Chapter 11 - Not Okay

Things had more or less died down after the daring rescue missions when Krissy got to Westchester with Kurt, but she still hadn't been able to see her friends since they'd all been screwed with, so she went straight down to the med lab where Sying was all patched up and recovering to rush over and wrap him up in a hug.

"I heard about what happened," she said in a rush as she wrapped him up tight. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah — I mean, not really, but yeah," Sying said, nodding as he returned the hug as tightly as he dared.

"I heard about all of it," Krissy said, settling in to sit next to him. "The breakup, the snatch, the muzzle, the everything."

"Oh," he said quietly.

"I'm really sorry," Krissy said. "That's pretty much the worst week of all time packed into, like, what, three days?"

"I do everything fast?" Sying offered, trying to redirect her into something a little lighter. "Really, it's okay. I… I'm really just enjoying being home right now. It turns out I'm really bad at not getting in trouble if I go… anywhere. Ever."

"Just when you go by yourself," she teased.

"Yeah. That's really helpful, thanks, Krissy."

She wrapped him in a hug. "I'm just glad you're okay," she said. "The last time, with the Russians, it was pretty horrible."

"I didn't freak out that badly."

"Then you're already doing so much better!" Krissy said, grinning at him a little wider.

He couldn't help but smile at her enthusiasm. "Yeah, I'm getting better at being captured."

"That's not what I meant!"

"I know what you meant," Sying said, still smiling at her.

"So!" Krissy disappeared in a poof of purple and reappeared by Hank. "So. What's the diagnosis, Dr. Blue? Can I steal him for movies?"

"I don't see why not," Hank told her with a little smile. "He's healed properly, and I'd say the best thing for him at this point is rest and relaxation. Can you manage that, little candy striper?"

"Not a problem!" she promised — complete with a crooked salute. "We've already got a Star Trek marathon upstairs, and Ael was asking for him anyway."

"Then by all means - popcorn and companionship."

Krissy grinned and disappeared in a poof again, then disappeared with Sying to where the rest of the group was gathered. And like she'd said, Ael rushed over to his big brother as soon as they arrived and wrapped him up in a huge hug.

"You have to stop getting in trouble," Ael told him seriously.

"I'm gonna try, anyway," Sying promised.

Krissy grinned at the two boys and brushed her hands off. "My work here is done." With that, she disappeared again, this time to go find a certain brunette boy.

She wasn't surprised, all things considered, that Chance was with Cody, both of them working on a thousand-piece puzzle in their family's suite and just hanging out together. But when he heard the bamf, Chance's head came up, and he grinned Krissy's way. "When did you get here?"

"Just, like, fifteen minutes ago," she said. "I heard about all the crummy stuff that's gone down lately and wanted to check on everybody."

"Yeah, it's been nonstop awful around here," Cody said, shaking his head.

Krissy nodded and then teleported over to where Chance was sitting to kiss his cheek and briefly brush her fingers over his neck. "Tyler?"

"Yeah." He raised an eyebrow. "You heard about that too?"

"I have a tiny army of demons who will do anything for snuggles and kisses. The real question is how you think I don't know about these things."

Chance shook his head with a little smirk and then leaned over to kiss her, which got a long groan out of Cody. "Can you two maybe not?"

"Nope, sorry. Someone nearly killed my boyfriend, and I have to make sure he's okay," Krissy said, which just had Chance nodding along with a smile. "Actually, if you guys are interested, there's a big snuggle fest downstairs with all the Star Trek movies. Ael is snuggling Sying, and it's pretty much a big cuddle pile of kids."

"Sounds familiar," Chance said with a smirk.

"Yeah, I think that's about how things go around here. Kids snuggling after something goes wrong," Cody said as he got to his feet. "I'll meet you both downstairs," he said before he headed out.

Krissy grinned after Cody before she turned to Chance. "You sure you're okay?" she asked. "I mean, this isn't the first time Sinister's tried to kill you…"

"Yeah, I got to hit some stuff when we went to Russia," Chance said quietly.

"And that helps," she agreed, tipping her head to the side before she leaned in and kissed him again. "But, you know, just in case you're not okay, you know where to find me, right?"

Chance smiled and nodded before he kissed her back. "You're pretty amazing, you know that, right?"

"Oh, obviously," Krissy laughed, then kissed him again for a good long time.

They finally did get downstairs, though, after a makeout session that lasted a little longer than either of them had intended, to find that the kids were already out of popcorn again. Krissy, of course, volunteered to go get some, though while she was ferrying bowls of popcorn, she had noticed something important.

