Hell Hath No Fury

Hell Hath No Fury Chapter Five
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOALIVALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… FINALLY! LOL. Gah, sorry this was so long in coming. RL is a bear sometimes. Blah. Anyhoo…FINALLY, here it is! Chapter five!


Kurt whimpered softly, curling his tail around his ankles. The past day…no, he corrected, the past month… had been sheer Hell. Running, hiding, starving himself just to find this place, this place he did not understand or even truly recognize except on some unconscious level, and he had been captured. Again. At least they weren’t trying to hold him down, and that girl who smelled really good was sitting near him. Kitty, he remembered. The scary man with the metal claws called her Kitty. They were in a large office, stuffy and humid, with faint rumblings coming from under their feet. The door opened and Kurt jumped, whirling and crouching defensively, always on guard.
“Jean!” Kitty cried in obvious relief, practically tackling her to the ground as she hugged her. “You wouldn’t believe what…eep!”
Abe Sapien’s face bore an expression of distinct amusement. “Nice of you all to wait so patiently,” he murmured dryly, slipping past Jean and into the office proper.
Kitty fell back, startled. “Who…who are you?” she asked firmly after a moment’s bobble.
“Abe Sapien,” the massive red man who insisted on being called Hellboy replied from his dark corner near the door. “You get too scared too easy,” he added as an aside.
“I do not!” Kitty protested, searching her friends’ faces as they entered, looking for some sign that they had at least an inkling about what was going on. Jean shook her head slightly and glanced at Logan, giving her little hope for more information. “What’s happening here?” She turned and faced Kurt. “Why are you trying to get away from us? We’re just trying to help you!”
“He was told to come he Hel Hellboy rumbled, sounding as if he were stifling a yawn. “It’s late, Abe. Can I get some sleep here or is this gonna go on all night?”
The tall, lanky man seemed to smileetleetingly but did not answer directly. “Now that we are all here, I shall make this quick. We are very interested in you, children of Xavier. We have been watching you for some time. Young Mister Wagner here is quite an enigma in and of himself but as he has brought you to us, we think we can kill two birds with one stone here.”
Logan was looking less tense but still unamused as he shifted to lean close to Abe. “The only thing that’s getting’ killed around here is whoever tries to stop me from getting these kids home, got it?”
Abe stopped just short of rolling his eyes. He began a lengthy speech but Jean heard none of it. Instead, in her head, she heard something else entirely. _*Jean Grey, is your mentor always so angry? * _
Her eyes widened fractionally. She had been practicing her own telepathic skills diligently but the amount of control it was taking the man to keep up one fluid conversation and one coherent telepathic one was something she had not yet mastered. One form suffered at the expense of the other, making her spoken word stilted or her telepathic communication disjointed and very basic. _*None of us are very happy right now, _* she finally responded, looking him in the eye.
_* We are a paranormal research facility, something that is difficult to understand for most people but I think you will be more amenable to the idea than your friends are. Already I can see in your mind that experience when you were a little girl, after your grandmother died, and that time you visited the battlefield in Montana… Only one aspect of our research but still, it is something you can recognize and something you can accept, no? _*
_*No! _* She was so startled, felt so exposed, that she almost spoke aloud. More carefully, she added, _* Those were childhood fantasies. Ghosts and spirits do not exist. _ *
_*According to public conception… _*
_*According to common sense. The paranormal is something people make up to explain things they don’t understand. _*
_*In that case, Miss Grey, we must all be figments of your imagination. _*
The contact was cut off sharply, like a door slamming in her mind. Jean sputtered audibly for a moment before regaining composure She spoke before she coue que questioned over her brief outburst. “I think we’d like to just take Kurt and leave, if you don’t mind. He’s not some lab monkey for you to research!”
Kurt looked up sharply at that. He had been transfixed by the play of shadows on Kitty’s features as she looked on the proceedings before her. She did not look as scared as he had expected her to but rather interested. She was not edging away from him but instead moving a little bit closer every few minutes. At Jean’s words, Kurt’s attention shifted from the unwilling fascination with the array of freckles on Kitty’s collarbone which seemed to form the Big Dipper to the face the people giving him curious and guarded glances. “I am not an experiment,” he said coldly after a moment’s silence. “I was drawn here… I needed to come here…” He closed his eyes for the briefest moment and ground out, “I am no one’s experiment!”
“No one is saying you are,” Kitty murmured urgently, laying a hand atop his.
Hellboy noticed the movement with a wry twist of his lips. “I t,” h,” he said into the brief silence, “we should set everyone up in rooms tonight. No way is this gonna be over quick and I’ll be damned if we have to go through this again when he runs from you all again.”
“No,” Storm interjected firmly. “We leave now. We will contact you in the morning.”
“Look, lady,” Hellboy rumbled, “this kid’s nearly killed himself getting here and he doesn’t even know why. I’m not going to let him put himself through that again!”
Abe held up a silencing hand. “We’ll make this easy. We want to find out why Kurt has been drawn to us and find out more about you all as well. We will come with you.”