Unidentified Human Remains & The True Nature of Love: Part 4
by Amanda Sichter
Kitty mulled over her thoughts as Wisdom drove them back to his flat. She'd been startled to find how much she liked the people on the task-force - having previously only met the DCI (~who yelled at me~) she expected to have been exposed to more surly, unpleasant personalities. Instead they had been a remarkably pleasant group - if more than a little driven.
She had talked with Emma Martin, interested in another woman's perspective on the case - interested in why they chose to work with Pete Wisdom. Emma had explained that the disbanding of F.66 - the Department of Unusual Death - and the allocation of their workload into the day-to-day business of coppers who had never had to deal with mutants or magical beings or serial killers who fossilised people, had led to difficulties in the field.
'Wisdom was recommended,' said Emma, 'to the DCI, no less, as someone worth having around when the weird stuff is going down. He's good, you know. He looks at things sideways,' said Emma, breathing gently on her cup of tea to cool it. 'None of us would ever have thought of those tapes - or looked at them. But he's got a way of seeing round corners and making us think again. That's why he's got free rein with all the evidence and can sit in on the interviews. Not that he's solved all our cases or even been involved in a lot of them, mind, it's not like we're that stupid - but he's been a big help in a lot of them.'
'So it doesn't matter then?' asked Kitty, and then elaborated as Emma raised a questioning eyebrow. 'That he's a mutant. That you're a mutant,' she added, timidly.
She hadn't expected Emma's heart-felt laugh. 'Sweetie,' she said, patting Kitty's hand as if she were a child. 'I don't know what world you're living in but we love him for his powers. You can't help but feel that way after his hot-knives have slagged a gun that was just about to shoot you full of holes. And as for me - Kitty, I'm the best thing they've got on this force for eliminating suspects from enquiries, for finding the guilty, for getting confessions. Being a mutant isn't the stigma it used to be - not here, anyways.'
Kitty had been so astonished she hadn't been able to respond at all and then Wisdom was shouting for her and they were in the car heading home and she finally had a chance to think about what was said.
~They like mutants,~ she thought. ~Not just like them - encourage them. They let them use their abilities to help - and they don't blame them for the actions of other mutants. This is just too weird.~
'Pete,' she said, softly and he grunted to let her know he was listening. 'How come mutants are - liked here? Respected?' she asked, her amazement obvious in her voice.
'There's been a lot of work done, Pryde,' responded Wisdom. 'A new government got in, some good advertising campaigns, educating people, they started to uphold mutant rights in courts, mutants starting getting work in places where their talents were useful. A few good bits of publicity - you know, firefighters with flameproof skin saving children from burning buildings, telepathic cops finding killers real quick, precogs getting people out of places before bombs went off - and next thing you know we're flavour of the month.' He smirked suddenly. 'Course it helps when one of the royal family turns out to be a mutant. It's still not perfect but it's a hell of a lot better than it used to be.' He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. 'I thought you'd know about all this stuff, Kitty. Yer really haven't been paying attention.'
'No. No, I haven't,' said Kitty, slowly.
She hadn't been paying attention. There hadn't been time to pay attention. All there was time for in her life was fighting and training and fighting again.
Kitty's thoughts turned down paths she'd never considered previously. How much more useful would Jean's or the Professor's powers be in the search for a serial killer? Would the world see mutants in a better light if Storm's powers were used to quell hurricanes so they didn't cause massive damage - or if she re-routed tornadoes? What about her own powers - couldn’t she help in hostage situations or burning buildings, phasing people away from danger?
Kitty's long-held feelings of diffuse discomfort suddenly crystallised into a harsh sense of anger at the X-Men. For a long time she had been aware of her own unfocussed despair, but she had put it down to her situation with Colossus. But now she was angry.
~Why can't they see?~ she thought. ~Why can't any of them see that all we're doing when we just keep on fighting is hurting ourselves - and other mutants? Why haven't we learned a thing from what's happened here? Oh, god, I'm so tired of fighting.~
She put her head down in her hands and tried not to think again for the rest of the trip.
Pete looked over at her slumped figure and wisely said nothing at all.
* * * * *
She had calmed down by the time they got back to the flat, tucking the harsh grain of her anger deep inside where it couldn’t be felt - although she knew she would drag it out late in the night and stew over it. But she was calm now and she was ready when Pete said, 'Okay, let's think about this.'
