Chapter 32: The Real McCoy
Jubilee silently snuck through the roofless mansion. Hanging out by the gates waiting for stray students to come back was fine, but it was also damned cold. Not that a roofless mansion was much better mind you, but at least the walls kept the unforgiving wind out. While she liked the cold as much as the next New York girl, she also didn’t like becoming a popsicle a la Bobby “Snowman” Drake.
So she tip toed about, her ears straining for any disturbances. Hey, Wolvie taught her every trick in the book and armed with the knowledge, she felt at one in this eerie darkn-
“OUCH! Sonovabitch!”
Oops. Didn’t mean to swear. Didn’t mean to stumble over the coat rack either. Jubilee gave the offending furniture a sound trashing before moving on. Hey, no one saw anything, therefore, Magneto did it. Capture the X-Men, tear the roof off the mansion, and maul the coat rack--super villains could be so cruel.
Up the debris laden stairs she went. Whoops, almost tripped again on a piece of roofing. Man, Kurt should’ve mentioned that mansion-sitting was a hazardous job: terrible conditions, deadly obstacles, and that horrible smell.
“Yuck,” gagged Jubilee. “Smells like... like... gunpowder.” She sniffed again. “Or maybe Remy’s cookin’.”
Gunpowder? Elf boy mentioned a big boom coming from Betsy’s room during Magneto’s grand entrance. Had the time now, might as well check it out. Besides, it was close.
Very thing she noticed at Betts’ quarters? No door. The big boom knocked it clean off its hinges and into the wall across the hall. The insides fared no better. All those expensive and delicate Japanese artifacts the telepath so loved were in varying states of brokenness.
Porcelain vases became shards.
Katanas bent from a concussive force.
The bed still smoldered a little.
Mirrors, clothes, and all manners of cloth covered the entire spectrum of charredness.
“Betts is going to blow a gasket.”
No point in staying longer. While admiring an executive leather chair imbedded in the wall passed the time, Jubilee didn’t want Psylocke coming back and blaming her for the mess. Oh, and come back she would seeing how there were no signs of her body parts in the room.
On the way out, she spotted an interesting tidbit. “Hold the phone.”
A green, nylon strap chilled on the floor, bits of tattered material hanging by a pair of intact metal loops on either end of the long strip. Looked like the poor remains of those sports bags Cajun Country and Wolvie used so often. In the words of Betsy, “I hate--absolutely abhor--those pitiful excuses for containers. By God, use a suitcase and get that eyesore out of my face.”
What would Betts be doing with something like this? Easy, she wouldn’t be, which meant the erstwhile cloth belonged to Remy, Wolvie, or someone more sinister, like the certain someone who carried explosives in this bag and fucked up Betts’ room.
“Jubes,” the girl said to herself, “You’re a freakin’ genius.”
She fished a stick from the ground, carefully lifted the strap up, and dunked it in her pocket. Hey, she learned the trick from CSI. Now, off to the labs down below! There were fingerprints to be had!
She was about to skitter off when the faint sounds of heavy breathing graced her ears. From where? From there! From that room! With a fearsome battle cry, Jubilee bolted down the hallway and jump kicked the door (Not like the Professor wasn’t going to repair everything anyway). The effect would’ve been spectacular if the door flew open, but it didn’t. Instead, Jubilee’s nasty kick made a hole which did an admirable job of trapping her leg.
The heavy breathing slowed. Quiet footsteps shuffled closer. Jubilee prepared herself for the worst and began gathering her pyrotechnic powers.
“Jubilation? Is that your leg or are you just happy to see me?”
She dissipated her sparks and let her racing heart slow. “Papa bear,” she sighed, “Ain’t I glad it’s you.” Her cheeks brightened when she remembered her precarious position. “Umm... little help?”
Furry hands eased her limb out of the hole. As Jubilee plopped onto the floor rubbing her sore and scratched leg, Hank McCoy opened the door and smiled at her to keep the mood light; however, the jovial greeting failed to erase his puffy red eyes, matted hairs, and haggard expression.
