OOC this thread was originally posted as if it was taking place in med lab since neither one of us realised that Xavier was in the advanced lab. Hence the lack of security associated with the advanced lab. Ho hum!
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It had been another long hard day in med lab. Mentally Hank was exhausted but his body refused sleep, just as his tired mind refused to shut down. So many problems! They seemed to just keep coming and for most of them he was no closer to finding a solution. It would have helped if he could have talked to someone, just asked for their advice but that was impossible. Doctor patient confidentiality. One of the basic premises of the code by which he lived.

If there had been another physician with whom he could have discussed the cases that would have been different but there was not. The staff who helped him in med lab were not qualified to deal with patients such as Scott and Spike. He wasn’t even sure that he was. Talia and Paige showed great potential and would one day make excellent doctors, of that he had no doubt, but they were still too young, too inexperienced. Hank sighed.

He missed the Professor! Charles had always known what to say to make problems seem less daunting. He had been the guiding figure in Hank’s life for so many years now he was almost like a father to the blue furred mutant. Now he lay helpless and unconscious in the private room that had been set aside for him his remarkable mind lost in darkness and silence. *Why should that be?* Hank asked himself for the thousandth time. There was no medical reason for it. He was well placed to know that. Night after night he had studied his mentor’s medical records searching, always searching for some clue that would put him the trail of a possible cure but to no avail. The doctor’s frustration was almost overwhelming. *Whether they be afflicted in mind or in body I am unable to help those I love. Is all my vaunted knowledge and experience come to naught?*

McCoy was not one for false modesty. He knew he was rightly recognised as one of the foremost experts in the treatment of mutants. His studies in genetics alone merited a Nobel prize, an accolade he well knew he would never receive given his mutant status. Once, such a thing would have bothered him. He supposed in some ways it still did. He had dedicated his life to fighting for mutant’s rights, always in the forefront of the struggle no matter what it cost him personally. To have been the first mutant scientist acknowledged for his work before the whole world would have been another milestone in the continuing battle.

He himself however had long since abandoned dreams of glory. Life and its accompanying tragedies had showed him the true nature of recognition. The look in a patient’s eyes as you told them they would recover, the handshake of a parent whose child life had been spared, these were the things that really counted.*And that is also the measure of failure* Hank thought grimly. *Scott will die and Jean will mourn and there is nothing I can do about it* Deep in his heart he had always known that he would fail, ever since he had first seen the test results, but he had refused to give up hope.

This wasn’t some stranger he was dealing with it was Scott Summers, one of his oldest friends. They had known each other since they were little more than children, gathered together by one mans dream to form the group that had become a legend. The X men. Now the intellect which had given birth to that dream lay sleeping and lost, no longer whispering its words of comfort to the children who had grown to manhood fighting for its vision.Yet comfort was exactly what Hank needed on that long night. And so his feet had taken him as they so often did to the bedside of Charles Xavier, teacher, inspiration and recently and most unacceptably, patient.

The doctor didn’t bother with stealth as he approached the silent room This was his domain and he roamed it as he chose. Yet now and always he moved with a grace and furtiveness that belied his massive form. Once he had looked human, only his overlarge hands and feet declaring his mutant heritage, Neanderthals man at his apogee. But that was all in the past. The irony was not lost on him.

His own youthful recklessness had led him to tamper with his genetic make up, granting him strength and agility beyond his wildest dreams but taking in the process any pretence of normality. He had been transformed into a blue furred apelike creature, becoming a beast in form as well as in name. Subsequently his genetic code had become unstable allowing further mutations to take place as his tempestuous career as an x man had put him in the way of danger. Now his body had reverted to a a form which reflected a time before the great primates had come to rule, a time when felines had been the ultimate life form!

He seldom let his acute mind roam onto the subject of further mutation. It was too problematic. Already the blood of a predator flowed through his veins. Already his heightened sense of smell had told him that there was someone waiting in the adjoining room. Someone other than the Professor! Too late he realised that his own lack of caution would have been detected, still he prowled the corridors confident in his own power. His only concern as he entered the room was for his patient, his own fangs exposed as he rose to the challenge of the female who awaited him. "Make yourself known." The voice was cool and provocative. He felt his hackles rise as the challenge sounded clear and strong across the room.

Suddenly his intellect, normally all prevailing struggled to the fore, temporarily overcoming the primeval forces that threatened to dominate him. ‘Female?’ The term struck him as strange, not one he would normally have employed regarding one of the opposite sex. And the being confronting him was so obviously of the opposite sex.

For so long he had dominated the animal instincts within himself that their sudden release left him confused and totally at their mercy. Instinctively he moved forward, asserting his right to this territory before her unwelcome intrusion. *This prey is mine!*His body declared it even as his mind wrestled with the conflicting information it was receiving. Doctor and animal confronting each other, neither one sure of the outcome, only aware of the confrontation!

The being before him was overwhelmingly female, the pheromones drilling their way into his body bringing with it the instinctive reaction, their effect made that blatantly apparent as he advanced into the chamber. His fangs were already exposed as he entered the room, his challenge clearly announced as he started the circle that could only end in death or ………………

*This is not me*For decades he had forced his mind to dominate the animal callings of his body But it was hard this time. The creature that crouched, unafraid, before him was powerful in a fashion that only he could sense, a primordial force that called to him ways his mind could not understand but which his body urged him to obey. It was a feeling he had not experienced in a long time, his regression having placed in doubt any relation he could have had with a woman.

Yet still his intellect prevailed, overpowering even the demands of a beast, forcing upon them the restrictions which civilisation had placed upon every sentient creature. The divine ‘Thou must not’ which governed their existence!

“ My name is Hank McCoy “ he replied, his voice husky with restrained emotion.” Dr Mc Coy! And this is my territory and my patient! Who are you to disturb his slumber?”