'About what, Wisdom?' she asked.
'What do yer think, Pryde?' said Pete. 'Why Huston couldn't remember mugging Daniels. Why the security guard couldn't remember seeing Huston mugging Daniels. This is weird shit, Kitty, and we're the only members of the Weird Shit Department so let's get thinking.'
'The Weird Shit Department.' Kitty shook her head and sighed. 'Okay, what're our options? Do you reckon the killer could be a mutant?'
Pete bit his bottom lip in thought as he settled down in a chair, his Scotch close to hand. 'No,' he said, finally. 'I don't think the killer's a mutant.'
'Neither do I,' agreed Kitty. 'There's too many difficulties . . .'
'Like how many powers would they have to have,' continued Pete. 'They'd have to be super-strong and able to make themselves essentially invisible . . .'
'And able to erase the memory of not only anyone around them, but also anyone who'd had anything to do with the victim in the last hour,' said Kitty.
'So it's not a mutant,' concluded Pete. 'Or not just a mutant, anyway. Something more than that.'
'The super-strength could be a mutant power,' mused Kitty thoughtfully.
'Could be,' conceded Pete. 'Although the memory-wipe could be one - a walking amnesia factory maybe.'
'Occam's razor,' replied Kitty.
'The simplest solution,' said Pete and Kitty grinned broadly at him, her eyes shining in her delight. She loved doing this - the talks with Pete where their minds intersected, where he finished a sentence she had started and she returned the favour, where she did not need to explain the thoughts behind her sudden pronouncements and leaps of logic were accepted as having sound basis without having to be dissected. Her heart danced suddenly in her chest.
Pete, of course, was oblivious.
'The simplest power for a mutant to have would be super-strength,' he continued his musings. 'So if it is a mutant that'd be the most likely power.'
'Someone like Sabretooth,' said Kitty. Pete gave her a questioning look and she continued, 'You know big, scary, shiny claws, nasty big pointy teeth.' She did the fang movements from Monty Python And The Holy Grail, her fingers wiggling in front of her mouth as she made 'aargh' noises.
Pete looked at her for a long moment and then raised an eyebrow. 'You're not suggesting a particularly vicious rabbit did this, are you, Pryde?'
'Maybe,' she said, seriously, but she couldn't sustain the pose for more than a few seconds. Her smile flashed across her face, beaming.
Wisdom gave her a long look and then sighed. 'Pryde,' he said, sadly. 'You'd better start taking this seriously or I’m going to have to spank you.'
'Ooooh, promises, promises,' grinned Kitty and Pete returned the smile.
Happiness rose in Kitty like a tide, a sudden rush of giddy emotion. It felt so good, this return to old patterns and flirtations, to someone who understood her and her wild conversational swings, her allusions to comedy movies, her habit of slipping silly observations into the middle of important conversations. She felt the connections between Pete and herself, connections that had faded nearly away, suddenly sparkle and renew.
'Anyway,' said Pete, frowning exaggeratedly at her. 'Excluding the possibilities of killer rabbits and multi-powered ultra-mutants what other choices have we got?'
Kitty sighed and grimaced. 'I really, really hate making this a possibility, but I don't think there's a lot of choice.'
'Oh god, no, Pryde. Don't say it,' Pete said, making warding-off gestures with his hands.
'I hate this. I really hate this,' Kitty ignored Pete's protestations. 'But I think we've got to take into account the possibility that there could be magic involved.'
'You had to bring it up, didn't you, Pryde?' said Pete. 'Do you know how much effort I was puttin' in to not thinking about magic? Do you know how absolutely revolting it is when you bring magic into a case? Do you have any idea the kind of looks I get from the task-force when I start talking about magic?' He buried his face in his hands suddenly. 'I hate magic,' he said, mournfully.
'Well, take heart,' said Kitty, brightly. 'Maybe it's aliens instead.'
'No,' said Wisdom, adamantly. 'Absolutely bloody not. Under no circumstances are we even going to think that it could possibly be aliens. You got that, Pryde? No bloody aliens.'
'Oh, I suppose I can accept that,' said Kitty and then she sobered. 'But it could definitely be magic, Pete.'
'I know,' said Pete, making it sound like a terrible doom had been laid on him. 'It's just too obvious. Maybe a mutant power or some kind of memory-altering technology could work on people around the murderer, but there's really no way they could move back down the victim's timeline and erase memories.'
