In his dream she was flying. Her hair drifted back and became the clouds as he stood on a mountaintop. He called out to her, but she refused to hear him. His words became fiery arrows that he spewed forth, each one aimed at her, but none could reach her wispy form. He looked down and saw black water rising up after her, hands grew from its oily waves and grasped her body, staining it with an inky black. Kurt screamed to her, tried to help her, but couldn't move from the mountain. As the black water encased her she looked at him. Her eyes were dripping red tears as she asked, 'Why didn't you save me?'
Kurt's body shot up from the dream. His head swept back and forth, taking in the messy lab room, trying to separate fact from dream. He sighed as he let his head hit his knees. 'Why couldn't I help her in my dream? I did help her! I saved her in the forest! I saved her from the Professor! So why am I still feeling so guilty?' he asked himself. It was true that he had done everything in his power to help her in the present, but the past, when she was still so small, he hadn't helped her. Many times he'd thought 'if only I could have teleported back then.' Then she wouldn't have left him, wouldn't have thought he needed protecting. But, then he wouldn't have met her either, if he had already learned to use his powers, he wouldn't have run from the boys who yelled 'monster'.
Kurt turned to look at Nym's still sleeping form. "I'm sorry," He whispered, "So sorry..."
It was clear, concise, her movement. Suddenly her hand was at his throat, a steely blade protruding from her index finger. Kurt couldn't move, couldn't breathe.
"Where am I?" Nym's hoarse voice asked. Kurt was in shock, and not just from the fact that she was threatening him; her voice had changed so much. It was once soft and musical and while it still held that underlying tone her words were sharper, as though they were carved instead of spoken.
"Yo-you're at the Xavier Institute." Kurt stuttered out. He slowly raised his head to look her in the eyes. Did she not recognize him? Did she not remember him? Surely she hadn't met one too many blue mutants to not remember him! Kurt felt his heart squeeze when he noticed she wasn't even looking at him. Instead her head swiveled around the room, taking it all in.
"Nym?" Kurt asked in a soft voice. He was scared now, scared that maybe it wasn't her at all, that he had been wrong all along. The doubts piled up in his mind, threatening his certainty.
Then she looked at him. Her large red eyes found his glowing yellow ones. She exploded. It was both a literal and metaphorical explosion. The metaphorical came from the fact that her face took on an expression of all out fear and shock. The literal was that she jumped halfway across the room, dropping the malformed blade that had been inside her hand. Several other pieces of unidentifiable metal fell from the skin on her feet and wrists as well.
"How?" Nym whispered, covering her open mouth with her hand. She was shaking and slowly sliding down to the floor. Kurt watched as she backed herself against a far wall and let her body drop into a crumpled position. Her eyes never left his, though, even as she began to cry.
"Nym! I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you like that, really!" Kurt said, try to explain. He was at a loss for what to do for her. He hadn't given it much thought really, what he would say to her when she awoke. Now he wished he had.
"Ah, I thought I heard somebody wake up." Dr. McCoy said, his tone teasing, as he came in from the back of the lab room. Nym was up in an instant, her hands poised in front of her, tangled metal objects coming from each finger.
"Nym! No! He won't hurt you!" Kurt shouted, struggling to get up from the make-shift bed. As he approached her suddenly she turned a hand towards Kurt as well. He stopped, utterly stunned that she would think of him as a danger.
"Now, now, there's no need for all that. I just came in here to use the computer, I'll be out of here in a few, don't mind me." Dr. McCoy said, turning around to use the large computer, waving at her over his shoulder as if to say, 'carry on.'
Kurt didn't move at first. He didn't know if he should. He wanted to talk with Nym, to straighten things out. But, Dr. McCoy's presence was making it hard to say anything. Kurt wanted to bring up the past, but felt an immense uncomforting at the thought of another person hearing Nym and his shared history.
