The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea Chapter Thirty Five (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… *shimmy * InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly for archiving/hosting. ProPhile gets a huge glomp whenever he returns and Morgan has a point about David Hasselhoff… Readers/Reviewers: I think RL is going to be kind to me tonight and maybe the Kurtty muses have returned…

It was a tense sort of silence that invaded the car, the kind that was thick like a summer night, redolent with things left unsaid. And what was worse, in Kitty’s opinion, was that Kurt was sulking. “Look,” she finally said as Storm applied the brakes particularly hard at a yellow light somewhere outside of Boston, the poor rental car squealing in protest, “it’s just really none of your business!”
“It’s my mother!” he cried, hours of pent up annoyance bursting forth in those few words. He shifted in the passenger seat to glare at her with baleful eyes. “You never keep secrets from me!”
“Sure I do,” she replied with a blitheness she did not feel. “You have no idea about Raoul, for example. He’s my cabana boy and gives excellent foot rubs.” She was not sure, but she thought that Storm snorted.
Kurt’s expression did not reflect any inner amusement with her attempt at flippancy. “Katzchen, I think that I deserve to know if you’re dragging my mother into some weird plot against your parents!”
“First of all,” she retorted sharply and quickly, “Logan is my only parent in the legal sense of the word now. Secondly, this isn’t some weird plot. Thanks oh so much for the vote of confidence!” She folded her arms across her stomach and turned away from him pointedly, glaring out the window at the passing scenery. Storm had managed to get them to the Boston metro area in record time, surprising the poor man at the municipal airport’s rental car counter. The placard bore the rather dubious name of Minuteman Auto Rental and made Kitty think of a myriad dirty jokes she would have normally whispered to Kurt as they waited a decorous distance, making him laugh and maybe blush under his holo, and most likely making him slide his hand from her waist, lower to pinch her sharply on the backside… But no, she reflected in a huff. He had to be snitty, she thought. He had to pout because she called his mother and arranged something with her.
Storm broke the silence this time. “I haven’t been able to reach anyone at the Boston house. Kitty, try your phone. Maybe mine is just… not working or something.” She turned down the long road leading to the ancient Frost house and wondered not for the first time at the similarities between Professor Xavier and Emma, wondering just what went weird where to make two such different people. Storm scanned the road ahead as she thought, wondering about Logan’s reaction to Kitty’s plan, much less his reaction to her biological father’s recent activities. It was as she was lost in thought that she did not see the figure dart out into the road before them, not until Kurt’s sharp gasp startled her back to focus. “Bright Mother!” she cried, jerking the wheel hard to the left. Kitty emitted a sound somewhere between a squeak and a yelp and Kurt cursed fluently in German, bracing his himself against the dashboard. The car did not skid, amazingly, but came to a halt at an odd angle in the middle of the road, no sign of the figure which had appeared in front of them so briefly to be found. Storm peeled her fingers off the steering wheel and inhaled deeply, trying to sound calm. “Is everyone alright?”
Kurt nodded, his eyes wide. Kitty swallowed hard. “No one answered for me, either,” she replied in a small voice, holding up the still-ringing cell phone.
Kurt vented a shaky laugh and leaned back in his seat. Storm’s face was unreadable. She pulled the car over to the side of the road and shut off the engine. “You two wait here. I’m going to see if I can find out what that was.”
“No!” Kitty cried. “Horror movies start like that!”
Storm rolled her eyes and glanced at Kurt as if to ask him to keep Kitty calm, but he looked just as nervous. “Fine, you come with me then but no talking, understand?”
“Why does she always look at me when she says that?” Kitty muttered as she got out of the car. “Not like I can’t be quiet when I need to be!”
“Katzchen!” Kurt sighed. “Shhhhh!”
“But…”
“But nothing,” Storm replied tersely. “Be quiet or get back in the car!” She did not give Kitty time to respond, heading for the far side of the road where the figure had emerged from, the teenagers trailing behind her. “Watch your step,” she called softly. “Do not step on anything that might be footprints or a sign of their presence.”
Kurt looked down at his feet and winced. There was a muddle of footprints in the roadside dirt, some of which were his and some of which might belong to a road crew or their mysterious figure. “Um, Frau Storm?”
She followed his gaze to the ground and sighed. “Damn.”
Kitty’s muffled sound of surprise made them both look over to where she stood. Her fingers were over her mouth, taking Storm’s stern warning to be quiet to heart. She stared into the ditch some ten feet away, her eyes wide and her face unusually pale. “Storm!” she finally squeaked. “Come here!”
Kurt appeared at her side in a blink, Storm soon after. “What is it, Liebes?” he asked, more concerned with the fact that she was shaking then with whatever she was staring at.
“Blessed Lady,” Storm breathed, going to her knees to peer into the ditch. “It looks like one of the Morlocks!”
“Did you hit him?” Kitty cried, her words rushing together in a shrill, high pitched way. “Is he dead?”
“I am,” a gravelly voiceliedlied, “a she. And no, she did not hit me.” The woman sat up, her gray-green skin moist like an amphibian’s back, her eyes watery and white. “I am hiding. Poorly.”
Kurt nodded, too stunned to do aing ing else. Storm spoke carefully. “What are you doing so far from…er…home?”
“This is my home. It has been for as long as I can remember. Who are the Morlocks of which you speak?” She stood, brushing ditch weeds and dirt from her clothing. “My name is Camille.”
Kitty was breathing a little easier now that she could see the woman was not dead or outwardly injured. “I’m Kitty, this is Kurt and Storm. We’re mutants, too.”
“Mutants?” Camille made a distasteful face. “I am no mutant. I am…different.”
Storm raised her brows, taking in the webbed fingers and gill slits. “We’re different, too… We’re going some place with many different people…” The smell wafting off of Camille denied the idea of baths or showers. The woman’s clothes were worn and so old that they lost any semblance of color or ability to provide protection from the elements. “Do you have shelter? Food? Family?”
“The trees and water for the first two, and just myself for the third…” Her eyes flicked from face to face, her posture stooped as she breathed an air of dejection. “I apologize for causing your startlement. I was running from… someone.”
Storm’s mind was made up. She could live with the smell for five more miles. “Get he che car with us then. We’ll take you somewhere to…”
Kurt jumped in. “To shower.”
Camille looked confused. “Shower? But I bathe in the river…”
Kitty wrinkled her nose. “We noticed. Come on. We can call the Professor from Emma’s place and he can come down and meet Camille and decide what needs to be done.”
After some brief discussion, Camille followed them towards the car at a short distance. Kurt held open the back door for her and smiled, not sure if it were simply a trick of his own eyes that hers appeared, for one moment, to be golden as well.