Chapter Two

"Running"

Running.

Running so fast that my feet no longer touch the ground.

Flying, legs pumping, blood pounding to the percussion of my heartbeat.

Running to escape.

Running to find.

Running forever.

Never to stop, to falter,

For the world's reality will crush me if I fall.

So, I am running.

Running so fast that the world is blur.

Running to lose.

Running to explain.

Running forever.

Until the day I trip.

~~~~~~~~

To think that not ten minutes ago Kurt's biggest problem was chores. It certainly put his life into perspective. Pietro lay in a crumpled heap. His clothes torn and bloodied until they were nothing more than tatters. He was missing most of his right pant-leg, the skin inside looking like it had gone through a cheese-grater. He must of tripped, was the unspoken observation. Yet, there was no way that some of those wounds could come from a simple tumble, even one at his speed.

Kurt stood outside the alley-way, unable to look at the gruesome sight any more. Jean was frantically trying to contact the Professor, while Scott was doing the best he could to clean up the white-haired speedster. Kitty sidled up next to him while he memorized the landscape beyond the buildings. "Hey, Kurt..." she began. Kurt shook his head, "I'm worried."

"About Pietro?"

"Vell, ja. I mean, vhat could have hurt him so bad vhen he is so fast?"

"Well, maybe he was, like, caught or something."

"That's vhat worries me." Before Kitty could ask him what he meant by that, Jean walked up to them. They looked at her, their faces drawn and tight. "The Professor said we should get him to the Institute right away. He didn't think it is a good idea to go to the hospital in case they recognize him as a Mutant."

"Okay. Um, how do we get him zhere? Isn't it bad to move him?"

"You can teleport him, right?" Jean asked. Kurt blinked.

"Is it safe?" Kitty looked at Scott as he joined them.

"We don't have a choice, do we? He's bleeding to death as we speak."

"He may be a member of the Brotherhood but he's still a person," Jean added. Kurt nodded and swallowed heavily. Transporting other people that far a distance was tricky enough. However, transporting an unconscious, injured person... "All right. Let's get this over with."

He crouched down next to Pietro, fighting back nausea. Pietro's normally pale face was gray and green. His white hair was stained and fell in clumps of dried blood about his forehead. Kurt reached out to touch him, only to flinch back at how cold and sticky his skin felt. Tiny fangs dug into his lower-lip as he replaced his hand on Pietro's shoulder. He could feel the bone easily, as if his skin was only a thin sheet of gauze stretched tight over the bone. "R-right." Kurt swallowed again and readied himself. Taking hold of his other shoulder Kurt closed his eyes and vanished in a burst of smoke. All that was left of the two was the large red stain on the ground.

"Let's get back quickly, the Professor might need us." Jean and Kitty nodded at this and they hurried back to Scott's car.

It took Kurt two tries to get Pietro to the Institute. Since he really didn't want to risk hurting his charge further Kurt kept the trip in short jumps. He had barely made it into the building before he was surrounded by the adults. They gasped at the mutilated sight. Even Logan winced slightly. Hank hurried a stretcher forward and whisked Pietro away to the medical hospice of the Institute.

As quickly as he had arrived, Kurt was left alone, still crouching from where he teleported just moments ago. "Everything will be okay, Kurt. We'll let you know as soon as he's stable." Professor Xavier had told him as he wheeled out the door. Logan had patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. "Good job, elf," was all had he said, before he had followed the in path the wheelchair had gone.

Now, Kurt allowed himself slip into a state of shock. Everything had happened so fast. Kurt wasn't sure he had it right. What in the world had just happened? One minute he was walking with Kitty, complaining about the heat, and the next he was sitting in the middle of the Institute, waiting to hear if a fellow mutant would live or die. It was easier to think of him like that. As a fellow mutant and not as Pietro. Not as the one who fought against them against every issue and betrayed his family not too long ago when he joined Magneto.

Pietro was always the cocky bastard. Then, as it was a habit when speaking in another language, Kurt thought about the meaning of his words. Was Pietro a bastard? Did he have parents somewhere? Now that he thought of it, did any of the Brotherhood? He couldn't recall anyone mentioning anything about the fact. It was strange, really. Surely they had them, and they needed a lot of things that humans did, like food, companionship, and the like. He had never really thought of that. It was just so much easier to think of them as the enemy, as inhuman. The thought made his chest ache slightly. How hypocritical of him!

"Kurt!" Kurt jumped as someone shouted directly into his ear. Kitty was looking at him expectantly. Kurt blinked. "Kitty?" he asked. "How did you get here so fast?"

"Oh my god! I nearly died! Scott was driving like a manic! I, like, didn't know that a car could pull a wheelie! I was nearly sick!"

Kurt stared at her, then over her shoulder where Scott was barely listening as Jean berated him for reckless driving. Upon catching his eye, Scott left Jean in mid-sentance to join them. "Any news?"

Kurt shook his head. "Not yet, they just took him in a few minutes ago."

"I see."

They settled down to wait.

