Unchained Instinct ( Complete)

Chapter 12

Mystique stumbled out of Kurt’s arms and whirled on him. “How dare you?!”

Kurt stood his ground. He’d “ported” into one of the solidly built rooms far below the mansion, built for special situations...like this one. Mystique would have a hard time getting out without his help.

“How dare I?” he shot back. “How many times do I have to tell you to leave me alone?”

Mystique loomed over Kurt, still a good six inches taller than he and glared at him. “You are too young to understand what you are doing, my son. And it’s obvious that you have not told your adoptive parents about your sordid affair with Logan. Someone needs to do the job and I’m more than willing to do so.”

“Why, Mother?” Kurt replied with sarcasm dripping from his words. “Why would anyone be so willing to cause such trouble? Would it give you pleasure to hurt the people who took care of your son? Who saved your child from exposure and drowning and raised him in spite of him looking like a spawn of Satan?”

A look crossed Mystique’s face that Kurt couldn’t decipher. She straightened her stance and sniffed in a deep breath.

“It’s not about pleasure. It’s about doing what needs to be done.”

“It will be done. I will tell them in my time about how I love Logan and it won’t be with your ugly words. You are making my love for Logan sound dirty and evil when it is nothing like that. What Logan and I have found is beautiful, Mystique. I never dreamed I’d find someone to love me like he does. Can’t you understand that?”

She shook her head and turned away, pacing a few steps and turning back to him. “You know nothing of love and that animal doesn’t know how to love. He uses and he’s using you. I saw how he used you the other night.”

A cold fist squeezed Kurt’s heart, another clutching at his throat. “What? What do you mean, you saw?”

A flare of righteous anger flashed in Mystique’s yellow eyes. “At that inn down the road, the cabin far back along the stream.”

Nausea rolled through Kurt’s stomach. “You followed us?”

She offered a cold laugh and moved closer, strolling towards him as if she had the upper hand in the matter, knowing she’d caught him off guard. “Yes, I followed and I watched.”

“How?” Kurt whispered, his breath thick in his throat, threatening to choke him. “The door was locked. The curtains were closed.” Kurt’s mind ran in circles, that same nausea working it’s way up his throat. He had to swallow down the bile building up inside.

“From a tree nearby. And your curtains weren’t closed enough, my dear son, to keep my raven eyes from seeing how you let Logan manipulate you, putting you in that subservient position.”

A chill ran down Kurt’s body and a wave of dizziness swept over him. He shook his head. “You understand nothing, Mystique. Logan doesn’t force me to do anything I don’t want to do. We give each other pleasure because we love each other. Something you’ll never understand, obviously. You are sick, spying on me and Logan that way, knowing what you’d see. Did you get off on it, Mother?”

The slap came hard and swift, faster than Kurt could react. The sting was nothing but an annoyance, but the humiliation of it stung far worse than the pain. He put a hand to his face and blinked in shock at Mystique’s audacity.

“Don’t you forget to whom you speak, young man. I am your mother and I have a right to interfere when I see fit.”

Kurt dropped his hand away from his face and glared at her. “You gave up that right a long time ago. You have no rights when it come to my life and you’d better figure that out now. Even if you had raised me, I am an adult now. You can’t tell me who to love. And whether you like it or not, I love Logan with all my heart and soul and breath.”

Mystique’s eyes flashed again and her mouth went hard, face cold as the stone she had once been turned into.

“You know nothing of Logan,” Mystique said. “You know nothing of his past, of the man he was before Charles Xavier came along and dampened the fires of Logan’s true nature.”

“I don’t care what has happened in the past. Logan’s past is shut off from him, except for bits and pieces. I know the man he is today and that man is good and decent, caring and loyal and loving.”

Mystique laughed again. “How you idolize him. How all you young fools idolize him. It makes me sick. He’s a savage, little more than an animal wearing a human disguise.”

“Not so unlike myself,” Kurt stated, crossing his arms against his chest, the pain of memories washing over him. “They call me Satan’s spawn, demon, devil...lab rat...animal.”

