Paradigm Shift

PARADIGM SHIFT CHAPTER NINE (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm) , what ever happened to Kristen and Lucas? They've been VERY quiet... InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are musebunnies for archiving. ;) ProPhile is still groovy for sending me the plotbunny that started this fic (on top of the springboard from Nutter sooooooo long ago, lol). Readers/Reviewers: *crickets chirp* Hello? I still love y'all for reading and those who review get extra muse kibble so ner. ;)

Kurt stared at his reflection in the mirror, looking for something different, something that marked him as not belonging there. The room that Kitty had assured him was his did not look like the Spartan space he lived in at the Institute he knew. Posters and pictures dotted the walls, the bed, while made, was not a victim of hospital corners and plain white sheets. Kitty had told him that he had picked out the wildly striped pattern because it reminded him of a costume he used to wear at the circus. _At least some things are the same. I was in the circus here, too. And Kitty...I think I like this life better than the one I came from if Kitty is going to be so close all the time, of her own free will. _ He turned from the mirror and looked around the room again, taking in the shelves full of books and movies and CDs, the slightly open closet door that showed he actually wore something other than his uniform here. In the desk drawer he had found an extra holo the night before but he had found that what Kitty had said was true-it did not even begin to work. "You keep meaning to have Forge or someone fix it but you never get around to it. Kind of my fault," she tittered. "I, um, I like to distract you a lot."
"Distract me?" he had asked, not quite sure what she meant.
"Um...I'll tell you when you're older," she said quickly and had left him with a quick hug, going to bed and leaving him to ponder the room and his changed existence. The day had been surreal, to say the least. Kitty had coached him on most aspects of his life at the Institute, leading him through conversations with everyone they came into contact with and explaining his seeming absent mindedness as after effects of his accident that morning. _Bobby...a guy. Huh. Who'd a thunk it? _ Kurt mused, using one of Jubilee's favorite expressions. _Though, in it's own odd way, it makes sense. _ He sighed and turned back to face the mirror, the drawn curtains making the room darker than it needed to be at nine in the morning. _Still blue, still fuzzy, still demonic. Well, guess I can't have it all, can I? _ A knock on the door broke his reverie. "Come in."
The door opened slowly and Forge's head appeared around the edge, looking distinctly uncomfortable out of his workshop. "No progress yet," he said shortly. "Just thought you should know."
"Oh." Kurt thought he had been upset before. Now, he felt like he had been punched in the stomach. "Oh."
Forge sighed, a growling sound that most found disturbing. "Look," he said, coming further into the room, though hesitantly, "if anyone can fix this, I can. This is who I am, what I do..." Kurt nodded at him, seemingly lost in his own thoughts. "You know," Forge said conversationally, "if this is all some ploy for attention..."
"Nein!" Kurt snapped, his head coming up and eyes narrowed. "It's not some ploy! If it was, wouldn't I be telling everyone? What do you take me for?"
"Hey, hey, hey! Calm down!" Forge laughed. "Had to break that sad sack thing you had going on. It's catching. If there's one thing I don't like, it's being depressed. Stop it."
Kurt frowned and watched him leave only to be surprised by Kitty ghosting through the door a moment later. "Gah!"
"Sorry...guess I don't do that a lot over there?" she asked with a rueful smirk.
"Not to me, you don't," he said. "Um...so now what?"
"Well, we play pretend. I still can't find the Professor-I left a note on his door and everything. He's either ignoring me, which I doubt, or he's...dealing with something." She shrugged, neglecting to add that Banshee had come back from the city alone and refused to answer any questions. "Today we act like everything is normal."
"How do I do that?"
"Well...act like yourself!"
"Myself wouldn't be talking to you in my room like this," he said dryly.
"God, am I like a total bitch where you're from?" Kitty cried in exasperation. "Look," she said, crossing to him and taking him by the shoulders, guiding him to sit on the bed. "I've told you all the stuff you absolutely need to know, okay? Remember it? Now, just play along with what everyone says. No one is going to try and trick you or something because no one knows you're not my...our...Kurt. Just...go with it."
