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Now you can see, through the streams in your eyes: every nickel is wood.
-Jude
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Chapter Thirty: Wooden Nickel Splinters
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Nat nearly doubled over in the pain of shock, her hands clutched tightly around the edge of the mattress. Her tongue felt thick and used, like a dry, scaly snake trapped in her mouth. On the floor beside the bed, a cluster of wires sparked and popped, emitting tiny fireworks from the shattered ceramic shards that had once been the lamp. Kurt reached down and pulled the plug deftly out of the outlet with a jerk of his wrist, and spun the cord in a circle, smiling. He eyed Nat carefully, his expression one of concern, and Nat stared back with a little shiver.
She noted his fretful appearance and felt herself go cold. A mass of ice settled at the base of her stomach to contrast the burning of her limbs, and she pressed her fingertips to her eyelids so she wouldn't have to look him in the face.
"Nat? Was? Are you alright?" His voice was thick with anxiety over her distressed condition, which didn't help the way she was feeling. Guilt swept in and washed over her fury, but didn't serve to flush it away.
Her cheeks were wet, and she hid her eyes from his line of sight. Still, she didn't resist when she felt the mattress bow as he sat down next to her, bringing her right thigh into contact with his left one, or when he drew her against his chest. The idea was a simple one, really: go limp, let herself fall floppy and numb like a rag doll, and maybe she would manage to take comfort in his nearness and calm down sooner. It didn't seem to work, but at least the sobs of the earlier day had been replaced with the more composed look of a mere wet face. His shoulder was hard, but the curve where it met his neck was warm, and she let her cheek take haven in it.
His indigo hands trailed along her back, and his chin came to rest on the top of her head. He shushed her gently, swaying a bit from side to side. "Was, Nat?"
"I…I did something terrible a while ago," her voice caught in her throat in the form of a whimper, "and I think it's finally come back for me."
Kurt's amber eyes narrowed, but he chuckled. "Um Himmels willen, Nat! It can't be as bad as all that." He brushed a dark curl out of her eyes in a gesture of comfort, and she blushed absently.
She sniffled, gazing at the shattered lamp and the displaced books and papers from the bedside table. "How do you know?"
"Vell, how do you know it's so bad?"
Angry again, but unsure of her real target, Nat shoved him away, getting to her feet and stalking over to the window, arms crossed over her chest. "Damn it, Kurt!" Outside, she could see heat lines wavering over the trees in the distance, and the appealing glint of the swimming pool and Breakstone Lake not far away. She focused on one tree, a scrawny, flaccid thing that looked choked in the early summer heat. "Why do you always turn my questions around so I look like a moron? I know when I've done something wrong, and this time I really have!"
Kurt blinked, surprised. "I…I didn't know I vas doing that." He swallowed, frowning at her as he approached from behind, keeping a safe few meters between them. "I'm sorry. Und I vant to know all about it, if you vant to tell me." Cautiously, he circled her until he came to a stop at the left side of the window frame, watching her intently in the long silence that followed.
"So?" she asked in a quiet, strangled voice.
"Was?"
He frowned at the sight of her glare, and tears gathering heavily in her eyes. "Go on! Get out of here, if you want to hear it so badly!" She raised on trembling hand and pointed at the door, barking, "Get out of here and hear all the dirt from your little friend Kitty!"
"Nein, I'd rather you tell me," he said softly. Nat's arm dropped lifelessly and she turned back to the window, bracing herself on her hands. Her anger seemed temporarily drained, but Kurt found that he had a little to share instead. "Verflucht, Nat!" he cried, grasping her by the shoulders and spinning her around so he could meet her stunned eyes. Her mouth was a tiny circle, her cheeks bright white.
"Get off of me!" she shrieked, tearing her arm from his grip, rage flaring to life again like a fickle storm, perpetually horizon-dwelling but unsure of its direction. The fear and anger of being manhandled by Pietro was still fresh in her mind. "Go talk to her! She doesn't seem to mind talking about it in the slightest, seeing as how she's been spreading my past round like it's her business rather than mine. So go talk to her! Wouldn't that be a whole lot simpler that all of this?"
"Nein, nein it vouldn't! I vant you to tell me. After all his time, all this verdammt secrecy, I think I have a right to know vat you think is so terrible that you've never had the guts to tell me about it!" He took her shoulders again, shaking her lightly, his voice dropping a note and calming. "Vat do you think I'm going to do ven I find out this secret of yours?"
