Author's Note: So happy for new and old readers! Welcome all… and prepare yourselves. Remember this story rated M for Mature due to war-related themes.

Enjoy…

Kitty's injury slowed them.

The bullet had only grazed her, but it ached something fierce, and they didn't have the proper supplies to tend to it. It made their already slow pace all the more grueling, and what should have taken one exhausting day was now lingering into a third. The group of teens plodded on, mostly in silence, only stopping to fill their canteens or munch on the last of their food. The walk had been uphill for the most part, which did not help their progress, but no one cared to complain.

Pietro walked at the back of the group, one hand gripping the right strap of his pack to keep some of the weight off his injuries. His gaze remained low, though occasionally he chanced a look up. Bobby Drake walked in front of him just a few steps.

Angel and Kitty walked side by side, the darker girl looping her arm around the other's waist and occasionally whispering to her. Pietro could see her making tentative, comforting motions towards Kitty, but the other responded only with weak, false smiles.

Pietro looked away again, unwilling to admit to himself that even a few days before, he would have done something – even the smallest thing – to try and make Kitty feel better. Now, his body aching and everything in his mind a flurry of angry hornet-like thoughts, he could only think about how much he wanted to be home. Even Magneto's hateful glare was preferable to this.

The trek continued on, and the group only paused when Bobby Drake lifted his face against the wind and held out a hand. A single snowflake drifted into his palm, and instead of melting, it remained as it was. Bobby inspected it thoughtfully, not saying a word as other flurries joined it.

"Great," Angel muttered, wrapping her arms tighter around herself. "Just what we need."

Pietro's feelings on the situation were equally dismal, but it was snow, and complaining about it wasn't going to do them much good. The quartet continued on, and as the day wore on, their heads and coats were covered in little sticky snowflakes, clinging to them whenever possible.

Finally, late in the afternoon, something happened. It was Angel who alerted them, shouting and bounding ahead of rest, leaving Kitty a few steps behind as she pushed aside some tree branches.

"Guys, look!" she exclaimed, waving them over. "It's the coast!"

So it was. Pietro peered from a spot a few feet away.

They had only a glimpse, and it was still an unwelcome distance away, but there was no mistaking the sprawling port town that sat on the edge of the country's borders. Boats of different varieties dotted the shore, and from their spot far above the town, they could see the movements of people down below. "Finally," Bobby exhaled quietly.

Angel grinned at him and then hugged Kitty, careful to avoid her injured arm. "We did it, Kitty! We're here!"

Pietro watched as the brunette girl managed to muster a small smile. "Yeah, we did it," Kitty agreed weakly.

Angel bound ahead of them, practically skipping. "Let's go now!" She ducked under a branch.

"Angel, wait" protested Kitty. "We need to be careful. It's still daylight. Let's wait until night and then we can sneak in," she advised, slowing her walk and shifting her pack. Angel whirled around and began to walk backwards, her every step a joyful hop.

"Oh, alright," Angel groaned, still bouncing backwards. "But let me tell you, I cannot wait - "

But Pietro never heard what Angel could or could not wait for, because in that moment, her head jerked ungracefully to the side and sprayed warm, sticky blood on the pine next to her. A few droplets found their way to the fresh snow, staining it red.

Then Angel slumped, falling into the base of the tree in a tangle of roots and limbs.

The other teens stopped. Three heavy, loud heartbeats followed.

"A - Angel?" Kitty's tiny voice cracked under the strain of dawning comprehension.

Pietro's head turned, his eyes roving over every hazy branch, rock, and a tree. The world tilted, slowed, and then snapped back in to place with focus on a long, thin black barrel that protruded from a bush.

"GET DOWN!" Pietro shouted, rushing forward and throwing himself over Kitty. A single blistering shot blasted overhead and shattered the branch overhead. "Come on!" he snatched Kitty's arms and yanked her up, barely managing to tug her limp form over Angel's body.

More gunfire followed, this time rapid and accompanied by angry shouts. Pietro stumbled again, sliding to a stop in the powder white snow and moving to take Kitty into his arms. Gunfire rained down on them, driving into the dirt in unstoppable waves, and Pietro knew there were more soldiers than he'd seen.

"We have to go!" Pietro shouted at her over the noise, but Kitty's face registered none of it. He pulled her against him and moved to flee, but a wall of ice suddenly formed next to him and caught the tail end of a wave of bullets.

Bobby Drake dropped down next to them, his lips parted.