"There we are. You two play nice okay? I'll be back in about an hour with some lunch for you." Dr. McCoy said as he exited the lab into another attached lab room. Another reason Kurt didn't like coming down to the lab rooms was the labyrinth of labs that were available. Kurt heard a soft 'click' from the other side of the door; Dr. McCoy had locked them in. Both relief and fear flooded Kurt as he turned to look at Nym. She still had her hands pointed towards him, but the metal was no longer visible.
From the night before Kurt had learned that Nym had more of a flight than a fight response, something he was now glad of. By keeping her in the room she would probably feel trapped, but she would also not be able to run from him anymore. He had things he wanted to say, wanted to ask.
"Do-do you remember me?" Kurt asked. He decided to start out slow. He had to make sure that she really did know him, that her earlier response hadn't been a fluke.
Nym nodded slowly, dropping her outstretched arms and curling back into the wall. Kurt's heart leapt, it was his Nym!
"Do you remember my name?" Kurt asked taking another step forward, a smile on his face. Nym let gravity take hold of her as she sunk back to the floor, pulling her knees up in front of her.
"Kurt. Your name is Kurt." She stated. There was no emotion, just a level voice. Kurt felt hurt by her response, or rather lack of. Wasn't she happy to see him? He was ecstatic to even be near her.
"Do you not feel well?" Kurt suddenly asked, trying to explain her lack of interest, "If you feel sick I can call Dr. McCoy back in here!" Kurt leapt towards the door Dr. McCoy had exited from to call him back, to have him help her.
"No!" Nym shouted, her red eyes wide with fear, "No doctors, please…" she finished more quietly. Kurt stood still and watched as her head fell forward onto her knees. He didn't understand. He wanted to help, but couldn't figure out the problem.
"You know, you're safe here," Kurt said, hoping it was true, "I'll protect you, so you don't have to worry, okay?" He asked, walking over to her. He sat down beside her, careful not to touch her in case it set her off.
"Safe? In this place? I don't even know where the hell I am! Who the hell was that doctor? Why am I here? Why are you here?" Nym shouted at him, her eyes spilled over with clear tears. Kurt was reminded of his dream, 'Why didn't you save me?' He hadn't meant to hurt her, hadn't wanted to make her cry.
"Wait! I'm sorry! I'll explain everything, please don't cry!" Kurt said, putting his face down by hers. She pulled away from him, but didn't break eye contact. Her eyes dared him to explain everything. Kurt gulped.
"You see, this is the Xavier Institute for the gifted. It's a school that the Professor," Kurt's voice faltered at the mention of the Professor, "built for mutants. It's a place we can be safe. There are other mutants who live here too, like Dr. McCoy, the one you met before. Here we don't have to hide what we are; we have a place to be free." Kurt finished with a smile hoping she would give him any look but her dagger filled stare.
"How did you find me?" It wasn't a question, it was an accusation.
"We-well the Professor uses a special machine that lets him use his telekinesis to be able to find mutants all over the world. He found you that way. He said that we needed to help you so we came to find you. But, the Brotherhood was already there." Kurt paused and saw Nym's guarded expression. "The Brotherhood is led by Magneto, a mutant that wants to take over the world and ultimately kill all of the humans. But, we found you first and we were able to get you out of there."
Nym looked away, down at the floor in front of her. Kurt could see it all processing in her head.
"This Magneto, can he bend metal?" Nym asked, her eyes narrowing at Magneto's name.
"Um, yeah, he has control of metal." Kurt said, leaning in closer to her, wanting to know what she was thinking about. "Do you…Have you met him?" Kurt asked, scared to hear her response. His fear came from two places. One, if she had met Magneto before it would meant that he had tried to capture her, that he had tried to hurt her. Kurt's blood boiled at the thought of Magneto pulling the metal inside of Nym around, hurting her in a way that Kurt hadn't forethought to be aware of. Second, if they had met had Magneto already talked about his vision of a human free world with her? And if he had what did she think of the idea? Did she hate it as he did, or, did she find it a reasonable action to take against humans? All of this ran through his head, making him dizzy.