She quickly pulled out her cell phone to call Elin up and became even more concerned when Elin didn't pick up, so she found the little reporter bamf. "She didn't go back to Nolan, did she?" Krissy asked, wide-eyed. "I mean, I heard he got captured, and I don't want… if she was feeling bad for him or something…"

The little guy shook his head quickly and chattered back at her, and Krissy let her shoulders drop, relieved to hear that Elin was just in the War Room with Scott going over all the intel from what Logan and K were up to as well as the intel from the past few days of nonstop crazy.

"Okay, good, because I thought I was going to have to go … I don't know. Drop them off of something. They'd both live."

The little guy rolled his eyes at her for that one, and Krissy stuck her tongue out at him before she teleported back to the group to watch Wrath of Khan with the snuggle pile of X-kids — and with Chance's arm around her shoulders.

"What the hell, Scott?"

Scott looked up quickly from what he was working on — intel reports on the situation in Canada, not that he was going to tell Chance he was looking into things like that — to find that Alex was striding toward his desk, not even waiting for Scott to look up and see who was coming after him. "Hello, Alex. When did you and Lorna get here?" He looked past Alex to Lorna, who didn't look terribly happy, either. "Hey, Lorna."

"We got here as soon as we could pin you down after our son got kidnapped," Alex said, putting his hands on the desk in front of Scott. "What the hell?"

"Not like I asked for the Russians to invade the school, Alex," Scott said, getting to his feet. "Michael's alright. Magda's looking out for him. You raised good kids; they're taking care of each other."

"This is the kind of thing that happens to your side of the family," Alex grumbled, though he looked less angry now that he'd been able to get out some of his grievances, and he leaned back with his arms crossed.

"It did," Scott said. "Chance almost died, and Cody was kidnapped." He shook his head. "And the only reason they were able to get in in the first place was that Sying was captured and forced to tell them how to get in. It's not like we wouldn't have taken them down hard if Sinister hadn't been involved."

Alex flopped into the seat in front of Scott as Lorna came to sit down in the other chair. "I really hate that guy, Scott. Why can't he just stay dead?"

"I ask myself that question every day."

As Alex tipped his head back, obviously frustrated, Lorna leaned forward, the corners of her mouth tight as she met Scott's gaze. "How is Michael? Really? He says he's fine when we talk to him, but you know how kids can be with their parents."

"Yeah, I'm intimately familiar," Scott said in a sigh. "He seems to be alright. Shaken, obviously, but he's mostly freaked out because Sying and one of our other students were outfitted with muzzles, and he knows he was next up for the procedure. It's the 'what if's that are tearing him up, from what I can see."

A minor smirk flirted with Lorna's expression. "He gets that from your side of the family."

"You're not wrong."

Lorna chuckled and leaned back in her seat. "Next time, call me. I could have torn apart the facility in seconds to save my boy."

"I'll remember that," Scott promised. "Really, we would have called you — everything just happened so fast. Sinister, Sying, the Russians, all of it. We just grabbed the people who were there and dealt with the problem."

"Scott." Lorna leaned forward, the look on her face reminiscent of her father. "Next time, call me."

Scott smirked. "Yes ma'am."

It had actually been good for Chance to get back to a more 'normal' routine with school come Monday. He would have been lying if he said he wasn't a little… off since the thing with Sinister, though to be fair, he didn't think there was any way to be okay after he had been frozen and unable to stop Sinister from killing him.

His vision had gone white and everything. It… it had been close, and he knew it. If Cody hadn't stepped in when he did, he'd be dead.

He couldn't help being frustrated. He had worked his whole life to get on the X-Men, to show he had what it took, but over and over again, it felt like he was just… the spare guy on the team. He knew none of his teammates felt that way, but just about every villain they'd come across did, and it was wearing on him.

He was trying not to believe it — he still remembered Brian and Casey and their stupid jabs — but that on top of the fact that his own little brother had essentially bargained his own life and freedom just to buy Chance the ability to breathe…

He was having a hard time.

But he made it through the school day just fine, and even caught up on some of what he'd missed after missing class on Friday. It was just coming back to his room with Cody not there that finally got him to realize that he wasn't actually okay.

He didn't know if it was the fact that Cody was gone or if it was just the room itself or if it was lying down in bed and staring at the ceiling when that had been what he'd seen when his eyes started to roll and his vision started to go white… Maybe it was a combination of all of those things. He didn't know.

Whatever it was, he realized quickly that he couldn't stay in that room. Not that night anyway. Maybe Moira would give him a different room if he asked… but he also knew he didn't want to be alone.

