Update! :) Just a quick warning: this chapter includes a scene that implies nudity but includes no specific detail and is in no way meant to be 'racy'. Still, viewer discretion is advised.
Chapter Twelve
Alice Wagner pulled her teabag from her favorite blue mug and dropped it in the bin. She added some sugar to the tea, started to stir, then threw the spoon down onto the counter and turned away.
She'd thought if she could take a break, concentrate her mind on the familiar, calming ritual of making some strong, hot tea…
But it wasn't doing any good. Of course, it wasn't doing any good! Her daughters were missing, her children, and she and her husband were trapped in the manor, forced into inaction by a lack of any real leads, any real information, anything that might tell them who to go after, who was responsible—
Alice clenched her fists until her fingernails began to cut into her palms, then leaned back over the counter, forcing herself to calm her breathing, slow her racing heart.
Moira, her best friend, was sick. She and Alistaire could be dying…that poor little girl, Jessalyn, was already so ill she could barely get out of bed…
At least Eliza Braddock was putting her training as a student nurse to good use, organizing the rest of the children to help keep their afflicted friends comfortable. Rahne was deep in her own work, searching for a way to destroy that awful parasite thing. Meggan was buzzing around the manor and grounds, keeping all the forensics and investigative teams Brian was overseeing supplied with sandwiches, biscuits, and hot drinks…
And, what could she do? She wasn't a nurse or a scientist – she'd studied international relations and communications at university. Her skills lay in diffusing conflicts, negotiating hostage situations, not decoding cybercrimes or battling microscopic germs! Until the others got a lead – finally found an actual criminal to confront…
Alice felt utterly useless.
Pouring her steaming tea down the sink, Alice rinsed out her mug, plonked it on the drying rack, and marched stiffly out of the kitchen, aiming for her bedroom and a scalding hot shower.
Kurt closed his eyes and turned his face up into the stream of steaming water raining down from the shower head.
The shower was supposed to relax him, help him focus his mind, but it seemed to be having the opposite effect. Without an outlet – an actual criminal to confront – Kurt's imagination ran in circles fed by fear, by dark, terrible worries…and even darker memories…
Memories of his own kidnapping, his own captivity…a prisoner of Weapon X…
Kurt had thought he was past this, that he had left the panic and anger and frustrated rage in the past with the war…locked away in that place before Excalibur, before the children, before he and Alice had pledged their lives and hearts to each other…
But, the images came unbidden, in vivid, visceral flashes…flashes he couldn't control…
The cell reeked of rot and worse; the stagnant mud at the bottom of the lake oozing its watery stench through the porous concrete. The chronic dampness bred an uneven colony of spindly, brown stalactites along the ceiling…the trickling droplets staining trails like tear tracks down the walls…
…drip…drip…
Kurt huddled beneath his tattered blanket, knees clutched to his chest, his entire body locked tight in an endless, rocking, freezing shiver.
There was no escape from the wet, the cold. The slick, metal floor leeched away any trace of warmth; the thin mattress pad drew in stinking, brown puddles like a moldering sponge…
Even the humming electronic door seemed to weep…
Echoes in the corridors, and he heard that voice…that smooth British accent, too distant to make out any words… There was just the tone, the timbre of that voice, far away but getting closer…coming closer with his needles, those terrible injections that burned in his veins, forced him to cry out like a tortured animal as he felt his body changing, his skin and fur growing darker, his mouth and eyes giving off a startling light all their own…
"Kurt!"
He gasped and huddled against the dripping wall, too lost in his horror think, to see anything beyond the nightmare that still lived in his mind…
"Kurt…Kurt it's me. It's Alice. I'm here, darling, I'm right here with you. Tell me you can feel my hand."
"Alice…"
Kurt closed his eyes, the falling water mingling with his tears as he clutched her hand in his.
"My God, honey, you're freezing cold," Alice said, and he realized she was crouching in the shower with him, that she was holding him, her strong, brown arms so secure around his shoulders…
His lungs still hitching, he leaned his head against her neck and just breathed her in, tangling his fingers in her long, dark hair. She was real. Gott sei dank, she was real, and she was here, and she knew…she knew without words how to find his heart in the darkness, how to draw him back to the present…
"It's Essex," Kurt whispered against her skin, his glowing eyes streaming tears. "He has them, Alice. Our beautiful girls. He's taken them because I escaped, because I got away…"
"It's not possible, love," Alice said, stroking his spine, his fuzzy back, and she pulled him close against her, pressing her cheek to his pointed ear. "Essex is dead, Kurt. Essex is gone, and so is Weapon X. It's all been thoroughly dismantled."
