Institutionalized

INSTITUTIONALIZED CHAPTER THIRTY THREE (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm)...Billy has gone in search of the menagerie and is taking Kristen and Lucas with him for backup...I wonder just where he thinks they're hiding? InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are sparkled. :) Readers/Reviewers: The ducks are forging a secret pact with the platypi... The Webbed Foot Armistice. This may not be good...



"Kurt don't look so good, yo."
"I can't even _see _ him," Piotr grumbled.
"I can, and I agree with Todd..." Rogue leaned forward and said urgently, "Kurt, can you hear me?"
"Ja, I can hear you...you're loud." Kurt groaned and shifted to one side, his tail pinching painfully between his hip and the floor. "Where are we?"
"Don't know," Piotr said lethargically. "We were drugged or something."
"Why didn't it wear off faster then?" Kurt muttered mostly to himself. He should have been conscious before then if he had been given a drug, he thought to himself. "Who all is in here? It hurts to open my eyes..."
"Me, you, Rogue, Todd, Rahne and Scott. Evan was here but Roulette took him away..." Piotr shifted in the dark, his large frame taking up most of the space in the very small room.
"Roulette?" Kurt said thickly. "What..."
Rogue's sigh cut through the closeness of the room. "We've been had."
Todd shifted and his foot struck Kurt on the side, but the blue teenager only winced. "It was so fucked up...I don't know what happened..."
"It was like," Scott said suddenly, his voice rough as if he had been yelling or exposed to a lot of smoke, "like we were ambushed. They came from all sides..."
"It wasn't _like _ we were ambushed," Rahne growled. "We _were _ ambushed! I saw Magneto and Pietro...the systems were all down, all of them...not even one alarm worked. We had no idea until it was too late."
Kurt groaned a little more loudly than he had intended and sat up, cradling his sore tail. "Kitty?"
"She isn't with us...I didn't see her outside," Scott sighed. "And I looked. I saw Remy, Jubes and Lance disappear into the woods, chasing after Pietro and someone else, though."
"Jamie, Bobby an Joh John are somewhere else, but they were taken with us," Todd said, sounding a little shaky.
Kurt was feeling less groggy and more afraid now. "What about Jean and..."
"Everyone who was not taken with us seems to have been taken by Magneto." Scott could see Kurt's eyes glowing in the dark and that comforted him, somewhat. He had been asleep for so long that the older teenager had begun to worry, knowing of fractious Kurt's body could become if deprived of sleep or nutrition for too long.
"Magneto?"
Rogue heard the disbelief in Kurt's voice and sighed. "Magneto. We all saw him and Pietro...But he didn't seem to see or want us one. I'm not sure which."
"I think," Todd said slowly, "he wanted the old Brotherhood back. It was like something was pulling me towards the woods when the plane came."
"The plane?" Kurt felt as if his head was spinning.
Rahne's voice, thin and angry, hissed, "The fucking Blackbird. They were using the fucking Blackbird...the Professor's own damned plane..."
"I thought he had taken it with Warren!" Kurt felt the buzz of adrenaline begin to make him nauseated.
"So did we," Scott said darkly. They all jumped in surprise as a door opened out of the dark, admitting harsh light and the scent of chemicals and cloying perfume as Roulette stood in the slice of radiance.
"My little pets...how nice to see you all," Emma crooned from behind the blonde girl, fairly shoving her aside as she filled the narrow gap between door and wall. "I'm sure you will find your stay here most enjoyable once you learn to live by my rules, few though they are, and understand that your previous lives are over now. Welcome to the Hellions."
Piotr growled, "Sooka!"1
Emma tsked. "Such language, Colossus...that is the little name you've chosen for yourself, is it not? Colossus...quite...quaint."
Scott tried to stand but his drug-weakened legs and the lack of space in the closet-like room prevented him from doing so. "What the Hell is going on here?"
Emma was only using a fraction of her abilities to keep them in place. The drugs she had administered had worked for a while, but the intervening hour and a half was purely her doing, her mental prowess keeping the teenagers in a stupor. Though, she admitted to herself somewhat ruefully, if she had not drugged them, they would have been too difficult to manipulate across the board. "Now, now, Scott...such language! If I were you, I'd take a cue from your friend Rogue here and remain quiet. Though, Rogue's had a taste of Incubus and he tends to leave one feeling drained, quite the opposite of what she's used to. Isn't that right, Rogue?"
Rogue had enough energy to make a rude gesture. Kurt, staring past Emma at a spot on the barely-visible wall, said, "Where are we?"
"My...home. Yes, my home. For now, this is your room. At least until you begin to see things my way." The door slammed shut and the room was again bathed in almost absolute darkness.
"Shit!" Todd cried, frustrated beyond comprehension. "What the fuck is she doing? Who the fuck is she? WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE?"
"Shhhh!" Kurt hissed. "We're being listened to."
"How do you know?" Rahne demanded.
"She's like the Professor and Jean...she can hear our thoughts. But she can control them, too."
"How the Hell did you figure that one out?" Scott asked, not sure whether Kurt had gone officially bye-bye or not.
Kurt, even though he could not be seen, tapped his thick finger against his temple. "She couldn't get past my blocks. I felt her, searching and pushing at me..."
Piotr spoke first. "Pardon?"
"I can block out that sort of thing," Kurt explained, almost patiently. "Jean and the Professor don't try and force their scans on me or even try to talk to me unless I say it's okay to sneak into my head, but we've practiced before...not matter how hard they try, they can't crack me."
