The Day Kyle Died, a Nicole's Knick Knacks ficlet
Disclaimer: I do not own Kyle XY
Author's Note: Inspired from the series finale. Italics refer to Nicole's monologue in this ficlet.
***
We returned to a destroyed kitchen and our patio doors strewn about our backyard and deck in tiny shards. Because we had treated the kids – well, Lori and Josh – to the movies, we knew two other kids who could have been in very real and mortal danger.
I kicked myself for not having stayed home.
Nicole Trager stood shakily in the kitchen overlooking the carnage. There was no sign of either Kyle or Jessi and no sign of forced entry. Josh summarized my thoughts exactly, only with enthusiasm instead of the dread she felt in her gut. "Woah, it looks like something exploded in here!"
When he sniggered in his teenage way Nicole knew immediately what he believed to have happened: Kyle and Jessi had defied them and had sex in the house, in their kitchen. Nicole wanted to swat Josh upside the head for the devilish remark and she was thankful when Lori did it for her, not that she approved of siblings whacking each other.
"Lori, don't hit your brother," Stephen said even as he whacked Josh up the other side of the head. "It's our job."
"Hey!" Josh exclaimed in my direction. "Abuse?"
Nicole gave him a stern look despite her emotional frailty at the moment. "I have a bad feeling about this," she said as she circled herself with her arms. Stephen was beside her in a moment and Lori was only a few seconds later.
Lori said, "You think Latnok did this?"
"I did," Kyle said from behind them.
"You're safe!" Lori shouted.
"Nicole, I'm so happy you're safe," Kyle said as he hurried into her arms. Nicole felt somewhat proud and worried to be singled out.
"What happened, Kyle?" she asked as he began to sob.
It appeared to her that Kyle was intentionally keeping the others' presence out of mind for some reason. "I killed him. I killed Cassidy. He," he started and paused as a big sob choked him, "was my brother."
Kyle began to wail then and Nicole was shocked to the core of her being. The others gasped and touched her shoulder or stayed by her side – by Kyle's side – but their continued presence, without judgement, without unnecessary questions, was highly valued.
Nevertheless, the Kyle that would emerge from this ordeal would be a drastically changed one. He was no longer innocent, no longer carefree, and no longer her Kyle. That night, she later learned, was the night Kyle died.
No, not only did he end his relationships with friends, romantic and otherwise, but he also stopped working as hard at school, striving instead solely for the normalcy he had always wanted. Jessi left when she no longer could get through to him, and Amanda too could only wait so long seeing that she didn't know his secrets.
Months later Nicole was working futilely in her little office wondering what more she could do to restore Kyle to his former self. She had a notebook dedicated completely to this ideal and yet had no success whatsoever with him. Whatever she tried, he countered with published studies showing the value of what he was doing and showing her how ineffective and innocent she was being about him.
He was a changed man, perhaps traumatized to a degree he had admitted, but he was able to objectively determine that keeping the distance between him and others while also restricting his abilities was the safest alternative for his entire circle of past friends and current family.
Nicole sighed. However small that family is now, she thought derisively. Both Josh and Lori had moved out from Doom and Gloom Boy. Stephen and Nicole had paid the deposits on their apartments but they were maintaining them. No, it was now only she and Stephen with a decidedly mole-like Kyle.
She gazed longingly at one of the photo-realistic pictures he'd drawn for her when he'd just joined the family officially. It was startlingly real despite being composed solely of dots from crayons no less. She shook her head while a sad smile spread on her face. Both Kyle and Jessi drew like that.
Except that Kyle no longer did. He had started practicing drawing, like a child, making pitiful stick people and piss poor drawings even young teenagers would sneer at.
Nicole got up from her chair and was on her way to Kyle's room when the doorbell rang. She turned around and opened the front door but was surprised at the regal old lady standing there with a huge limousine parked across their driveway and the neighbor's, the Blooms.
"Hi, can I help you?" she said, momentarily perplexed.