"Fuck!" he shouted, gripping his head for a moment. Pietro quickly jumped to his feet. "Get it together, Drake!" They both jumped, ready to flee, but Kitty's limp body phased right through his arms. Pietro panicked, waving his arms through her slumped form over and over.

"Damn it, Pryde! Stop phasing!"

Pietro scrambled back when bullets sliced into the air around them, but they all sailed right through Kitty, who sat hunched over the ground like the husk of a real person left behind.

"Come on, Kitty!" Drake shouted, but it was no use. The soldiers were advancing, one with a long scoped rifle, and there was nothing they could say to make her stop phasing.

More gunfire forced them further back, and the boys scrambled. Drake fell over onto the ground and barely managed to dodge a flurry of bullets. Pietro looked only at Kitty, his mind trying to reach her, yell at her, tell her she had to move or do something because she was going to die if she didn't. But it seemed no force could make her look up from where she stared hollowly at Angel's lifeless body on the ground.

Just then, Kitty's head lifted. Pietro's heart briefly leapt with joy, but it quickly faded. Kitty's face was not her own.

He watched as she stood slowly, her head tilted, arms lax, and turned fully in the direction of the advancing troops. Her brown eyes lifted and searched with unnatural movements. Pietro watched, his lips parted, as Kitty Pryde lifted her gaze high.

Her chest lifted, her lips parted, and Kitty took in a deep, shuddering breath, all before her hands curled into claw-like figures at her side and she let out a shrill, devastating scream.

It was not the sort of scream Pietro had ever heard in his life.

It did not fade when she should have been on her last bout of oxygen, but instead grew louder, shriller, and more anguished. Kitty's hands reached up and fisted in her hair, her gaping mouth jerking with the force of her furious clawing and yanking.

The soldiers halted, stared, and then looked to each other in bewilderment. This lasted only for a few moments, because it was quickly replaced by panic.

"Oh my god," said Bobby Drake next to him. "Maximoff, she's… phasing everything around us."

Pietro turned slowly, his hands shaking at his sides as he watched every soldier, every tree, every rock and every stick sink into the ground like a pit of quicksand had materialized beneath them.

Men shouted and tugged at their knees, now buried in dirt and growing shorter. They clamored at the dirt, trying to dig themselves out, but it was too much, too fast, and they began disappearing beneath the soil to drown in earth.

All the while, Kitty screamed.

Her fingers gripped her hair and then shifted down her neck in bloody runs carved by her fingernails. Pietro shook his head to clear it and reached forward to stop her, but he realized with a jolt that he could not move. "Fuck, Drake. She's phasing us, too!"

He and Bobby looked down to see their legs disappearing into the ground, their forgotten packs already below the surface.

"Shit, make her stop, Maximoff!" Bobby tugged and yanked at his legs, but he could not free them. "Hurry!"

Pietro jumped at Kitty, trying to grab her, but he was too far away. His fingers curled and twirled in the air, trying to reach her hand, but he was trapped and she was inches out of reach.

"PRYDE!" he shouted, trying to get her attention. "Pryde, stop!" He fought harder, trying to break free of his prison, but he was nearly to his hips now and he could feel the crushing weight pressing down on her with every slow, agonizing inch.

"Stop!" he reached for her again, his mind racing. Images flashed through his mind in a dizzying array of her smiles. He fought to reach her, more desperate by the second.

"KITTY!" Pietro cried out.

Her body shifted just a bit at his call of her name, and it was just enough for him to snatch her wrist. Pietro pulled her with all his force down on her knees in front of him, wrapped a hand around the back of her neck and brought her forehead to meet his.

"Stop," he told her firmly.

Kitty's screams dropped away quite suddenly. Her eyes flickered and shifted, the glazed stare pulling away like a receding tide. Her face hovered so close to his, he could see every click of recognition as it passed through her eyes.

Kitty choked, raspy sputters escaping her as they struggled to become words.

"Oh, god," she cried out, her face crumbling into ash. "Oh - I'm so - I'm so sor - " Her fingers moved, fighting for coordination, struggling for purchase as she blindly tried to help Pietro out of the ground. Jerky sobs and half-finished apologies turned into full, despairing cries.

"Kitty," Pietro forced his voice to steady. "It's okay, just get us out - "

"I'm so - I'm so - "

"I know, Kitty, just - " Pietro breathed in deeply. "Kitty, please... "

"I'm so sorry," she sobbed, and for a moment, Pietro wondered if she was seeing him or someone else. After several seconds of fumbling, she managed to get Pietro out of the ground, finally, but when he finally stood, what surrounded him was more devastating than he could have imagined.

