The Phoenix Crisis

Chapter 2

By all accounts, Clark should have been appalled. There was enough equipment in the sub-basements of this school to warrant the government's concerns. The entire first sub-basement contained a training area worthy of West Point with a hard-light holographic gym, a fully equipped clinic/laboratory, and something called Cerebro which could apparently find mutants all over the world. The second sub-basement had two large rooms full of emergency rations, and an airplane hanger with an SR-71 Blackbird. Last time Clark checked, those weren't available outside of the military.

Half a dozen kids in Kevlar uniforms exited the hard-light gym, sweaty with exertion. Their instructor, a young woman with a white streak through her hair, was writing something on an electronic pad. She nodded at the four of them, her eyebrows rising with Superman's approach.

"Anything I can help with, Storm?"

"We have everything in hand, thank you, Rogue." She turned to them. "Rogue, this is Lois, Richard, and Superman. They will be staying with us while Jason White recovers in the med lab."

The young lady stuck her hand out. "Pleased to meet you." Upon reaching Richard, she faltered, her mouth gaping a little. "Uh, sorry," she said recovering slightly. "You just look like one of the people who used to teach here."

Richard only smiled tightly. He hadn't lost that shell-shocked expression, Clark noted. He was pretty sure the person in Richard's head was the teacher everyone was talking about around here; after all, it had been that person's idea to call Hank McCoy. Which led to Clark's primary question: if that man was in Richard's body, where was the man's body? He hadn't seen it in the medlab but they could just be keeping him in a different room. If he was being kept in a different room, was it for extended care (because goodness knows the school had the equipment for it) or for safety concerns?

The pit of Clark's stomach shivered slightly.

While he didn't have any bad feelings about this school, he couldn't say the same about the person in Richard's mind. Richard was a good friend, at least, as good a friend that he could be considering everything Clark had kept from him so far. He didn't want him hurt by this other entity.

As he contemplated this, Ms. Munroe and her companion led their small group back into the medlab. Dr. McCoy hunched over a microscope while a woman that was presumably his assistant stood beside Jason, making notations on the EEG machine. She stroked his forehead for a moment before moving on to the IV, the respirator, and a dozen other monitoring devices.

Six long years ago, when he'd overheard Lois say that she didn't love him, Clark thought nothing would hurt more. Now seeing Jason, still so tiny and thin, drowning amidst tubes, needles, and electronics, Clark truly felt his heart break.

Dr. McCoy lifted a claw upon hearing their approach. "I will be with you in a moment," he said, not looking up from the microscope.

"Finish whatever you need to, Hank," said Ms. Munroe. She spun her chair around to face them. "I've shown all of this for a reason."

"You want a quid pro quo," said Richard. "You show us your secrets and we'll show you ours."

"And depending on what you hear, you'll treat Jason," Lois ended.

Clark heard Logan's heart rate increase and felt his temperature spike. This time, it was Ms. Munroe who squeezed his hand.

"We would do no such thing," she said, in the same even tone. "Hank is a licensed doctor and has taken the Hippocratic Oath. We would treat Jason even if you told us no more than you already have. I showed you this to offer you some security in revealing your secrets to Hank." As she turned to head towards Jason, her calm façade wobbled. "I will leave you now to speak privately with him. Annie?"

"On my way out," said the nurse. As she passed by Lois, she patted her arm. "He's a lovely boy. We're going to do everything we can for him."

"Thanks," said Lois and, in case the nurse got offended by her curtness, she softened it with a smile.

Dr. McCoy spoke as he came out from behind the microscope. "Now, I realise that you--" he nodded to Clark-- "have very sensitive hearing as well other pressing duties. Perhaps if we were to speak first and leave Lois and Richard to comfort Jason for a while?"

Clark nodded and followed the big blue doctor to a room adjoining the lab. Everything there was oversized to fit the doctor's hefty frame. What he didn't expect was the huge mess. Books piled in tottering towers, some with sheets of papers sticking out from between the leaves. Boxes full of files created a small maze around the desk. The trashcan overflowed with candy wrappers.

A little sheepishly, the doctor swung up to the ceiling and, using his feet to clutch some overhead handholds, he hung upside-down to clear a chair and a small spot on the desk. "A common failing for most doctors, I'm afraid," he said. "Much like our writing, our sense of organization leaves much to be desired. Rumour has it that both the writing and the organization are a learned skill intended to decrease the possibility of forgery or some such but really, we're just too brain-dead after a day at work to clean up."

Clark nodded. He could appreciate that. His own apartment frequently sent his mom into fits.

"So, let us begin." said Dr. McCoy.

