A few wrinkles aren’t gonna change that. And if it makes you feel better, we'll just both go straight to white if you happen to start greying before me. A look Ororo has been rocking for so long can't be that bad. That a deal?"
"I'll hold you to that. Because I'm not going anywhere either, you know. Not now, and not once we'll be ready to retire to a little paradise like this one day." That, too, was a kind of promise they didn’t give each other often; for that, they'd learned too painfully how quickly a job like theirs could end things from one second to another. But with this last dangerous crisis ending on such a positive note, Katja thought they deserved to indulge in a little optimism at least for a while.
The last of gloom from that captivity finally fading away for good, Katja took her husband tightly by his waist where she could be sure she wouldn’t hurt him accidentally, and kissed him, putting all her gratefulness about his surprise in the tender touch of lips, the faint brushing of the tip of her tongue along where the last signs of dehydration and days full of screaming had long disappeared. The low tingling in her middle promised even more exciting things to do in this decadently luxurious location which Katja had already decided of, she didn’t even want to know what even a few hours of using it had cost Scott. That was for later though. Right now, she only wanted Scott to know how happy she was he was still there to experience this together with her, this glimpse of a life of normal people that probably in the long run would have been far too boring for them anyway though.
Which didn’t make it less exciting, dipping into it every now and then. "Any chance you hired a barkeeper for us for a birthday cocktail, too? Oh, and this pale-skinned German here should get some shade or I'll age on you even faster, atmokinesis or no."
Scott gave her lower lip a little nip that had Katja's skin burn for entirely different reasons than an afternoon in the Maldives. "Your bag's in the bedroom. See you at the pool bar."
On second thought, morphine and vodka were one of those combinations not worth the inevitable sermon from Hank upon their return. So Katja politely declined Scott's offer of mixing her one of his mean fruit long drinks out of solidarity. She didn’t need intoxication to be all but high right now anyway, as early as after five minutes of lounging in one of the hut's pools together with her husband. Located at the very edge of the terrace, it had an unhindered view of the floods right beneath them. That private residence being at the very edge of the holiday resort, there was not a single of the other ocean buildings in sight that made this archipelagic state so unique.
Unique like mutants, like them. And for once, they could enjoy that without having to worry about either being needed at their job or hostile glances from people around them, even when the dark clouds of the rainy season surrounded their little part of paradise here and only the unhindered happiness and relief about another catastrophe averted in Katja's soul kept the sky above them entirely clear anyway. Or when Scott experimented a little with his newfound control to shoot them a mango from an artificially planted tree nearby for a snack.
But most of the time, they were just enjoying being back in each other's arms with hardly more than two thin layers of Lycra between them. Wordlessly bracing themselves on the smooth, snow-white pool railing, they were staring down in silence into the vastness of the ocean below or followed the way of the sun slowly starting to set in the distance. None of them felt the need to contemplate yet again all that had happened, that had once more changed their lives so profoundly. As for what huge unsolved issue would soon shake the team and the whole world once more ... There would be more than enough time for that again when Scott was back on his feet for real.
For now, nothing but the other's touch was what counted.
Katja wasn’t entirely sure when Scott had sneaked his hand under her bikini top but at some point, she saw it happily floating away in the light fizz of their tub and decided, this was definitely her favorite part of all that training Scott would have to do for the regrown tissue in the next few weeks. Still, without taking her eyes off the glow of orange in the distance, she wrapped her arm tighter around Scott's middle and nudged him along with her to the other poolside so they'd still be able to enjoy that enchanting image across the terrace edge while enjoying each other for dessert.
"What do you think …" After another sip from her drink for a little bit of energy, Katja moved to sit in front of Scott on the broad underwater bench, snuggling against him shamelessly, her hand reaching back for his neck to keep his lips right there, on the side of hers. There was no need for a lot of seduction or games tonight, and Scott wasn’t exactly in the best shape for that anyway, as her guilty conscience dutifully wanted to whisper to Katja. "How long will I be exiled from sick bay if I give you a little physical workout for your regeneration, Principal Summers?"