A massive section of land that had once been forest was now nothing but patchy shrubbery and shallow graves. The soldiers who had assaulted them were well beneath the surface, with only a few odds and ends still visible above the dirt. Bobby stood next to him, brushing off his pants with weak and trembling hands.

Pietro turned back to Kitty and touched her shoulders. "We have to go," he told her, but she jerked away from him.

"We have to go get Angel!" she cried emphatically.

Pietro stared, his silver eyes flickering to the side before he managed to speak, his own throat dry. "Kitty..."

"We have to go get her!" Kitty screamed. Her voice dropped into a pleading whisper, eyes teary and imploring as she rushed to Pietro, grabbing his arms. "We have to go get her, Pietro. She's underground. She'll suffocate down there."

Next to them, Bobby Drake slumped to the ground and buried his face in his arms.

Pietro stepped forward, his breathing shaky. "Kitty, she's gone."

"No, she's just down THERE!" Kitty gestured hysterically. "We have to go help her! We have to get her out or she'll suffocate, please, Pietro. She doesn't want to be down there! It's - it's dark and she's afraid, Pietro." Her sobs brought her to her knees.

Pietro steeled himself to snap at her, to order to her to come with him, but instead his words faltered and his gaze dropped. Never before had he felt such despair as that which he shared with Kitty Pryde in that moment.

Pietro ran a hand over his face, streaking it with dirt as he cast a long look around their bleak surroundings. Without another word, he stepped over and gathered Kitty up, bringing her into his arms and stepping away.

He stopped next to Drake and shifted Kitty into one arm. The other he offered to Drake.

"It's time to go," he murmured.

Slowly, Bobby Drake looked up and took the hand. Pietro supported Kitty with both arms again and they continued on.

Half a mile to the coast.

They camped one more night, even though they were close enough to continue. Maybe because they had grown so used to it, it had come to be a comfort. Pietro wasn't sure anymore. He and Bobby faced the fire. Kitty Pryde slept between them, fitful even in sleep.

"Drake?" Pietro looked over at him. "I don't know if I can get us home," he admitted in quiet, even tones. "I don't know how."

Bobby stared at the flames, cracking a twig in his fingers and tossing it into the fire.

"I figured," he whispered in reply. "Otherwise, you would have been gone a long time ago." The fire crackled and spit. One of the logs in the center cracked under the heat.

"Just promise me one thing," Bobby continued, turning Pietro's way. Pietro raised a brow. "Promise you won't leave her." He nodded towards Kitty, who struggled in her sleeping bag against the weight of her dreams. Pietro turned away and focused on the cracked log. It simmered and popped from its place in the fire. Smoke curled and twisted from the top.

"I promise."

Once, when Kitty had been very young, she has fallen ill and had stayed home from school for an entire week. She'd only been ten or so, but even then, she had been desperately worried about all the work she was missing.

Kitty loved school. She hated being sick.

So Kitty begged her mother every day to allow her to return, but of course, she was told to rest by her mother and so she returned to her bed and slept as often as she could, determined to rejoin her classmates. By the time the week had ended, she felt even worse than before. Her sickness had gone away, but sleep seemed to be working against her. Her limbs hurt, her eye sockets ached, and everything on her felt weighed down.

She'd hated that feeling, and she'd hated it even more because she knew she had done it to herself. Humans were not meant to sleep like that, she realized. They weren't meant to feel like that, either.

Fifteen- year-old Kitty shuffled behind Pietro Maximoff, feeling so like her sick ten-year-old self.

The coastal city had not been as close as they had believed. The tall steeples and towering buildings which dotted the coast has misled them. Now, after hours more walking, they were coming close, and with every ambling step, Kitty cared less and less about escape. Words jumbled around in her head, fighting to form coherent thoughts, but the only thing that fell from her lips was the occasional grunt when she stumbled over a rock or a root.

If Pietro hadn't been leading her by the hand, she would have fallen.

Behind her was a beautiful tapestry of Polish countryside. In front of her was a labyrinth of high-reaching, antiquated buildings made of red brick and wrought-iron. This city was not fenced, Kitty noticed with disinterest, but it was patrolled by such a thick line of German soldiers that the city itself looked made of them.

"We need Kitty to sneak us past the front," Bobby said nearby. Pietro paused. Kitty nearly ran into him, but he touched her shoulder to stop her. Perhaps she had already done it once or twice. He turned to her.

"Where do you think we should go in?" Pietro asked her, tilting his head to look at her face. Kitty looked away, blinking slowly at the city. The sea beyond it was dark.

She shrugged.

Bobby sighed from a few feet away. His tone was not irritated, simply exhausted. He was probably upset, Kitty thought mildly.

