Tempest in a Teapot

Tempest in a Teapot Chapter Ten
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *dance of almost Samhain * Hee hee… InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink, Dracena and Greywolf are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. J ProPhile: Yay for weekends! Morgan: *waves wavily * Readers/Reviewers: Wheee for more, lol!

“Todd, stop it!”
“My gown itches,” he pouted, rubbing the back of his hand where Kitty had slapped him. “You don’t have to hit me! I bruise easily!”
Kitty bit her tongue—literally—and swung the car into the parking spot she had spotted moments before. The parking garage was well full this time of day, she noticed, wondering if her idea was as foolhardy as the tiny voice that sounded like her Yaya in the back of her mind was trying to lead her to believe. “Come on,” she ordered Todd, impatient from their short yet tedious drive from the Institute. “You need to put on this coat!” She reached into the backseat and pulled forward a long, leathery trench coat borrowed from the hall closet at home. She suspected, from the scent of bourbon vanilla and strong tobacco, that it was Remy’s, but she did not know for sure. “You need to cover up.”
Todd looked down at the pink lace covering his lap and frowned. “But this is my prettiest gown! I wore it so the Prince would notice me!” He gave Kitty a look fraught with anxiety, leaning to clasp her hand in his. “At midnight, it’ll turn back to rags!”
“Somewhere, the irony gods are laughing,” Kitty muttered to herself. “Look,” she sighed, sliding from the driver’s seat and moving around to Todd’s side of the car. “You’re on a secret quest, right? If the people in this castle know you’re a princess, they’ll hold you ransom and the Prince will never get to see you!” She shook the coat invitingly. “So come on, put the coat on and let’s go.”
Todd seemed to be turning this over in his mind for nearly a full minute before speaking. “But if they hold me for ransom, won’t the Prince ransom me?” His eyes lit up and his back became straight as a ramrod. “I *want* them to hold me for ransom!”
“Oh for the love of…” Kitty grabbed Todd by the wrist and pulled him from the car, phasing him through the car door. “Put on the damned coat. The Prince can’t ransom you if he’s never seen you so getting caught here won’t do you any good. The Prince gets scores of ransom demands a day for princesses he’s never even heard of! Yours will just be thrown on the pile!” She jerked Todd’s arms through the sleeves, covering the see-through pink slip and the costume jewelry. “Take off the tiara.”
Todd, looking shaken, shook his head. “It’s pretty.”
“Todd,” Kitty said after a brief pause, “there have been a lot of things in my life which I never dreamt possibly. I have seen things, done things, heard things… I have lived a life that most people could never imagine. But in all of that, I think this is going to be the most unbelievable thing I have ever said.” She paused, took a deep breath, then said in a rush, “Todd, if you take off your tiara right now, I’ll buy you a pretty pink ball gown when we’re done here.”
“With strappy shoes?”
“With strappy shoes.”
Todd considered this and took off the tiara, carefully tucking into one of the coat pockets. “Lead the way, faerie godmother.”

“Shhhhh!” Kitty wished she had duct tape handy. She would even settle, she decided, for masking tape and a rubber ball if it would shut Todd up. He was exclaiming over the equipment, shivering theatrically each time he brushed his long fingers over a cool metal surface. “It’s not a dungeon!”
“What else is this used for then, if not to torture innocents?” he spat, scorn in his voice as he jerked away from an x-ray machine.
Kitty opened her mouth, then paused, closing it. “You’re right, Princess. It’s a torture device. My friend is going to help me see inside your head with it.”
The young intern, cowed by Kitty’s lies of being a nurse from a psychiatric center and her spew of medical jargon, was watching in awe from a safe corner. “He’s not…violent, is he?” he asked in a stage whisper. “I mean… do I need to get orderlies to hold him down?”
Kitty sighed. “No, just play along. He’s suffering from a psychotic break with marked Jungian tendencies, evidencing in this protracted role play of a princess fantasy which in and of itself is archetypical of depression, re the feeling of needing to be rescued.” Todd had gone wonderfully limp, whimpering in a nearly comical fashion. Kitty managed to drag him to the MRI machine and grunted as she shoved him onto the platform. “Now remember what I told you?” she asked the intern, raising one brow.
“This is between us and no one else,” he repeated.
She smiled winsomely. “That’s right. And what happens if you report this to your supervisor?”
“I…um…” he blushed slightly, knowing that what he was doing was wrong but desperately wanting to impress who he thought was a very pretty nurse. “I’ll be blackballed from working in neuro.”
“That’s right,” Kitty repeated. “Okay, we have just a few minutes. Let’s get moving.”
“Tell me again what we’re looking for,” the young man said, moving towards the controls for the machine.
“I’ll know it when I see it,” Kitty muttered. “I hope.”