Kurt murmured ascent, pausing for a moment before asking, "Kitty, were we really best friends before we got together?"
"We still are," she said a little sadly. "This is so fucked up," she burst out then. "You look like you, sound like you, even...even _smell _ like you, but you're not!"
"Sorry," he said dejectedly.
"Don't apologize so much," she said sharply. "You stopped doing that about a year ago. You stopped apologizing for everything that came your way...you're more confident here. More...more..." her eyes lit on one of the movies sitting on the corner of his nightstand. "You've got this very watered down Errol Flynn thing going on when you'roundound people other than me."
"So I hide behind a character?" he asked archly.
"No...it's just who you are. Just try and let go of all the apologizing and self degradation...we love you here, Kurt. I'm sure they do there, too, if you just come out of your shell a little!" She glanced at her watch and swore. "I've got to go get Tabby and Wanda for their appointment with Beast and Cecilia...I'll be back in about an hour, okay? Until then, just...just be yourself, only more so!"

_Myself...only more so _, he repeated as he made his way to the rec room. Scott and Jean were watching a political commentary while Jamie and St John argued over the merits of Yu Gi Oh versus Card Captor Sakura. _Okay, normal so far... _
"Finally out of bed?" Jean asked without looking up from the television.
"Uh...ja, finally!" Kurt laughed. _Okay, I get up early here. Noted. _
Scott made some vague noise of agreement and said, "Logan was looking fou eau earlier...you missed your Danger Room session so he's pissed. I'd hide of I were you."
"Logan...Danger Room...erk!" Kurt knew without being told that such a thing was a bad deal in either universe.
Jean laughed softly, whether it was at his discomfort or the inane babbling on television, Kurt was not sure. "Just go there now and tell him you're sorry..."
"Like that'll work," Scott said.
"I'll just offer to do a double later," Kurt sighed. "Think he'll let me?" _This is easy... I can do this... _
Jamie piped up, "That's the second one you missed since Monday...I don't think he's gonna be too happy no matter what you offer!"
"Kid's right," Logan said from the kitchen.
Kurt cringed, very aware of the quartet of sympathetic expressions suddenly turned his way. "Hello, Herr Logan."
There was the scrape of a chair on linoleum and the sound of booted footfalls, Logan obviously wanting to be heard, and he appeared in the doorway. "Danger Room. Now. You'd better be there before me or I'm adding an hour for each second I have to wait."
Kurt felt frozen in place for a moment then disappeared, leaving sulfurous fumes in his wake. He felt slightly vertiginous as he appeared in the Danger Room, thankful that Kitty had shown him the layout of the mansion the night before. It was essentially the same as his own worlut hut he was still nervous to port given what happened the last time. Kurt let out a shaky breath as he looked around the familiar silver and white room. _Still the same here, too...maybe this won't be so bad... _
"Wolverine Sim Four Six Two, Overlay Random Battle Sounds," Logan said over the loudspeaker.
"Oh, fuck," Kurt said, the room shifting and changing.
"On your own, Elf. I'm observing!" Logan sounded inordinately happy about that idea.
Kurt's brain shut off conversational mode and he flung himself purely into survival. The appalling thought came to him as he leapt to avoid a sharp-edged projectile that maybe, in this world, the Danger Room was more lethal or Logan was more sadistic. _Think happy thoughts...happy thoughts...don't think of getting splattered all over the wall... _Kurt clung to the wall for a moment before letting himself fall backwards, flipping to land atop one of the devices sending out the metallic orbs that were apparently a major feature of this sim.
Logan watched in a mixture of irritation and pride as Kurt disabled one of the mechanisms. "You broke my Danger Room," he said over the intercom, smiling to himself.
"Ja, and if this keeps up," Kurt panted, really starting to enjoy himself, "I'll do it again."
Logan laughed and flipped the microphone back on. "I'm comin' down there. Pause sim."