Clark began. Starting from the destruction of Krypton.

It had been so long since he spent this much time with Jason what with his overseas work and his part-time editor job at the Planet. Every time he came back from an assignment, Jason was taller and more angular. If he squinted, Richard could still see the big-eyed, shaggy-haired puppy that his son used to be but, God, eleven years old came too quickly. He wasn't ready to send Jason to middle school.

He wanted to sit beside him to hold his hand and tell him that Daddy was here and wouldn't let anything else happen to him but Scott was too agitated.

Stop it! Richard told him after the fifth attempt to sit down.

Sorry, Scott said and retreated to the back of Richard's consciousness. That suited Richard just fine; he didn't want anyone eavesdropping on something this private, no matter that the man had been privy to his life for the past six years.

Lois sat on the other side of the bed, stroking Jason's hand. "Hey there, tough guy," she cooed. "You took a helicopter ride here, isn't that neat? They're a lot scarier than planes but you were so brave, wasn't he, Richard?"

"You beat me," Richard said promptly. "I was shaking the whole flight here. Of course, you got a cool bed to ride unlike Mom and me."

Cautiously, Lois smiled at him, her long lashes keeping her tears back. She had a few grey hairs, Richard noticed with start. Not enough to be visible, but a couple strands winking metallically under the lights. Had that much time passed?

He reached out for her hand. Even stranger, she permitted it without remark. It still felt comfortable, still felt right.

"We're in a very special hospital," Lois was saying, "It's just for kids like you. Kids who can do all sorts of super things. When you get out of here, you can compare with them. I saw one boy who was bright green and another who had red wings." She stroked Jason's forehead. "You know what else is cool about this place? There's a school upstairs that helps those kids with superpowers. See? You're not so different after all, huh? It just took us a long time to find the right school."

Then, without changing her tone, she addressed Richard. "I want to tell you something."

Richard leaned forward. "Yeah?"

"I think Clark is Superman."

He nearly fell off his chair. There was Clark, angsting about how he would reveal his secret and all this time, Lois knew?

Wryly, she said, "I know, huh? Meek, mild-mannered Clark Kent is the world's greatest hero. I know it sounds insane but... it makes so much sense."

"How do you figure?" Richard asked.

"I've been around the guy for almost ten years," Lois said in a dry tone. "I'd have to be a special kind of stupid not to notice that he's never around when Superman is. Or that he looks exactly like him without the glasses."

His petting slowed. "Have you always known this?"

"No," she admitted. "I suspected it a couple years after he came back but I wasn't sure until four years ago."

"When you broke up with me," Richard said, slowly putting pieces of the puzzle together.

"If I'd known that in the end he'd just... Let's just say I collect bad moves," Lois admitted. "I am the Bad Move Queen." She sniffled, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

Richard gave her a handkerchief. "Does he know that you know?"

"Sometimes I think he might. Sometimes he's so good at hiding that I start thinking I'm insane." Laughing cynically at herself, she returned to stroking Jason's forehead. It didn't pass Richard's notice that she did not extract her hand from his.

For a while, there was nothing but the monotonous beep of the machines and the hiss of the respirator. "Remember when he was born?" asked Richard, half-talking to himself.

"He had so much hair," Lois said. "I knew there was a reason my stomach was itchy all the time. You thought it was something deadly and spent all that time in the library researching fatal rashes."

"Hey, I got a good article out of that research."

They laughed. It felt good to laugh together like this again.

"I remember thinking that I could handle anything after that first year," said Lois. "What are terrorists and crooked politicians compared to a colicky baby who's allergic to every colic remedy on the market?"

"Oh, God, that stupid colic! And to think we were so happy when he got off the respirator and started vocalising."

"The joy lasted all of four days."

"Remember the week when we were so afraid to feed him anything that we subsisted on water and flatbread?"

"I will not eat pita to this day."

"I know."

Lois looked up at him. Richard met her eyes. He wanted to tell her now that he loved her, that he'd never stopped loving her, not despite her faults but because of them, all two dozen rough-edged shields that she used to keep the world at bay but let him in. He wanted to say that those five years they had together were some of the best years of his life and he knew she felt the same and his greatest regret was letting it all go in the name of chivalry.

She finally released his hand, only to lay it on his cheek. "I know," she echoed.

If he concentrated, Scott could block out almost everything "Richard" with the exception of highly volatile emotions and the memories that triggered them. Living with telepaths-- two of them very powerful and constantly present-- helped Scott create a natural barrier against psychic intrusion. He also took lessons from both the professor and Jean about safe-guarding his mind against telepathic assaults. Thankfully, the mind was made of very pliable material; whatever you could imagine could happen. When he first realised he was trapped in Richard's body, Scott used those lessons to make himself a "room." This was for his benefit and Richard's; he certainly didn't want to be around when his host body did something private nor did he want his own secrets floating around in Richard's head.

