This one isn't based on any story-line that I know of. I read the "Nightcrawler" series and that's where Christi kind of comes from - but otherwise it's just something I came up with. Kurt loses his faith.
The pages tore far too easily.
Kurt's faith was shredded like clouds in a cold wind. He let the damp paper fall to the ground, appalled at how like refuse those once-sacred pages looked crumpled on the gray pavement. Another page tore, another, and another as he waited for some sign that would tell him it was not just a mockery, that the words he had followed for so long were not just the ramblings of over-ambitious man – the mutterings of a sick child.
A whole handful of carefully printed pages parted ways with the wet binding of the Book. Scrawled notes and archaic symbols (the likes of which he had etched into his very flesh) began to bleed under the influence of the heavy, damp sleet. And yet, no matter what damage he wrought that tome, that physical embodiment of a force he had so completely trusted, no hand reached forth to stay the execution.
The Bible finally dropped from Kurt's nerveless fingers and the rosary beads that followed clacked hollowly in the gutter. The Nightcrawler bowed his head and wept.
He was truly alone.
He showed up all wet on the raining winter step, wearing shred more than his skin.
Christi crawled up on the couch behind Kurt, pressing the cold, metallic disk of the stethoscope against his back. "Ok…deep breath and hold it," she said, reaching to brace one hand against his chest. The skin beneath the dense, blue fur felt feverish and there was a slight catch, a certain rattling in his lungs. She knew if she didn't watch the blue elf close, he would develop a serious case of pneumonia.
Shifting the scope, she listened again for the tell-tale sound…and realized he'd gone very still, holding that first breath. His whole body was taunt beneath her touch, and a terrible shaking suddenly took hold of him as he folded up in against some terrible pain. Christi dropped the scope and pressed into his back, sliding both arms around him to try and help protect him. Her fingers were suddenly caught in an almost painful grip against his chest as he fought against a wall of anguish.
"Let it go, Kurt…let it go," she said quietly, knowing some grief was already tearing him to pieces. His breath sighed out in a long suppressed moan, the next drawn in a heart-wrenching sob. Somehow, his world had ended.
"You came!" Christi didn't try to keep the surprise out of her voice as she opened the door.
Logan, loomed on the threshold with a well-worn cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes, merely shrugged and growled something unintelligible. Moving aside to let the stocky, rough-looking man pass into the hall, Christi noticed a bulky shape in the back pocket of his faded jeans.
"Where did you find it?" she asked, knowing what it was before he even pulled it out and handed it to her. Kurt's Bible was crusted in grime and the pages, or what was left of them, were soggy and started to disintegrate even as she tried to wipe some of the mud from the binding.
"Gutter down the street," he rumbled. "Long with these." The Wolverine pulled a tangled mess of rosary beads out of his pocket. Ignoring her distress at the state of Kurt's most sacred possessions, he took off his hat and headed down the hall. It looked to Christi as if Logan was going to barge through the house in his usual gruff manner until he found the elf, and then very physically shake some sense into his friend. She hurried after, intending to put herself between him and the bedroom door if need be, though getting in the way of the Wolverine was not the best choice anyone had ever made.
But she was reprieved of any heroics by the fact that Logan stopped when he found the right room and just leaned heavily against the door-frame, hands shoved deep in his pockets as he contemplated the dark interior. The last light of a winter evening filtered into the room through the blinds, just barely picking out Kurt's huddled from occupying the bed. The tall, lanky German looked like a wounded animal lying in a dark corner waiting to die.
"How long he been like this?"
Christi hugged the book to her chest as if it could somehow become a shield against the pain in her heart. "He hasn't spoken since he came yesterday morning. I found him outside just before dawn and . . . I want to help him Logan. He's getting sick and I can't…" her voice caught on the words. "I can't help him if he won't let me." She stopped and pressed her lips tight together, blinking hard, unable to tell him how Kurt had clung to her like a child terrified of what was in the dark.
Logan let out a long-suffering sigh and threw his hat on the dresser. Christi saw him pat his pockets absentmindedly from long habit while he stood looking at Kurt. He finally slouched into the chair by the bed where she had sat vigil for the last several hours, desperately hoping that the man who had only muttered curses on the phone would come. Logan pulled off his mud-caked boots and, settling deeply into the chair, propped his feet on the bed, looking for all the world as if he were just stopping by for a nap.
