Fractals

Fractals Chapter Seventy Four (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta… One more to go! Wheeeee! InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink and Dracena are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. ProPhile: Tomorrow, your smut… Morgan: *glomp * Readers/Reviewers: This is the last *official* (lol ) chapter but there’s going to be a brief epilogue tomorrow. I’m going to take a day or so off of Foreververse to catch up on some sideflings then start up with the series again :)

Kurt’s head throbbed with fatigue and stress. He could barely move, stretched out in the back of the van as he was. Kitty sighed and stroked his ear idly, almost without noticing. He was too tired to honestly care or react beyond a barely vocalized murmur of thanks. It had been something between anticlimactic and a relief to find his mother sitting by the side of the road, shaking slightly, looking more angry than scared. He had barely heard a thing that Clark Kent said to her and barely noticed when the man disappeared into the thick hedgerows near the gate. Kitty and Paige had helped Astrid into the van then Paige took off at a run after Clark. Kurt was not ashamed to admit he cried a bit, seeing his mother was safe. “Don’t do that to me!” he scolded, sounding like the parent rather than the child. “I was scared!”
Kitty could barely understand the discussion between Kurt and his mother but she caught the gist of it. Sitting in the back of the van now, Kurt’s head in her lap and Astrid staring out the passenger side window, looking for someone or something that wasn’t there, she thought she might understand why Astrid had gone off like she did, despite ‘knowing better’ as Kurt had put it. Kitty sighed again and shifted, stirring Kurt from his misery only slightly. “They’ve been gone a while, Kurt. I’m going to go see what I can see.”
He frowned and clutched at her futilely. “Nein,” he murmured. “Don’t go. You won’t come back…” He twined his fingers around hers and tugged on her hand. “Stay, bitte.”
Kitty glanced at Astrid imploringly. “Kurti,” his mother said softly, “she’ll come back. I promise.”
“Thank you,” Kitty mouthed as Kurt reluctantly. With a small amount of difficulty, she wriggled free of the van, phasing and hoping she had not inadvertently short circuited something important as she passed through the exterior of the vehicle. It was so quiet outside that she had a hard time believing that, a few short hours ago, the place had been the scene of such chaos. She wondered if Tabby and Wanda were still inside or if they had managed to get out when the others had. It had been so dark that she had not been sure who she was grabbing and pulling through the wall and half feared that she had ‘rescued’ some of the Brotherhood in the process. It was cold enough that her sweater was negligible, shivers starting to rack her body. She crunched through the underbrush of the hedgerow, trying to stay on the outside of the fence, but she found herself phasing through the wrought iron when the hedges became too thick and it was only then that she saw she was not alone. “Paige? Paige, are you crying?”
She shook her head and kicked at a pile of something Kitty could not identify at first, belatedly realizing it was Paige’s shed skin. “No,” she sobbed. Her face was red and her nose was running freely. She scrubbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt then flung herself at Kitty. “I can’t find him anywhere! I can’t go in there by myself and…and…and…”
Kitty winced involuntarily as Paige sniffled hard and inadvertently left a trail of tears and other fluids on Kitty’s shoulder. “And what, Paige,” Kitty asked as gently as she could. She pushed the other teenager away slightly and made her look her in the eyes. “What?”
“And she’s just upset,” a male voice replied kindly.
Kitty stared. She could not help it. It was not every day you saw someone in blue tights and a red cape, standing there casually, as if it were the most natural thing on Earth. “Where are your pants?” she blurted, still staring.
The man snorted, then laughed. “They cut down on wind resistance so…” he gestured to the outfit. “Your friends are fine. They’re at the van. I’ll go back in for Clark…” He turned and paused. “Paige, right? Jono is fine.”
“He is?” she sniffled, brightening a hair.
The man nodded. “He wanted you to know…” He smiled and was gone.
Kitty shook herself. “There are some nutty people in the world,” she opined, still staring at the figure circling the house in the air. “And that’s one of them… Tights? I thought *our* uniforms were bad! I wonder who he works with…” She turned to get Paige’s reaction but the other girl was gone, crashing through the hedgerow, calling out for Jono. Kitty sighed and trudged back to the van slowly. It seemed like a nice and neat solution, this mysterious man sweeping in and cleaning up the loose ends, saving the others but it was only a surface solution. Beneath the shiny paper, she thought, was a box full of loose parts and no instructions to put them together. Glancing behind her, she saw that the house seemed empty, waiting. The front door was off the hinges and a gaping hole was like a toothless maw on the side of the house she could see clearly. Kitty stopped and stared a moment longer, not sure just what she was looking for but knowing it was something important. A faint wisp of greenish mist escaped from the hole and she shuddered. _Who knows what the Hell that was, _ she thought bitterly. _Knowing my luck, something carcinogenic. _ Tarot appeared, walking slowly, from some shadowy area on the far side of the porch. Kitty froze, expecting to have been seen, but the red head did not even look up. She seemed to be moping or even looking for something on the wide wooden porch that wrapped half way around the mansion. Kitty decided not to tempt fate and phased through the shrubbery and onto the shoulder of the private road skirting the grounds.
“There you are,” Paige sighed in relief as Kitty gained the van, sliding in silently. “Ready?”
“More than,” Kitty agreed, taking Kurt’s tail in lieu of his hand and squeezing nervously, wincing as he hissed in discomfort. “Sorry, Fuzzy.”
Astrid rubbed her fingers over her lips, frowning. “Where is Logan?”
_*Logan? *_ Jono leaned forward, bringing himself into the conversation. _*I haven’t seen him since yesterday… *_
Astrid sat up straight and scrambled at the door handle. “He’s still in there then! With that beast of a man!”
“Astrid, stop!” Kitty grabbed her wrists and held on tight. “Logan can more than take care of himself against Sabretooth and I know he’ll be fine…” The figure over the house had disappeared. “I’m pretty sure he will be…”
“What about Clark? We can’t leave him!” Tabby looked haggered, far older than her years. Wanda was oddly silent beside her, her eyes, Kitty noticed, dead. That scared her more than anything else she could have possibly seen.
_*He’ll be fine, _* Jono replied cryptically.
Paige grasped at his arm and shuddered. “We have to wait. We can’t leave him. He’ll get hurt…”
Jono sighed and reached into the glove compartment, past Astrid. He fished out the emergency cell phone and tossed it to Kitty. _*Call Storm and tell her to come wait for Logan and Clark then. I’m not staying here a second longer. *_
Kitty glanced down at Kurt, who was tugging on her arm again. She bent lower so she could hear him whisper to her, her ear almost against his lips. “What is it?” she asked softly.
“Clark will be fine… “
“How do you know?” she murmured.
Kurt smiled faintly. “Blue tights,” was all he said before closing his eyes and drifting into an uneasy sleep.


A/N The epilogue will see them all back home and details about what’s going on next. And smut, lol.