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Things have been different since his incomplete reformation.
Bobby doesn’t realize this at first. After his annihilation, he cringes back into his ice form, then sloughs back into his flesh one, tired, before limping home. Everyone greets him with the usual happiness. They move on quickly. X-Men always die; X-Men always return. Bobby excels at reforming now. They worry the least about losing him.
Something is wrong . Bobby doesn’t say it. He never does when it comes to cores of himself. He wants to. Something intangible aches in his chest. An absence more than an invasive presence. In the days that follow, that void stings the most while Bobby is alone in the classroom, or staring at the X-Wing’s metallic hull. He is a broken plate glued back together without its middle.
Still, is that truly an issue? He is whole, after all. Breathing. Walking. Talking. Everything. That’s more than some resurrected X-Men can say. Bobby keeps his head down.
As the weeks slip on, the rest of the plate crumbles.
Iceman walks the halls of Xavier's now, the moth-ball smelling road of carpet showing through the rims of his translucent feet. He idly studies the dusted labyrinth of framed photographs on the walls as he goes. Him and Hank, shoulder to shoulder. The original team. Jean before Phoenix. The New Mutants. Scott awkwardly taking a large bass from Warren on a fishing field trip. Emma teaching.
Some of these images, Bobby remembers. Others he does not. It takes a moment to recognize his flesh self in some of those older photos. His body changed much as it grew. But he has not left his ice form for a while now.
He opens the oaken door of Charles' office without knocking.
Per always, the office is dim and warm, crowded by books and antique furniture and hopes for the future. The curtains shrouding the window hang in soft arcs. Beyond them, the topiary sways. This is a place of plans and comfort. A safe place. One of punishment, too. Charles sits behind his desk. He swivels in his wheelchair when Bobby enters. He does not look too surprised.
"Bobby,” he says.
“Hi, professor,” Iceman says.
It is a formality more than anything. Words that automatically spill from him. Everyone of flesh spends much time greeting each other and growing upset if the rituals aren't followed. Bobby is beginning to lack interest in it. Still, he does what he must to avoid upsetting anyone.
Charles assesses him. Something tightens his throat. Makes his stern brows fold in a quietly anxious way. One of his thumbs frets with an armrest. Bobby should know how to read him by now, but he's uncertain of what this means.
The professor has been wary ever since he discovered he could not enter Bobby's shattered and recrafted mind.
“I am assuming you'd like to talk,” Charles says, almost soft. “Take a seat.”
“I'd rather stand.”
‘Almost' is a concept that kills. ‘Almost' is a word Bobby hates. He walks to the front of Charles' desk. Dusk lights the cool planes of his body. It paints the faceless cube he's chosen for a countenance. Charles' reflection restrains a flinch as he peers into it.
“You haven't uniced for several weeks,” the professor says. Fishing for an opening. “Are you comfortable?”
“I am.” Bobby studies a dust mote on his wrist with boredom. He does not need eyes to see or a mouth to speak.
It distressed Hank when he lost his face. For all his intelligence, Hank has a gentleness that hinders him from true efficiency. Bobby maintained a structure he no longer felt attached to for three extra weeks just for Hank. In the end, it still gave. At the other corner of the room, the professor's record player clicks, then begins lurching through a classical music album. Music peels from the turning record.
“I am worried about you, Bobby,” Charles says.
Bobby is sure of that. The last time they officially spoke here four months ago, it was a vicious argument ignited after Bobby began declaring he was gay to anyone that bothered to listen. Hiding had no longer seemed important. His adopted family seemed startled by his abrupt coming out, if supportive. His biological family is no longer his family anymore. That’s fine. It meant something before. It does not now. Bobby has known for years he is not cut out to be anyone’s son. Xavier’s included. Charles did not enjoy this blot on their public image.
Even now, with many feelings away on a separate glacier Bobby cannot reach, that memory boils at him.
“Worried about me?” Iceman says. “Or worried about what I might do?”
Charles grimaces.
“You have not been yourself,” he says. “I fear your last shattering and reassembly have changed something in you irreparably. Everyone has felt this loss. You need help.”
‘You have not been yourself.' Bobby has heard that so many times now. He heard it from Scott when he collapsed a bridge on some fleeing henchmen two months ago. He heard it from Hank much earlier when his interest in outings began sagging. From Jean, when he gave her permission to glean his thoughts and she could not, withdrawing with fearful concern; from Warren, when he ceased wanting to joke or engage in the hedonistic joys of life.