Her green eyes were haunted, and she whispered, "I…I don't know, I guess. Nothing, maybe. Or a lot."
Gently, Kurt's hands slid down to her elbows, grasping them and bringing her closer, so her hands were against his chest. He didn't flinch at the inhuman heat that they gave off, and she stared at him, searching for something in his gaze. He went on kindly. "Is it that you think I'll be mad at you? Is that vy you're afraid to tell me?"
"I…don't know."
He laughed quietly, a characteristically easy sound that seemed out of place in the tense room. It bit her to the bone to think how painless it was for him to laugh, and how hard it was for her. "Vell, for someone who thinks they know all about this terrible thing they did, you don't seem to know much about how I'll react."
"Please, Kurt. Don't tease me now."
Kurt shrugged, pulling her into a gentle embrace. His voice was soft and near her ear, and her cheek again nuzzled the side of his neck, feeling the soft, warm fuzz there. "Okay, mein Flamme. No teasing now."
His eyes drifted shut, but Nat kept hers broad and unblinking. She felt his body beneath her touch, soothingly cool under her hot fingers. The beating of his heart was not far beneath the fabric of his shirt and the flesh of his chest, and she wondered obscurely why it seemed that she could feel it even when she wasn't touching him. She sighed. "Do you really want to know?"
"Ja, ja. I really do."
She swallowed hard. Her breath came in shaky gasps, but she continued, almost unbroken in her speech. "Okay. Okay, I think I can do this. I think I can tell you."
"Vith me, you can say anything. You know that, right?"
She nodded, reining in fresh tears and clenching her hands into fists. "I don't have much control over my powers, even here. I never have." She started to shake, and bit her tongue. "I've caused some awful fires." A knot tied in her tongue to keep calm, and made her mouth feel like it was lined with cotton. "People have been…hurt."
There was a prolonged moment before Kurt found the words to speak again. "Ja, Nat, I know das."
Agony almost exploded in her chest, a wave of surprise and furious fear. Had he already heard from someone? Pietro? The professor? Desperation clouded her sense of reality, but curiosity drove her desire to know what was happening here. "What do you mean, you know? Who told you?"
"Niemand! Nobody told me, Liebchen. At least not out loud. I think maybe you told me. I like to think that I know you pretty vell. I could…I don't know, see it. In your eyes, and the vay you carried it around on your heart." He shrugged. "The vay you reacted ven the table caught on fire that night on Muir Island, and the vay you alvays avoided questions about your past."
If he already knew, than what was the point of hiding anymore? Relief flooded through her, accompanied by a vague humiliation. "You mean…you could just…tell?"
He chuckled lightly. "I suppose so. But I vas never absolutely sure, and I knew you didn't vant to talk about it. So I just pretended that I knew nothing, and you didn't seem to mind."
Her cheeks blazed in an inexplicable annoyance. She'd tried so hard not to let him find out these things, and had spent countless nights agonizing over how she would tell him when he found something out, as he undoubtedly would some day. Now, she found out that he had already known, and possibly for as long as she had been hiding it. It was almost like being mocked, and she sought her mind for the proper response, which turned out to be an attempt to shock him.
"I killed my father, you know."
Kurt's face twitched, his yellow eyes shocked at her candor. Behind him, his barbed, devilish blue tail stopped flicking at the air and was still. "Was?"
She nodded, and words began to spill from her like wine from a bottle now that the cork had been broken. "A few years ago. There was no car accident, like I told you there was." She began to pace, unable to meet the face of her sweet-voiced companion. Smoke coils circled her body, but no flame was present, and she seemed unconcerned about it. "I was upset that he hadn't come to see me in so long, that he had abandoned me as soon as he realized that I was a mutant. He called me a freak. Did you know that? Right to my face, when I was eleven years old! 'Dirty mutie freak', he said, with some other words I don't want to remember, and spat at me. He smelled like cheap booze and hatred and God damned betrayal, and I hated him almost as much as I loved him!" She was trembling now, her entire body lost in the heat of the memory.
Kurt remained silent, but backed up slowly and lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, watching her with mournful eyes. He looked weak, confused, his large hands clenched into nervous fists. Nat went on, unable to stop herself now that she had begun.