Time crawled on broken knees as they waited to hear from the Professor. Centuries passed and the world froze over. Ice finally shattered into reality when the door that lead to the hospice finally opened. The Professor wheeled in, his expression blank, giving no clue about what was going on in his head. The students stood. None of them knew why they stood, but their hearts had leapt up in their throats when the door opened and it only seemed natural to follow the movement. Xavier examined the small gathering. During the few hours that had passed the four had multiplied into the entire X team. A small part of him wondered how the young Daniels had responded when he had heard what had happened.

"Ah, thank you for being so patient," he said, his voice smooth and calm.

"How is he?" Kurt asked, his demonic tail winding and unwinding itself around his leg.

"He's stable, for now, but we have no idea what happened, so we're not sure of to the extent of his injuries."

"Professor?" Scott asked, his eyebrows furrowed.

"From the state he is in, we can gather that he had run quite a ways. There are hints that he may have passed through a forest of some type. Then, he twisted his ankle, or tripped, possibly, and skidded for quite a distance before that wall stopped him.

"From what I gather, I don't think that Pietro would be so clumsy. So, I believe that something must have happened to frighten him enough that he was more careless that usual. Whatever has frightened him that much may leave some psychological marks. So, until he wakes, we won't know the full extent of his injuries."

There was a slight pause as the group processed this. "How long is he going to be out?" Jean asked finally.

"A few hours, a few days. It really depends on Pietro."

"Are we going to, like, tell the Brotherhood?"

There it was. The question that was hovering in the back of all their minds. Most were glad that Kitty was the one to realize it. Were they going to tell the Brotherhood? Pietro was a member, more or less. His membership seemed to teeter from incident to incident. Whenever something important happened he would take off. During a several of the scuffs the two Mutant groups would get into Pietro would be suspiciously absent. No one seemed to notice if he was there or not anymore. If he was, then it just meant that they had to double team him and get him out of the way fast, or else he'd cause all sorts of quirky racket. The boy was extremely quirky. At times he was screamingly fruity, like when he and Spyke fought in the shopping section of the mall, and at other times he was a playboy, like when he had three dates for the school dance. He definitely had an ego. All in all, Pietro was just... Pietro. Was that a good or bad thing?

"I think we should wait until after Pietro wakes and can tell us what happened," the Professor said.

"...Can we see him?" Xavier looked up in mild surprise at the request. The boy ruffled his tuff of blond hair and scowled at the cuffs of his baggy pants.

"I don't see why not. Keep it short though, Evan."

"Yeah, yeah." Evan walked out of the room without another word. They blinked after him in some surprise.

"I thought they were, like, arch-enemies, or something?"

"Well, they have known each other for most of their lives. I doubt they could have been enemies for all that time."

"Vhy do you say that, Scott?"

"Well, Evan told me something about what happened at his old school. That he and Pietro played basketball ever since Pietro showed up in his neighborhood. They were rivals, but it was more of a friendly-rivalry at that time."

"What happened?"

"Evan didn't say."

Evan peeked around the door to the small medical room. A blue mass obscured his vision of the pale-haired boy as Hank moved back and forth around the slowly beeping machines. Hank turned at the sound of the door, and smiled slightly. "Mr. Daniels, I thought you'd be by."

"You did?"

"Mm hmm," Hank nodded. Evan sighed, then returned to more important matters. "How's he do'n?"

"Under the circumstances, decent. His respiration's steady. His heart rate is like a rabbit's and I'm not sure if that's normal for him or not."

"It is."

Hank raised an eyebrow. "How do you know?"

"Pietro told me once. He, um, had an attack or something a long time ago, and when I went to, you know, check his heart and breathing and stuff. Later, I asked Pietro about it and he said that's normal for him."

"I see." Evan walked around Hank to the other side of the bed and looked down at Pietro's still form. He had a breathing mask around his jaw, almost forcing breath into his lungs to keep oxygen moving. Tubes ran from his arm and wires connected to various spots all along his body.

"What's that thing on his thumb?" Hank followed his pointing finger. "Ah, that checks his pulse to see if blood is flowing through."

"Oh." Evan fell silent once again as he stared helplessly at the gaunt figure. When had Pietro gotten so thin? They could see the bones through his skin. All muscle seemed to have been eaten away. Dark circles surrounded his eyes making them seem sunken in. It made him seem so old. So fragile. So very un-Pietro. It was unnerving. Finally, Evan turned away, his spikes slid out as he fought down the anger coursing though him.

"Mr. Daniels?"

"What?" he growled.

"Why don't you go get some supper. Pietro needs to rest."

Normally, a gruff "whatever" would have greeted this, yet Evan couldn't seem to force the word out around his gritted teeth. Finally, he just growled and hurried away, leaving a groove in the doorway from where his spikes had hit.

TBC….