He heard it from Pyro too in everything other than words. He fucked Simon Lasker's brains out in a bathroom two weeks after coming out, but all warmth Pyro had towards him – all attempts to discuss a relationship, their friendship – seeped away as familiar uncertainty and worry settled in. As Bobby responded less and less. Bobby assumes that Simon saw what everyone else did: that something vital and human has been slipping by as the time passes. Something is missing.
Bobby wouldn't sleep with Simon now, even if he wanted to resume his human form. It's not as if having sex with Simon was terrible. He enjoyed it, at the time. It came with a rush of liberation, happiness, and excitement, all feelings that accompanied his coming out too. But such things hold no interest for him lately. Haven't.
Little does. He's bored.
Charles is growing uneasy with the silence. He watches as Bobby plucks a chess piece from his desk without permission and rolls it around his hand.
“Do you remember the conversation we had in here,” Iceman says, “when I was sixteen?”
“There were plenty. I've known you for much of your life, Bobby.”
“I mean one of them.” Bobby drops the chess piece. Flicks over another. “The one where you told me that being out would hinder us, and ripped some seams out of my brain. That one.”
“Bobby.”
Charles sounds helpless. Bobby doesn't feel bad at all. He watches Charles levitate the chess pieces back to where they belong. He picks at them again unabashedly. He has been helpless too many times in this room to dislike the feeling being placed upon someone else.
“That ruined me for a long time,” Iceman says. “I felt broken. I wanted you and the others to love me more than anything else in my life, but this thing I couldn't help but carry was between us. I was terrified of losing everything. So I let you hide me. I let you rot me from the inside out.”
The pieces keep falling. Charles keeps putting them back up. Bobby is mechanical and undeterred in his motions. He would not be surprised if Charles is preparing to summon security. But maybe Xavier thinks he can handle the youngest of his original wards.
“I did what I did to protect all of you,” Charles says. Old pain tints his voice. “To protect what we were making.”
“Sure. You mean you saw a little fruit and decided to crush him. For duty. For love. Same thing.”
Bobby stops messing with the pieces. He steps back. Charles tenses when Bobby raises a hand, though trust still glimmers in his eyes, trust and pieces of a hundred other complicated broken things Bobby does not give a shit about.
“Hey,” Iceman says. “Could a fruit do this?”
Charles is telepathically reaching out when Bobby drops every cell in his body into the subzero.
There is a tearing sound. Cells exploding. Veins splitting. Bobby can hear all of them as Charles drops onto his desk, twitching, a tattered mess of expanded flesh. He watches as the last movements flee the professor's body. For a moment, a sense of satisfaction spreads through his icy core. A sense of relief. Vengeance. Justice. A judgment passed for a vulnerable sixteen year old boy that is no longer here, that may as well be dead given how long he has been gone.
“You look different, Charles,” Iceman says. He hears his voice saying this without him: occupying an old niche. “Is it the haircut?”
What is left of Charles does not respond. Bobby feels strangely empty. The words seemed correct, but nothing else was. Jokes are not filling. He did something incorrectly there. Oh well.
Then the panic sets in.
I'm going to be in trouble, Bobby thinks. He trembles in place. What will Scott say? Hank? Warren? Jean? They will be devastated. He does not want that. He sickens in the fast current of his racing thoughts. How disappointed in him will they be? How sad, or angry? What if they don't want him anymore?
How does that matter?
This final thought stills Bobby. It buries him in place, the first flake of an avalanche of revelation. He stares at Charles and the desk. He is bored of pretending to care. He is bored of interacting with everyone every day. He is bored of thinking about what others may feel, and changing accordingly. He is detached from it all. Who says he must keep pretending to be attached?
Nothing matters.
Bobby feels lighter, heady with revelation, before reality seeps in again. Even if he is freed from those chains, the others will still have an opinion on this. They will attack him. They will lock him up if possible. There are physical consequences for what he has done. Bobby does not want to wrangle with those. He does not want imprisonment.
What if they all attack me? he thinks. I won't be able to win.
The vermilion truth that was just revealed to him shines through again: nothing matters. It illuminates every translucent cell of Iceman's ever-changing body.
He will only lose if he cares what he does to them. If he doesn't, he has the strength to win. He has always had that capability. Why not use it? For the first time, when Iceman sees himself reflected in Xavier's imposing windows, he recognizes the faceless thing looking back at him. There is no worry. There is no guilt. There is only him. Iceman holds it in, brimming with actualization.
Of course he has come into himself at home.
He waits until he hears approaching footsteps in the hallway before he releases the ice age inside him.