Right away, Jubilee picked up on his less-than-happy disposition. “Whoa, you look like day old crud.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment: I feel like week old crud.”
Like Emma said: “They’re young, not stupid.” Though her grades didn’t reflect the statement, no one mistook her for a dim witted fool either. The facts present told Jubilee why Hank was standing here and not captured like the other X-Men.
Well, the facts and the rumors she’d been gathering for some days.
“Should I just leave or do you wanna hang?”
“I suppose the adult response would be to assist you in this rather cataclysmic event.”
“Screw being adult for a second, big blue. Elf boy left me here to look after people, and I ain’t skimpin’. You need to be alone or you need to talk?”
Jubilation Lee--how much Logan’s little girl had grown. The rebel still burned within her, but she tempered it with uncanny wisdom, the product of many years in the line of fire. If he scoured his brain far enough, Hank could see the too cool for school teen trying her hardest to look and sound apathetic during her first visit to the mansion.
In a way, Logan’s little girl became everyone’s little girl, and those endearing memories warmed Hank just enough to open up. The Beast parked his big self on the ground in front of the teen. “This cowering doesn’t suit me, does it?”
“No biggie.” Jubilee stretched a few times to work the kinks out of her leg. “Don’t tell no one, but there’s been plenty of times I just wanted to hide under my bed. Can’t blame you, ya know, having quit and all.”
Hank hung his bedraggled head. “Oh my stars and garters... I’ve let those close to me down again.”
“You didn’t, papa bear.”
“How’s that? The very second the mansion shakes, I’m locked in a closet praying for the fear to leave my bones. How are my actions not deplorable?”
“Well, ya didn’t die--that, in my humble opinion, would’ve been the ultimate letdown. Think of it this way: if you’d thrown yourself in front of Magneto and his cronies, they would’ve swiss cheesed you.”
The mention of Magneto sent Hank closer to the edge. “Magneto? He was here?!”
“Whoa,” calmed Jubilee. “Forget your meds this morning? You’ve seen the man before--about yay high and greasy white hair.” The girl gazed into Hank’s eyes and shook her head. “What’s wrong with you, Hank? Never seen you like this before, all petered out and cringin’. You used to be superman, big blue.”
“My dear, even Superman hung up his cape.”
“Yeah, but he put it back on when trouble came a knockin’. I dunno, maybe you just need to leave it all behind for a little, ya know? Sort like what Wolvie does? I hate it when he takes off like that, but I have to admit he comes back brand spankin’ new.”
“I have been away, but the distance has not helped. My Walden Pond eludes me.”
Walden... who? “Over my head.”.
“My peace eludes me,” Hank clarified. Dr. McCoy took control when he realized Jubilee truly had no inkling of the literary reference. “Of course you’ve read Walden Pond by the great Transcendentalist, Henry David Thoreau. He talks of a detachment from society and the fulfillment brought about by an intimate communion with Nature. If I remember right, Ms. Frost made it required reading at the Massachusetts Academy, citing it as a valuable treatise on civil disobedience, life experiences, nature’s beauty, and personal freedom.”
Jubilee batted her lashes. “Must’ve missed that one...”
“Missed Thoreau? What in high heaven was going on up there?”
“Back off, I was probably resting my eyes in class.”
Snorting, Hank folded his arms. “Unlikely given Emma’s penchant for telepathic spying.”
“What class would this have been for? History?”
Oh, that got Hank going. “Literature! English!”
“Yup, missed that one. Probably played hooky.”
Hooky? “You play hooky and leave such a wonder to the winds of ignorance? Jubilation Lee, I am sorely disappointed in you!”
“Hey, playin’ hooky’s done plenty good for me, more than this Thoreau guy ever could! I bet all the stuff he’s ever said about life I’ve heard a million times already!”
“Really Ms. Smarty Pants? Let’s hear it then.”
So this guy was a nature lovin’, hippy philosopher, huh? “I bet he said stuff about sanctity of life and how you and me, we’re in this together and we’ll make it through somehow.”
