Institutionalized

INSTITUTIONALIZED CHAPTER TWENTY (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), Dodo's been awful quiet lately...he didn't run off with Kristen and Lucas, did he? InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are wonderful for archiving. :) Readers/Reviewers: *hugs * Now I'm all happy because you reviewed. And I'm happy that y'all are reading. Bad day is all better now. The ducks can't even faze me! The Killer Kitties (tm) and their Minions (tm) are another story...At least the armadillos got out of the bathtub. (Don't ask...you don't want to know...)


"Ugh, my head is killing me..." Kitty moaned, holding her hands over her eyes in an effort to block out the light.
"Welcome tur fur first migraine, Kitty," Beast said with a touch of humor, meant to comfort and not mock. He made some notations on his chart andd ged gently, "There's not much we can do right now...take some Excedrin and a cola-caffeine seems to help some people-and go rest. You'll find that the light and some noises may exacerbate the situation and you mayerieerience some nausea...Oftentimes, women get migraines around the time of their monthly cycle."
"She's not due for three weeks," Kurt put in, holding a bottle of pain killer as if it were the most valuable thing in the world.
"Kurt!" Kitty cried, embarrassed. "You're not supposed to know that!"
Beast and Kurt exchanged glances and asked "Why not?" at the same time.
Kitty shook her head, wincing at the shockwave of pain that moved through her central nervous system. "Ooooh..."
Kurt hastily poured two painkillers into her palm and 'ported away, only to return a few moments later with a can of cola. "Here, Schatz...take it quick."
Beast smiled vaguely and said, "I'd suggest just going to bed for now, Kitty. Get some rest...Are you feeling better than last night, though?"
She made a small noise and said "A little...I'm not dizzy anymore."
Kurt fretted with his tail nervously. "Is she okay, though? I mean, last night was a little scary. It was like she wasn't there," he said, tapping his temple for emphasis.
Kitty frowned and said, "I was just feeling sick...my head hurt and I was dizzy. I thought I'd faint or something." In truth, she had a brief, terrifying moment where she thought she was having a blood clot as a side effect from her birth control pills, but Beast quickly put that fear to rest when he told her that she would have been dead by the time he saw her if it had been a blood clot. "This morning, I feel a lot better. Just a little achy and kind of drugged...like I slept too much."
Beast nodded. "It's a bit like a hangover, the residual pain of a migraine. Did you have plans for today?"
"Temple," she sighed, looking at the clock. "But I'll never make it in time. And actually, if Kurt doesn't mind, I was going to go with him to the hospital to see Erika. They're doing her surgery today..."
Kurt cleared his throat, feeling very depressed all of a sudden. "You don't have to, Katzchen...she's going into surgery in a few hours and if you don't feel up to it, I don't want to subject you to the drive."
"Kurt," she said calmly, laying her hand on his arm to stem the flow of words, "I care about Erika like she's my own sister...I care about your whole family like they were my own. I want to be there for them and for you, okay?"
Kurt nodded, forgetting for a moment that Beast was in the room, trying to seem like he was not listening in avidly. "Well, I guess, if Beast says it's okay..."
"It's up to Kitty...she's in no medical danger from a headache."
Kitty nodded carefully. "You're driving though, Kurt!"
Kurt lingered after Kitty left, ostensibly to ask Beast about the details of Erika's sort of surgery. When Kitty was gone, however, he said, "She doesn't remember all of last night. She doesn't remember the babbling about the white-haired woman and Boston..."
Beast made a dismissive gesture with one massive hand and said, "Some migraine sufferers experience hallucinations with their headaches. She may be one of those. Or she was having some sort of dissociative fugue state. I think you know that she's prone to certain...well, mental issues." He knew they were both thinking of her Shiva hallucinations from several months before when he continued, "I would not be surprised if, after the events of the past year, she had some form of depression and a very active fantasy life that would throw up some scenes to explain supposed trauma to her. The car trouble she had with Roulette may have exceeded her stress levels last night and triggered the migraine and associated hallucination."
Kurt nodded as if he agreed and made his excuses, leaving to find Kitty already waiting for him by the front door. "Everything cool?" she asked with a tinge of pain in her voice. Her features were pinched from the headache and she moved carefully, as if every step was a threat to her balance.