"So, when I was fourteen, and I went to see him…the truth was that he was as screwed up as ever, and a filthy drunk to boot. But I still loved him, because I'm dumb, I guess, and I tried to talk to him. And when he turned me away again—" a snap of her fingers "—the old man got roasted, in a split second of lost control. The last thing I said to him was that I hated him." She quavered in voice and body, her green eyes glazed and her cheeks ashen. She stopped pacing, once more at the window, and hugged her arms to her body to keep warm despite the summer heat outside.
Not far away, Kurt's voice was tender, carefully moderated in the quiet of the room. "You know, sometimes the hardest part of these things is admitting to it. Maybe now you can…let it go."
A jolt ran the length of her body, and when she slid slowly downward she lost sight of him for a moment, then found him at her side. Her knees were on the carpet, her feet tucked awkwardly beneath her, and he sat beside her with his arm around her waist. "I tried, Kurt, I really did. But I can't let it go when it keeps happening over and over again! It happened at my last school, and nobody got killed, but I destroyed the entire building! I almost blinded a girl, and everyone could have died!" She drew in a shaky breath. "And you've seen me lose control more than once, on a smaller scale. What would I do if it got out of hand?"
Kurt didn't answer for a few long minutes, and when he spoke his tone was hushed. "You vere just a kid, though, ven your father vas…lost. It vasn't intentional, and it vasn't you're fault. None of us knew how to control our powers that long ago. And the last time, at your school…I'm sure it vas an accident. You've already improved your control in the short time you've been vith us at the institute." He hesitated, glancing down at her and noting her far-off, troubled expression. "But…vas that the last?"
She shook her head as he pulled her closer to him, her head tucked under his chin again. "No. It's never the last. Never has been, at least."
Kurt sighed. Of all the things he had expected to hear, her father's accidental death was not one of them. Pain gnawed at his insides, an ache brought on by what she must have been feeling to hide this for so many years. How horrible it must have been, to think that the world would blame you for your accidental crimes, and to probably be right! He was feared for his appearance, a fact that he tried stringently not to dwell upon or complain about, and the world saw him as a demon. And poor Nat, this gentle girl that no one seemed to know very well, was feared as a hazard. The worst part, Kurt assumed, was that she too saw herself as a liability, a potential danger to others. She was afraid of herself, because the world was afraid of her. "That's alright. Here, vith us, you can learn to control yourself more. Soon, you von't have to vorry about your fire going crazy on you. I promise."
Nat squeezed her eyes shut, blotting out the world that had gone hazy through a veil of tears. "Don't promise, Kurt, please. Not when it can't really be kept." She sniffled lightly, rubbing her eyelids with the back of her hand. "I haven't told anybody yet, but…"
"Was?"
"It's been getting worse." She nodded at his questioning glance, pressing her cheek against his collar with a sigh. "The fire. I feel like my hands are going to…I can't even think of a word for it! It's as if there's a fire inside me, quite literally, that's coming out more and more and more these days. I never used to make smoke like this. Sometimes…sometimes it's all over my body, in my eyes and my stomach and my chest, not just my fingers anymore. It's like it's swallowing me, and I feel it burning but it never harms me. Just everything around me."
Thoughts were whirling through his head. He gave her a tight squeeze. "You should tell the professor about this. It's possible that your powers are further implementing themselves, und he can help you harness them before they get too strong for you to handle."
"But why? Why would that happen now? I've had these abilities for years, and suddenly it's as if they're getting stronger! Why wouldn't they just start out this way?"
With another embrace and a brief shrug, Kurt went on, gently patting her shoulder. "I don't really know vy, Liebchen, but I've heard that it sometimes happens."
Nat drummed her fingers against the floor. "I'm tired of feeling so helpless all the time! And all I want to do is either get rid of it, or…use it. To…I don't know, burn down the world."
He chuckled. "Vell, I don't think that vould help anyvun much."
"I don't care. There's still a few people I wouldn't mind getting rid of."
There was a silence, long and slightly uncomfortable. "Warem, for instance?"
"Those F.O.H. idiots, for one. Each and every one, starting with the ones that hurt you."
Kurt chortled. "Vat do you know? I have my very own vigilante."