A sad expression crossed Mystique’s face. “I’m sorry, Kurt. I’m sorry you’ve been treated that way. That’s why I did what I did, helping Apocalypse. He would have created a world all mutants could live in and never suffer the pain and tortures, the indignities put on them by mere humans ever again.”

“And millions of humans would have died to create this mutant paradise. Some of us couldn’t live with that price for this paradise of yours.”

“Sacrifices must be made for progress.”

A cold chill ran down Kurt’s back. He’d heard someone else say that very thing concerning him and Logan and the comparison sent another wave of nausea through his bowels.

“Not that kind of sacrifice. Not millions of lives,” Kurt said with loathing. “But then you thought nothing of killing mutant children, so why should it surprise me that you’d care so little about the lives of human children and adults?”

Mystique sobered, a look of contriteness sweeping her features. “I had no desire to kill those children. They were unfortunately in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“You deliberately locked them into the mansion and set it to destroy itself. If it wasn’t for Scott, they would have died.”

She shook her head in agitation. “Don’t speak of that boy to me. He’s caused more trouble than he’s worth.”

“He’s not a boy any longer, Mystique,” Kurt replied in a voice far calmer than he felt. “Scott is a man. And so am I.”

With a dismissive wave, Mystique said, “you’re a mere child. Eighteen years old.”

“I’m nineteen or can’t you even remember when I was born? Perhaps it meant so little to you that you’ve forgotten.”

Startled, Mystique took a step back then steadied herself. He’d hit a vulnerable spot, one of the few Mystique had. “I knew that,” she said softly. “I’ve...I’ve just lost count of the years. I remember as it was only yesterday.” She stumbled away as if she’d lost her will and leaned against the wall, one hand to her face.

Kurt hesitated, wondering if this was a trap, a ploy of some sort. Yet Mystique seemed deep in thought, her mind far from this room. With uncertainty, Kurt moved closer, his guard still up.

“What happened to me?” he asked. “What did Magneto do to me?”

Mystique’s head shot up and a deep abiding pain lodged in her gaze. “He didn’t want you to know. He threatened me that I should never tell you and when I tried, he set my own brotherhood against me.”

“Magneto is not here,” Kurt said gently. “He is no threat to either of us right now.”

She said nothing, her gaze sliding away to stare back in time once again.

Kurt reached out and the feel of his mother’s skin was soft and supple. He wondered what it would have been like to have been held by her as a child. Could she have loved him? Would caring for him have changed her?

“Please, Mother, tell me. Don’t I have a right to know?”

Her yellow gaze returned, full of contradiction, soft and hard, cold and fiery. He wanted to believe in her again, wanted to believe even Mystique could be saved from her own darkness within.

With a slow nod, Mystique reached out, gently touching his cheek where only minutes before she had slapped him.

“You were such a good baby, a perfect child,” she said in a distant voice, so unlike her normally hard, controlling tone. “I left you only briefly, an hour and no more...sleeping. He took you from your cradle, uncaring that you were a babe, uncaring that I had given no approval for his experiments, as if I would have given approval.” She turned away with a terrible pain in her gaze. “I couldn’t find you when I returned and searched all over until I heard your cry and found...found him holding you down on a table as if...as if....” Mystique’s hand went to her face and Kurt wondered if she was crying...if Mystique was even capable of crying.

She swallowed hard and looked up, her eyes dry, but the pain was still there, her eyes reflecting her haunted memories.

“You were a normal child when you were born, Kurt. As normal as any human child,” Mystique said.

“Magneto did this to me?” Kurt asked, indicating his current appearance. “Made me like this?”

She nodded. “He activated your x-gene with some sort of injection. I don’t know what it was or why he thought he had the right to do it. But Magneto claimed it would have happened by puberty anyway and that he was doing you a favor by allowing you to grow up with your mutant powers already active.”

