XxXxX
"Climbing trees again," Logan said, scowling up at her. "Haven't seen you do that since you were in high school. Something eating you, half-pint?"
Kitty stuck her tongue out at him from her resting place in the oak's upper boughs. "Seriously, Logan, I'm almost, like, twenty-two. Could you stop calling me that?"
"Grow up some and I'll consider it."
She thought she saw a phantom of a smirk on Wolverine's face. Funny, because he himself was only about an inch taller than Kitty, at an unimpressive five foot three. But somehow his diminutive stature was never the part of Logan that made an impression on people…
"C'mon, the others are looking for you. One of the new kids made dinner and Charles says we all have to sit down together and eat it."
Shadowcat sighed, savoring the last few moments in her haven of solitude. Then she started climbing down. About halfway through the descent, her foot slipped. The branch in her hand snapped like dry chalk, and she pitched backward. Strange, she thought for a surreal, slow moment as gravity wrapped its hands firmly around her. I've never fallen before…
Logan was underneath her, she realized even as the scream caught in her throat and her body started its plummet. Logan would catch her. She could already feel him moving in beneath her with open arms. She saw the stern look ready on his face as she fell into his arms, and then his confusion as she through them to the ground. From there, she gaped up at him. He stood over her, arms empty, his face shocked.
It took what felt like a full minute to understand what had happened.
"Oh my God. Logan!" Joy flooded her. "My powers! Did you see? I phased right through you! My powers are back!"
Something flickered behind the surprise in Logan's eyes. Panic. Then fear. His lips moved. He was speaking to her, Kitty realized, shouting. But no noise left his open mouth. She suddenly became aware of the eerily silence of everything around them. Hadn't there been birds chirping only a moment before?
"Logan? What's wrong?" Kitty reached to take his hand and pull herself up. Her fingers slid through his as if she was made of water. As if she wasn't even there at all.
It was her turn to feel panic then. She tried to get up, but couldn't, and looked down to see that her legs had already sunk deep into the ground. When she tried to move them, to phase upward, she felt nothing. Could do nothing. It was as if she didn't exist from the waist down at all. And – her heart lurched – and she was still sinking.
"Logan!" She reached for him again, but this time out of desperation. "I can't stop it! Please, I can't-" and Logan was reaching for her too, trying to grab ahold of her, silently shouting at her to take his hand! Stop! But each time their arms met, she passed through him like she was nothing. And still, she sunk deeper into the ground.
The others were running out of X-mansion now, toward them. Jean and Rogue and Kurt and Scott – her teammates and the new recruits, all tearing toward her, shouting with empty, silent mouths. They swarmed around her, and Kitty was only sinking faster and faster, down to her navel and then past her chest, and from below the earth she felt nothing at all, and that scared her more than anything else. "Please, please," she realized she was crying. Hot, wet tears left scalding tracks down her cheeks, and her uplifted arms burned like they'd been doused in kerosene as she reached. Above her were a dozen open arms, stretching fingers, and desperate hands as her family and friends tried to pull her up, to save her. A hundred hands, and she couldn't grab ahold of one. She sank. Finally, her arms dropped, too burned and exhausted to reach anymore. She tilted her head back as the ground closed up over her neck and then hugged at the corners of her jaw.
The faces of her friends grew father and farther away. Silent, scalding tears streaming past her temples and into the dirt that was closing over her ears and creeping up until she was only a face and nothing below. The last thing she saw as she sank into the earth was someone forcing apart the crowd, someone shoving aside Evan and Scott, pushing through everyone with ferocious, desperate rage. And even through the horrible, all-encompassing silence and the ground swallowing her up, she could see so clearly that what Lance Alvers was screaming was her name.
XxXxX
Kitty shot up in bed to roll of deafening thunder. Cold. Sweating. Alive. She could feel her body, tangible and solid all around her, shaking and tight with fear. Shivering, she pulled her comforter around her like a second skin and, without even thinking, reached for her phone. She was half way through finding his name in her contact list before she stopped herself. Outside, summer rain beat down on the window in sheets. A dream. It had only been a horrible dream. She didn't have to call him to say she was okay. He would probably question that statement just by the mere fact that she had called him at - she glanced at the top banner of her cell - four forty in the morning just to say so. Besides, Kitty thought, as the backlight burned his name into her eyes, he probably wouldn't even pick up for her anyway. She knew she wouldn't, if the situation were reversed.
The tears fell onto the phone screen, surprising her. They were just as hot and burning as they had been in her dreams.
XxXxX
"Couldn't sleep?"
Kitty looked up to see Kurt standing in the doorway in his pajama pants, a cell phone in his hands.
"Bad dream," Kitty said, sending the milk carton sliding across the kitchen table as Kurt got out a bowl and sat down across from her.
Kurt raised his eyebrows at the proffered jug, pouring dry cheerios into his bowl. "I know you're dirty secret, Kitty Pryde. You think I forgot that you drink straight from the carton? Cooties."
Kitty put down her spoon. "If you're going to torment me, I'll just go back to my room."
Kurt snickered, pouring milk into his bowl.
