driftfleet | Back from the Dead

Entry tags:

Back from the Dead

Who: Remy, Kurt, and open.
Broadcast: Yes.
Action: On the Twin Roses.
When: Backdated to 9th October.

[Several weeks after the loss of the planet, both Remy and Kurt seem fit enough to finally head back to the Twin Roses. Or at least fit enough to roll themselves out of the beds they had been left in to wake up and recover from their not-so-near death experience.]

‘nd I thought the day after Mardi Gras was bad. Merde, remind me never to be down on an explodin’ planet again, feel like ‘ve been stuck in a tumble drier filled of swamp water ‘nd set spinnin’ for two weeks on end.

Lebeau, if you don’t stop complaining I’m going to put you back on that planet. Gott, I haven’t felt this horrible since I was a child. [Kurt paused, raising a hand to shove his shoulder-length hair out of his eyes] Und my hair is in my fucking face. [He’s going to pretend that didn’t sound at all like a pathetic whine.]

Thought that kinda comes with the whole fur thing, ya know, hair in the face. [Look at him, he’s just so funny, isn’t it? Though they had to come back to reality eventually, as much fun as it was to avoid it and just muck around.] How angry ya think Kitty will be at us? Though, in my defense, I had been usin’ ya as the messenger, so ya the one who failed to tell her, not me.

[Hilarious, and Kurt is about to tell him in no minced words just how well his humor is going over when the other man mentions Kitty. What spirit Kurt has deflates, his tail drooping far enough to drag on the ground.] I doubt you’ll have any worries about her wrath once she sees me.

Ahh, [Remy reached out to pat a hand against Kurt’s shoulder, maybe a bad thing at the sudden movement didn’t help anything, making him winch before he dropped his hand again.] We’ll face her together, after all, we stuck in this together, hein? Seems only right with ya bein’ an idiot ‘nd coming back for me.

[A faint smile twitches at the corners of his mouth, even as he very carefully shakes his head.] Don't make promises, Lebeau. You might want to kill me too when this is over.

Though, [Remy started as he moved to pull out his comm, activating it so he could say the next part into it as well as saying it to Kurt. Kurt forced himself to straighten, crossing his arms over a chest that's broader than its been in years.] Guess while we at it it be good to let everyone know we’re, ya know, back alive? Which be a good thing, don’t recommend the dyin’ but glad to be brought back. I just may be spendin’ the next week or two in bed still. Donno what they do to ya while ya out, but merde if it ain’t a number on ya.

I have a few theories.

[To Kurt.] Guessin’ we ain’t really goin’ to get ‘ny sympathy over it though, considerin’ what we did.

At this point I'd settle for the mercy of a swift death. [Kurt glances toward the comm, giving a good shot of his face; lean, but noticeably younger by the better part of a decade. His hair is longer too, falling around his shoulders.] Any takers?

[Feel free to tag either of the boys, or both.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He fights the urge to close his eyes, instead keeping his gaze trained on every twitch of her expression. He built this future with the actions of the past and the desire to protect her one last time, and he will face the consequences head on.]

When I killed Bobby, I had to make myself hate him first. In the months I spent hunting him down, I stayed awake at night thinking about the people he'd killed, directly or indirectly, and for what? The chance to enjoy a sunset, or a woman, or a steak. My sister died because Bobby wanted to walk on a damned beach!

It was.. tolerable, then, to watch him die. Because I hated him, almost as much as I'd ever loved him. Because so many people had died, and suffered, because of his selfishness. [Kurt does close his eyes then, long enough to swallow. When he opens them, his eyes are clear.] More died because of mine. I didn't want you to mourn a man who didn't deserve a damn tear. I don't deserve it, and you deserve a damn sight better than to cry over a man who single-handedly destroyed everything we ever fought for! [He's shouting now, not entirely certain of when he began to.]

[It's hard to hear about Bobby like that because it's not how she knew him. He was part of the team. He was family. He'd die for Rogue, he wouldn't kill her and Kurt wouldn't kill him and why did any of this happen?]

Well, it didn't work! [Matching his volume rather than recoiling from it. Instead her body leans slightly toward him as she shouts out her reply, hands fisted at her sides.] I still cried for you! And I deserve to love you! Because there's been too much hate and too much suffering and too much losing! [Loved ones, people they wanted to protect, battles, the whole war, their world.]

