It had been difficult, the same sort of endlessly annoying, tedious and drawn-out feeling he'd gotten when his uniform had gotten so soaked through that the water had reached his fur, and everything became an impossible vacuum-sealed combination of clingy spandex and clingy fur. It'd taken what had seemed like forever to peel himself out of the ridiculous ensemble, in those instances, and every moment of it had felt like a literal fur-pulling agony. Not, as it turned out, that it had actually been anything even remotely resembling agony. Not that it had been even in the same family of sensations.
And not that this had been something so petty as removing the red and black.
When he finally slipped free of his body and the sheer pain it had been experiencing, the relief that Kurt Wagner felt was enormous. It was a bigger, broader, wider feeling than he'd ever felt before, something indescribably large, larger than felt could fit inside his body-which was just fine, suddenly, because suddenly he knew he had no ties to that body any longer. The process of dying, he understood now what he had always suspected, was itself terrifying and painful, but the state of being dead, after the dying, was actually more of a comfort than living had ever been.
Still, beyond the euphoria that faded to comfort, Kurt was filled with the nagging feeling of having left something unfinished, something that was keeping him from really being able to answer to call that was showering down on him from above. There was something he needed to do first.
The world around him had grown hazy and soft-focus, and even as he realized he could look around him and see the grief-stricken faces of those he had called friends and family for so long, gathered around the shell he'd left behind, he realized something else; he could 'phase', much like one of his oldest and dearest friends could, through the ground and move at his whim regardless of what had once stood as a physical barrier. He also realized that the one thing he needed to do lay in the medical labs below Utopia's ground. Like a sigh, he drifted downwards, passing through his own body and rock and metal, wires and infrastructure.
Time took on a distorted feeling that had no meaning; Kurt could feel no sense of hurry so divorced from his flesh and bone, from the heart in his chest which had kept time and tempo for every moment of his life. By the time he got where he was going, the sun had already finished setting, and someone had gotten there before him.
Their forms were as insubstantial-looking as he imagined he must look to them, if they could see him at all. Kurt had no reason to believe they could. Still, he could make out what was going on if he concentrated, like the effort of will it took to hold on to something that was almost out of reach. Logan's squat, dense form with both hands pressed against the metallic cylinder , his forehead leaning against its viewing port. Kitty's own blurry image inside, both hands over her mouth. He could feel the heartache radiating off of them in waves, and briefly his entire being-what was left of it-was overcome with regret. He hadn't even gotten to say hello to Kitty, much less goodbye, not since she'd returned from being lost in the stars, and now...
...now it was too late.
Too late to make amends, too late to tell Scott where he could shove his terrible crusade, too late to remake decisions that he knew in his heart he'd never have made any other way anyway. Kurt felt heavy, like there was a great inertia pulling him downwards, watching the shadow play of the man who might as well have been his brother tell the closest friend he'd ever had that there would be no happy reunion for them, not now or ever again. Logan should never had found cause to carry that burden, too.
Yet, as he watched, Kurt became slowly aware of something. A shift in the palette of colors his friends were made of, or perhaps more accurately a shift in his perception. He could see, suddenly, the dark patches over their hearts, the places where their souls had been battered, pieces torn away by loss and life and villainy. There were so many holes, so much pain and patchwork in the both of them, that Kurt knew he would never be able to make up the difference. Just as suddenly, he knew that he could do something.
He really had no actual inside or outside any more, but it still felt like reaching inside of himself and tearing free small pieces of his immortal self. Fragments of whatever ineffable star-stuff made him unmistakably Kurt Wagner and no one else-he tore them free with a strange wrenching sensation of not-pain and rolled them between his 'fingers' until they had formed into small, lopsided spheres. Without any better idea of what he was doing than the instinct to do it, Kurt reached forward, letting his hand pass through Logan's body until he could place the little piece of himself into one of those terrible, aching voids.
The darkness in his friend lit up from inside with the addition, and Logan seemed none the wiser. Kurt smiled, very faintly.
"My dearest friends. You must not cry too much for me. I know the pain is great but it will fade in time. And here, this way...there is always a piece of me with you, a part of you now, you will not be alone. I will be watching, I will be with you." He knew they couldn't hear him, but it almost felt better for Kurt to keep up the concept of the words, even as he eddied forward and reached through the containment shell to place the second bit of soul-stuff into the darkness of Kitty's heart.
Unlike with Logan, there was the faintest echo of a physical sensation as he did this, and Kitty drew in a sudden, almost helpless breath. Her eyes came up and for a moment, just one long protracted beat of a heart he had no longer, she was looking straight at him. Not through him, but at him, her face shocked and wild with sorrow. He could see her lips move without the sound accompanying.
'Kurt?'
He had just enough time to smile with all the love he'd ever felt, to release the piece of himself to her care, before the light flared around him and he was finally Called Home.