Pietro turned her face to look back at him again, his fingers soft at her jawline.

"Kitty. Come on, think." His fingers grazed her temple, and the strange sensation made her eyes flicker and then close for a moment. She could feel her senses kick just a little, fighting for life, but she didn't have the energy to give them.

She dropped her face into Pietro's chest and said nothing.

He sighed, sounding much like Bobby. Somewhere nearby, a truck rumbled down the road. Kitty felt Pietro stir and put his hands on her arms. "Alright, look. There's only one road coming from this way and it's going into the city. We'll phase into that truck - Pay attention, Kitty - and then phase out before it gets through the checkpoints, okay?"

Kitty tilted her head up, peering at Bobby, who was looking at her skeptically. "I don't know, Maximoff. Kitty's not exactly... "

"She can do it," Pietro cut in, his tone biting. He shifted back to her. Kitty's only visible eye looked up at him, her cheek pressed against the fabric of his shirt. "Right?"

Kitty blinked at him a few times, her face rustling against him as she felt Pietro's hands move up her arms to sit on her shoulders. His fingers brushed the back of her neck.

Her voice hurt to use. "Right," she whispered.

Some part of Kitty woke up again when the trio sneaked into the cargo truck and, at last, entered the city.

Perhaps it was the sound of men shouting, tossing things about, rustling papers as they checked this or that. Maybe it was the clink of guns as they shifted on their owner's shoulders, waiting to be of use, or the less ominous roll of the nearby water as it lapped against the concrete barriers that lined the city. Kitty peered out of one of the gaps between the tarp that lay over the back of the truck.

Buildings came into view and then disappeared again. The map had called this place Gdańsk, but the glaring red posters that kept flashing by read firmly:

DANZIG IST DEUTSCHE.

- with a golden swatstika emblazoned the top right corner of every visible display. Nazi domination permeated the city like an infection, filling every nook and cranny with constant reminders of its tragic symptoms.

The truck rolled to a stop. Soldiers moved to check the cargo for clearance. Kitty reached up, moving of her own accord for the first time in nearly two days. She grasped the boys' hands and dropped them through the bottom and into the ground, surfacing again very nearby.

The trio found themselves at the corner of a shop inside the city, just ten or so feet away from where uniformed men inspected the now deserted truck space. Kitty straightened slowly, her back against a wall of crumbling brick. Bobby shifted his jacket.

"We're going to have to abandon our packs. They'll look suspicious," he pointed out. The others nodded and shed them, carrying only what they could in their coat pockets. Kitty buried the packs in the ground. When she straightened, Pietro was in front of her.

"Put your hat on," he told her, sitting the felt hat on her head and then tucking her brunette hair behind her ears. Kitty tilted her face up at him, her face lax and expressionless. He frowned down at her and slowly let his hands drop.

"I'm ready to go home," Kitty murmured hoarsely, brown eyes glassy.

She tried to register the peculiar look that passed over Pietro's face, but her mind was not up to investigation and, as always, he offered no explanation.

"I know," he said softly. "Just hold on to me," he glanced over his shoulder at the crowds of people that flooded the streets of Gdańsk.

"And if we get separated," he told her, "Just hide. I'll find you."

Kitty nodded and let him take her hand again as the three teens moved into the streets. It wasn't difficult to blend in. People of all sorts of shapes, sizes, and classes mixed together in the streets of the city, but there were nearly as many soldiers as civilians. The Jewish extermination had already happened here, Kitty knew. This city had once housed a Jewish population of almost three thousand.

Now, posters on the walls of city businesses promised a one way trip to Stutthof for any who harbored Jews. A spark of rage bubbled in Kitty's chest as Pietro tugged her past.

It made her feel alive to hate them. She feared that.

People bumped into them and some glanced their way, but most others ignored them. Pietro kept his head low, his eyes hidden under the brim of his hat. Kitty stumbled along behind him, trying not to lose her footing. Above them, a tall clock chimed.

They turned corner after corner. The city was a maze of streets blocked by people, streetcars, and horse-drawn carriages. The people here were like those in Warsaw in the sense that they moved about their everyday tasks in a tense, fervent way. Parents moved down sidewalks with their children tucked closely at their sides, their carts brimming full because they did not want to journey out of their homes more often than necessary.

Evidence of battle decorated the landscape. Chapel walls had shattered stone instead of stained-glass windows. A schoolyard had lost a swing set to a bomb. Some houses lacked whole walls or roofs. Bullets remained embedded in the streets, lightpoles, and sidewalks.

