Work Text:
07/06/2018
The timing, for once, couldn’t be better.
Hank's worries kept revolving around that weird con that Mystique had pulled on him in the besieged city yesterday, the riddle of why the woman wanted to get in the X-Men's network so badly that she'd tried to Trojan a virus – fortunately quite a primitive one, compared to decades of highly developed Shi’ar tech in this house –, in Hank's hands, of all people, back to Westchester.
Whatever these files contained that the X-Men had acquired from their archenemies a while ago and still were at a loss about how to decipher them: It was very obviously crucial enough for their enemies to become increasingly restless about it, enough for the premature execution of ill-thought out plans.
Which also meant, the next one they'd get up to would probably show up on the Mutant High doorstep a lot less subtle.
Therefore, Hank was relieved that this morning, he had to visit his currently only inpatient charge on the sick bay solely to finally release the girl. In case all these current dangerous conflicts might soon accumulate to yet another violent clash outside either their own gates or in New York – or even worse, around this whole poor planet –, the X-Men would need the young people shaping up to join them as their successors more by the day, to stand by their side.
Not to mention, their leader and headmaster would be back to a lot more focus and above all, show up at the breakfast table in a far better mood once his daughter would finally be sitting by his side again, to rate his ties on flop ten lists in the mutant social network and steal the last sip from his coffee.
Especially in the light of the ongoing tragedy that was New York being in the enemy's hands and the question of why no one in Washington seemed to particularly care about that, it was about high time, some things at Mutant High finally went back to normal.
These embarrassingly pessimism haunting his mind before sunrise already – Christ –, Hank couldn’t help but smile when he entered said patient room, Saskia's file already opened on his datapad so he wouldn’t keep the girl waiting much longer, and spotted a certain young man with huge wings on his back already sitting by the bedside – again. It looked like he wasn’t the only one trying to at least start and fix things around here.
"Hey, you two. Rise and shine."
Andréo slightly startled, apparently having dozed off for a moment. The last few nights had apparently taken their toll. He put a finger on his lips with a jerky headshake, indicating he'd not dared to wake his ex-girlfriend up for a little badly needed chatter.
Those just as noble as cowardly intentions came a little late though; Saskia's big round eyes were already fluttering open, a weak smile curling on her lips when the first thing they beheld was a certain strong built bare chest and unkempt, long brunet curls, dreamy dark eyes right next to her. "Hey … Did you get up even once since I passed out? You gave on sleeping or something?"
The smile didn’t remain for long when Andréo's bashful little shrug brought a flush to far too pale cheeks and had Saskia lower her head inevitably … right toward where Hank had sneaked yet another needle into one of those thinned-out arms last night once the girl had fallen asleep. "Just couldn’t help yourself, Henry, could you?"
Hank silently smirked to himself about certain X-Men offspring copying a lot more of their parents' demeanor than naturally rebellious teenage spirits would ever want to admit, and pulled up a chair with one foot claw on the free bedside. He was nice enough to at least unhook the almost empty saline bag from Saskia's elbow so she could move more freely.
"Just a little parting gift. You needed another dose of antibiotics after I found another small spot to correct between the fifth and sixth rib. Which is why I'm glad young Mister Worthington made time before training to check in on you again, as it gives me a chance to demonstrate to my future assistant how flawless post-surgery results can look when you bother to redo sloppy stitches."
Saskia didn't look awfully enthusiastic about Hank's efforts to have her leave this room with as few traces of her serious injury as possible. "You opened that damn thing again."
"Just half an inch of it. Last time, I promise. But you didn’t seriously think I'd let you walk out of here with the marks of the Brotherhood's incompetence all over your chest and back, did you? Andréo, that was not a polite request."
Hank impatiently patted his side of the bed frame, motioning Saskia with his other hand to pull up her wide top with the Lord of the Rings map print for said detail check.
At least one of his stubborn two problem children this morning followed the request, albeit unnervingly slowly, with his eyes on the ground, unwilling to expose his former partner to having to get naked in front of him of all people.
Another time, with anyone else, Hank would maybe have taken such sensitivities into consideration. But not to mention he was getting increasingly tired of this childishness between two people who were all but suffocating his senses with the pheromones flying between them whenever they were in the same damn room, and who for his taste had learned far too much from their parents and teachers about how to silence problems into festering issues instead of solving them … This was a lesson that anyone wanting to work in the X-Men's medical facilities would have to internalize sooner or later.