'But a spell,' said Kitty, gently. 'A spell could do it. It'd have to be a very powerful practitioner, though.'
'Hugely powerful,' agreed Pete. 'Someone who can do that kind of stuff - there can't be many witches that could do it.'
'Sorceresses,' Kitty corrected absently. 'Or sorcerers. But why would someone that powerful be going around stealing body parts?'
'Don't go there,' warned Pete. 'Just don't. I can think of half a dozen possible reasons and every single one of them makes me want to drink booze until the whole world slides into a black hole and leaves me to die in peace.'
Kitty's mouth pursed as she thought about it and then she shuddered. 'Just too revolting,' she said, decidedly. 'Anyway, this is all based on the assumption that it is someone doing magic. It's still just a theory.'
'But a good one,' said Wisdom, grudgingly. 'Only now we're going to have to try and find out who could do magic of that level.' He frowned suddenly. 'It couldn't be Sefton, could it? Or her mad-bitch mother.'
'Amanda's given up sorcery. Margali's dead.' Kitty said, softly. Pete raised an eyebrow at her and she continued. 'When Daytripper left Excalibur she went to Limbo. She thought Margali might still be out there and she knew she had to try and find the Soul-sword. Turned out Belasco had it - and Margali. Amanda fought to get the sword - she's never told us what really happened, but it was some kind of magical battle. By the end of it she'd locked Belasco in Limbo and Margali was all the way, permanently, dead. Amanda didn't want anything to do with magic after that - so she found some nice safe little magician without a bad bone in his body and he agreed to bond with the sword and guard Limbo. She hasn't used any sorcery since she came back to Earth.'
'So how do you know all this?' asked Pete.
'Amanda came back to the X-Men, back to Kurt. They got married about a year ago.'
A delicate ache suffused Wisdom's heart and he had dropped his guard so far now that Kitty saw the pain upon his features. Instinctively she wanted to soothe the hurt.
So she laughed at him.
The look he sent her was purely offended, until she said, 'Get over it, Wisdom. They eloped to Las Vegas. Nobody got an invitation.'
He frowned at her for a second and then his face went slightly pained. 'The fuzzy elf got married by an Elvis impersonator, didn't he?' he asked.
Kitty grinned and nodded.
'That man has absolutely no class,' said Pete, rolling his eyes.
'But an awful lot of style,' replied Kitty. 'He bamfed Amanda into the church right after she said yes.'
Wisdom gave her a dubious look. 'That's so romantic it's sickening,' he said.
'Isn't it just?' grinned Kitty. 'But back to the topic at hand - Amanda definitely couldn't be doing the murders. Not that you should have suspected her anyway.' She frowned at Pete, who shrugged.
'She left Excalibur before I did,' he said. 'How did I know what'd happened to her? Seeing every other witch I ever met was a fucking loony . . .' He trailed off.
'Weeeelll,' drawled Kitty. 'I s'pose I can forgive you - but only if you're very, very nice to me.'
Pete grinned devilishly. 'Would that being nice to you involve any whipped cream, perhaps?' he asked, slyly.
'Maybe,' said Kitty, coyly looking away and then spoiling her practiced flirt by having an uncontrolled attack of the giggles. 'Sorry, mental picture,' she said and refused to elaborate despite Wisdom's extensive and increasingly outrageous threats.
'Well, if you're not going to tell me,' he huffed eventually, giving up. 'How are we going to find out who'd be capable of doing this level of magic?'
'They'd all know,' said Kitty. Pete gave her a surprised look, so she elaborated. 'They're all on the Winding Way,' she said. 'I've never seen a bunch of people who had more idea of who their competitors are - they make figure-skaters look like whiny nancy-girls when it comes to taking down people ahead of them. So all we've really got to do is ask a couple of them. They'll be able to tell us.'
'So who exactly do we ask, Pryde?' said Wisdom. 'You got an in on the Winding Way? I presume Sefton's lost track by now.'
'She has and I do,' said Kitty, managing to restrain herself to just a hint of smugness. 'I can get in touch with Dr Strange - we've got a mutual friend.' She had come to know Stephen Strange quite well over the last few years - he always visited the mansion when Betsy and Warren came back for a visit. She rather liked the sorcerer - one of the few who still respected the fact that his use of magic should be used only for the greater good.