"Hank's gonna play nice if he doesn’t want me to cancel his golf magazine subscriptions," Scott snickered against her ear, with a touch of conspicuously deep breathing that made it difficult not to rut back against him immediately. But his glance into the distance immediately carried a more serious, cynical note.
"And I can't afford to lie around much longer anyway. I can walk? I can command. For orders, I don’t need all my muscles. And in the field, I can at least pilot in case of emergency. As long as we keep a secret that can cause World War III in our house, there won't be much time for recreation, I'm afraid."
"For neither of us, no," Katja nodded, just as anxious in the light of that possible next new huge crisis already in the air. Her hand clenched down on Scott's good leg, in a silent promise of personally getting in the way next time Mystique tried to lay hands on her husband. "I failed you far too often already by not being by your side. If mutant New York is the possible downfall of peace, then I'm not staying in the second row this time."
"I never put you in the second row ever since I got you on my team, Katja. When I do leave you at home occasionally, it is because then I know all of our secrets, our weapons, our children, our future there will be safe. That's the only reason Mutant High hasn’t been nuked a few times yet like Kade's and Piotr's camp, like Sean's base at the time, or the Defenders' bases. I couldn’t be fucking prouder of you. I just wish you could finally see that." The still very shaky, too-cool touch of two of his fingertips on the left turned Katja's face to where Scott had risked another of these still very anxious moments of pushing his glasses up, just so she could see the anger glowing just as bright as his powers in his pupils … and the unbroken light that was his love for her.
"I didn’t run headfirst into Mystique's trap because you weren’t there but because I wanted to believe just as badly as Ororo that there is a way out of this mess in Washington that won't endanger all that Charles ever taught us, all that we believe in. But the Brotherhood showed us once more what their idea of coexistence looks like. Every day that psychotic bitch is in the President's chair, we betray our cause. I'm not gonna stand by and watch this lie any longer. If you want to be out there with me this time when we take the Brotherhood down? Chances are good I'll blast a building or two just to clear your path."
Finding herself very comfortable with that image on her mind, Katja thought with a hint of very tame self-criticism that talking murder shouldn’t possibly be so sexy.
But that was when Scott pulled her close with his good arm, right to where he was already hardening against her back, and she decided, maybe being a little bad every now and then actually felt alarmingly good.
Where her bare breasts were sun-heated, her nipples sensitive from the surface bubbling around them, now an even hotter touch found her skin, only caressing for now, not groping tightly enough for skyrocketing adrenaline at once. Her own hand was moving just as lazily, her thumb trailing up the inside of her lover's good leg. By the time she grazed the soaking wet material hugging his hips, the growing bulge there, which earned her a quiet purr, the lighting was darkening quickly enough to see her own wide-eyed reflection on the red of Scott's glasses. Just a second before that teasing tongue of his on one of her most sensitive spots dipped into her ear, strong teeth grazing the shell, and Katja's eyes fell close entirely.
There were situations in which neither of them had ever needed to see a thing.
Their rhythms matched as much as their breathing, unhurried and firm, every smallest twist of Katja's up and down motion inside her lover's briefs following the experience of almost two decades of their marriage. Every flicker of fingertips swiping across the thick dampness beading at the crown drew a deeper, a faster breath of those lips sucking small bruises into Katja's neck. The fingers harshly tugging at her pebbled nipples found their own speed, even a little too lightly for her taste, until she thrust her hips forward into nothing with an impatient gasp … Only to find, Scott had managed to get his still quite weak left upper arm around her as well. His hand was braced on the pool bench in a way that had her most sensitive spot press right against him.
With how lightheaded she suddenly felt, Katja wasn’t so sure there hadn’t been a little bit of booze in her drink after all.