He didn't really think about it before he wound up at Krissy's door, and she looked surprised when she saw him there. She was wearing her pajamas and looked like she had just been drifting off, but she woke up quickly and looked him over with an expression of concern. "Are you okay?" she asked.

He nodded at first and then paused and let out a breath. "Not… really," he admitted.

She frowned, grabbed his hand to pull him in, and sat down with him. "What's up?"

"I just… can't… really… stay in that room right now," he admitted. He hated admitting it, too, because he'd always tried to just… push through things. But this was Krissy. He could tell her anything.

Krissy nodded. "I bet you can get a different room if you ask."

"I know," he said. "I just… thought maybe I could stay here." He quickly held up his hands. "I'm not… I'm not trying to fool around or anything."

"I didn't say you were," Krissy said, though she had flushed a brilliant, bright purple.

"I'm not," Chance said.

"Well, good," Krissy said, flushing a little deeper.

"I just didn't want to be alone," he said, though he was pink now too.

"Okay. Yeah." She nodded and then quickly brushed her hair behind her ears. "Yeah. That's fine."

"I can go somewhere else…"

"No, really," Krissy said quickly, grabbing his hand with a small smile. "You're totally right - you shouldn't be alone if you're having a hard time."

He let out a breath. "Thanks."

Krissy couldn't help but grin a bit and leaned over to kiss Chance. "If you hog the blankets, I'm making you sleep on the floor," she informed him, which finally broke the bit of tension in the room and had him laughing as he nodded his agreement and climbed in beside her, snuggling her with his arms around her waist and her tail around his leg.

Sying knew that his aunts and uncles and grandparents didn't like it when Annie fussed over them, but for the moment, he was actually incredibly glad that she was, because he was enjoying the ability to eat real food.

He hadn't really been gone that long — about two and a half days — but everything that had happened in those jam-packed days just had him grateful for the little things, like a serious breakfast spread of French toast and eggs and stuff.

He was sure to thank Annie for all of the trouble she'd gone to — and she, as expected, assured him that it was no trouble at all before he dug in, though he was a bit surprised when Charlie came to sit next to him and put a hand on his arm.

"You really need to stop that," she said.

He swallowed and looked up at her before he shook his head. "Stop what? I don't have to worry about eating too fast; I'm—"

"No," Charlie said, shaking her head. "I'm trying to prevent another… complex." She shook her head and pulled a face. "And I might not be able to get through to James right now, but you?" She gestured at him with one hand. "You know better than to wallow in the past. What's that thing your dad is always saying? The Kree 'Hakuna Matata'?"

He couldn't help but laugh at her description and shook his head. "I know, I know; I shouldn't think about the 'should haves'."

"So why are you sitting here under a mountain of guilt?"

"Because I'm the one that told Sinister where you and your brothers were hiding!" Sying said, turning to face her fully with wide eyes. "I was trying to avoid telling him where Cody was, so I played 'which Summers are you asking me about' until he realized Chance was still alive."

Charlie tipped her head to the side with a little frown, which Sying was sure meant that she had just realized he had royally screwed over her brothers, before she shook her head. "She made you answer her, right?"

"What?"

"Those powers of hers. It was a command, wasn't it?"

Sying blinked at her. "Yeah, but I tried to fight it by accidentally giving up Chance's position!"

"Yeah, okay, I heard that," Charlie said. "But come on, Sying. She was going to make you tell her where Cody was either way. And he and Chance shared a room. Do you really think if Sinister hadn't known going in that Chance was alive it would have been any different?"

"I—"

"It probably would have been worse," Charlie continued, not letting him get in an argument edgewise. "She really hates him. Can you imagine what she would have done if she'd been lashing out at him instead of just cold, calculated murder?"

Sying stared at her, completely at a loss for what to say. "But… he's your brother."

"Yeah, and I'm really, really happy that he's alive," Charlie said, nodding along. "And I'm also really, really glad that you're back safe and sound." She gave his arm a little squeeze. "Nobody blames you. I know Chance doesn't blame you." She tapped the side of her head. "I would know if anyone was holding a grudge, and right now, that only person who blames you — is you."

"It's not like I can just turn it off," Sying muttered.

"I know," Charlie said. "But… I thought maybe that would help. Hearing it from someone else. Getting a little… logic to balance out your freakout."

Sying couldn't help but smile her way as he nodded. "Thanks, Charlie."

"Anytime," she said with a smile before she leaned over and hugged him and then got up to go fill up her own plate for breakfast.