Everything was so bad when I died! How the hell did it get worse?

[For all that he thinks Bobby came back wrong after he shattered (because he did, Kurt can pinpoint exactly when Bobby changed even if no one else seemed to notice), sometimes he wonders if his friend simply hit his breaking point. Even up til the end, Bobby was trying to convince him to walk away from it all, let his vengeance go before it killed him and accept the second chance that new world offered.

Kitty's told him he deserves to be happy too, and that's why he can't believe her.]

Of course it didn't! Story of my damn life; I try to protect someone and fuck it all up! [He lifts his chin, shouting directly at her. He can feel his nose burning, and his face twisting in anger at himself. 'Don't you cry, Darkholme. You don't have the right.'] You deserve better than a remnant of a world that fucked you over, Kitty! You deserve a world where you can grow your damn hair out, and let yourself get soft and bury yourself in computers and books! You deserve a world where I'm dead, because that seems to be the only time any of these universes have a future!

Don't give me that! Don't say it like I don't have blood on my hands too! I'm not better than the rest of us! I'm not better than you!

[And then a pause as her breath catches before she pushes on.]

Did you want to die down there? Did you make it happen? [It's this unspoken question that's been hanging around in the back of her mind, not daring to be fully thought and definitely not vocalized, but out it comes. Would he have sent the message unless he was sure? Would he have been sure unless he was choosing it over escape? Was it some kind of penance from the man who hated god?]

You are! You were a child and instead of protecting you, we made you into an assassin! We let you make decisions like the adult you weren't, and you're the one who paid for it!

[His eyes widen, and the answer comes roaring out too quickly for him to think about it.] No!! What kind of man do you think I am, that I'd let someone else I love die because I couldn't stand to live anymore? Hell, woman, do you think I really need a meteor to arrange my own death, if I still wanted to die? I don't deserve this life, but by god I want it! I'm tired of suffering, Kitty, and I'm tired of trying to earn forgiveness from a woman who's been dead for years!

[His jaw clicks shut then, his already wide eyes growing larger as his own words have time to filter through his fevered brain. With blue fur covering his skin, Kurt can't visibly grow paler, but his expression is stricken all the same.]

[She finds a lot of relief in that quick no. It also doesn't feel great that he died while trying to survive, but he's here now just like she's here now. They aren't alone even if they have been screaming at each other. She doesn't feel like screaming anymore. She moves closer, sitting next to him and gently reaching for his hand.]

You weren't that much older. [Spoken softly. Maybe technically an adult. Legally an adult. And definitely someone who had been through more in his early years than she had, but most of them were so young. How old was Wanda when she died? What better life options were out there if they'd chosen some other path? Quicker deaths maybe. A life spent being experimented on and brain washed? Pass.]

You think Linda would blame you?

[He resists, just for a moment, her attempt to take his hand. It would be so much easier to keep screaming, keep pushing and poking until he found the thing that would finally drive her away. Except it wouldn't be easier at all, it would just be what's familiar. Kurt uncurls his hands from around each other and slips one into her hand; he never could tell her no for long, and this too is familiar.

At her softly-spoken point, Kurt just shakes his head, feeling his longer hair brush his shoulders with the movement. He doesn't have the energy to explain that he was never a child the way she was, nor that he was too dangerous to risk joining the other side. Her question isn't any easier, and he rests his head on his knees.] Why not? The only reason she died was because I loved her.

She would hate what I've done in her name, I know that. She hated the things I did as a spy; we didn't talk about it. I told her lies and she pretended to believe them. Maybe she actually did.

[She's almost surprised he lets her hold it at all. And for a moment she thinks of the way she phased when Rogue tried to embrace her after her students died. She was so much harder back then and maybe more afraid. More afraid of feeling and letting it in and breaking down and not being able to get back up. Now she's done all those things and she's still going.]

I don't know what the world was like in that moment, but I know what it was like before and giving someone a reason to live—loving someone and being loved—it meant more than the dying. [Says the girl who still has a very uneasy internal relationship with her memories and thoughts of Piotr. Who she loved. Who killed her.]

But Linda's gone now. She can't blame you. You're blaming yourself. You have to forgive yourself.