"Then, it's someone else," he said desperately. "Someone else who knew that damned traitor, some radical relic from Weapon X labs, or the LGP! Who else could have done this, Alice – what other motive could there be…?"
Alice chewed her lip and glanced down at her husband's shoulder, his arm. The brand there was darker now, merely a series of raised ridges she could barely see through the shower steam and his wet, indigo fur…
But she remembered how it had looked that day in the medical ward, when she'd seen what those Weapon X madmen had done. Red and swollen, the number-shaped burns glistening from the cream Dr. McCoy had spread over the ugly, ugly wound…
She remembered…she had stared at Kurt, but hadn't known him. Her handsome, playful, dashing elf just wasn't there. She'd seen only this terrible, nightmarish creature…hunched and twisted, his nails long like yellowed talons, his dark fur nearly black. He had looked up at her, opened his mouth…a light like burning sulfur had poured out from inside him...
And, she had shrieked in fear.
"Who… What is that!"
She'd known then how deeply her words had cut him, and her choking guilt had only made things worse between them. Instead of helping his recovery, she had snapped at him, the two of them fighting for months over every little thing until, finally…
She closed her eyes and swallowed the memories, that awkward time of separation before he found Excalibur…before they found themselves…
Taking her husband's hands, Alice pulled him to his feet and stood with him under the shower stream. Slowly, she touched the branded scar with her fingers, then her lips, feeling his muscles shudder away from her touch.
"Don't…" she said, and moved closer, her gentle fingers mapping out his other scars as she edged slowly around him. Laser burns, sutured gashes and surgical incisions…so many lingering reminders of battles past, of tumbles taken and pain endured…
She gazed into his golden eyes, and he brushed the wet hair from her forehead with the spade of his tail, smoothing his calloused palm down her cheek to her shoulder, her side, to rest against her abdomen…where his thick fingers gently traced marks and scars of a different kind.
"What was it for, Alice?" he whispered into her sodden hair. "We thought we won the war…that we were bringing our children into a safer world than the one that we had known… But, is it, really? Has it all been a mask, a bubble – is the real world outside, beyond IX-MO and the X-Men, still that same cruel, fear-driven, bigoted place? I think about all we endured, everything we fought to change, to teach, and I…I…"
Alice ran her hands through his hair, her own eyes stinging at the sight of the silver-blue strands that streaked through his midnight curls, gleamed in the rough stubble on his cheeks and chin…
She knew mutants tended to age slowly, and Kurt was no exception. Although he was nearly fifty, most days her husband could easily pass for a man in his mid-to-late thirties. But now…with his head bowed, the water highlighting the silver in his hair…he actually looked his age and it hurt her to see him so…mortal, so fragile…
"Oh, Kurt," she sobbed, and pressed him to her, holding him as tightly as she could. He returned her embrace with the same desperate fervor, and they swayed together in the shower mist, his spaded tail twining around them both.
"What if the battle we won was merely political?" he said. "What if the minds and hearts of the people have not truly changed? If Sinister and his twisted League for Genetic Purity allies truly have been discredited, then who could have our daughters, Alice? If they have been watching us for so long, why target Betsy and the children? Why release that parasite into the water supply?"
"We'll find out, Kurt," she assured him. "We're not alone in this. The world has changed since the war, which is why, to me, these crimes reek of desperation. Whoever is behind all this must know they are the ones on the outside this time. That they are the ones who are alone."
She pulled back and looked at him, fixing him with her steady gaze.
"We are witnessing the last great flash before these criminal extremists and all their bigoted, genetic-purity dogma finally fade into the past where they belong," she said. "It is our success that has made us targets, Kurt. Not our failure."
Kurt nodded slowly, and pulled her back to him, resting his head against her shoulder.
"Ich liebe dich," he said, kissing her neck, then behind her ear. "Danke, meine Liebe. I believe my mind is clearing now. I will be able to return to my work with fresh eyes. And you?"
"Mmmm," she agreed, burying her nose in his shoulder. "But, not yet...please... Let's stay like this a little longer. Just us two."
"Of course, my love," he said and they held each other close, together in their fear and pain as they had been in their joy the nights their children were conceived.
To Be Continued...
References include: My previous stories, "True Love Ways" and "The Day The Earth Stood Back."
Until next time, thanks so much for reading, and for your reviews! Your feedback is always very much appreciated! :)
