We Can Explain...

We Can Explain...Chapter Forty Two (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta... *sigh * I think this one was poisoned. InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are fantabulous for archiving/hosting. :) ProPhile: feeling muse-y? Readers/Reviewers: First, I want to thank The Dolphin Queen for giving me the impetus to end this story sooner than I might have. Chapter forty two is going to tie up several loose ends (read: bring some coherence to the randomness) and any additional chapters (no more than two, I should think) wbe tbe the "opening" to the next fic, which is going to be more like the original "feeling" of the Foreververse than this experimental type story. So *glomps * with naked muses to all of y'all for sticking this one. Let's pretend it never happened ,lol. ;) The next story, Sins of the Father, is going to start in a day or so and is going to be in the arc with Shiva and Devourer of Sins within the Foreververse AU.

Kitty slid from the infirmary bed and glanced quickly at Kurt to make sure he was still asleep. Beast had dosed him with a relatively mild sedative to keep him from bouncing off the walls, his agitation over the entire situation making him shed profusely and pace the walls. sle slept soundly, but not for much longer, she knew. The claxons in the hall were loud, seeping under the door and making him twitch in his sleep, part of him recognizing a danger signal despite his doze. Overhead, footsteps pounded and the muffled sound of voices bespoke urgency and anger. Kitty took a breath and decided she could not just let whatever was happening go on without her presence, even if it was just Bobby playing a prank again. Phasing through the door into the hall, she winced and gasped at the sheer volume of the alarms. Logan had once tried to teach them all the different alaror tor the Institute: fire, intruder, Danger Room malfunction and a myriad of others, but there were just too many to remember much less sit through, the lesson leaving them all with varying degrees of temporary tinnitus1. She clapped her hands over her ears and took off at a dead run, heading towards the bank of elevators at the end of the corridor. She restrained herself from phasing through the door and instead punched the "up" button several times in quick succession. "Come on," she hissed. The stairs were to her right and she sighed, dreading the run up to the main floor, but after another moment she felt she could not honestly spare, she muttered mild oath and took a breath, pushing her tired legs onward. It felt as if she were running underwater, her muscles protesting a week of little use, her lungs burning as she sucked in one deep breath after another. She burst through the door to the ground floor with a gasping wheeze, her face red from the short distance she had run.
"Kitty, get out of the way," Logan snarled, pushing her back against the wall as he ran by.
She opened her mouth to protest but snapped it shut before one word escaped. A quick look to her right showed a seeming wall of teenagers crowding the end of the hastarstaring and murmuring at something to her left. Kitty followed the direction of their attention and bit her tongue to stave off a startled yelp. Emma held Mystique in some nonphysical grasp, Logan already moving to grab the blue-skinned woman himself. Emma glared and Logan fell back. "Get the Professor," she blonde snapped.
"He's busy," Logan returned, his claws springing out as he eyed Mystique. "Let me...talk...to her."
Mystique remained still, though Kitty could not tel tha that was from Emma's telekinetic grasp or through her own sheer will. She did not look at Logan nor Emma, though she seemed to be staring straight at Kitty. "I was wondering how you made out," she murmured. "Though not for your own sake. It would have been a shame to have my son so.strastraught...over your demise."
Kitty blinked rapidly, surprised to find her idle notion true. Mystique had been eyeing her and the reason was only slightly clear. "What do you mean?" she asked, stepping forward quietly. She heard some of the other students behind her, murmuring more loudly, and she wished they would all just shut up and go away. "I wasn't about to...demise myself...or whatever..." She narrowed her eyes at Mystique's smile. "Were you behind all this?"
"You must get more rest," the older woman said in a syrupy tone. "Lack of sleep seriously depletesr Enr English skills."
Kitty was now close enough to smell the strange perfume of Mystique's skin, mingling with the sweaty tang of Logan's and the spicy floral of Emma. She cocked her head to one side and remained silent for a long moment. "You did it, didn't you? Whatever all this was, you did it."
Mystique's smile became more edged as she narrowed yellow eyes at Kitty. It was surreal, to have this confrontation in front of an audience, and she knew this put not only Kitty but Logan and Emma as well at a disadvantage. While they would hesitate to cause bodily harm, even to her, in front of the other students, she would not. In one smooth, supple movement, she evaded Logan's belated grasp and twisted to prevent Emma's, grabbing Kitty by the upper arms and pushing back as she landed. Kitty, partially from panic and partially in a sense of self preservation, phased them both through the floor.