“But...it might never have activated,” Kurt stated, his anger rising. “Magneto didn’t know if I would live or die when he did that to me, did he?”

This time, Mystique shook her head. “No, he didn’t. The process could have easily killed you. You were only two months old. I called him a monster then and that’s what he was.”

“And you ran,” Kurt added, leaning back against the wall for support, his knees feeling weak, his legs shaky.

“He wasn’t finished,” Mystique continued and the light of long ago fears lit up her eyes. “I knew he’d want to do more experiments on you. He’d want to see how far he could push the mutation. I had to run. I had to get you out of there before it was too late.” She took a shaky breath and sighed. “He trapped me on the bridge, he and his minions, the creatures snapping and snarling, trying to pull you from my grasp. They knocked you out of my hands and into the river...and I thought at that moment that I had lost you forever.”

Kurt looked over at her. “But you knew I survived. You knew I had been rescued from the river, yet you never came to claim me. Why?”

She gave him a confused expression then clarity cleared the confusion away. “Ah, Rogue. That’s how you know so many details.”

“Yes. Why, Mystique? Why did you leave me with them?”

“Because it was best for you. You were better off with those simple people.”

“And you returned to Magneto even after what he had done to me. Why?” Mystique turned away again and Kurt thought he knew why. “Because he offered you power. Right?”

“Don’t presume to read my mind, child.”

“But it’s true, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she replied in her usual hard tone. “Yes,” she said again, her gaze defiantly meeting his. “I wanted power. I wanted what only Magneto could give me and still, he betrayed me when I had given up everything for him...even my child.”

“You can’t have me back, Mystique,” Kurt offered in a gentle reasonable tone. “You know it’s too late.”

“It’s not too late, son.”

“But it is. I make my own decisions. I love who I want to love. Anyway, why are you so opposed to me loving a man? What reason would it matter to you?”

With a shake of her head, Mystique let out a humorless laugh. “It’s not men in general. It’s the man you chose. Logan. I cannot abide this, Son.”

“You’ll have to, Mother. For I’ll not leave him for any reason. I would follow Logan to the ends of the earth and to hell for that matter.”

“That may well be where you’ll have to search for him.”

“Don’t make threats,” Kurt shot back, his tone deadly. “Don’t think I won’t defend my mate just as surely as Logan defends his.”

“Tell me what brought this on.” Mystique demanded. “What happened between you two that this could occur?”

Kurt hesitated. He didn’t want to talk to her about what happened, yet he had to offer her some explanation. “Logan and I were kidnapped and tortured by Bolivar Trask. You remember him, don’t you? We suffered together, Logan and I and we found comfort with each other that turned to love. So if you want to blame someone, blame Trask. He drove us together and now that it’s done, I’ll not be parted from Logan. If you want to know more, The Professor offered to explain. So go ask him. I’m tired of talking and explaining.”

Mystique took a deep breath and let it out in a rush. She stared at him and Kurt stared back, not backing down from her hard gaze.

“When do you intend to tell your parents about Logan?”

“Tomorrow morning. I wanted to let them enjoy my graduation and celebration. They will be upset.”

“Isn’t that reason enough to break it off with Logan?” she offered in a smug tone.

“No. I love my parents, but I also love Logan and he’s my future. I can’t let them decide who I love anymore than I can let you. Now, will you let me tell them in my own time?”

She stared at him again and Kurt sensed Mystique’s mind ticking, formulating plans, deciding what she could live with. “Are you going to take me out of this place...wherever it is?”

“Mystique. I need some assurance you won’t upset them.”

She gave a nod, as close to a promise as he was likely to get from her. “I’d like to meet them. Will you introduce me? I will do them no harm...after all, they did care for you when I was unable.”

Trepidation clutched at Kurt’s heart, his stomach doing another flip flop. He couldn’t keep her here forever, but could he trust her? Of course not, but he had to give her a chance to prove herself. Now was as good a time as any. And if she tried anything he didn’t like, well he’d teleport her out over the cliff and drop her into the water.