"Good morning Nicole," the old lady said as she seemed to be looking up her nose toward her eyes. The old lady was nearly a foot shorter than she was. "My name is Grace Kingsley and you have been housing both a murderer and a failed experiment. I demand custody of 781227, or the one you call Kyle Trager." Kyle's name was uttered with such contempt and distaste it sent Nicole's hackles up.
Nicole made an effort to give the lady a good natured smile. "Maybe your intelligence is off Grace but Kyle no longer lives with us and to be honest I have no clue where he is anymore."
"Is that so?" Grace inquired with noticeable doubt.
"Ever since your biological son Cassidy tried to murder him – and murder us – did Kyle protect us the only way he could. Your son destroyed Kyle!" she exclaimed without meaning to. The emotion got the better of her. Before her stood the witch who bore the man who drove Kyle out of her life! The young man who was in his room now was nothing but a shell. Nevertheless, he mustn't overhear this conversation or… She couldn't fathom his response to this woman. Perhaps more accurately, she feared she could fathom it.
Grace Kingsley smiled viciously and tried to take a step around Nicole into the doorway. "Kyle! My name is Grace Kingsley and I demand your—"
Nicole was surprised by the woman's actions and tried to push her back out the door. At the lady's age it should have been easy but for some reason the woman could be budged no more than a locked steel door. Nicole, angered beyond belief and utterly surprised by the strength of the old woman, took a step back and gave the nastiest punch to the head that she could muster.
The woman turned without a cry of pain or anything. Grace Kingsley smiled. "Since you are so fond of our failed experiments and of housing them and adopting them and so forth, how about I give you a little taste of 781228's favorite killing method?"
Nicole had no time to react. Grace Kingsley's hand was impossibly strong and was clamped around her neck like a vice. Her feet left the ground in a dizzying feat of strength and Nicole could only believe her death would come in mere moments. Her pulse pounded in her ears as she grasped futilely at Grace's hand.
She never heard anything but the pounding of her heart in her ears but was soon splattered by gouts of blood and chunks of white gore before the hand loosened its grip. She fell to the ground as she tried frantically to pull in a breath through a crushed wind pipe. She understood only that she would die. Her eyes closed against her will as she fought with slowing effort and will to live.
***
Nicole's eyes opened and she was in her bed. Her hand instantly went to her neck in memory of her crushed wind pipe by the horror that was Kyle's mother, Grace Kingsley. Had it all been some nasty dream?
The drapes were closed but fleeting sunshine filtered through nonetheless. The spot beside her was empty. She glanced at their bedside clock and saw it was a little past eight.
Nicole sighed in relief. She got up and got dressed and did the few extra things she always did to keep middle age away. It made her feel sexy and that was good.
Because Josh and Lori no longer lived with them she didn't bother to call out their names. She descended the steps and proceeded to the kitchen for a bowl of fruit for breakfast and maybe a little coffee too.
Strangely she didn't feel particularly tired.
The pit of her stomach tightened when she walked into the kitchen. She never noticed the smells of spaghetti and her husband's nearly famous meatballs nor the sound of whispers and the light clinking of glasses and forks and spoons.
Her entire clan sat at the table. Josh was home from Vancouver up in Canada. Lori was home from Oakland further away. Kyle and Jessi sat almost hand in hand at the table turned toward her with identical beaming smiles.
Kyle said, "Nicole, how are you feeling?"
Nicole was speechless. Instead, her hand went to her throat where she smoothed unblemished skin.
Stephen was less composed and she saw in his eyes what she both feared and wanted beyond her wildest hopes and dreams. Not only had she quite possibly died that day at the hand of Grace Kingsley, but her Kyle had returned to the living as had the rest of her brood. Did it matter that neither Kyle nor Jessi were biologically linked to her? Not at all. By the smiles in their eyes she knew they were Tragers through and through.
As her family stood – she saw the man Tom Foss in the corner being his invisible self – and gave her hugs and kisses and shared long tender moments, she knew in the deepest part of her soul the one thing that mattered most.
Just as she had died that day, and just as Kyle had perished in heart months previously, they had both returned from the dead together.
FIN