"Told you, rehab workout," she laughed against Scott's lips before licking at them playfully, thrusting her tongue in deep. A small moan escaped her throat, the muscles in her core reacting similarly intensively to the growing pressure of her lover's hand against her folds. "I promise I won't let you neglect it even for a day …"
"You …" Scott bit her lower lip a little more sharply before kissing her little yelp from it softly, a lewd smile curling on his at her deep moan as two of his fingers pushed under her bikini bottom, finally finding where she was wet and hot for him already. "… are talking far too much for someone I'm gonna fuck soon until all you can do is scream is my name, birthday girl."
With that, those slowly circling, gentle fingers found their target, slipping in deep, underlining that slightly chauvinistic promise, and Katja's voice was definitely far too busy with other things than teasing Scott back for a couple of minutes.
"Tell me what you want me to do," he breathed against her shoulder huskily, against another large bruise he'd just left there, marking his territory in an almost feral way that never failed to get Katja's blood racing.
"More," she whimpered breathlessly, pressing down her hips against that delicious intrusion filling her up so perfectly and yet not nearly enough for her ever-present taste of testing and expanding limits. It had been a while since they'd gotten around to experimenting in that regard a little, and tonight they'd finally have less time pressure than usual for once. "Want you to stretch me open … Make me take all of it …"
Inside her firm grip, Scott's cock was straining so much for a moment that she was almost certain he'd come all over her hand right there and there at that lewd promise. Quickly, she squeezed him even a little harder but unmoving for a second, circling her hips provocatively to turn him on even more.
When it was even no longer three but finally four of those clever long fingers spearing her wetness open, Katja actually had to let go of where she was treating her lover to those firm motions because she could tell from those chopped, breathless groans rumbling against her back, Scott was getting close. Drunk on tiredness, on far too many drugs on Scott's part, and drowning in these sensations for each other that they'd almost lost for good not too long ago… They'd get carried away too soon instead of making the night their friend if they weren’t careful now.
Katja used the chance for a quick break to kneel over her husband on that bench. Two fingertips of hers cautiously found their way inside at a highly responsive spot, using the hint of slickness from the water, while she was fucking herself shamelessly on Scott's hand again in a similarly slow rhythm. Her eyes squeezed shut, his name and high whines of lust on her lips alternating, she indeed almost did miss the point then when Scott's rock-hard length twitched against her lower arm especially firmly, his teeth nipping down so harshly on the spot they were marking that Katja knew it would be showing for a week. A thought that only had more slick warmth from her swollen folds stain the water.
Too rapidly. After all, they did have that house until tomorrow …
So instead of going even faster with her own movements, Katja reluctantly let go, kissing the pout off Scott's lips. She softly grabbed his wrist and guided it to the ribbons keeping her bikini bottom where it was, for more workout for fingers that only needed to find their strength again. Her hands shaking just lightly, she was slowly caressing up and down Scott's chest in the meantime, her longing gaze finding his once more through the shield that wasn’t really one, not anymore.
The obstacle gone too, Scott pulled her onto him with pure want and admiration on his face, not a hint of discomfort shining on it to Katja's relief, not least to her being very careful not to put any weight on where Mystique had once more almost ruined his body completely days ago.
Her legs crossed high behind his waist instead, they didn’t move a lot for a while once they were joined, letting the lazy drag of the pool and tightening muscles, instinctive little thrusts of need doing the work for them, building up to a long drawn out height finally shaking them both to the core long after it had long become dark.
Make a move to even just get out of the water, neither of them did. This night was only theirs to enjoy, and they were both determined to make the best of that before the next possible doom would strike.
Until an urgent message from his second-in-command flashed on Scott's wristwatch, informing him in Logan's unerringly charming manner that Space Jack Sparrow and Plasma Squirrel, also known as Scott's birth family, were just in the process of landing on the Mutant High rooftop and that he should get his ass back home, it was as perfect as Katja could have wished for her 39th birthday to go.