Nat sighed. "And Pietro Maximoff. That little snot's going to regret the day he messed with me, I'll make sure of it."
"Is he the vun that's spreading rumors?" When she nodded, he shook his head. "I vouldn't vorry too much about Quicksilver. He has an ego, and he doesn't let anyvun forget about it, but for the most part he seems pretty harmless," Kurt reasoned, trying to calm his livid companion. He frowned a little, thinking to himself, and continued. "Except for his hair. Vas is up vith his hair, anyvay? It looks like he fell into a bucket of bleach, and then tried to give himself a pair of antennae."
Nat swallowed a grin, but frowned slightly at the same time. "I don't know why I bother having serious conversations with you, Elfie boy. It only works about half of the time."
Kurt smiled back, laughing. "Because I'm a fabulous conversationalist. And dead freakin' sexy to boot. Or maybe just freaky." He placed a finger to his chest and batted his eyes, trying to make her giggle.
Part of her wanted to play along, to steer away from the dangerous little tête-à-tête they had begun, but the rest of her wanted to get the remainder of it out into the air. To Nat, there was something outlandish in the way he was acting. It just didn't seem right for him to behave as if he was so unruffled, like he didn't really understand what she was trying to tell him. Her face flushed, annoyed, and her jaw twitched as she clenched her teeth together. Why was he reacting like this? She nearly sneered, and pulled away from him, her expression lost between disgust at herself and confusion at his calm, almost jovial, temperament.
Memories of that one disloyal moment, that vicious kiss that had tainted her mind so completely, flooded her heart, and guilt bulged at her seams. His hands on her lower back felt like weighty reminders of her indiscretion, and a gnawing had begun at her mind, like a hungry rat.
"Doesn't it bother you that Pietro knew something about me before you did?"
His indigo brow furrowed. "I hadn't really thought about it. I suppose it does bother me, a little."
She swallowed, her eyes shuddering, and stared at the floor. "I have to tell you one more thing."
Kurt pulled back a bit, so they were no longer intertwined on the ground. They were opposite each other now, just inches apart, their knees almost meeting. He looked nervous, engrossed but afraid to hear what she had to say. She was beginning to feel distinctly nauseated.
"Go ahead," he said with a little crooked smile, reaching out to pat the back of her hand. She turned her hand over, grasping his fingers for one desperate moment so she could cling to his touch for that few seconds longer, fearing that this would be the last instant of its kind.
"I've done something to you, Kurt." She cleared her throat. "I don't know if you'll be able to forgive me so easily for this, because this was something I could have helped."
He frowned, his eyebrows making downward slopes above his golden eyes, his lips thin and navy blue. His hands laid motionless, and Nat's heart seemed to stop beating for a time. "Ja…"
She bowed her head like a scorned child, tears dripping into her lap. "You remember that day when the tire went out, on the camping trip? When Pietro showed up?" She looked at him, and he nodded, so she went on in a dithering voice. "He…wanted to talk to me…and we were talking…and he kissed me."
There was a tiny twitch on Kurt's face before anger started to well up in his expression. "Ach! Zum Teufel…I'll kill him, I swear to Gott, if he comes near you again!" His sweet eyes fell, his hands coming up to cup her face. "Oh, bitte, Nat, please forgive me for leaving you alone with that Schwein!"
Comprehension dawned in Nat's eyes when she realized what poor Kurt was thinking, and her heart nearly broke in that flash. She had begun to tremble, and she squeezed his fingers in her smaller ones again, tears obscuring her vision. "No, Kurt. No, that's not it at all. God, I only wish..."
"Dann…was?"
She leaned in closer, so her forehead nearly touched his, pressing her lips to his for a moment or two, but he didn't respond much. A little sob escaped her. "I…kissed him, too."
The look on Kurt's face made Nat want to collapse into ashes. His eyes went wide for what felt like an era, and his tail spasmed jerkily in the air. Gradually, he pulled his hands away from hers, his lips twisting into a heartbreaking knot. He rose slowly to his feet, turning away from her so she couldn't see his eyes when he started to cry. His slim shoulders were tight, the muscles in his neck tense and bunched like the fists that hung inertly at his sides.
"Kurt, I…"
"Bitte," he said, his voice sharp. "Nein. Gerade…nein."
Before she could respond, he turned on his heel, and was gone from the room.