The husk looked like rotten cornflakes. Hard, dry, peeling off in flakes at the slightest touch, and covered with moldy looking brushes, it smelled of death, decay and moistness. The odor was sticky and each whiff made the group of solemn people in the room want to throw up. Its shape was that of man, like a sarcophagus covered in ages of of dust and dreariness.
The man whose appearance of roughly thirty years belied his actual age stood, only his eyes moving from one face to the next: The white-haired woman at the window, whose face he needn't see, because the thunderstorm outside with its low black shrouds and the torrents of water beating against the window told of her each and every thought.
The bald man in the wheelchair, whose calm, serene face showed that his mind was not with them, but whose furrowed brow would have tricked better people into believing his body was not an empty shape his mind had left and was now looking for any trace of life in the brown crumpling shape on the small bed with its green satin sheets.
The woman with the fiery red hair who stood in front of the long turned off life support monitors. The faint reflection of ambient light made the phosphorous surface bask her and her fiancee's form wrapped around each other in shared pain in a strange, black blanket that was light, and wasn't.
And the strange, furry creature that knelt at the bed, various assortments of needles, syringes, probes, electrodes, little bottles and test tubes with traces of various liquids scattered around him, and numerous other contraptions made of the fabric of nightmares. His huge feline mouth was shaking, bared fangs seeming to glow brightly in stark contrast to the red, dry darkness of his eyes.
The monster winced, as he felt the man's eyes on his face, and slowly his face turned, eyes growing wide in fear as he became aware of the other's presence. Then his eyelids sank, for a moment cradling his tortured soul in the cold, searing gray of pain. His eyes were sore, swollen red slits as his massive skull slowly turned to face the other's eyes that stared back at him darkly and unbelieving.
The monster's vocal chords needed several attempts before they finally produced their strangely charred, voiceless sounds, broken and guilt-stricken.
"I didn't know--" a strange, guttural sound crackled in his ribcage instead of a sob. "I never thought--" His strangely skewed animal form fell forward weakly, powerless paws clawing at the carpet as he tried to hide his face against the floor, but the man wouldn't have it. Fiercely, two hands wrapped around his lower arms, roughly pulling the animal back up to face him, the wordless silence screaming its demand to continue at him as another burst of thunder made the window panes shake. "I was... I ... I was supposed to cure..."
At these words the man pushed the beast back from the bed, where the shaking body finally found himself buried against the carpet, his hands pounding against his temples, trying to force out the pounding pain even at the cost of bursting his skull.
His body slumping at the sight of the husk in front of him, the man sat down beside it, his stomach lurching as he caught the familiar note of a scent amidst the foul secretions that had always felt so pristine and pure to him. A glint of metal drew his eyes to the thinner upper end of the hull, where a few links of a chain were stuck in the dry surface.
"Too late." He croaked, as his hands slid over the filthy surface, fingers seeking out the cold hardness of metal so similar to the one in his bones. And then he just sat there, frozen, as the realization of his failure began eating its way into his chest.
It wasn't until the next morning that the four somber friends slowly made their way down an eerily quiet stairway. The halls, where on other days children would have played noisily, were deserted, only here and there little groups sat in quiet circles, having long ago ran dry of words.
Small faces with big eyes greeted the four, the two women in front, the man with eerily glowing eyes supporting the big, fur-covered being stumbling disinterestedly down the stairs, recklessly ignoring its own safety. No word was said in the halls that were quiet, the only sound a stream of sobbing on a lower stairway. As the four had passed, and the unceremonial rumbling of the elevator announced that the fifth one had retired to his room, the children began huddling together, realizing for the first time that, no matter how much you wished, or how dedicatedly you prayed, or how hard you fought, there was still one force more powerful.
And a benevolent force it seemed to be no longer.
When the man with the glowing eyes left the monster's room, he found himself facing the same, desperate eyes. Slowly he picked up one of the smaller children, lifted it on his arm. The small group got up, and soon they all followed him to the dorms. There was nothing he needed to say. Nothing he could say. It was enough that he gave them a direction, that he led them, that he was there, ready to support them, his stance that of power, his posture that of certainty, his face showing no sign of pain, nor of fear. Not a single tear.
He descended the stairway towards the sobbing, to find three students sitting on the stairs' lower end in the attic. In the middle sat a young asian, dressed in her usual yellow-and-blue jacket, glowing pale in dawn's light. She was resting against a young boy, sobbing loudly, crying against his shoulder. At her feet sat a brown-haired girl, her best friend, her back against the banister, one hand resting on the other's shoulder, who was repeating the same tear-broken fragments over and over again.
Regrets. Unsaid words. Their last argument. The forgotten birthday present. That she hadn't stopped her. Guilt.
He softly placed a hand on the girl's shoulder, gently gripping her shoulder, the firmness of his grip calming her miraculously, his strength unexpected but welcome. Slowly the three got up, climbing the stairs back to the dorms, the man next to them radiating the calmness and strength they had been missing.
He saw each of them to their rooms. The brown-haired girl was last, and as they stood in front of her door, she turned towards him:
"How do you do it?" A simple question, fraught with sorrow, helplessness, but also with genuine interest.
"I don't." he said, the red glow over his face not giving away the slightest trace of emotion. Her face didn't change. She didn't understand.
"I can't." he said. "I can not cry" he whispered as he turned, and the eyes of the girl behind him saw, for the first time, through him, into him. She took the sad truth he had just shared with her like a blanket to wrap around her, as she weightlessly stepped through the closed door and dropped onto her bed.
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Story Notes:
Thanks to my proud beta-reader Redd, who helped me trim my run-on-sentences. They're still too long, but it's all because I'm too chicken. Also, I'm mixing in some newer versions (can you say "secondary mutation"?) of certain characters from the comics into this movieverse fic.