There was no fighting here, though. Not anymore. German occupation had settled deeply here.

Water came into view. Kitty's heart leapt, just a little, to see the massive barges that rolled with the inky black currents. These ships would not be going to Allied territory, but the neutral country of Sweden lay just across the channel. Thousands of Jewish people had taken refuge there since the start of the German occupation. It was there that Kitty and the others would be safe.

Some desperate part of Kitty decided that she was going to get on that boat if she had to kill every soldier in sight. It was an unwelcome mental image that she could not push away.

She glanced up, away from the boats, just long enough to scan the area. Her eyebrows furrowed as she glanced on another poster, and then one just like it a few feet away. They were not the propaganda posters from before. These had illustrations on them. Faces.

"Pietro," she said, tugging on their joined hands. Pietro hushed her, fighting hard to weave them through the crowds of people. She tugged on him again.

"Pietro," she hissed, trying to catch up with him so she could point. "Pietro, look! Pietro!"

"Not now!" he whispered harshly, yanking her to his side. "And keep your voice down - "

In front of teens, somewhere in the crowd, someone screamed. A gun fired. The people around them stopped, shuffled, and then another gunshot sent them into chaos.

Kitty shrieked when someone ran into her and knocked her to the ground, Pietro's hand yanked cruelly from hers. Overhead, she saw a Nazi officer standing high on a platform, his fist curled around the shirt collar of a young man, freshly killed.

"Das ist das Gesicht eines Verräters! Danzig ist deutsch! All diejenigen, die die Juden beherbergen, wird bestraft!"

The Nazi tossed the body carelessly in the water. A woman screamed and scrambled at the railing, trying to reach the body, but another gunshot echoed over the shouts and screams and then she, too, was dumped hastily into the sea.

"VERRÄTER!"

Kitty cried out softly and then jumped up, fighting and pushing her way through the crowd.

"PIETRO!" she shouted, twirling desperately in the midst of the chaos. "BOBBY!"

Everyone and everything around her was a blur. People shouted, shoved, and cried out for their loved ones as they clamored for the safety of their homes. Others on the docks and surrounding ports hurried to get away as more traitors were brought forth, all made into gruesome examples of totalitarian leadership.

The Nazi soldier did nothing to calm the crowd. Panic was his intended effect and his message was clear: do not harbor Jews.

Tears filled Kitty's eyes as she looked, jumped, and shouted for the boys, but they had both disappeared into the multitude of people around them. Her heart pounded, her limbs protested, and her shoes finally split around her feet. She left the pieces of them behind in the street and ran on bare skin over gritty gravel.

Alone, she fell to her knees on the sidewalk and heaved, trying not to panic.

"Pietro!" she called again, looking all around, but the faces all blurred together and her overburdened mind couldn't make sense of them. In the fray, she had lost her hat as well. Her dirty hair curtained her face in stringy pieces. She sobbed, unwilling to run anymore.

"Dziewczyna!"

Kitty looked up, sobs wracking her body. An elderly man peered at her from the corner of a barbershop, his bushy brows furrowed with concern. He quickly looked both ways and beckoned.

Kitty sniffed and peered at him, her eyes looking all around. She pointed to herself. "Me?" she asked, her throat dry.

"Tak! Chodź tu, szybko!"

The words were Polish and didn't mean much to Kitty, but she got the hint. She hurried up, falling over her bare feet, and jumped through the doorway of his shop. The man quickly closed his blinds and ushered her in.

Kitty breathed in shakily, tears still flooding down her face.

"I - I don't know what to do," she told the man, crying again when she realized he wouldn't understand her. She buried her unwashed face in her tired, aching hands and fought to remain standing.

The man shushed her, his hands coming up and dragging hers away. He pointed to the outside and shook his head. Then he led her gently by the hand to the wall behind one of his barber chairs and held up a hand for her to wait. Then he quickly moved the chair aside and opened a well-hidden door in the floor. He beckoned.

Kitty's eyes widened. "You - You're hiding me?" she asked. Outside the shop, people continued to shout. Gunshots echoed behind each execution on the waterfront.

The man reached for her hands again and squeezed them gently, giving them a little shake.

The barrier between their languages melted away and the transcending nature of human emotion took its place. Kitty did not need his words to know that he meant to keep her safe. He did not need her words to know that she was overwhelmed with gratitude.

Kitty quickly took the steps revealed by the secret door and dropped down into the dark hole. The man peered down at her, his finger at his lips in a hushed motion, before he slowly slid the lid over Kitty's anxious face and eclipsed her in total darkness.