"Ja, it's fine..." He did not believe Beast's reasoning for one second. Kurt was feeling a strange niggling doubt and it was centering around Empath. The unexplained behaviors of some of the residents of the Institute, he had noticed, only occurred in the new recruit's proximity. He had tried asking Jean about it, if she had any sort of ideas about the teenager, but she had been cryptic, skirting the issue and saying that Kurt should leave well enough alone. _I wonder...was Empath nearby for that conversation? _
"You're a million miles away," Kitty finally said. They were in the car and well towards the freeway when she spoke, making Kurt startle slightly.
"Sorry, Liebes... I was just thinking about some weird things going on. What do you think of Empath?"
"He's skeevy. I don't trust him."
"Why?"
"Not sure..." she sighed, reclining the seat to get more comfortable, closing her eyes before she continued, "he doesn't talk much to anyone except Roberto and Roulette, which isn't so weird since they know each other better than they know us, but at least the other two make an effort, you know? And he just sort of skulks around, staring at people."
Carefully, Kurt swerved to avoid debris in the road and asked "Have you noticed strange things going on around him?"
Kitty opened one eye and peered at him thoughtfully. "Now that you mention it...I get kind of dizzy around him. I wrote it off to cheap cologne or something."
He chuckled slightly and merged onto the busy freeway. "Kitty, I think there's something off about him but no one else notices...I think he's up to no good and maybe the other two as well."
"Well," she said consideringly, "what do you want to do about it?"
"Catch him out. The Professor is coming back today and should be home by the time we get there...Maybe he'll have an idea."
Kitty blinked and felt a stab of pain in her head. "He was supposed to be back last night...Emma said so."
"Emma?"
She yawned widely and looked at him in confusion. "Emma who?"
"You just said Emma said the Professor was supposed to be back last night..."
"No, I didn't."
"Kitty..." Kurt cursed sharply as a truck cut them off and by the time he had regained his own lane, Kitty was half asleep again. "Never mind..."
"How do we catch him out?" she murmured.
"I don't know. I guess you have no ideas about it, huh?"
"We could...well, I don't know. What does he do, exactly? His name implies empathy, which means he can feel what someone else feels, but how would that make him affect others?"
"Maybe," Kurt said, slightly impressed that she could speak lucidly while mostly asleep, "he can manipulate feelings. Bobby kissing Rahne, Jean not minding that Roulette was acting weird..."
Kitty made a noncommittal noise and said, "Maybe he can, but how will that help us catch him up to no good?"
"I have no idea."
Kitty was quiet for so long that Kurt thought she had fallen asleep but she surprised him when she said, "I think Paige and Jono would be cute together."
"That was out of left field...you've only seen them together once!"
"I can tell," she sighed, turning slightly so that she lay mostly on her side in the car seat. "They just need a push."
"Don't push Jono," Kurt said quickly. "He won't like it and it'll just make him more sketchy."
"You don't have a romantic bone in your body, Kurt Wagner."
"Pardon?"
"Sorry...I forgot who I was talking to for a second there..." She giggled and reached over to lay her hand on his knee as he drove. "You're plenty romantic."
"Which reminds me," he said, pushing Empath aside for a moment, "what do you want to do for our anniversary?"
"Ask me when I'm awake, sweetie," she murmured, finally falling asleep.
Kurt smiled faintly and patted her hand almost absently where it rested on his knee. He managed to make it all the way to the hospital before thoughts of Erika and surgery, of Empath and possible deviltry reemerged.

Kitty was still blinking sleep from her eyes when they met Kurt's parents and sisters in the waiting area outside of neurosurgery. "Kurti!" his mother said raggedly, looking wan and thinner than Kitty remembered. "She just went in ten minutes ago...She looks...she looks..."
Katja sniffled softly and hid her face against Anja's shoulder. Kitty bit her lip and refrained from consoling the girl within earshot of her parents, just in case the secret of the accident was not known yet. Instead, she said "Can I get you anything, Astrid? Johannes? Coffee or something from the cafeteria?"
They looked at her blankly for a moment until Kurt said, "Coffee...they both like it with sugar and milk."
Kitty nodded and looked at Katja. "Want to come with? Stretch your legs a little?"
Anja answered for her. "We'll come along...I need to see something besides these toothpaste green walls."
Kurt nodded encouragingly at Katja, who rose slowly and seemed to be making a great effort to hold back tears. "She'll be fine, Katja...the doctors wouldn't lie." _Would they? _
Kitty smiled thinly at Johannes and Astrid who had resumed their seats, magazines on their laps but unread, Kurt between them, staring at the wall and fiddling with the strap to his holowatch. "We'll be back soon...I think the cafeteria's on the second floor..." she lied, not knowing where anything in the hospital was. The Wagners did not even look up as the girls left.