He closed himself in his "room" now, sensing that Richard wouldn't welcome his presence at that moment. So many things had changed at the school. Jean told him that time had passed but hearing about it and knowing it were two entirely different entities. She hadn't filled him in on everything either. Like where was the Professor? Charles had been making noises about retiring from the headmaster position but Ororo was the last person Scott would have expected to take his place. Not because she wasn't competent; far from it. He'd always thought she would be a better over-all leader because she had an in-born empathy that he had always struggled with. But Ororo was like Wolverine in a way, half-wild and uncomfortable with being indoors too long. That was why she taught in the solarium.

And what was Hank doing back? He was glad; the older man had helped Scott through the worst of freshman and sophomore year in college but he'd been making great progress in DC. He gathered from Richard's memories that Hank had been sent to the UN as the American representative. He hadn't practiced medicine in years and now he was the school doctor? Where was Jean?

That, Scott admitted, was the crux of his problem. He had to find Jean. If Jean stuck him in this body, Jean could take him out.

Richard's emotions pulsed against Scott's make-shift mental walls. Colours and sounds leaked in, ghosts of memories that pulled at his own emotions. It was like hearing a television two rooms away. Selfishly, Scott tasted the passing thoughts. He knew that flavour. He felt the same about Jean.

Suddenly, the memories whipped away and Richard's consciousness knocked. You in there, Scott?

Yeah, what's up?

It's our turn to talk to McCoy, said Richard.

Oh, sure.

Looking through Richard's eyes would never get old. To see real colour after almost ten years of an orange or yellow tinted palette was like tasting a full range of flavours. Scott didn't know if Hank had always been that brilliant a shade of blue; he'd always seen the older man as a murky purple. At the same time, he missed his kinaesthetic sense. Richard's body was always a touch too slow, saw things a touch too late which aggravated Scott to no end.

"Mr. White." Hank shook Richard's hand cautiously keeping his claws retracted instead of using the hand-crushing grip he gave old friends.

"Call me Richard," Scott's host body said as he sat down. "Mr. White is my uncle."

"Richard it is. And you must call me Henry."

Hank. Scott stubbornly said.

Richard gave him a mental poke. The guy had picked up on the finer points of telepathy really quickly.

"Before we start," said Richard, "I want to ask you about someone. You had a teacher on staff a few years ago by the name of Scott Summers. Where is he now?"

Hank's face drew in and his eyes shuttered. "How do you know Scott?" he asked.

Do I tell him? asked Richard.

Go ahead. Trust me, we've seen weird stuff before.

Weirder than this?

Hey, it's not my city's hero who wears his underwear outside his tights.

"I'm about to tell you something that'll seem... completely insane," said Richard. "But I've been assured that you're used to insanity."

Hank grinned briefly. "Richard, we are a mutant high school. I have seen levels of insanity previously relegated to fairy tales. Please, go on."

Richard took a deep breath. Scott did too.

"Scott Summers lives in my head."

To his credit, Hank's mouth only dropped a fraction of an inch.

"He told me about this school," Richard quickly said. "I'm not sure how it happened but a few years ago, six years ago in fact, I was hospitalised with a ruptured brain aneurysm. When I woke up, I had what I thought were hallucinations. I saw this school-- I can recognize a lot of the features. And I saw some of the students. Sometimes my conversations would turn into conversations that Scott Summers had and for a couple of years, I was pretty heavily medicated because I'd just babble to myself."

"What type of medication?" Hank wanted to know, picking up a pen.

Richard listed off three of the prescriptions. "But recently, I've found out that I'm not hallucinating. He really is living in my head. He... he talks to me sometimes and you think I'm certifiable, don't you?"

Hank wouldn't look him in the eye. "Richard, I know that everything seems overwhelming at the moment--"

Scott groaned. Shoving against Richard's mind, he said, Let me talk.

What? No!

Do you want to spend the rest of this visit high as a kite? Let me talk.

Hank was still speaking, "-- and it's understandable that sometimes, our minds will--"

"When I first came to Xavier's your Twinkie stash was in the bottom-most drawer of the filing cabinets in the library," Scott-Richard blurted out. "The professor found it so you moved it to the specimens fridge behind all the pickled pig foetuses that you knew none of us younger kids would touch."

Hank's jaw dropped a couple inches lower.