"What are you doing up so early?" she asked. "I thought you could sleep through anything."
"I can. Amanda's scared of thunderstorms," Kurt said, placing the phone down on the table. "We've been talking for the past hour." Kitty noticed that he wasn't wearing his hologram projector on his wrist, and was surprised by the umpteenth time to realize that Kurt's smooth, peach hued skin wasn't an illusion this time.
"What a good boyfriend," Kitty crooned.
Kurt winked as he shoveled cereal into his mouth. "Now you see what you missed out on, huh?"
Kitty snorted, getting some milk up her nose. "Ugh, like gross."
Kurt grinned. "Soo, are you ready for Boom Boom's party tonight?"
"At this rate, I'll be ready for bed by dinner time. I don't even want to think about clubbing."
"Then you'd better find the time for a power nap, because Boom Boom will kill you if you don't show up. And now you can't just walk through a wall or two to escape her."
"I know, I know. Besides, it wouldn't be fair to Rogue. I pretty much convinced her to come. I can't bail out now."
"Maybe you can make it fun for yourself. Take, say, a date."
Kitty wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, I'm sure that Rogue would be super thrilled if I bringing a boy to a party she barely wants to go to. Besides, it's not like I have anyone to ask."
"I think you mean, no one you want to ask," Kurt ribbed.
Kitty gave him a smile, but he must have seen its thinness because he dropped his playful demeanor quickly. "Hey, you are only awake because of a nightmare, right? I mean, if there's anything you want to talk about…?"
This time Kitty's smile was real. "Thanks Kurt, I'm okay. It really was just a bad dream."
"Yeah…" Kurt looked awkwardly around the room for a moment, before sighing and setting his spoon down with seriousness. "Look Kitty, Scott may have said a few things to me earlier. And, well, you know that I don't like Avalanche. In fact I think the guy's a jerk and all wrong for you. But if you ever want to talk to someone about it."
Kitty put her hand over Kurt's and felt five, bare-skinned fingers under hers. "I know. Thanks. But I'm really fine." She gave his hand a light squeeze. He looked relieved. Then she stood, clearing her bowl to the sink. "I think I'm just going to try to get some sleep before sunrise, and then tonight I'll go to the party and try to enjoy myself. It'll be great."
"You sound so convinced. Maybe you really should try bringing someone," Kurt said, playfulness returning. "But be careful about it. Rumor has it that one of the new recruits might just die of happiness if you asked him on a date."
Kitty nearly dropped her bowl in the sink. "What?"
"Let's just say I have my little birds throughout the institute," Kurt grinned, making a sprinkling motion with hand as if he were scattering seeds.
"And just who might these little birds happen to be?"
"Ah ah ah!" Kurt lifted a scolding finger as he leaned back in his chair, "I don't betray my sources. It's the first rule for the Master of Whispers."
"Master of-" Kitty laughed, rolling her eyes. "Kurt, you seriously need to stop watching so much of that show. It's taking over your life."
"If by 'that show' you mean the best series of all time, then: kindly watch it before you diss it. One does not simply insult Game of Thrones."
"Yeah, yeah. Maybe I will," Kitty waved a dismissive hand. "Sometime. But right now I'm going to try and get some – what? What's wrong?"
At the table, Kurt's entire body had gone whip-like from lax to rigid, his eyes sharp and fixed on something behind her. Kitty had done too many missions with Nightcrawler to not recognize when something was wrong. Flashes of her slipping through the ground, dark and suffocating, flit across her brain. She looked down, but her feet were still solid and firmly planted on the floor.
"I think I saw… something." Kurt said quietly, getting up as silent as a whisper. He padded past her barefoot to the entryway and slowly poked his head out into the hallway, looking left and then right. Kitty came up alongside him, sliding off her slippers as well to make less noise.
"What?" she whispered quietly.
Kurt nodded down the hall towards the living hall, his golden brown eyes fixed on a place that looked like nothing but shadow to her. "Someone was just there, watching us."
"Are you sure?" Kitty whispered around her stomach, which was suddenly halfway up her throat.
"If only I had my powers," Kurt whispered angrily, "I could teleport down there and…"
"You don't," Kitty said, putting her hand on his shoulder softly. "But you have me. Come on, let's go check it out together."
They crept down the hall in the dark, sliding in and out of shadows until they reached the end of the hall. Then they slid into the great room, pulling back curtains and checking all the crannies. They went into the foyer and looked under the grand stair.
"Are you sure you saw something?" Kitty asked once they'd combed the library, still whispering despite herself.
A flash of silent lightning illuminated the frown on Kurt's face. "Definitely."
"Maybe it was just one of the kids sneaking around," Kitty suggested. "They're not supposed to be up this late. Maybe they heard us talking and went back to their room."
"Maybe you're right," Kurt said, but Kitty saw him shaking his head slowly. "I just thought… it looked like someone I'd seen before. And I didn't like the way they were creeping around. Like…"
"Like what?" Kitty pressured, his silence doing more to shred her nerves than anything else.
"Like someone who was watching the two of us, and didn't want to be found."
AN: BUM BUM BUM. More direct Lancitty interactions to come soon.