[Kurt forces himself to draw in a slow breath through his nose; then another, and another, until it doesn't hitch in time with his heartbeat. His eyes screw shut, hidden by his knees because he can't make himself look at his best friend.]

How? [The words are strained and weak, and terribly vulnerable. He sounds young to his own ears, and hates himself for it.] How can I reconcile the man who told his wife--on our wedding day--that he'd love her until the stars went black, and the man who is tired of hurting? I want to be happy again, without feeling guilty when I'm alone. I want to be in love again, but I don't--even when I had nothing else, I had my word.

It's not easy. [Because it's not. She still struggles with it sometimes whether it's loving people who aren't Piotr or being happy about something even though her team and her world are dead. She'll struggle with it more sooner or later if Winn doesn't return and she can't find her way to him.] I tried telling myself I hated Piotr for killing me and letting our students died. Sometimes I was more convinced of it than others. One time... There was this graveyard in Marina and I went there and just talked to him until I'd said everything I needed to say. It felt a little bit ridiculous, but it helped. And I figured if he wanted me to be miserable and alone he probably wasn't ever worth loving.

[Kurt squeezes her hand, the only indication he gives for several minutes of even hearing her. His breathing continues, hitching now and then in his throat. A few times, it sounds like sobbing. When he does speak again, his voice is barely louder.]

Bobby said the same thing. [He tilts his head, letting the light shine off the matted track of fur under his eyes, damp with what few tears had escaped. That's the problem with fur; it's hard to hide when he's been crying. With Kitty, he doesn't try.] The last time. Through the entire fight he kept asking why I couldn't try to enjoy life again, enjoy this new world. I was there to kill him and he was still trying to help me.

[She isn't sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing considering Kurt's history with Bobby. And she still struggles with the survivor's guilt. The fear of it all being too selfish and self indulgent even if she's at least a little further down the road than Kurt.] Are you afraid of becoming like Bobby?

[Kurt nods, his chin dropping with his gaze. His eyes are firmly fixed on the bedsheets between them when he answers, a little louder but still so soft.]

I killed him for this, Kitty. Oh, officially it was for betraying us, because he was too powerful to be allowed to bounce around as a loose canon, but--[He scoffs, shaking his head.] All he wanted was to be left alone. He was colder, and he'd lost what made him a hero but he never--What Jean was afraid of, him turning that terrifying amount of power toward making either world into a frozen wasteland, he would never have done it. Even then.

[She takes a ragged breath taking that in. She trusts Kurt and Jean, but she trusted Bobby too. She isn't sure what to think and it all just hurts.]

What did we become? Piotr killing me. Gambit killing Piotr. Bobby killing who knows. You killing Bobby. Logan killing the rest of us except you and Jean.

We were family.

[His tail does move then, snaking around to wrap loosely around her waist. His lips press together against a litany of apologies; she isn't a child, and she deserved to know the truth of what they became after her death. But hell if he didn't wish he'd lied, when faced with that pain.]

They weren't themselves, Katzchen. Not Logan, or Bobby, or.. or Piotr. None of them took any joy in what they did; neither did Remy or I. Bobby, I told you. Logan damn near went on his knees begging Jean to join him, to change us so that we would, and-- [He can't make himself say the man's name a second time, and hesitates over finishing the sentence; but he does, in a whisper.] The only time I've heard someone scream like that since was Rogue, when Charles died.

Love was why I went after Bobby, and why Jean had to be the one to take down Logan. We still loved them, and they still loved us. Even with all the killing, we were still family.

[It still hurts. Maybe even more than before because of the guilt over doubt creeping in over her family. He's right. As messed up as it is there was always love binding them even if their lives were R-rated at best.

She holds him again, tighter than before. He's the only one left. The only one who really understands what it was like back home for all those years. Other people here have had hard lives. Maybe harder. But there's something so comforting and easy in just knowing someone really, truly gets it. The violence. The love. The sacrifice.

There's still in different places from him living longer there and going through more and her having more time to decompress and heal, but those places are shifting ever closer and it's still a much smaller gap than with others.]

I don't want to lose you. Don't push me away.

[He's noticed the shrinking distance between where he is and where Kitty is, and it frightens him. Kurt broke at some point along the way; if not when Linda died (though if walking around with the emotional range of a murderous ghost doesn't count then he doesn't know what does) then when he tried to kill Sascha and couldn't stir up the conviction. In his life Kurt has never seen someone come back from that kind of emotional damage, and so he fears that he's dragging Kitty down with him.