"Don't be infants, you two. This will not be the last time you have to take care of each other when one of you is compromised. If you are too unprofessional for that, being together on the same team will never work out for you."
"There's no need for shock treatment right now either though, Hank," Saskia nagged, a warning flash in her narrowing eyes as if she'd read his thoughts as easily as her best friend could. "I'm fine."
"Maybe, but this is not only about you but about the people who were worried sick about you when you ran into the next best sword available on your first big mission," Hank replied mercilessly, one paw coming to rest on Saskia's arm for a comforting squeeze when she shivered visibly, the faint fragrance of acid salt building on her fine neck for a second, at the memory of just how close to not making it out of Watergate alive she'd really been.
"Which brings me to your question from earlier: Young Mister Worthington here hasn’t spent a single night in his own bed since they brought you home from New York."
"Really?" Saskia promptly blushed even deeper and shyly reached for Andréo's hand, following that unspoken yearning still smoldering between those two idiots for a moment …
Then she apparently remembered why her no-longer boyfriend preferred to sit by her side in silence though and only when she wasn’t watching, instead of just lying down in that bed beside her to comfort her through the usual post near-death experience nightmares. Saskia's face tightened immediately.
Pretending all the more now to not even care, holding on to that arduous sober relationship that those two clung to, ever since things had gone wrong between them, to not lose that spot on the X-Men successors' team respectively that they'd fought so hard for, she finally got her shirt out of the way and crossed her arms under her head.
When Andréo finally gathered enough courage to say as much as her name in a choked, helpless tone, she harshly shook her head. "Just do your job. Nothing to talk about, Worthington. Especially not when we got company."
"Hey, don't let me stop you. I'm not even listening," Hank claimed with a perfectly innocent smile, one hand on his chest to underline his utter and deep sincerity, before grabbing a Shi’ar scanner from his coat pocket to take a closer look at the freshly lasered wound in question.
"Right." Saskia rolled her eyes at him, her back tensing even more when Hank impatiently pulled Andréo closer by one of his elbow feathers to inspect the almost invisibly mended wound margins right below the underside of her breast. "Can you just get a move on it? Gym's waiting. We're a little too old to still fall for the Predatory Department sketch, McCoy, you know."
"That one only works when I got my workmate from Counseling in here anyway," Hank replied with a sad smile, recalling the last time Katja and he had pulled off their little act of secretly applied mental therapy in these very premises, back then to ease a scratching, biting young man named Bastian Murray into his re-appearance in this house.
A boy who had happened to make sure at Watergate just a few weeks later, this very young woman lying before Hank here right now wouldn’t succumb to her horrible injuries before Hank had even gotten a chance to do anything about them. In a way, Bastian's arrival had ushered in this new period of ongoing lethal danger and drama in this house, after so many years of only the occasional mission and a cautiously growing hope for peace …
And yet it was these teenagers who should one day become valuable members of the X-Men's team, without whom there would be even less hope for this planet to not go up in the flames of war right now. Including Scott's and Katja's daughter who so shortly after almost having her heart cut out of her chest already couldn’t think of anything but getting back to training.
In this case, fortunately, Hank had the better arguments to keep his ambitious young patient from asking too much of herself, as her mother was so prone to as well. "The Counselor in question is still quite shaken from almost having to watch her daughter die by the way, so she's off duty for the moment."
He nodded in satisfaction when Saskia promptly blushed once more and sank back down on the mattress with an unhappy sigh, the need to get out of this room and away from the prying eyes of someone who'd examined her without clothes for whole different reasons not too long ago, suppressed for the moment.
"Better. Almost done, Sassy. Let me get that vital sign readings statistic in your file and write up the meds you're gonna need for a few more days, then you're free to go. How about you two make good use of that time before you go back to needlessly being a pain in each other's behind in training? You know, the good thing about feral senses? Selective perception. You two wrap things up between you guys, and I'll do the same in here."
With that, Hank demonstratively turned to his datapad, albeit without much hope that his not-so-gentle nudge would achieve anything more this time than the last few attempts at helping in this complicated matter. Fixing emotions was sadly so much harder than knitting up tissue and straightening bones.