"Your favourite song is Blinded by the Light by Bruce Springsteen. My first mission as an X-Man was to pick Ororo up and you two didn't get along. She made Jean cry." Scott searched for more information. "The rec room used to be the formal dining room. It was my idea to change it because the kids were blowing their allowance on the arcade downtown. When Jean finished her residency, you, me, Jean, Sean Cassidy, and John Proudstar got so stinking drunk, we took the hamsters from the--"

Hank held his hands up. "All right, I believe you," he interrupted hurriedly. With a sigh, he rubbed his chin, took off his glasses and cleaned them, replaced them on his nose and sighed again. "I'm officially speechless."

"I'll make note of the time and date," said Scott-Richard.

Hank wagged his head, amused and bedevilled. "It's amazing how much you resemble each other. Am I speaking with Scott or Richard at the moment?"

"Both," said Scott-Richard. "It's like there's someone else in the room and he's-- I'm dictating what he's seeing and saying."

"Fascinating." Hank peered at them through his glasses, his brown eyes coming alive.

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh? Richard parroted. What do you mean, "uh-oh"? What's happening?

I know that look. Hank's just discovered a mystery. We're going to be his science experiment for the rest of the week.

Science experiment?

You'll see.

The nurse, Annie, had come and gone several times since Superman-- Clark-- Kal-- whatever-- went in with McCoy and, she assumed, another couple of times while she was in there.

It wasn't just for Jason; most of the time, she stayed outside of their section, tending to the usual schoolroom scrapes and cuts as well as some singularly mutation-based injuries. One girl with boney growths sticking out of her came in crying because a spike on her leg refused to come out and it was hurting her. Another kid, a boy, had a bloody nose from crashing into a tree during flight practice. A teacher dropped in for a bandage after being sneezed on by a student who spat magma.

"Is this normal?" Lois asked the nurse.

"Oh yeah," said Annie, rolling her eyes. "This is actually quiet."

"Is there anything I can help with?" asked Kal. Even knowing that he was Clark, she couldn't help but think of him as Kal when he was in that suit.

"I'm fine," said Annie, waving him away. "You're busy, I know." To Lois, she said, "He's going to be asleep for a long time. Did you want me to bring in a cot for you to rest on?"

Lois declined the offer and the nurse bustled off again, leaving her and Superman to look over Jason's still form.

"I'm going to go away for a while," he said softly. "I might be able to access information that could help Jason."

"From your crystals?"

He hesitated briefly before answering and Lois hated him for that fraction of a second. All these years and he still didn't trust her. "From my crystals. Maybe it will help with... that part of his body."

Lois shrugged, hollowly. "Sure. Whatever you think is best."

That seemed to make him hesitate. "Lois. Are you all--"

"All right?" Lois finished for him. She turned away, closing her eyes.

"I'm sorry. That was a stupid question." He brushed his fingers through her hair, his large, warm hands cupping the back of her head. "I love you. Both of you."

She allowed herself to lean back against him, just a little, just to get a little bit more of his heat. "I know."

In a rush of air, he was gone. Stifling a moan, Lois pressed her forehead against her crossed arms in a vain attempt to hold back a migraine. Where the hell was her pride? She shouldn't be missing him, not when they-- the romantic "they"-- had been over for half a year. And he shouldn't say things like that when he was the one who ended it. How did a guy make her feel cared for but at the asme time mistrsuted? Maybe it was one of his super-powers. Super-emotional-obfuscation.

Jason stirred.

Lois lifted her head, brushing the hair from her face. "Hey, baby. I'm still here, don't worry."

He didn't move any more although his eyes twitched under his eyelids.

"Your daddies are so worried about you," she said. "It's worse that when you got the chicken pox. Remember that? Remember how sticky the oatmeal baths were and how you tried to put sugar in it so that you could have breakfast and a bath at the same time? And then we found out you were allergic to oats? So we had to keep you in a cold swimming pool for a whole weekend. You said you were turning into a huge pink raisin and Daddy said that it wasn't fair you turned into a raisin and he didn't so he hopped in with you and then I went in and finally, we had a little beach party in the tub."

Lois glanced at the EEG machine, spiking away at a regular rhythm. "You have to wake up soon, okay, honey? We have so many other adventures to have especially now that you're growing up and getting new gifts. That's what this school calls powers, you know. Gifts. And that's so right; it really is a gift. You're the best gift I've ever had. I wish I knew--"

McCoy's door cracked open. He glanced around, searching for someone but finding only Lois, he said, "I suppose it's for the best. Lois, if you don't mind coming in my office, Richard has some things to discuss with you."

