#casually using a cap from the issue where Hank kisses Jean just for maximum weirdness

[positivelybeastly]

Do you ever resent Scott Summers?

"Resent - ? What, no! Scott is, well, he's something of a martinet, to be certain, and he could definitely lighten up a tad, but what is there to resent? Anyone with so much as a hint of maturity can see that he's simply trying his best in an impossible situation. I sometimes think that the Professor puts a little too much pressure on him, to be frank. No, I do not resent Scott Summers one bit. If anything, I'm grateful for Scott Summers."

"Scottie? Pfft, not one bit. He may appear stiff and unapproachable, and - he is." Hank grins a little, like Fozzie Bear after a particularly awful joke. "But he's also a great friend. He tries his best, he really does. Does he fall short? Sure. But we all do, every now and then. The real important part is that he tries. That's all I can ever ask of him."

"Is it resentment? I'm not quite sure. On the one paw, he - he - " Oh, this answer is off to a brilliant start. Hank takes off his glasses and rubs at the bridge of his nose.

". . . He's gone too far. I look at him, and I don't see the same man I thought I knew all those years. I want to see that man. I want so badly to just, go back and apologise, and tell him that the water is firmly under the, X-Force, shaped, bridge. Because I understand why he did it. That's the thing I truly do resent him for, is that I can't even say I don't get it, because I do, now.

But mostly I resent everyone else. Because when I left, no-one came with me. They stood with Scott, and they stood with Logan, and they had the audacity to act as if I were the one betraying them, as if I was the one who turned their back on them, when those two were lining up shots and taking them. Is that not a betrayal? To look at the principles that we were taught, at the basic decency, at the common human covenant of 'thou shalt not kill', and deem them a luxury, and not our guide?

. . . Yes. Yes, I do resent him."

Hank's very, very quiet for a good long time, just seeming to stare into the distance. "I think, that . . ." He's quiet again, his thumbs drumming against one another.

"I think that Scott brings out the worst in me. I think that I resent him for being - for being the man that mutantkind needed, when I very much wasn't. I resent him for dying a hero. I resent him for running headlong past the limits I set for myself, for doing things I would consider reckless and irresponsible and ruinous for mutantkind, and being rewarded for it. I resent him for exposing that yes, it really is the petty, wounded little heart that actually drives this big blue brain, after I spent so much time cultivating an image of logic, of cool, of pretending that it didn't."

He swallows.

"I resent Scott Summers for exposing the fact that in the end, I'm simply not good enough. For validating what I've known all along. Clearly, it's all his fault."

His gaze is cold.

"What's to resent? It was embarrassing for a time, I suppose, to be caught so thoroughly off balance and waste so many years pretending that Cyclops' methods were anything other than absolutely necessary. But now, I possess perfect clarity.

Cyclops was right. His only flaw was that he lacked the stomach to follow through."

He starts, blinking, taking a moment to - process, think, to collect up his marbles in a little black bag. He sniffs.

"Resent him? No. No." Hank shakes his head. "Mostly, I just . . . I just miss him."

"Fuck that body condom wearing little twit. Resent? Please. What's to resent? An army of brats from a variety of increasingly more ridiculous futures, his lack of an ass, the way he simpers and sniffs and eats his soup like a little dweeb? Resent. Pffft."