We Live Forever

Chapter 35: Explanations

This is the essence of this chapter and also a message to myself (I cheated on you guys and Hank, read "Faceless Violence" on Ao3, it's a Vigilante/Adrian Chase x OC)

Crimson's POV:

The ride home was somehow more awkward than the ride home from prison. After an eternity of awkward eye contact, we make it back home. It appears that in Charles' absence no one has bothered to take down the various holiday decorations. 

"Everyone rest up, we'll have a lengthy discussion in the morning," Charles spoke and everyone walked off in various directions.

Hank and I started to make a beeline for our room, eager to get some sleep. But, our dreams of... dreaming were interrupted by a familiar little boy.

"Professor McCoy's!!" The little boy cheered as he came up and gave us - well mostly our legs - a hug.

"Bobby, how many times do you have to tell you we aren't professors, just teachers?" Hank jokingly scolded.

"Forever!" Bobby exclaimed before running off to go cause trouble. 

"It took all of five seconds to thrust back into the bowels of being responsible for two-hundred kids," I whispered to Hank, earning a chuckle.

We continued onward and eventually managed to make it up to our room. As soon as we entered the room I flopped down onto our bed, thankful to be back in our rightful home. 

"Comfortable?" Hank asked.

"Very," I confirmed. 

Then I got an idea, a very, very good idea. I sat on the bed and moved back until I sat up against the headboard. Hank gave me a quizzical look until I reached out and made "grabby hands" at him.  

"Oh, is that what you want?"

"It's a win-win situation"

Hank looked to our bookshelf and finally selected one.

"We are masters of compromise," he declared.  

With his chosen book of the night, Hank settled into the bed, nestling his body between my legs. I began to run my fingers through his hair, gently playing with it while he read his book aloud for the both of us. 

The next morning we both got up and quickly got ready to deal with the aftermath of- well everything. I got the best sleep I had gotten in a long time, being back home certainly has its benefits. We headed straight down to the meeting room trying our best to dodge students until we'd come up with the official explanation. 

Once we arrived I noticed that my wonderful night's sleep was a very unique occurrence. Everyone else looked like they'd come undone during the night and were still struggling to piece themselves back together. Some, like Peter, wore sleepy smiles; others took after Scott and gave some strong glares. 

"So, we should probably explain..." I spoke first.

"Yeah, no shit," Scott mumbled.

"Let me start from the beginning. We all remember what- what happened to Logan, right?" I got a little choked up and Erik gave me a sympathetic look. "His powers deteriorated and eventually stopped working altogether, which is what ended up killing me. We believed the same issue is happening with me, except since no one else has tried to burn us down... yet, the issue has progressed further," I continued.

"Exactly and it ended up causing Crimson to slip into a coma, or at least that's what we all believed it to be. It ended up being a similar, but also quite different medical phenomenon-" Hank started to explain.

"Ma na ma na," Peter sang quietly.

"-called 'Locked-In Syndrome'. From an outside perspective, Locked-In Syndrome presents itself exactly like a normal coma, but not from the inside. Patients are fully conscious the entire time, seeing and hearing absolutely everything, but being unable to move, speak, or otherwise communicate," Hank explained the science of it very confidently while everyone else just nodded along. 

"While stuck in that condition I witnessed Charles perform some strange and often downright evil acts. He was basically kidnapping students, staff, and strangers and looking through their minds before removing their memories of the encounter. He even went so far as to stab Hank with a scalpel and then force Warren to stitch his Dad back up-" I continued before quickly stopping. 

At my words every muscle in Warren's body stiffened and then his wings appeared to tense up. He launched up from his seat in a nanosecond, balling his fists and staring Charles down. 

"YOU MOTHERFUCKER! YOU- YOU STABBED MY DAD!? YOU STABBED THE BEST DAMN MAN AND FATHER FIGURE ANYONE HAS EVER KNOWN AND THEN YOU MADE ME STITCH HIM BACK UP?! HE COULD HAVE DIED! YOU COULD HAVE KILLED MY DAD, YOU FUCK! AND THEN YOU TOOK THE MEMORY FROM ME AND JUST LEFT ME THERE! I THOUGHT I HAD GONE INSANE! HOW COULD YOU?!" Warren screamed before trying to climb across the table to Charles.

Hank and I both quickly reached out and grabbed onto Warren, trying to keep the situation from escalating. Hank reached to the top button on his shirt and attempted to quickly undo it, but he ended up popping the button off the shirt and into the crowd. Hank gained Warren's attention and pointed to where his stab wound would have been.

"I'm okay, see? No harm done. Everything is perfectly fine, I'm fine Warren," Hank spoke calmly.

That was a necessary mistake. Everyone looked on in equal parts confusion, shock, perhaps horror? Where he'd once been stabbed and stitched up was perfectly normal and healed skin, there was no sign of any injury. 

"How in the hell..?" Alex murmured. 

"No cut would have healed that fast and that perfect..." Kurt added.

"My stitching alone should have left a scar..." Warren accused. 

"Things have changed-" Hank started. 

"Please tell my best friend did not take on your furry form," Erik begged.

"Ouch, but no. When Crimson woke up she convinced me that we needed to leave and we ran off to my parent's house. Unfortunately, they came home and decided to secretly leave both of us gifts. The serum they left was supposed to give both of us the same invulnerability, but my parents have a horrific track record. So, we opted to not try the serum; just to be safe," Hank explained. 

"I'm guessing things got complicated?" Jean asked.

"Don't they always?" Sean joked.

"Yes, they did. We tried to lure Charles into meeting with us and it was working. Then the building suddenly exploded- you know, like they always do. We were both fatally wounded in the explosion: we were going to die, we didn't have a choice. We injected each other with serum and it worked. We were then kidnapped by a man named Trask and he tortured us in the name of experimentation and scientific progress," I finished. 

"He had all of us together. I finally got my chance to explain. I'm not going to attempt to justify everything or say that what I've done was right. However, I just have this gut feeling that something is wrong with Raven, that she's in a lot of danger. She used to send me an occasional postcard, but they stopped and I just felt like something was wrong. So, I borrowed people's brains to try to figure out where she was. It didn't work, but fate still had me in mind. It turns out that our new friend Trask used to have Raven in his facility, but she's escaped," Charles took his turn to explain. 

"We found a tape of her in the facility and we hope it can help us locate her, if you'd all like to take a look," Hank spoke pulling the tape before his jacket.

Everyone nodded.

"For Raven."

Author's Note:

Long time no see guys. Welcome back!

First things first, there will be no update schedule or anything that an organized person would do, I'll write whenever I can.

It worked out very well that this is where I left on in my outline because this chapter served as a perfect little recap for us all (Myself included)!

Thoughts on this chapter?

Also, hello to all the new people! Welcome in, we're very happy to have you here!

Thank you all!