Devourer of Sins

DEVOURER OF SINS CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, I've set Joaquin and Billy on the trail of the elusive package...I think the dolphin is somehow involved. He keeps giving me weird looks... Maybe it's the sparkly deedlyboppers I'm wearing. Dunno... InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink-heaps and loads of chocolate to you for archiving. :) Readers/Reviewers: I think the duck is gone...but what's that orange glow on the horizon? Is that...oh, no! The platypi! They've massed into a mob and are somehow carrying tiny torches and a cauldron of pitch! Who knew they were so organized?


Kitty was nice and warm, wrapped in a soft blanket thhe whe would have sworn was made from clouds. Sighing contentedly, she rolled onto her side and opened her eyes only to see herself staring back at her. _The hell? _ The self she was looking at was drawn and pinched, a yellow tone to her skin and blood dotting her arms where they lay above the covers. The self before her was breathing in slow, even pumps of her lungs, seemingly asleep but somehow, Kitty knew better. She knew it was not a natural sleep and this was not a natural dream. "What's going on?" she whispered, fear choking her voice.
"Stupid bitch," a voice hissed in her ear. Kitty felt the warmth ripped away, leaving her bare and cold, her bones aching from the force of the chill. She tried to turn but could not; her body was pinned in its position, forced to stare at the other, the Kitty laying in the bed in what she recognized as the infirmary. "You nearly ruined it for us, didn't you?"
"What do you mean?" Kitty asked shakily, not sure if she should scream or if she would even be heard if she did. "I didn't do anything...I just got up to take a shower and...and..." Her mind was muddled. She remembered Kurt panicking, Beast soothing her, the scent of Logan's cigars and cold air, warm liquid on her stomach...then nothing.
"You cut yourself, didn't you? You dropped the box and cut yourself because you hurt to bad. You wanted to die, you needed death... You lusted for it more than that scrawny creature you take as your lover..."
Kitty felt sick. She could not feel her body but felt her consciousness shiver at the feeling of hot breath on her noncorporeal ear. "Am I dead?" she finally managed, swallowing a sob.
"You'll only wish you were," the voice in her ear hissed. With a suddenp-pop-pop feeling, Kitty was no longer staring at herself, but rather the acoustic tile of the infirmary ceiling. She felt heavy and clumsy, like her body did not fit quite as it was supposed to. A pain in her chest made her panic until she realized that the pain came from not breathing. Kitty's first inhalation made her sit straight up in bed, sucking in a draught of hair with a rattling, wheezing groan that made Beast come running from the next room. Tears streamed from the corners of her eyes as she took another breath, then another, the pain in her chest receding with each intake of air. Beast was saying something to her in a soothing tone, rubbing her back firmly as he checked her IV line. Kitty's slowly lay back against the pillows, dislodging Beast's hand, and winced at the pain in her abdomen.
"I used butterfly sutures rather than stitches, Kitty," he said, cutting straight to the chase. "I feel your healing as at a stage that regular stitches would be overkill...Um, Kitty? Could you tell me what happened, how you popped your stitches?" He eased onto a low stool, concern etched on his features, as he gave his entire attention to Kitty.
"I don't...I was napping. I woke up and felt like I was covered in dirt and sweat, like I had been running for miles and miles..." She frowned in thought before pressing onward. "I just know I got up to shower, took off almost all my clothes, and went to pick my hairbrush off the dresser. " Kitty paused and then went pale, the freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks standing out in stark contrast to her pallor. "The box..."
Beast leaned forward. Logan had found a cracked, empty box on Kitty's floor near where she had fallen, traces of the iridescent white powder still inside. "What's wrong with the box, Kitty?"
She hitched a pained breath and her eyes lost focus, staring at a spot somewhere beyond Beast's shoulder. "It's wrong, isn't it? I mean, for her to do this? To take something that isn't hers? It isn't her sin to have, is it? The box isn't wrong, it's one of those necessary evils..._She's _ the one that's wrong! Not me, never me!" She began a slow rock back and forth as she murmured on, sometimes in English, sometimes in Greek, Ladino, Yiddish, or Hebrew, and then in more harsh tones, in a language Beast did not understand even slightly. He was not comfortable leaving her, so fascinated and afraid of her sudden impression of _When Rabbit Howls1. _
_*Charles, I think you'd better come down to the infirmary. Quickly. _* The doctor edged closer to Kitty, the girl's frantic murmurings growing more distressed in tone, her rocking becoming more pronounced. _*And bring Kurt, if you don't mind... _*
There was a momentary pause, then the Professor's mental response: _*I'm on my way... _*