'Well, go on - get on the phone,' said Pete. 'C'mon, Pryde, he might be able to help us solve this before another poor sod gets strewn across the landscape.'
'It's not that easy,' said Kitty and grimaced. 'I'll have to get back onto the X-Men to get a number for him - it's not like he's listed in the book.' She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. 'It might be a little awkward,' she confessed.
'Why awkward?' asked Pete. 'All you've got to do is ring up and tell someone Strange can give you a clue. I can't imagine your darling X-Men not falling over themselves to help solve a murder.'
'It's just,' Kitty paused and bit her lip. 'It's just that - they don’t actually know I'm here,' she confessed. 'They don't know I've come to see you and they don't know why. Only Logan knows.' The look she gave to Pete was more than a little shame-faced.
The look he gave her could have melted glass. 'You ashamed of me, Pryde?' he asked, and if his gaze was fiery, his voice was icy-cold.
Kitty felt a sudden stab of pain. She remembered when Pete comprehended everything she thought, when a misunderstanding like this wouldn't have been possible. 'It wasn't like that,' she protested, softly. 'It was just that - with Piotr and Kurt and some problems I was having with - well, with being in the X-Men - I just - I didn't want to tell them. I didn't,' she paused and took a deep breath, steeling herself against a revelation she had been hiding even from herself. 'I didn't trust them, Pete,' she said.
'Didn't trust them with what?' asked Pete, his voice still suspicious but considerably softer.
'I didn't trust them not to try and talk me out of it. I didn't trust them to leave me to make my own decision. I didn't trust them to trust me.' Kitty's words were almost a plea.
'Why wouldn't they trust you?' asked Wisdom, his voice soft with surprise. 'You're Kitty - the golden girl, the great white hope of the X-Men, she who can do no wrong. Why wouldn't they trust you?'
Kitty groped for words, almost afraid to articulate what had been inside her for so long but that she had concealed so successfully from herself. 'The X-Men - Piotr and I ended - unpleasantly. It was at least as much my fault as his - and I've never been allowed to forget that fact. They have a tendency to treat me as if I'm - emotionally unstable. They keep making decisions for me.' Aimlessly, she waved her hand in the air. 'It's not that they want to - they don't even realise they're doing it most of the time. But they do it. Only Logan - only Logan lets me be Kitty. Only Logan lets me make mistakes. Everyone else tries to make me do what they think is best. If I'd told them I'm was coming here to see you - well, let's just say I couldn't have coped with all the meetings we would have had to have to decide if it was the right thing to do. Or even worse, they would have wanted to come along with me.' She bared her teeth in a mirthless grin. 'Can you imagine the chaos of the X-Men arriving in full regalia in the middle of London and barging up to your door?' She shuddered briskly. 'When you rang - your phone call - gave me the excuse I needed. I had wanted to get away for so long but I just couldn't talk myself into it. There wasn't a reason to go. Not a real one. Not one that wasn't just emotional cowardice. When you rang - I just told the X-Men I needed a holiday, packed my bags and ran away.'
Pete nodded in understanding - he knew all about running away. 'What happened between you and Rasputin?' he asked, his tone carefully neutral.
Kitty gave a harsh bark of laughter. 'I can't, Pete. I just - not yet. I can't. It was such a mistake. Just one giant fuck-up. I've made so many mistakes, Pete.' The eyes she lifted to him were haunted with the memories of old wounds, past mistakes.
As she looked into Pete's eyes, Kitty felt something click between them. Something delicate hovered there, trembling on the edge of existence - all it needed, they both knew, were the right words and it would be whole and real.
Pete nearly said the words. Nearly. But, inside his head, a trigger had been built when Kitty had so unceremoniously ended their relationship - a trigger designed to make sure he could never be so vulnerable to pain again - and the look in Kitty's eyes tripped it to on. So what came out when he opened his mouth was, 'Well, you'll just have to make sure yer get onto Logan, then.'
Kitty stared at him for a long moment and then laughed, as much at her own expectations as at what Wisdom said. 'I suppose I will have to,' she said. 'I can do it but it'll just take a little time. But Dr Strange can give us - well, certainly anyone he knows about on the Winding Way who could do this.' She pursed her lips judiciously, her mind back on the matter at hand. 'We probably need more than one source, though,' she said. 'You could ask Romany if she knows anyone who could do it.'