It hasn't occurred to him that this, his frustration at living up to his wife's standards and his own unhappiness, his conflict over the same, and even his inability to hurt a friend, could be signs of healing. There was never a chance to properly heal in their world; even in peaceful times he was still cleaning up after the war, and after the wounds were kept raw.

He swallows, hard, and ducks his head, hiding hid face in her shoulder. His voice comes out rough, forced through a tight throat.] I don't do it because I want to. You're all I have left of home, Katzchen. But I won't drag you down.

You're not dragging me down.

[She says it before she really considers it. She doesn't want to think about that happening because she knows she's not going to let go. Not of Kurt. Not after everything and everyone she's lost. But when she lets the quiet wash over them and really thinks about the words she's sure they don't ring true. She hasn't felt pulled down. There are times she reverts to form around him the way you might when seeing someone from your childhood, but it's not exactly the same. She's changed and she would like to think it's for the better.

Lately, things have been harder. Just getting up and doing and being have been hard in ways they hadn't been. But it's not Kurt. It was losing Winn. She pushed herself to keep going and she did, but it was like fighting a current. But some of that drag feels lessened now. She still misses him, but she felt refreshed waking up. She felt ready to get out of bed without listening to his final message or old network recordings of him. She did call him and got no reply. It's still a process.]

What makes you think I'm not lifting you up? I'm the one who walks on air, remember?

You have no idea how badly I want that to be true.

[He's not sure either; he wasn't lying when he said he was tired of hurting. Kurt wants to live again, though he's not sure he'll ever feel he deserves it. A promise was made to his wife; but at the same time, he's beginning to wonder if he ever could break it. The promise was to love her until the end of time, and even now he still loves her every bit as much as he did on their wedding day. perhaps he always will; time and the act of loving two wonderful women (though he intends never to tell Wrath that) never cooled the wistfulness that had Emma's name carved in it.

It always was strange, to him, to hear people talking about falling out of love. He's never been good at it; another way that he's strange inside. It was a part of the child he used to be that survived when he remade himself into something that could survive the battlefield, and the thought of that is what worries him. Some parts of him don't belong in polite society; the part of him that learned to enjoy the slaughter, to find joy in causing pain and pride in his skill. It was why he signed on with the fledgling government as a bounty hunter after the first war, to feed that beast. It was why he was perversely relieved when the raiders attacked.

Something like that doesn't belong in any good world, and after so long Kurt isn't certain if there's much left to him without it. Considering who raised him, maybe there never was.] But would you let me go if it weren't?

[She doesn't give the immediate answer this time. She gives the real one. The considered one.] Eventually.

[Letting go isn't exactly her strong suit. Looking back it seems she held on to Piotr too long at home. She definitely held on to Tyki too long. She always knew better, but after the first break up she really shouldn't have gone in for a second. And Reid? She let him trample her heart and never really let him go. The only thing that did that was falling in love with Winn. If she saw any one of them now could she say that she'd really let go or only that she'd moved on?

But Kurt isn't a lover. He's a friend, a teammate, family. She wouldn't let him destroy her, but...she isn't letting go without a fight.]

But we're past the point of no return if you think it would ever be painless.

[The set of his shoulders relaxes as he lets out a sigh of relief against her shoulder.] Thank God. [And if nothing is indication of how much he'd worried over the prospect, that might serve as a good indicator; how many times has he ever referenced any kind of deity, save in the middle of a rant?]

If you think trying to drive you away was painless, even to consider-- [He leaves the sentence hanging, trusting her to finish it. His fingers tighten slightly, as though the very thought makes him fear that she'll slip through them. After a moment of letting the silence hang, he continues in a very soft voice.] Are we done arguing? I think I'd like to lie down.

I'd.. rather not be alone.

I can argue with you no matter what position you're in, but yeah, we're good.

[And she's just going to lie down next to him once he's comfortable.] You being alone right now was never going to happen.

[It'll be nice just to be glad he's back without worrying about the rest. And she is glad. She wasn't ready to lose anyone else. Maybe she's never ready. Maybe no one is. She's definitely not getting better with practice though.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Back from the Dead

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject