eliyes | fanfic (X-Men): "Big Reveal"

One of the many things which bugs me about how Uncanny X-Men #415 ended has nothing at all to do with the thing with Northstar and everything do do with some basic common sense.

What if it had gone differently?

Hank McCoy made a quiet entrance into the infirmary, conscious of the late (or perhaps very early) hour. He paused just inside the door, frowning. The bed closest to him was empty, when it should have held Jean-Paul Beaubier. The French-Canadian mutant was still recovering from injuries sustained in his recent heroic, unsuccessful attempt to get a child, whose mutant ability to generate explosive blasts was out of control, to safe containment and medical help. Jean-Paul (a.k.a. Northstar) had not been cleared for release by Hank, and yet his bed was not only empty but neatly made and lacking in monitoring equipment or personal effects. Clearly the man had checked himself out while the nurse was still up and about.

He shook his head. He would have thought Annie had more sense, especially after the night's events. He would have to have a chat with her, and with Jean-Paul.

Hank walked past the empty bed and it's neighbour, where Alex Summers (a.k.a. Havok) lingered in his troubling catatonic state. Hank was still trying to unlock the mystery of Alex's condition, but at the moment his purpose for visiting was the patient in the third bed. Mere hours before, a jealous mutant mudman had attempted to kill Hank's dear friend, Bobby Drake. Thanks to the timely intervention of Northstar, Bobby had been saved, though not without sustaining injury. Hank feared that the worst damage from the night's escapade would be to his friend's psyche, considering the events leading to the altercation --

-- But here was a fresh mystery, and Hank paused midstep in befuddlement when he realized that he could see Bobby's costume on the parts of him peeking out from under the sheets. He should have been in scrubs or a hospital gown, as was standard procedure, not -- Hank stripped off the covers in one quick motion -- not in costume, certainly not! And yet the only details lacking were Bobby's shoes and glasses; he even had on his jacket and gloves!

"Completely unacceptable," Hank murmured ominously. Considering the oddly blissful smile on Bobby's face, it seemed likely that the enhanced pheromones Josette had used to ensnare him (before her husband tried to kill him) still lingered in the clothes.

"Great, just great! The whole place is probably contaminated now," Hank muttered as he diverted away from Bobby for just long enough to locate and don one of the air filtration masks that still worked with his face's new physiognomy. He grabbed two more masks, putting one on Alex and the other on Bobby before he set to work stripping away the costume.

When had Bobby started wearing a faux-leather shirt under his faux-leather coat? The last time Hank had checked, he'd been sporting a patterned purple button-up. Implicit was the mockery of the new, so-called "street clothes" of costume that Bobby thought was so impractical. While the frequency of Bobby wearing jeans in public had increased from "almost never" to "seldom" sometime in his mid-twenties, that was the limit. He only wore the leather-look pants because he'd been made to, and would certainly never have been seen in them otherwise. The new shirt didn't make sense.

Hank was careful not to wake him as he removed the gloves and coat. The latter required a certain amount of lifting and rolling. He briefly entertained the hypothesis that Annie hadn't changed Bobby because she'd been unable. Of course, he'd seen her change Alex with practiced efficiency, and he was taller than Bobby, though he was losing weight -- but the costume was more challenging than a paper gown or loose hospital scrubs.

Still, she might have removed the gloves...

Hank unzipped Bobby's shirt, and froze. Not literally -- though he could feel the chill of ice on his fingers where they brushed Bobby's chest. He could see the ice -- the ice that should not be there, since Bobby was asleep. The Iceman had long been possessed of the ability to turn only partially to ice -- but usually it was his hand or hands, when he was using his powers. That was entirely different from this. This was a portion of Bobby's chest, dark and translucent, through which Hank glimpsed organs. It went as high as the bottom of Bobby's throat -- and this explained the switch to high-necked shirts. It spread unevenly: one nipple was ice, one flesh. Hank could see intestines before the ice halted it's downward progression.

This was not good.

And Annie had known about it, he would wager on it.

Yes, they would definitely need to have that talk, and soon, but first he had much more pressing matters to see to.

Cross-posted to

frozen_breaths.

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From:

neotoma.livejournal.com

This is set in that bizarre period where Grant Morrison was writing one of the X-books, isn't it? I am really sketchy on that period, because well -- Grant Morrison bends reality and logic, I swear.

I like that Hank actually *notices* something, and that Annie the Nurse has actually been hiding stuff.

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