"Yeah, I've met him. Back in Stuttgart he approached me." She explained. 'Stuttgart?' Kurt thought in panic. It was well over 100 miles from Munich where they had first met. He had never really given much thought to what she had done after they had parted. In his mind he had kept her as the small girl who lived in the forest, but of course she had to have changed. 'I mean, she was in Michigan for crying out loud!'Kurt thought, inwardly punishing himself for having been so stupid as to overlook so much about her.
"I have to say, He's not someone I want to meet again." Nym said, referring to Magneto. She had a thoughtful expression on her face.
"Did he hurt you?" Kurt asked. He was glad that Nym hadn't gotten along well with Magneto, but that meant that Magneto had tried to convince her otherwise.
"Well, yeah. I mean I guess I didn't realize how much metal I had in my body until it got ripped out…" Nym answered, looking blasé about the subject of pain. Kurt, however, was taken back. Magneto had done such a horrid thing to her?
Nym seemed to notice Kurt's shocked expression. "But, I got him back pretty good." Nym said a devious glint in her eye, "Shot a few chunks of rotten wood and moldy pipes at him, I'll bet he's still trying to get to smell off." She giggled, and for the first time Kurt saw her smile. It had a more hardened look to it, but she was still the same. Taking the pain others gave and laughing at her own crooked revenge.
"How did you get to America?" Kurt asked once she had stopped snickering. Nym's features dropped immediately. Her impish eyes fell blank and her mouth molded into strict frown. He regretted the question once he had asked it.
"Sorry! If you don't want to say I can-" Kurt began. Trying, and failing, to return to the light atmosphere they had had.
"No, it's okay," Nym said, "I figured I was going to have to tell you once we started talking." Her eyes scrunched up in a sad smile that had Kurt's heart in a knot. "I guess I should start from where I left you. Well, that damned man and the priest finally caught me. They took me back to their town and were saying they were going to burn me do dispel an evil demon from the world, just a bunch of stupid nonsense. They put a guard in the room with me, figured that he could stop my 'demonic powers' or something." Nym paused and brought up her hand to look at it.
"It was the first time I used my powers to kill someone." Kurt wasn't breathing. Her confession, if it could even be called that, had his mind reeling so fast that it was practically standing still, running in a never ending circle.
"He…the guard…that man tried to touch me. I was fucking 6 years old for god's sake! I…I wanted him to disappear so badly." Nym curled into herself, bringing her knees closer to her body, as though she was trying to keep something out. "So, I put my hand on the wall when he took off my dress. I screamed and told him to stop. I didn't even feel the rocks being absorbed by my skin. All I felt were the bits of now sharpened rock jettisoning themselves from my out stretched hand." She closed her eyes but continued with her story, "It…it took him a while to die. The rocks had been changed from the blunt boulders that my hand was on to small spear shaped projectiles. They didn't go in the way a bullet does. They kind of got stuck in the middle of him. He choked on his own blood and died in front of me."
"Nym…I…I…" Kurt wanted to say something, anything to erase the look of pain on her face. But no words were right. No action appropriate for the hardened girl beside him.
"Don't worry about it, Kurt. It happened a long time ago." Nym said opening her eyes and taking a deep breath. "After that I escaped again and started to head east. I lived in the woods for a few years before some hunters found me. They caught me and brought me to the orphanage in Stuttgart. The people there just thought I had some kind of birth defect. I made sure to keep my powers a secret form them. And, in all honesty, the staff there didn't care about me much. They had at least fifty orphans in the place with only four rooms to house us all. An anti-social kid was the least of their problems. I stayed there for about five years, living with these other children that had no place to be. Lots of them got adopted. There were a few times when families came and tried to talk with me, but, every time I acted wild, like I was having a fit or something, so that they wouldn't want me. I was scared that once they brought me home and found out that I was more different than them than they thought that they would throw me out, chase me away, call me 'demon'."