The ride on the elevator was very tense. Katja looked vacant, her eyes glassy with unshed tears as Anja absently stroked her back, trying to soothe her malady despite not knowing what it was. "Kitty," Katja said quietly, "have you evere ane anything really, really bad? Made a mistake you couldn't fix and didn't know how to handle?"
"Well," Kitty said just as softly, averting her eyes from Anja's intense gaze, "just about everyone has at least once."
"I mean something huge, something that could really be...really be terrible."
"Actually, yes I have."
"Me, too."
"What do you mean, Katja?" Anja asked fearfully. "What happened?"
"I...it's my fault Erika's hurt. I was flirting with Sergei and he didn't check her safety line. She fell because I distracted him."
Anja's jaw dropped but she quickly regained her composure. "Katja, it was an accident...it could have happened to any one of us. You know that sometimes we get forgetful, we feel too safe on the equipment."
"Nein, Anja!" Katja shouted as the elevator came to a halt. "We never make mistakes that could kill someone! You know it as well as I do!"
Kitty grabbed for her wrist as Katja lurched from the elevator. "Slow down! You're all worked up..."
"My baby sister is in surgery because of me! They're cug opg open her skull because I fucked up!" Anja and Kitty both gasped at the harsh language coming from Katja's mouth. "Ich mache eine Spaziergang ums Krankenhaus."1
Anja started after her but Kitty pulled her back. "Let her go, she'll be fine."
"It's not her fault."
"I know...Piotr told me about this. Sergei confessed it and is too ashamed to talk to Katja now."
Anja closed her eyes and sat down on a bench in the elevator alcove. "Does Kurt know?"
"No, I didn't tell him...I thought it'd be better of Katja said it herself."
"Ja, it would be...but I'm worried about her, Kitty. Her and Erika, both...my whole family," she said, finally sobbing. "We've been here so long and the circus is starting soon...I don't know what we're going to do to catch up to them or how we'll make ends meet..." she dissolved into her native language, most of which was unintelligible due to the crying jag.
Kitty sighed and sat next to her, pulling the girl closer and into a hug. "I'm not going to tell you things will be okay, but they can only get better, Anja."
"I hope you're right..."
Kitty did not want to admit it, but she was starting to have her doubts.

Mystique did not want to do it but knew that the situation was too far out of her control now, what with Emma seemingly going insane. She forced herself to dial the number known only by two other living people and waited as it rang and rang and rang some more. _ You'd think the old goat would get a fucking answering machine. At least the kid would. _ There was a subtle click and the ringing stopped, but no one spoke. "Eric, it's Raven," she said after a moment. "Are you going to talk or is this some mindgame of yours?"
"Mystique...how nice to hear from the mutant version of Benedict Arnold again. Tell me, is the grass truly greener on the other side of the fence?"
She ground her teeth and said, "I did not abdicate the Brotherhood. It collapsed from beneath us. And I do not agree with your tactics, attacking children, killing that girl..." _Among others... _
Magneto laughed weakly, obviously in the throes of what he termed a fit of illness. "Then why are you contacting me now?"
"Emma Frost."
"Ah, yes. The White Queen. Spoken with her, have you?"
"Do you have any idea what she is up to?"
"Yes...and do you have any idea how ridiculous her plan is? She is easily dismissed once my own ends are met."
Mystique felt marginally ill. She did not know when she had grown a conscience, but she did not like it. "I have a proposition for you, Eric."
"Do tell."
"I want Emma out of the picture. She is rotten to the core and will only complicate the restructuring of the Brotherhood."
"And what makes you think you are going to be part of this new Brotherhood that you care so much about its potential restructuring?"
"Eric..."
"Go on about Emma, do. I'm tiring of this conversation."
"Emma is going to double cross you, Eric. She's put plants in the Institute and she'll do the same to you. She can enter the Institute at will now, she's got the codes from the mainframe. She has information on all of us, including you and I. Anything that Charles had on the computer, she has now." There was a thoughtful silence at the other end of the line as she rushed onward. "She wants to gain your trust, then take your place."
"Mystique," Magneto finally said with faint amusement in his voice, "you are the most paranoid person I've ever met, and I know quite a few people."
"Eric!" she said in exasperation.
"I will send for you when I'm ready to discuss this further. Until then..." He hung up on her indrawn breath. "Pietro, bring me Tarot, would you?"
1 I'm going to take a walk around the hospital.