"Nothing left to wrap up left," Saskia promptly growled, back to stubbornly avoiding a certain sight by soulful eyes resting on her face, pleading for a kind of absolution that would never come, not as long as there were so many unspoken words between those two.
"Sassy, maybe he's ri…"
Those hesitating, hopeless words, too, mumbled almost too quietly to hear anyway, died down immediately again when the next warning snarl from Saskia's lips, a noise that almost made Hank's own feral articulation proud, went his way.
A conversation reminding Hank far too much of the last personal talk these two lovebirds had had on that one bad night a few months back, one that fortunately only feral senses could have picked up on from one story above as most of the pupils had already been asleep at that hour.
Okay, so should we do this the classic way? Like, with you telling me, it's not what it looks like, me yelling at you for a while before I slap you and her across the face …
Hey, Hurricane, can you take it down a notch? We …
You want to know what it's like to freeze to death? Then keep on talking.
Sassy ...
Or you can put some damn clothes on right now and let me pack up my things alone. And never touch me again.
I'm sorry, Sassy.
Yeah, I don't give a fuck about that in either scenario.
"I'm sorry," Andréo murmured, undoubtedly replaying that same depressing scene in his mind while almost as stubbornly ignoring Hank's inviting glance from the side as Saskia had earlier. "I never meant to hurt you."
That was undoubtedly true, but it what was really still in the air about this ugly drama back then that was standing between these two people, because Andréo just didn’t have the guts to come clean about the truth.
Saskia pulled down her shirt again with a harsh movement when Hank gestured her to, visibly relieved to finally be allowed to get up from her bed and hurry over to the patient cabinet to gather her belongings.
"I believe that, Worthington, but it doesn’t make it better if you keep reopening that wound either. I just can’t forget."
"I wish that was true." It came before Andréo could really stop himself, and Hank could hear the boy gasp and curse himself silently immediately, see him bite his lower lip in regret when Saskia turned around to him in confusion.
"What was that?"
Sensing there was no way back now, Andréo gave himself a push at last and forced himself to seek that confused gaze again, wringing his hands in growing nervousness. "There’s something you don’t know about this whole thing between us, Sassy. Your mind … It refuses to remember for some reason. And I … I can’t tell you."
His increasingly uncomfortable gaze found Hank's again, immediately turning away again when Hank cleared his throat, reminding the boy what Hank had told him about this whole tricky situation more than once. "You need to remember yourself. Or you’d never believe me."
Visibly only even more puzzled, Saskia looked back and forth between Andréo and Hank several times, frowning deeply, shaking herself a few times as she tried to retrieve that one certain tidbit from inside her head that would have changed everything in an instant but just couldn’t manage to, still, until her shoulders dropped in old and new disappointment and she continued dressing all the more quickly.
"You never fought for me. That’s what I know. You just left that night."
"Because you told me to," Andréo reminded her quietly. "I respect you too much not to act against your wishes."
"Yeah … you always did." The unbelievably sad smile on Saskia's lips made it clear how much she, too, indeed still cared about this young man who'd been her first love. Which was why it hurt all the more how that whole thing had ended. Both times. "Until you fucked someone else behind my back. I wish it could be like it was."
"Maybe one day it will." Andréo took a small, depressed breath and got up, heavily as so often with probably not only the weight of his wings pulling him down, and trotted towards the door.
"You … uh … you could walk me to my apartment if you want," Saskia unexpectedly murmured before the door could open.
She rolled her eyes a little when Andréo stopped in surprise, cocking his head at her, and motioned down on her still bandaged chest and back and then at Hank. "What can I say? Maybe if I agree on a babysitter to watch out for me for a day or two, King Kong will let me return to exercise faster."
"Wow, reason just walked into the room," Hank commented, smiling broadly to himself for more than one reason.
"I thought you weren’t listening," Saskia commented dryly.
"Almost 17 years, you still fall for that, Ice Princess."
Hank ducked his head with a chuckle when Saskia made a move to throw her bag at him and then waved the two people away so that they could continue to make up a little on their way back through the at this time still-so-quiet halls of their home.
Little glimpses of hope in the frightening dreariness of newly threatening war indeed.