"Then, when I was about 15, that Magneto guy showed up. He came in all high and mighty like he was some big shot millionaire that wanted to adopt a kid. He had all of these shiny rings on his fingers and a big fur coat. All of the staff was so nice to him, showing him all of the kids dressed in their best outfits. By that time the staff had stopped even trying to get me adopted. They had either come to terms with the fact that I didn't want to leave, or they were just sick of dealing with me. So, in he comes, looks at all of the brightly dressed smiling kids, and doesn't seem too interested. Then he looks at me, standing in the hall by the stairs. The look in his eyes when he saw me read 'jackpot.' Next thing I know he asks to talk to me alone. The staff let him, but they warn him about my outbursts."
"Then, I'm sitting in a room with him, a table in between us. He's looking at me like he's god. It made me sick. Then he says, 'Do you know what you are?' I didn't give a damn and didn't answer him. He got rather irritated by this. Next thing I know I can feel the loose pocket change I kept around my hand's knuckles start to pull out of my skin. You see, I kept the change there so if I had to hit someone they would get a fist of metal instead of just my hand." Nym explained, letting a smile grace her features. Kurt assumed she was remembering a fight when her metal hand had come in handy.
"I'm pretty shocked and he can tell. Then he says, 'You didn't think you were the only one with powers did you?' I stayed calm and wouldn't look at him. He starts to go on about what a mutant is and how we are the chosen race of the world and how I deserve better than this. It was probably just my teenage attitude that made me say this, but, I will give myself credit here, I really know how to piss people off. 'Just shut up you senile old man! My god! I've never heard anyone go on for so long about such a dumb-ass idea! Who gives a flying fuck about race or power? Just because you have a few nice rings on your finger and some fancy words you think you have any right to tell me what I do and don't deserve! So shut the fuck up and get the hell out of my sight!' I said to him." Nym blushed slightly and smiled at Kurt's shocked expression.
"Yeah, I thought I was pretty bad-ass when I was younger. Like I said, I know how to piss people off." She smiled even wider at that before continuing, "It happened pretty fast really. First he turned a bright red, then purple, and then I felt it, my body being torn. It hurt like hell; I didn't realize I had that much metal inside of me. I guess I always liked having it on hand in case of a fight. There was some in each of my feet, my hands, below my stomach, under my left knee, and behind my right ear. Honestly, I didn't keep track of what I was absorbing back then, I would just walk around and whatever I stepped on I absorbed and kept."
Kurt looked down and saw Nym's shoeless feet. It made sense that she wouldn't want to wear them if that was how she mainly absorbed things. She would need a part of her skin touching something solid if she wanted to fight.
"The Magneto guy starts yelling all of these crazy things about my own demise and how stupid I am. And wouldn't you know it through all of that pain and blood loss I still managed to tell him to 'Shut up' right before I put my hand on the floor and send a bunch of rotten wood and moldy broken pipes right at him."
"You know what hurts worse than having all of the metal taken out of your body? Having it all put back in. When the bastard got hit with my, admittedly small, stream of rotten junk he must have snapped cause he threw every last piece of metal right back into me. I almost passed out from the pain. The staff heard the noise and came running up. Magneto started to try and get away, he ran out of the room, last I saw of him. Then suddenly I'm alone because they are trying to corner him downstairs and call the police. I don't know if they even saw me laying there. But, I guess it was good that they didn't, because that was when I learned to mold my own flesh."
"I guess I always could, but I had never had the guts to try and rearrange my own body. Sure I can absorb and mold pretty much anything, but living flesh was something I had always shied away from. So, there I am just laying there bleeding when suddenly I decide that I don't want to die here, that I wasn't going to die here. My adrenaline took over and I started to remold the metal that was now back in my body around my broken bones, he had gotten me in the arm and leg pretty badly. Then I put my hand in the puddle of blood coming from my stomach, he had gotten a cheap shot in there. And I just start taking back in what had bled out. Pretty soon there's no puddle on the floor and I'm not feeling so light headed. Then I looked down at the open wounds on my arm, leg, and stomach. They're pretty bad. I put my hand over the hole in my stomach and start to try and seal the flesh back together. It hurt a lot, not as much as the metal, but still a lot. By then it wasn't even a question of wounds, though, I was exhausted from using my powers so much and trying to heal myself. I passed out before I could try to seal my arm and leg."