"Great," Todd sighed. "What good does that do us?"
"Not much, I guess," Kurt said honestly, "but I have something that will help." He closed his eyes and gathered his remaining strength, thinking hard about that part of the space beyond their prison that he had seen. With concerted effort, he teleported out of the room, reappearing in what turned out to be a narrow hallway with milk-painted walls. He fell to the ground, heaving and panting, his body protesting strenuously. It occurred to him only then that it might be a trap, that Emma knew of his abilities and wanted him to port away, come into her clutches, as it were, but then another thought occurred to him...she thought he was too weak to port. He hoped that the latter thought was the right one. The blood rushed from his head and then back, flooding his face with heat as he tried to remain conscious and calm, pulling himself up the wall to stand on his own two feet. _That was stupid, Kurt, _ he chided himself. _If you died doing that, what would Mama say? Mama...fuck. What happened to my family? To Kitty? Jesus in Heaven, if you can hear me... _ Kurt prattled on mentally, praying the entire he he staggered down the hall, staying to whatever shadows he could find but never hearing or seeing any sign of life, not even a security camera to indicate inhabitants. He had very nearly decided that they were in some elaborate trap, set to look like a house but really nothing more than a prison cell, maybe even a holographic image akin to Star Trek's holo decks, when a hand clamped onto the back of his neck.
"You must be Nightcrawler," a female voice said almost apologetically. "You're so young..."
Kurt felt weak, so weak he could not even fight a little bit, as the hand on his neck began to heat, scorching his flesh, the smell of burning fur sickening to the point of making his stomach try to heave nonexistent contents. The hand turned him to face it's owner and he blinked drowsily, the heat overtaking his body, as he met the cold eyes of a blazing red-head, seemingly made of flames. As his body gave into the desire to faint, he thought, _Where's Amara when you need her? Fight fire with fire and all that... _
"O "Oh, this is wonderful," Tarot sighed, wiggling her toes in the thick Oriental rug layered across the floor in Pietro's room. "My room's just got plain wood."
"I, um, got it from Magneto...he said it used to be his..." Pietro wondered if he were actually blushing under Tarot's vague gaze. "Want me to ask him if we can put one iur rur room?"
"Oh..." Tarot blinked at him, surprised. "Well, you don't have to. I just like how it feels under my toes!"
Pietro nodded dumbly. "Um, are you okay? After earlier, I mean?"
"Yeah, fine...I let the cards deal with it," she grinned, tapping her hip pocket to indicate the ever-present deck. "You?"
"I'm too fast to get hurt!" he bragged, only lying a little. He had been hurt plenty of times in plenty of ways, but he did not want Tarot to know that. "Hyou you seen them all?"
Tarot nodded. " Yeah...Magneto's got 'em all down in the basement, lined up on little beds. It's almost cute, really."
Pietro winced. He had made a comment to Magneto when he had first seen the beds, all lined up neatly along the long walls of the first basement level. He had asked if he was expecting a crowd. Magneto had only sneered and informed him that they weren't for comfort but rather restraint, then demonstrated most painfully. The beds were metal-framed, of course, and had numerous devices hidden along the side rails, secreted in thin compartments along the tubing. Each bed was rigged to a complex system that would deliver shocks of varying degrees to the occupant should they try to move or even at Magneto's whim. Pietro had taken days to stop twitching at random intervals after his father's demonstration. "Yeah, cute...Have you met Mystique?"
Tarot snorted. "Bitch."
Pietro bit back a smile. It was nice to have someone of a like mind in the house. He crossed to her with traces of his old self-assuredness surfacing. He did not feel cowed with her as he had around Magneto. In fact, if he had to analyze his feelings, which he was loathe to do, he would say he felt the same lovely tingling sensations in his stomach as he had when he first fell hard for Rogue. _Rogue, _ his mind spat, _is going to get what she deserves. Soon. _ He was so wrapped in his flare of bitterness thatalmoalmost missed Tarot's inquisitive look. "Um, just thinking of how well ythiything is going," he lied.
Tarot called him on his deception. "No, you weren't. You were pissed. Still are. You turn red when you're mad and boy, you were just glowing."
"I'm not pissed," he denied.
Tarot smiled a little. "What's her name?"
Pietro almost told her, just to get it off his chest, but his old personality was loving its resurgence and took over fully. He shut her up the only way he knew how-he kissed her. Hard. Hard enough to draw blood as her lips pressed beneath his, mashing against her teeth as she fought him briefly, managing to slap him hard and break the contact. "What the Hell was that for?" he cried.
"Did I say that you could do that?" she snarled. "No touching, got it?"
Pietro tasted blood inside his mouth, his cheek swollen where she had struck him. "Think of it as celebrating our success so far..." He leaned towards her again, slow enough for her to see him coming, but she shoved him away. "Tarot!"
"Lookee here, Petey, you want to get in my pants, you gotta do things right."
"I thought I was..."
Tarot laughed a little at that, pushing herself to her feet and walking a few feet towards the door before pausing and turning to face him again. "Tell you what...if you can convince me in the next twenty four hours that you're everyg yog you seem to be...I'll do ya."
Pietro felt his sense of purpose renew even as the door closed.
1 Phonetic spelling of the Russian word for "bitch/traitor/whore". I'd type in Cyrillic if I had the font, but...well, no I wouldn't. FYI, the Greek in upcoming chapters will be phonetic, too.