Kitty was staring into the middle distance as she spoke, her thoughts tumbling, so she didn't notice that Pete's face went blank and utterly still at her words. 'I need a smoke,' he said and then he was gone, walking out of the room.
For a moment Kitty's eyes locked on his back, her expression bemused. Then she smiled to herself. She didn't blame him for cutting and running. Too many emotions had rippled between them, too much had been left unspoken. It would be easy to drown in a sea of implication and innuendo. Of course he needed a time-out.
But even as she thought these things, Kitty felt elation rise in her like bubbles of champagne. She could feel it again, all the connections between them, all the things that had made them Pete and Kitty, made them friends, made them lovers. Kitty's mind shied away from the word lover. ~Is that what I want?~ she thought. ~Do I want us to go back to being lovers? Do I still love him? Does he still love me?~
There were no answers to her questions. She didn't know what she wanted, didn't dare to think about what might happen. All she knew was that there was something between them, more than something, and it was a promise and a dream and a wish all in one. Light of heart, Kitty rose from the couch and made her way out to the balcony.
She paused there, looking out at him looking out at the world. Pete leaned against the balcony railing, one hand holding his cigarette, the other his Scotch glass. Scotch and cigarettes. He had always tasted of Scotch and cigarettes. Whenever he had kissed her that's what his mouth had tasted like. No-one else's kisses had ever tasted like that - no-one else's kisses had ever tasted as good. It was with a sense of astonishment that Kitty realised how fiercely she wanted to taste his mouth again.
And then she looked at him, truly looked at him and a tremor of apprehension ran through her. He was - defeated. She could see the hurt in the line of his back, the pain in the way he hunched his shoulders. He lifted his glass and drank and when he sat it back down on the balcony railing, she saw that it was empty.
'What's wrong?' she asked, quietly.
For a moment she thought he hadn't heard her as he stood without moving. But then he leaned forward into the railing and dragged deeply on his cigarette.
'My dad died nearly three years ago,' he said. 'After he died Romany moved out of London, out of the rat-race as she put it. Couldn't be any more fucking ironic. About two years ago she ended up at the bottom of a big fucking pile-up on a motorway somewhere. She didn't have a chance.' He stopped abruptly, as if the pain caught the words in his throat.
Kitty was stunned, motionless. ~No, no, it can't be true,~ she wanted to protest, but she stopped herself. Of course it was true, of course it had happened. Pete's whole family was dead, they had all died, Romany had been dead for two years, and Kitty hadn't known a thing about it. Pete had had to deal with all of it, every horrible part of it, totally alone - and she was the one responsible for him being so alone.
There had been no magical web of connections between them. Kitty knew it now - knew she had been talking herself into believing something that had not been real for a very long time. She felt all the illusions she had about there being more than something between them wither and burn into ash. Too much time had passed, too many things had changed. There were no connections between them - all that was left were the ghosts of old love.
'I'm sorry,' said Kitty, tentatively, and then stopped as Pete shook his head gently.
'Not your fault,' said Wisdom. 'You've got nothing to be sorry for.'
~Yes, I do,~ thought Kitty. ~There's a thousand things I can be sorry for. But the worst of all is the fact that I've been sitting here expecting that I could just pick up with you where I left off - as if nothing had ever happened, as if I'd never hurt you. I should have more sense, I really should. For that, Pete, I truly am sorry.~
But Kitty didn't say any of it. With a dull ache in her voice, she said, 'I'm going to try and ring Logan.'
Pete nodded, not turning his head, and she came back in off the balcony and made her way to the phone. She picked up the receiver but just held it in her hand for a long time, staring at the wall. She didn't want to ring the X-Men, didn't want to talk to Logan.
She didn't want to have to explain why she was crying.
On the balcony, Pete Wisdom dragged deeply on his cigarette, and felt the pain he thought had dulled to nothing now slice like knives again. He had thought he was over Romany's death, thought he could deal with it, but explaining it to Kitty (~Kitty, who should have been there~) had made the hurt suddenly loom inside him again. He leaned on the balcony railings and felt the pain of all the things that might have been fill him and spill out into the night, drifting with his cigarette smoke until it felt like his agony encompassed the universe although he knew that it was only, really, as large as himself.