Kurt would not leave Kitty's side, not even when Logan growled at him and threatened his future reproductive capabilities with a flash of one long metal claw at a discreet distance from both Beast and Professor Xavier. Kitty had not emerged from whatever stupor she had sank into, her blank eyes fixing on Kurt's scared ones for long stretches of time, her mouth working as if she wanted to say something but could not find the words, only to shake herself and return to the semi-catatonic behavior she had lapsed into. "Katzchen," he murmured as the older men conferred in worried tones, "I know you're in there...stop scaring us like this...I'm beginning to think you just want the attention," he said in an attempt to tease her into a smile. Failing that, he sighed deeply. "Liebes, don't make me beg you...I'm not too proud, I just think you're stronger than that. You're in there. I don't know what's wrong with you but I'm not going to leave your side until you're back to normal. No matter what the old guys say." He said the last loud enough for Logan to hear him but the Professor's ill disguised grin let Kurt know the older man heard and approved of his attempt at humor. "Katzchen," he said again, softer than before, "I love you. I feel like a shadow since you're...unwell. All I do is worry about you..." Looking over at the trio of mentors and finding that he was unnoticed, Kurt carefully crawled in to the hospital bed to lay full-length next to Kitty. He was certain he could feel her heart, even through the layers of clothing and bedclothes. "See? I knew you were in there," he whispered, pressing his ear over the general vicinity of her heart. Kitty had ceased murmuring and was instead staring blankly at the ceiling. Kurt continued whispering to her, promising her anything so long as she would "go back to normal."
On and on the men talked, Kurt to Kitty and the older ones to one another. Kitty was dimly aware of it all, some part of her mind unclouded by the red-black flood that had descended on her when the voice left. Kurt's presence was shining in her inner vision, making that rational portion of her mind seek him out, trying to make her mind focus on one thing rather than the thousands of ant-like thoughts racing around in a nauseating circuit of confusion. Her mouth would not open to speak nor would her hands move to touch him, so she made herself content for the moment with _feeling _ him and knowing, even in her addled state, that he could feel her. As if underwater, she heard the heavily filtered voice of a man she identified with safety, with the word "father" say that Kurt should move. She was about to panic, about to try and force words from her throat, but then the voice of a man she associated with the smell of old books and the faint tang of pipe tobacco tell the first man that it would be fine, leave them be. Kitty did not let her consciousness, such as it was, slide away until she heahe the three men no more, Kurt's weight against her an anchor to what was left of her reality.

"Look to the south for evil...who sahit hit like that?" Logan growled.
"Someone who is being oblique, obviously," Beast said, a hint of a snarl in his voice.
"_Children _ ," Professor Xavier intoned, the insult not lost on either potential combatant, "our issues here are greater than that phone call last night." The Professor steepled his fingers and seemed to consider the weight of his words carefully. "Kitty is...blocked. I could not get into her mind at all, not even to pick ou ove overriding emotion. This is extremely unusual for someone such as Kitty, someone who does not have very developed psychic abilities."
"What're you saying, Chuck?"
"Kitty...isn't herself. All I could gather was that the energy blocking me did not stem from Kitty herself. It came from outside her mind, as if someone had sealed her off from all others."
Beast whistled low in the quiet room, Logan's sudden eruption of a wordless snarl shattering the last nerve of the blue doctor. Gritting his teeth, Beast asked, "What can we do?"
"Nothing," the Professor sighed, surprising both men into silence. "The last piece of the puzzle, or at least, the person who would give us the pieces, is dead."
"What?" Logan said, straightening in confusion.
"Theo Simpson was murdered late last night in a most gruesome fashion," the older man said with the taint of grief in his words. "I received a call this morning from the embassy in Mexico City. The number here was on a card in his wallet so they called, seeing as he had no kin living and no other contact numbers..."
"I'm so sorry, Charles," Beast said, offering a massive hand to cuff the Professor lightly on the shoulder in a show of sympathy.
"Murder?" Logan said. "How?" Ignoring Beast's indignant snort, Logan made a "well, get on with it" motion to the Professor.
"He...he was genitally mutilated, the organ placed near his head and his arms and legs arranged in a strange fashion. He bled to death, it seems..." The Professor had been privy to all the gory details from an over-enthusiastic coroner's aide working through the embassy.
Logan drew back in disgust, Beast bearing a similar expression on his own face. "Genitally..." the blue mutant finally asked.
"Yes,' the Professor nodded and averted his gaze, studying the spines of the lowest level of books on the case. "Much like the man Jean described to us..." He turned assessing eyes to the other men. "Henry, could you see what you can find about this type of...murder...in Mexico City, if it's a serial killer on the prowl or something...more." The doctor nodded and told the Professor he would return before the end of the evening with whatever he could find, leaving the other two men alone.
Logan broke the silence. "I'm sorry about your friend, Chuck, but right now, I'm more worried about Half-Pint...she's acting awfully strange..." He sighed and shook himself, bracing for what he was about to say. "I mean...she had those hallucinations about that Shiva guy not so long ago...what if she's...what if she's _unstable _ ?"
The Professor smiled kindly. "I do not think she is, as you put it, unstable. She's been und gre great deal of stress and that may make her susceptible to...flights of fancy, as it were."
"Chuck, you can't be saying that you think Kitty was all with us when she was talking to that...that whatever it was, what she called a god!"
"I'm just saying, there are more things on heaven and earth, Logan, than dreamt of in your philosophies." 2

A/N sorry about the short chapter. Tomorrow...some sex, some talking, some angst, some death...and I'll write another chapter, too!
1 Really, really affecting book about one woman's battle with paranoid schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder. Quite fascinating. Better than Sybill, but no one asked me, did they? LOL...
2 Paraphrased from Hamlet