"Next thing I know I wake up in a hospital, the bad kind. You see, the orphanage couldn't afford to have me patched up all nice by an expensive hospital. Instead the staff brought me to a rundown place just outside of town. Really sketchy, like they take people apart and don't put them back together there. I'd heard of it before, the kids called it 'The Chop Shop'. Guess the orphanage didn't think I was going to pull through so they figured they could make a quick buck. You could bring people there; living or dead, and they would take what they wanted for the underground markets and give you money, pretty rough set up right?" Nym asked rhetorically. Kurt was astounded. All of this in only a few short years? It didn't seem possible, 'But it is…' Kurt thought. The guilt of his own easy, in comparison, childhood dug into his stomach, churning its empty contents.
"So I come to just as they are setting me up on this table and I recognize the fucked up set up they have going on. Every child on the streets knows what it means when a man with a dirty scalpel comes at you. So I grab onto the metal table they have me strapped to and absorb the sections around my hands. By then the guys with the knives are freaking out, after all my hands had just eaten half of the table. And damn, if they weren't surprised then they sure were when I shot the metal back out of my arms cutting the straps. Well, they start to shout and run, and I figure that I'm in the clear except for the fact that the basterds have pried open my leg wound and all of this blood just spills out form it, guess they wanted something from inside, so I can't even walk. I don't get why in the hell these big men are so scared of me, who was at that point pretty close to passing out again from that dammed leg of mine. They're running around screaming something I couldn't make out, grabbing things from the shelves and trying to get out the door. Then all of a sudden there's this huge bang and these police men come storming in. They start to arrest the guys and when they see me, well, they know it isn't good. Of course I saw pretty scared of them, back then police were never a good thing for me, but these officers didn't have the same uniform that the Stuttgart police did. They wore all black with big bulky shields that had something written in English on them. As you can guess I fainted after all of that. When I wake up it's in a really clean room, but not like science lab clean, more like homey clean. There're these flowers on the table next to me and I can feel these tubes in my arms feeding me nutrients. The blankets are soft and the light is dim, and damn, I really thought I was in heaven. I figured that I had finally bit the bullet. I can't tell you how happy I was then, when I thought that room was heaven. After years and years of people telling me I'm a demon and I deserve nothing more than hell I wind up in heaven! It was great until the nurse came in, until she started to mumble English words I didn't know, until they brought in a translator." Nym's face was set in a hardened expression of misplaced trust.
"They said that I had been saved by the American government. Apparently the police that had stormed through the chop shop that night were an elite group of American officers who had been tracking the illegal sale of human organs. They had found the hideout the night I had been there. At first I'm pretty surprised that Germany would let some American police have so much power, but, the lady explains that because the Americans took care of stopping the trafficking ring the German government didn't have to admit that there even was one, a pretty good publicity stunt for both the countries. And, when I ask the translator why I'm here in America she says that I was a charity case of the mission. Since the German government got to deny the existence of the trafficking they didn't want anything to do with a victim of what they were denying. So, the officers got to bring me back here to receive treatment from a real hospital. I turn into a pity case in a small town in Oregon, where I was receiving treatment. The poor little girl who was already born so ugly saved by a group of courageous overseas officers just before she was going to die! They get a lot of press and my picture gets published." Nym stopped her story to sigh, "I fucking hated it all. They treated me like I wasn't human, like I had never known that there was a better life outside of my old dirty one. Hell! I wasn't stupid enough to not wonder what I didn't have back in Germany. We had TVs in the windows of shops where I would watch actors and celebrities run around in tidy homes with shiny jewelry. I knew what I didn't have. And it pissed me off that those American doctors and journalists assumed that I was ignorant of everything around me."
"But…how did you get to Michigan?" Kurt asked as Nym stopped talking. He was astounded, but he also felt a certain familiarity with her story. He, too, had been treated oddly when he first arrived at the institute. He had felt stupid when the students had thought that he needed to be taught what a toaster oven and a computer were just because he had come from a back woods farm. He had played along then. He could still see Evan's smiling face telling him what each of the buttons on the microwave were for, though Kurt could read them easily. And, he could still feel the want to punch Evan in the face for assuming he was stupid enough to not understand what the word 'defrost' meant. It hurt, to be told that you were stupid, to be thought of as something alien.