The lights flickered as they passed through several bundles of electrical wiring and Kitty was absurdly grateful that it silenced the alarms. She let them fall through the first sublevel of the basements and finally let herself and by virtue of that, Mystique, become corporeal again when they reached the vacant second sublevel. The emergency lights were on, Kitty's phasing having played havoc with the systems they passed through. The impact knocked the wind out of Kitty, less so Mystique as she landed atop the younger woman. As she lay gasping for breath and literally seeing stars, Kitty felt Kurt's biological mother move from her. She struggled to sit up but could not quite yet, her lungs aching as she drew in deep breath after deep breath. She felt nauseated and bruised. She hoped she would not be sick in front of Mystique.
"Fuck," the older woman muttered, slapping her hand against the closed door. "Locked."
Kitty found the breath to laugh. By a stroke of luck, she had brought them to one of the storage rooms that lacked a door knob on the inside, designed for storage of dangerous equipment and things Logan deemed "hands off" to everyone but him and Forge. It was impossible to open from either side without a key card. "Ironic, isn't it? You make it all the way in here," she paused to take another few breaths, finally sitting up, "and a teenaged girl traps you."
Mystique had an eerie greenish glow under the yellow sodium lights. She turned to face Kitty, her near-naked form alternately shadowed and exposed in the dim emergency lights. "You talk to much," she snapped, stopping just short of Kitty's prone form. "And that irritates me."
"Why are you here?"
Mystique raised a brow and stepped back as Kitty struggled to her feet. "Is it something they teach you hear, annoying questions?"
"I don't think you have much time for being bitchy," Kitty snapped. "Logan and the others will be down here any minute and..."
"And what?" Mystique asked innocently, shifting and changing. In seconds, she looked just like Kitty, down to the disheveled hair and dark circles under the eyes. "You even smell like me now," she added. "You held onto me long enough..."
Kitty balled her fists at her sides and took two steps forward, bringing her eye to eye with her doppleganger. "Bullshit. You can't scare me, Mystique. I've had too many fucked up things happen to me this year alone to make me scared of your penny ante schtick."
The sudden, ringing laugh from the depths of Mystique's being. "You're precious," she cried, leaning back against the wall. "Everything is just black and white to you, isn't it? All of you..." She caught her breath and stood straight again, still an eerie mimic of Kitty. "There's only good and evil, right and wrong, no gray area. It has never occurred to you that maybe, sometimes things happen that are in the middle. Sometimes, people you love will betray your sense of honor and right to serve the greater good..."
"What the Hell are you talking about?" Kitty demanded, swaying slightly on her feet. "You're babbling!"
"If you would shut up and listen, maybe you would understand a fraction of the enormity opening around you," Mystique snarled. She tugged at her ponytail in a feminine attempt at vanity borne by her current guise and went on in low, tense tones. "It never would cross your mind that the reason I made it so far into the Institute without being caught is because I was invited. It never would cross your mind that every thing you have been through in the past week was not only sanctioned and condoned, but designed by..." She seemed to draw up short then and diverted herself. "You're an innocent. All of you are. Unworthy to fight against those who would destroy us. Unable, despite all of your so-called education to do thing one against our enemies."
Kitty's head was reeling. Why wasn't Logan already here, she thought frantically. He should have been down by now, she knew, or even Emma or someone, anyone, who hadn whn what had happened. Security cameras were still in place, working on separate circuits from the lights, and they had sound capacity. All it would take was a quick look at the monitors in the small room in the side hall to show them where she was and what was happening. "You're a liar," she snapped, her voice shooting up several levels in her near-panic. "What happened was...it was..." She blew out a shaky breath. "I don't know what it was but if you're implying the Professor or anyone here would have LET that go on..."
Mystique's slow smile said more than words could. She spread her hands as if to say "Oh, well," and made a sudden move towards Kitty. She was met by an unexpected spinning heel kick courtesy of Logan's intensive martial art's ting.ing.
Kitty felt the impact shoot through her leg from her heel, jarring her teeth as her opponent staggered back. She did not wait for a response but turned again, this time coming around with her other foot for a sharp side kick to Mystique's jaw. She did not let herself think of how the shape shifter looked or even the reality of the spurting blood and the slight crunch of bone under her foot as her third kick connected with Mystique's ribs, sending her sprawling this time, the thud of her head on the concrete floor loud in the small room. Kitty fell back, panting. Her anger made her want to keep attacking, kick her while she was down, but her good sense made her step away. She wondered briefly is Mystique were unconscious but a soft groan and slow movement from the ld hld hld her otherwise. She backed against the wall, keeping one eye on Mystique and the other on the red light of the security camera set in the corner. "Hello?" she called out hoarsely. "I know you can see us...what's taking you so long?"