"You got any 'a that green tea crap? Elf's fond 'a that."
He popped his knuckles loudly; his hard, resolute gaze taking in the pathetic form of Nightcrawler.
Every inclination told her not to leave, but she buried her preconceptions and forced herself to walk out of the room. She left the stained Bible on nightstand near at hand and said nothing about the pots of tea she had already brewed to no avail. The Wolverine had his methods and she had to trust this instinctively brutal man – his nature might be the only battering ram able to break down the walls Kurt had built.
Logan craved a cigar and found himself patting his empty pockets in search of the sweat tobacco and matches. He remembered how the thick wash of nicotine had always helped him relax, cleared his mind in the face of any situation. But he'd given it up and honestly felt better for it, but it would at least have given him something to do while he sat in the dark.
He'd just have to be his old, blunt self without the softening aura of the smoke.
"Hey elf," he said to the near invisible form of Kurt. "Nurse honey there is wantin' to help ya. Your givin' her a helluva lot o' trouble on your end."
The Nightcrawler gave no indication whatsoever that he heard. The only sound came from Christi putting on the kettle far away in the kitchen.
"You best give up with that feelin' sorry for yourself crap. Old wolvie's seen 'em hurt worsen' you and ain't got no sympathy for a mutie who's gone to lettin' somethin' eat at him so." Logan's only known method was that of attack. He'd mentioned once or twice that he didn't hold with any of that Freudian stuff. According to him, all a crazy despot truly needed was a really stiff drink and a hell of a good kick in the ass. If the Wolverine had to get his claws out in the mean time, so be it.
As simple and cruel as it seemed, it worked for the scruffy loner. A slit of gold from Kurt's lamp-like eyes appeared, turned in his direction. Logan seemed not to notice the change as he picked up the filthy Bible and shook dried mud from its pages. Leaning back in his chair to look through the partially open door, he made sure Christi was busy with the tea before he popped his claws.
The six inches of razor-sharp adamantium could have shredded the book into coleslaw, but Logan was as dexterous with the half-foot of lethal weaponry as an expert chef is his knives. He used one claw to delicately peel apart the water logged pages until he came to the section showing the most abuse. The claws snikted back between his knuckles and he perused the running ink, able to read perfectly in the dark with his enhanced vision and the aid of a blunt finger following the lines.
"Did a real number on the ol' Testament, didn't ya elf," he asked, absorbed in studying the stenciled angelic symbols in the margins – exact copies of which decorated Nightcrawler's indigo skin. The page he studied had been partially torn out, but a good fraction of it still remained – as if Kurt had suddenly been defeated by something and stopped the willful destruction. Logan tried to decipher the archaic German, intoning the words badly in his gruff voice:
"Ich bin der … Lord Ihr Gott," he mumbled, turning the book sideways as if that would help. "Bunch'a ramblin' about God I spose."
Suddenly, the book was ripped from his grasp and sent crashing violently against the wall, scattering picture frames and breaking things as it went. Nightcrawler had slammed full-force into Logan's chest and luckily catching the instinct-honed mutant off-guard and not ending up with six adamantium blades through his chest. The acrobat was able to pin Wolverine's arms to the chair for just a moment with his ambidextrous feet, his prehensile tail whipping angrily through the air as he leaned close and clamped his hands tight to the other's collar.
"THERE IS NO GOD!"
Logan felt his blood turn cold in the face of that vehement declaration. He didn't try to quell the defense mechanism that was as grafted to his nature as the metal was to his bones and knocked Kurt back with a blow of his forehead to the other mutant's face. It was a powerful enough motion to throw the Nightcrawler backward, but not quite enough to keep him down. He tucked himself up in the small space, performed an impressive somersault and launched himself back at Logan from the opposite wall. In those few half-seconds, Logan had to remind himself that the man was still his friend no matter how messed-up by untold events. It took that much and more for him to keep his claws sheathed.