"Well, I stayed in the hospital in Oregon for about two months, just long enough for my wounds to heal, before I snuck out. I grabbed some clothes form a store I broke into and started to head east. Learning English was pretty easy since I had already picked up bits here and there in Germany and now I was surrounded by it. I didn't really have a place to go, but, I ended up jumping from one homeless shelter to another. Unfortunately, I was easy to track. The people in Oregon were less than happy that I had left and they had posters and whatnot up with a 'Have You Seen This Child?' title. It would have been easy to blend in if I didn't look like this, but I had to be careful, wear sunglasses and hats all the time. Pretty soon I had made it to North Dakota. Like I said I didn't know where I was going, just that I didn't want to go back to any place I'd been before. It was when I was passing through part of Minnesota that I met the, what did you call them, the 'Brotherhood'?" Nym asked Kurt.
"Yeah, there are about three of them, all guys." Kurt said, answering quickly. He wanted her to continue.
"Yeah, those guys. Well, I met them for the first time there and man were they a pain in the ass! They just came at me out of nowhere telling me to give up and come with them. So, I kicked their asses. It was a pretty messy fight, left a lot of damage behind and so I went to Wisconsin. They found me there again, and I dealt with them. Honestly, they're not very bright are they?" she asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No, they're not!" Kurt answered laughing when she shook her head in pity at them.
"Well, I guess you know what happens next, I make it to Michigan and there those dumb-asses are, still trying to 'capture' me. But, this time there were more of them, and the new ones were stronger, not at stupid…" Nym said trailing off, looking to Kurt for an explanation.
"Yeah, that was us. We were trying to help you too, though, with hindsight bias I have to say we did a pretty bad job..." Kurt said looking down out of embarrassment, "But why did the Professor say that your name was Natalie?"
"Hmm? Oh, that was the name that the hospital gave me. I used it a few times when I was traveling I guess. It was weird to hear all of your team calling me that." Nym answered. "So? What about you? What's your story?" Nym asked. She scooted closer, letting their knees bump together.
"M-my story?" Kurt asked, his voice going high. The contact with her had made is heart race. She wasn't afraid of him anymore! He had earned, as least some, of her trust! "We-well, I grew up on the farm with my parents and then one day I got a letter about coming to the institute. My parents both thought it was a great idea and I decided to come." He answered. Kurt felt very awkward at the fact that his journey only took a few seconds to explain.
Nym nodded as he stopped talking. Kurt could feel the heat of her skin from where their knees touched. It sent him back to when they were younger, when she had touched him so easily.
"Hey, just thought you guys might be hungry." Dr. McCoy said as he came through the other lab's door with two trays of hot food. Kurt felt Nym tense, but instead of moving herself away from both of them, she scooted closer to Kurt, putting herself half behind him. Kurt felt his chest swell with the pride that she believe he could protect her. It surged through him and brought a goofy grin to his face.
"Hmm?" Dr. McCoy asked as he saw Kurt's smile. But he only laughed under his breath when he realized why Kurt was grinning. "Well, here you go fresh soup and a dinner roll with some milk." Dr. McCoy said, placing the trays on the lab table as though it was a high class restaurant. "I'll be right back with some clothes for the young lady." With that he exited to the room once more, leaving Kurt and Nym.
"Are you hungry?" Kurt asked her. He had to move his head sideways to look behind himself and see her eyeing the food with hunger in her eyes. She looked so cute sitting there on the floor waiting for him to move first, for him to say the food was hers to eat. "I'll get some chairs for us." Kurt said a she stood up and started to move around some of the lab stools to the table.
"We really get to eat all of this?" Nym asked as she toke r seat nest o Kurt. He had purposely arranged them next to each other instead of across. It felt better to have her closer to him.