"Maybe," Mystique growled, taking great effort to knit her bones before she sat up slowly, "they're enjoying the show. Maybe they think it's time you found out the hard way..."
Kitty felt a cold hand of fear grip at her stomach and squeeze, her breath becoming gasps again as her sore back protested the spasming tension. "Stay away from me," she hissed. "Stay away or so help me..."
"Poor little Kitty," Mystique crooned. "Am I scaring you? Why don't you just phase away?" she asked in a sing-song voice, making a fluttering hand gesture. "Why don't you just go away and leave me here for your Logan to find? Or is something in you making you stay? You really want to know what I was talking about, don't you? You want to know why all this," another hand gesture, "happened..."
Kitty narrowed her eyes and channeled Logan's temper as she replied, "And you must want to have the living daylights beat out of you to stand here talking like this, you stupid bitch!"
Mystique's expression became incredulous for an instant before it became enraged. She crossed to Kitty in three quick steps and pressed her against the wall, breast against breast, hip against hip, holding her firmly in place. Instead of phasing, Kitty stared back at her in mute, nervous fear. "Shut your ignorant mouth and listen to me. You haven't put it together yet because it is too beyond your scope to even think that there is something as...gauche...as experimentation going on. You and your little friends are near perfect specimens, every one of you a first gen mutant except my own son, my little sacrificial lamb. Every one of you is part of this web. Your DNA is too valuable to be wasted in some messy fight with the Brotherhood or even on one of those idiot paragovernment groups forming even now. You're the mothers and fathers of the future armies..."
Kitty could not breathe, but not becaus Mys Mystique's pressing against her. The rant sounded crazy but Kitty felt it had a ring of truth. She remembered the Mexico incident, remembered the project that had brought them so much trouble. They had used human DNA, she thought with eerie calm. They created their own mutants. Wouldn't mutant DNA make it just a little easier for them? Aloud, she spat at Mystique, "That's ridiculous."
She smiled, her teeth showing whitely in the dim room. "You'd like to think. What was inside those silver things, I wonder, to make you so tired? What was it that made your metabolisms go into overdrive? If you were experiencing hyperovulation2, wouldn't tmakemake you a little...aroused?"3 She eased back, sure that Kitty would not try to escape now.
"What do you have to do with any of it then?" Kitty finally asked, feeling weak.
"I'm the middle man," she shrugged. "Bait." She seemed resigned to this title, not prettying it up in the least. "I could lead you where you were needed and leave you there for them to take what they needed."
"And wwas was that?"
"It's not important now," Mystique sighed. "The project has failed again. The implants were removed too early, your systems were unable to metastasize the contents properly and you are rejected from the experiment. Gambit was the only viable one and he was...compromised." She sd agd again as if in regret. "Compromised by one of my own."
Kitty found herself on the verge of irrational tears. "You're lying..."
"Am I?" Mystique shrugged. "Ah, the cavalry has ard."d."
The door to the storage room opened to reveal Logan looking oddly bland. "Half Pint..."
Kitty pushed herself away from the wall and practically flew at Logan, her doppleganger shifting again to her old self. "Logan," the young woman sobbed. "What took you so long?" She hit his chest hard, burying her face against the hard layer of flesh and muscle over the Adamantium skeleton. When he did not answer, she pulled back, looking up at his set-in-stone expression. "Logan?" Behind him, someone coughed lightly. She twisted in her foster father's suddenly too-tight grasp and found herself staring straight into Sabretooth's eyes. "No..." It crashed on her like a ton of bricks. The realization that Mystique was being truthful wrenched her guts into a knot of pain and betrayal. "Logan, no..."
He swallowed hard and did not quite meet her eyes as he pushed her towards the open hall. "Beast wants you in the lab right now."
"No," she breathed. Then louder, "No. Not until you tell me..."
"Kitty, I don't have to tell you anything. Get out of here and let me take care of what needs to be taken care of..."
She barely kept herself from being sick until she reached the ground floor.

A/N This is the last official chapter. The next one is the wrap up. *sigh * "Sins of the Father" starts the day after the wrap up and is going to take off from Mystique's accusations, if that helps any...

1 Ringing in the ears.
2 A condition usually induced by drugs for women who are donating eggs or harvesting their own eggs for in vitro. It also occurs in some women naturally, though it is rare. Many ova are released at once instead of the usual one or two per month along with the inert "false ova" that are usually released.
3 When women experience ovulation, they experience a spike in sexual desire in a biological attempt to promote intercourse during the period of prime conception conditions.