Hank’s eye twitched. “He did write that no human being would ‘wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure as he does.’”
“Nice,” she smiled, oddly pleased with herself, “Guess who wrote that junk about being in this together?’”
“Kurt Vonnegut? Ayn Rand? Jack Kerouac?”
“Nope, Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails.”
“An outlier of a comment,” Hank dismissed, “Another bull’s-eye may convince otherwise though.”
What else did hippies believe in? “Umm... we live life like a rat race and it’s keeping us down because we’re not concerning ourselves with the big picture?”
“‘The mass of men lead life in quiet desperation,’” Hank quoted, the line very much echoing his current depressed state of being, “And coincidentally enough, Thoreau also noted that ‘the universe is far wider than our views of it.’”
While Jubilee glowed with pride, the intellectual stimulation left Hank and returned him to... to... a happier place? In the wake of his literary escape, Thoreau’s wisdom lingered and pecked at his unraveling, and now seemingly unreasonable, emotional responses to trauma. A great weight eased itself off his shoulders; through the bottomless pit of sorrow he’d drowned himself in for these days in the mansion, a speck of hope glimmered.
As Thoreau alluded to: life would go on. Whether he hid in a closet or battled megalomaniac mutants, existence would continue. These past six months away from the X-Men, he’d been riding out that wave of ever moving life, rediscovering the inventor and letters aficionado in him. He didn’t realize it then, but locked in his work room without a care, he’d unwittingly found his Walden Pond. Looking back, he’d felt rejuvenated and happy.
Then came Betsy and the trip back to the mansion. Jean supposedly undid Betsy’s damage, but his depression remained and tore down his months of bliss. What was it about this place that made him so susceptible to the dementia? By all accounts, he should’ve been laughing it up with the friends and family he missed so much. Instead of celebrating, he spent the past days locked in an anonymous guest quarter feeling sorry for himself. Not even the best of effort of Jean and Kurt could yank him out of his funk.
Where mightier failed, Jubilee succeeded. Why? Was it the odd sense of privacy a half-destroyed mansion granted? Was it the company, the refreshing take on life by a youthful, vigorous, yet patient counselor? Was it the lack of activity that normally heightened the ambient stress about the X-Men? What was it about this mansion that could so quickly giveth and taketh away like a whimsical child?
Whatever “it” was, Hank felt more alive. The water from his Walden flowed again, refreshing his mind, body, and soul. The hurt still reminded, the hurt from Betsy and past experiences, but they didn’t seem as near or overshadowing anymore. If negative emotions had minds of their own, Hank would’ve postulated that all of them decided to gang up on him at the same time. Seemed like every bad thing that ever happened to him dominated him and only now did they fade into the background, finally distanced by time, reflection, and wisdom.
He smiled at Jubilee, a genuine one this time, not the forced lip movements he’d been using since he showed up here. “Your scholarly words amaze me, young lady. Tell me, when did you get so insightful?”
“Since I met all of you.”
“A lie,” he chuckled, ruffling her hair, “but one which pleases the ear.”
“Y’ok now, papa bear? Ya suddenly look like Wolvie after one of his trips. Should I be sad or glad?”
“Glad,” he responded. “And thank you.”
The loud rumble of a plane approached and sent the two scrambling to the windows. A sleek, black jet touched down on the front lawn and blew loose blades of grass into the mansion.
“The Mark 3,” whispered Jubilee.
“I suppose this is a good thing.”
“With the way today’s been going so far? Don’t hold your breath.”
Lights and engines shut down; the landing platform didn’t open. Kitty phased through the metal, in her arms a lump of person. Upon seeing the sorry state of the mansion, the brunette dropped herself and her large burden to the ground, the defeat evident for anyone in plain sight.
“Get on,” said Hank, gesturing for Jubilee to climb on his back, “We’re taking a short cut.”
The Asian girl grabbed a fistful of fur and barely suppressed a “Yeeee-haaaaw!” as the Beast once again took to the air. Maybe there were other problems in and around the world, but here, right now, at least the real McCoy had returned.
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- To be continued...
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