Christi stood with her hands clamped over her ears to mute the sounds coming from the other room. Whatever awful thing it was that had been happening to Kurt, she knew at this terrified moment that it might possibly not have been as terrible as what was happening to him at the hands of Wolverine. She had known the inevitability of this outcome when she called Logan and thought she could accept it if it would pull Kurt back to a rational state.
Now she knew she had been wrong!
Logan wasn't a creature with which one dealt lightly. He was as unpredictable as a rabid animal and as terrifyingly lethal. Christi hadn't let herself think for a moment upon the deadly turn the state of affairs could take if Nightcrawler, in his irrational and feverish state, attacked his brutish friend. Though described as impulsive and uncontrollable by all who knew him, she had developed an uncanny trust of Logan that, through desperation, she had to put to its truest test.
A sudden silence struck only more fear in her as silence after an X-Men battle usually meant there was absolutely nothing left to say and no-one to say it.
She made the first, hesitant movement when an unexpected BAMF! of displaced air brought Kurt heavily into the wall. As soon as he hit the floor, he lashed out in confusion, blind to his surroundings and deep in an inherent defensive mode that overcame all rationality. Just by chance, he caught a handful of her blouse and would have sent her across the room as if she were just another piece of furniture had not Logan interceded
The speed with which he caught Christi before she made a painful journey across the room and then wrangled Nightcrawler were only believable because of his mutant abilities. With a string of curse words so black they could have curdled milk, he cornered Kurt and put him in a tight hold that defied even the acrobat's ability to break. The Wolverine jammed his knuckled up under Kurt's chin in a threatening gesture when the other's struggles continued.
"Do it, mon geit…Logan…I do not wish to stay…in such an empty place."
Christi felt a wail rise up in her throat and bit her lip hard enough to taste copper, sure that she would hear the metallic twang of Logan popping his claws, the man finally giving into that deadly impulse in light of Kurt's blatant weakness, something that always infuriated the man beyond rationality.
A moment later, she was as ashamed as she had been frightened. He locked eyes with her as Kurt dropped exhausted to the floor. "He don't know what he's sayin'," Logan muttered, his gaze accusing her of believing he was a cold as his adamantium skeleton and as impetuous as the feral creature of his namesake. "Somethin's gotten into his mind and he ain't lettin' it go."
During the whole endeavor of just a few moments Logan had hardly broken a sweat while Kurt, struggling to his knees, was drenched and trembling with fatigue. He was like a rag doll that Logan picked up and dumped unceremoniously into a kitchen chair, looking crumpled and fragile in his misery. Wolverine pulled up another chair and sat in it backward, his hands once again going automatically to his pockets in search of his cigars
"Now then elf," he said, giving up the search in frustrated resignation. "I think Miss Christi has herself a few errands to run…"
A bell-tower struck chimed the hour somewhere in the still night, the cold air carrying the sound half-way across town.
Christi sat on the steps to the building with knees drawn close. Her "errands" had been to walk up and down the street for the last hour fighting the desire to peer into her own windows. She had shown Logan her true lack of trust and this was her payment for such, to be relegated as a hindrance and ejected from her own home while he dealt with Kurt and didn't "baby him," as the mutant had termed her methods.
The last chime of the clock coincided with the click of the door behind her. Logan came down the stairs and, surprisingly, sat down beside her on the cold stoop.
"Kid's been hurt bad," he said, fingering his old cowboy hat in a distracted way. "It's one o' them injuries to the head . . . ya know . . . inside."
Christi nodded. "His faith, he's lost it…"
"Nah, it'd be easier if he'd just lost it," Logan said, coming to the point. "Somethin' that's lost might be found again. No, everythin' he believes in been shredded like that ol' book a his; completely destroyed and as far as I can see."
The cold with which she shivered had nothing to do with the temperature. "What can I do for him? How can I help him?"
"Seein' as I know a lot about beein' destroyed and rebuilt both inside and out, I can only tell ya not to coddle 'im. He's startin' from ground zero and has got to have some firm ground to build on. I got him started, knocked some sense into him if ya will." The Wolverine actually cracked half a grin at this as he stood and jammed his hat on his head. "The world's goin'a be a hell of a lot meaner place to him, goin'a be a lot like Hell actually . He ain't never goin'a be the Kurt we used to know," He said, and walked off, a silent and solitary figure into the night.