"Yep, this looks like Storm's famous chicken noodle soup so it should be really good." Kurt answered licking his dry lips before he dipped his spoon into the warm broth.
It wasn't until Kurt was raising the spoon to his mouth did he notice that she was copying him. She only dunked her spoon in when he did, and slurped up the soup quietly just like him. Kurt giggled under his breath as he watched her chase the last of the noodles around the bottom of her bowl as he had just moments before.
Nym looked up at him when she heard his laughter. Kurt locked eyes with her and smiled. Her white face exploded in a pink blush. He had never seen her blush before and the new sight had Kurt's mind and heart reeling. Was there nothing she could do that wouldn't make him have a heart attack? She was just too cute, he decided. He tough front was scary, but, under that her vulnerable side was too much to resist.
"You okay over there?" Kurt asked in a teasing tone as she looked away, trying to hide her pink blushing face.
"F-fine!" Nym answered a little too loud. Her voice was panicked and embarrassed. Kurt felt worried at her response.
"Hey, really, I was only teasing. It was cute how you copied me when we were eating. I didn't mean to make you upset." He apologized, leaning in close to her.
"I-I haven't eaten with someone in a long time, okay? I just wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. I mean usually I eat half a cup of refried beans at a shelter with my hands. This is just…different…" Nym explained in a whisper. Kurt understood then that she felt the gap between them. Suddenly, Kurt didn't want to see her blush again, he didn't like to see her looking inferior to anyone, especially himself. His hand reached out for her shoulder as the back lab door opened.
"All done? Well, that was pretty fast, though the homemade chicken noodle soup doesn't usually last long in this house anyway." Dr. McCoy said with a smile. He had a small bundle of clothes tucked under his arm. He set them on a smaller table before he came over to get the trays.
Nym tucked herself away from Dr. McCoy again, but not behind Kurt this time. Kurt felt himself sink; he had upset her without meaning to.
"You can go and see what fits in the closet there if you want." Dr. McCoy said as he stacked the trays. Nym slid off the chair and cautiously went over the clothes. She grabbed them and disappeared into the closet in the back without a word.
Kurt sighed as she disappeared. He wanted to make her happy, but he only seemed to be hurting her with everything he did.
"Not feeling too good there Kurt?" Dr. McCoy asked, settling into the chair next to Kurt.
"I just don't know what to do for her. I mean I brought her here but it doesn't seem like she wants to stay or even be near me at all. I can't help but see the gap between or lives and I wish that it wasn't there." Kurt explained, letting his head hang low. "Maybe I shouldn't have saved her. Maybe I should just let her go…" Kurt said his voice growing dark.
Just then a loud crash came from the closet where Nym had been changing. Kurt leapt over the table to the closet without thinking. He banged on the door, screaming "Nym! Nym! Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
"N-no, I'm fine…a box fell that's all…" Her agitated voice trailed off and Kurt heard the rustle of moving cardboard.
"Just let her go eh?" Dr. McCoy asked, his tone mocking, as he carried the trays out of the lab. Kurt shot him an annoyed glance before the doctor mad it out of the room.
It was true, though, no matter how much Kurt second guessed his actions his body always chose the protect her. She was embedded into his mind, woven in his skin, carved in his bones. He couldn't leave her because she was so much a part of him.
Another sudden crash form the closet followed by a muffled curse had Kurt in a panic once more. This time he didn't bang on the door but ripped it open instead, sending the beams of the lab room's light into the closet. And there he saw her.
She sat in the middle of the small room, surrounded by over turned and fallen boxes. Her back was facing him, but not just her back, her nude back. At once Kurt realized that she was topless. He felt his face heat up as he let out a surprised, "Sorry!" before shutting the door to the closet once more, embarrassed by his own thoughts. In those few second a thousand dirty scenarios had run through his head, each one ending up with him and Nym entangled. His breathing was haggard as he tried to shove those thoughts away. But, it wasn't just that she hadn't had a shirt on that had made his breath shaky. It was what he had seen on her back, what had stared right at him when he opened the door. Those same seven scars from their first meeting were still embedded in her skin.