Inside, Richard held his ubiquitous cup of coffee already half-drained and probably still bubbling hot. Lois winced as McCoy's door clicked closed behind her. Without the doctor as a buffer, the tautness would suffocate both of them. She was familiar with the pattern.

Lois fidgeted. "So, how'd it go?"

"Y'know. Doctors."

This was crap. She hated how stilted everything felt. For a few minutes back there, she'd been comfortable again. She had her best friend back and now he was uncomfortable all over again because he knew how uncomfortable she was all over again and she wished she knew how to talk to him again because this was killing her.

"I have something to tell you," Richard said. One finger tapped sporadically at the rim of his coffee cup. At her nod, he began. And it was more fantastic than anything she could come up with. By the time he got to the part about this Scott Summers making a room in his brain, she really needed a cigarette. It wasn't even a want right now; her head pounded and her hands shook.

Maybe if she said it, it wouldn't sound so weird. "So your hallucinations are actually the memories of this person in your mind?"

"Yes."

Nope, still weird.

She took a deep breath. Could formaldehyde double as nicotine? Somehow, she didn't think so.

"Okay." Taking another bracing gulp of air, Lois finally relaxed enough to lean back on her chair. "Okay. I think in the face of magma-vomiting teenagers, a spandex-clad alien from outer space giving me a baby, and Cookie Monster as our new family doctor, your being possessed isn't that big a deal."

Richard gave her a weak, if relieved, smile. "No matter what we've been through, it's still weird, huh?"

"Oh, yeah. I don't think I can be surprised by anything, extraterrestrial, extradimensional, or otherwise. I am numb to further revelations. Try me."

He chuckled. "We're certainly not your average nuclear family."

That vise that had been squeezing Lois' chest for the past five years loosened a little. She joined in on his chuckles and soon, they were laughing so hard, tears streaked down their cheeks and Lois knew they were really just half-hysterical right now but the crying and the laughing and the howling felt good in a way that nothing really had.

"Oh, God." Richard wiped at the corners of his eyes. "Oh, man, that felt good."

He smiled at her. He still had dimples, Lois realised. Dimples should have looked incongruous on a man on the cusp of forty but there they were, as boyishly charming as the first day he goaded her into a game of Tetris as a way to cheer her up after Clark left.

"I wish..." Richard's voice faded and he looked aside.

"What?"

When he looked up, bitterness tinted his smile. "I was going to say I wish we could still laugh like that. I hardly see you around the house any more."

Lois drew back at the accusation. "I wasn't the one who stopped hanging around."

"What do you mean by that?"

"The three-month assignment to the Czech Republic right after New Krypton? And the business meetings every weekend? You're not home half the year and when you are around, you go out of your way to avoid us."

"Forgive me if I don't want to witness you and Superman cuddling on the sofa watching Letterman."

"I wasn't talking about Kal and me; I'm talking about the time you spend with Jason."

Richard went red. "Don't talk to me about Jason."

"Why not?" Lois fired back. "It only took this to get you to be with him for longer than half a day. I've been making excuses for your absence for years! He doesn't even ask about it any more; it's just a fact of life."

"First, you take him away from me then you accuse me of abandoning him?"

"How dare you-- I never took him away from you!" Lois had to keep from screaming. "If I wanted to take him away, I would have moved out as soon as we broke up. I went out of my way to make sure you two still have time together but you just kept pushing him away."

He rolled his eyes. "That's not fair."

"No, you're not being fair." Lois couldn't shut herself up. "I can understand why you'd hate me but there's no excuse for how you've treated Jason." She took a ragged breath. "What piece did he play in the last spring concert?"

He didn't answer, pressing his lips together into a tight white line.

Lois pushed on. "Which award did he get in the interim assembly? Which of his friends moved to Cincinnati last summer? What's his favourite cartoon?"

He might have whispered something but all the anger, all the resentment she held for Jason bubbling up.

"You say all these things, you talk about loving us and missing us--"

"You don't really expect me to--"

"-- and how unfair the world is to you but it's been years--"

"-- stand by and merrily--"

"--since you did anything with us without being prodded to--"

"Because it hurt too much!" Richard yelled.

Lois stepped back. Richard never yelled in anger.

He looked just as surprised at himself. For a long time, they just stood there, staring at each other.

"It hurt too much to see you three together so happy and knowing that it wasn't mine any more," Richard finally said quietly. "So I just... stayed away."

Lois' ribs rattled with the force of her heart beats. She folded her tongue under her upper teeth, an old trick she'd picked up to keep her tear ducts from overflowing.

"I never wanted you to," she finally managed

Richard wouldn't meet her eyes. Muttering something about aspirin, he left, leaving Lois with a room full of angry words.