Kurt hid a smile as the room seemed to freeze around him, the image shimmering slightly. _This isn't bad at all...this is kind of fun... _ The door hissed open and Logan strode in, throwing his shirt to one side as he approached Kurt. "Well, Herr Logan, when does this get hard?"
Logan bared his teeth in a fair approximation of a snarl. "Now."
Kurt wisely leapt upwards and seized an outcropping piece of rebar as Logan began the sim again, surging forward and narrowly missing grabbing Kurt's tail. "The Elf is quicker than the Wolverine!" Kurt called down to the older man. Logan made a sound that was either a curse or a g, Ku, Kurt did not pay enough attention to discern which, as he found a foothold in one of the structures rising around them and began to climb after Kurt. The sim became a game of cat and mouse, both participants changing roles as the hour wore on. Kurt had begun to feel very confident in his skills, dropping to hang by his taiom aom a piece of metal tubing just in front of Logan. "Guten abend!" he chirped.
Logan grinned and, quicker than Kurt could realize, slashed the tubing on either side of the teenager with a swipe of metal claws. Kurt hung in the air comically for a moment before plummeting downward, still clutching a lengthy piece of pipe with his tail. There was an audible thud and Logan peered down to where Kurt should have fallen. "Stop sim," he called as he leapt to the floor, not seeing a trace of his charge anywhere. "Kurt? You okay?" Silence. "Elf?"
"Have at you!" Kurt crowed, appearing out of a pocket of shadows and brandishing the pipe like a sword. Logan blinked in surprise then dropped to a crouch. Kurt was grinning madly, fencing his heart out as Logan feinted and parried with gusto, not equal in skill to the teenager's swordplay but very enthusiastic nonetheless.
It was there that Kitty found them, engaged in what was possibly the most disturbingly funny activity she had seen in a long time. Logan was swiping and jabbing with his claws, Kurt was dancing around with the pipe, looking as if he knew exactly what he was doing, and they were both laughing and smiling. "This," she said to Tabby, "is nuts."
Wanda snorted. "This is beyond nuts," she stated firmly. "This is surreal."
Tabby, looking paler than usual, said wanly, "Your boyfriend looks different..."
Kitty frowned. "Oh? Looks the same to me..."
Tabby raisedrow.row. "If you say so..." They were standing in the control room, looking down at the two, the game they seemed to be playing winding down as Kurt began to slow in his attacks. "So what did you want us to see?"
Kitty shrugged. "Just wanted to say hi before I took you two home."
Wanda gave Kitty a distinctly harassed look and glanced at the control board in front of her. Finding the switch for the intercom, she leaned over and said shortly. "Hi."
The two in the Danger Room looked up and Kurt began to wave, forgetting for a moment his worry and confusion. "Katzchen," he called, "want to play?"
"I think I'll take a rain check," she called back. "Come up here and say hi to the girls."
"The girls?" Tabby and Wanda said together.
"Oh, shut up," she replied, coloring slightly.
Wanda chuckled and took Tabby's hand in hers. "After this, we've got to get back. She needs to lay down again. I don't want you going into labor early," she said to Tabby.
"I'll cross my legs and hold it in," she said dryly.
Kitty rolled her eyes. "Did Beast tell you what it was?"
"Yeah, a baby," Tabby shot back.
Wanda elbowed her gently. "We don't want to know. We want it to be a surprise."
They fell silent and Kitty wondered at the oddity of the couple with her, how Wanda seemed to be quickly becoming invested in the relationship and Tabby did not mind a bit, enjoying the affection and attention and quite possibly feeling the same way the other girl did about her. She wondered if it would be impolitic to ask if they were in love but Kurt's entrance put paid to that notion. "I think my muscles are going to abdicate from my...my...Mein Gott!" He pointed a shaking finger at Tabby's abdomen. "You...you're..." His eyes rolled back in his head and he slid to the floor in an undignified heap.
Kitty sighed. "He's not himself today."

A/N Sorry if this is slow...there's going to be smut in ch. 11 and a twist in ch. 10, so bear with me. :)