Unidentified Human Remains & The True Nature of Love: Part 9
by Amanda Sichter
Noises.
Soft noises. A beep. A rustle. A whisper.
Something moved.
Light. Something dark passing through the light.
Moving, moved something.
Pain.
He opened his mouth to scream and the pain was in his mouth, in his face, in his lungs. And then a voice was soothing him and he felt the soft prick of a needle in his arm and the pain settled down into something that throbbed and trickled below the surface but could be dealt with.
Pete Wisdom opened his eyes. For an instant the light burned them but then it dimmed as something swung between him and the light. He squinted at the shape of it for a while and then murmured, 'Kitty?' His mouth felt like it was full of cotton-wool.
'Pete,' she said and he knew that she was crying although he couldn't focus closely enough to see it.
'What are you doing here?' he asked, moving his mouth carefully to stop it hurting again. 'I'm dead. Why are you here with me if I'm dead?'
The tears fell harder - he knew it because they splashed against his hand, could feel them there. 'You're not dead, Pete,' she said. 'You're not dead. You were so close, oh Pete, you were so close - I thought I'd lost you so many times. You're not dead.'
Things were slowly coming back into focus for Pete - both physically and mentally. 'Have to be dead,' he said more sharply. 'I remember - the demon - Sethanek - it ate me - my face - it was eating me alive - I died - oh, god, Kitty - I died.' He stopped, his whole body racked with shudders and Kitty whispered soothing words and stroked his hand gently until the shuddering slowly ceased.
'You died,' she agreed. 'It killed you, Pete. I watched it kill you.' She closed her eyes, seeing again the horror before her in the basement, seeing the skin on Sethanek's back surge and split before her, opening a view onto horror, showing her all the things that had been stolen and then worse, rising up - a tide of flesh engulfing Pete, smothering him, his last look of fear and then the noises. It was the noises that kept Kitty awake in the long nights now - those obscene, sucking noises that came in the night and drove her screaming out of sleep.
And she watched, watched through the cage of its ribs as blood began to flow in desiccated veins, as the flesh began to plump and firm where it pressed against the wall, as the heart, the stolen heart, began to beat again in a slow steady pulse of evil, magic becoming real, demon becoming flesh, and Kitty felt her soul writhe again in guilt and hate and horror as Pete's blood drained from him to give life to an evil so obscene that she thought she would die just for having looked upon it.
'I saved you,' she said, her voice very quiet. 'I saved you.'
She leaned forward and clutched at Pete's fingers tightly. 'I watched it killing you, Pete, I thought I was going to die next - or worse, that it would let me go and leave me alive after I'd got you killed. I thought I was going to go mad. But I saved you.'
'What happened?' asked Pete, softly.
'Logan came,' said Kitty. 'Logan brought the Blackbird and came because we'd been too long - he didn't tell anyone, he just came to the address and he scented me and you and tracked us into the basement and he sliced me off the wall.'
If Kitty had believed in miracles she would have thought it was an angel descending as light suddenly flooded down the stairs and into the basement where the thing still sucked and fed. She had looked up, tearing her eyes from the slow beating heart to see Logan, his face a savage twisted mask, claws extended, leap down the stairs without even touching them. Adamantium bit and sheared through her bonds and collar and she was free and Logan stood beside her, sniffing, puzzled, scenting Pete but not seeing, seeing only the thing - the half-thing, the beating thing, the flesh that mounded and pulsed against the wall.
'He's dying,' screamed Logan and Kitty knew, she knew, and she reached out her hand and phased through the rib-cage and, with all of her strength, pulled out its obscenely beating heart.
'It made itself real,' she whispered to Pete. 'It made itself mortal. I pulled out its heart. Sethanek is dead.'
She didn't tell him the rest. She didn't tell him that she had crushed the beating heart in her hands until it had stopped and Sethanek had died and with him had died the magic. She didn't tell him about having to wade through a grotesquerie of half-limbs and scattered organs which had suddenly unknit, unravelled and spread themselves across the basement. She didn't tell him about the blood that coated everything, the walls, the floor, Kitty, Logan, the blood that was Pete's.
'We found you - you were nearly dead,' she said. The body, underneath the skin, the flayed skin, turning him over, blood - Pete's whole body blood, slick and oozing from him from a hundred thousand needle-points in his skin, each drop taking his life away, his mouth pouring blood from more wounds inside, his clothes reduced to shreds and tatters of cloth. Kitty screamed, just once, and then found a pulse and then Logan was calling the number she gave him and there was an ambulance and Kitty had found a sheet and wrapped it tightly around Pete trying to stem the hundred thousand tiny wounds and then the DCI was there and Kitty was in the ambulance and they were on their way to hospital and the officers kept losing him, he kept slipping away into death, but they pulled him back each time, started his heart again, and into the hospital and there was blood, more blood than she had ever seen and they were pumping blood into Pete and finally she was sent away to wait and to wait and to wait.
'You've been in here for a fortnight,' said Kitty, softly. 'They've kept you totally sedated until today. I've been waiting for you for so long, Pete. I'm so glad you're back.' She kissed his hand lightly.
Pete frowned, then squinted. There was something on his face, he could see a shadow across his face, above his left eye and a whiteness below that. He crossed his eyes and pursed his lips but couldn't work it out. 'What's that?' he asked.
'It's a bandage,' said Kitty. 'You're all bandaged up. From head to toe. You're still healing.' She smiled suddenly. 'You're just one giant scab at the moment, Pete Wisdom.'
He glared in her general direction. 'You say the nicest things, Pryde,' he grumbled, then he moaned. 'Oh, god, I'm not going to have more scars, am I?'
She nodded and touched the bandage on his cheek. 'Apparently this one went right down to the bone - looks like Sethanek was trying to take marrow as well. You'll always have a scar on your cheek. You'll have to wear an eye-patch for a little while, too. That's why you can't see properly - your left eye is covered in gauze.'
'I'm going to look like a frigging pirate king,' grumbled Pete and then sobered. 'What happened - with the demon?' he asked.
'Dead,' said Kitty. 'Totally dead. When the task force came with the magicians they tried to pull it back to the binding place but there was nothing left of it. They think I killed it at the moment it was caught between magic and flesh - so it dissipated utterly. It can never come back.'
'And Scratch?' asked Pete, and his voice was full of black hate.
'Arrested,' said Kitty, softly. 'Stealing classified government property, conspiracy to murder, trafficking with a demon - not that that last one'll ever get mentioned in open court. There's enough evidence to put him in jail forever. And the DCI went to the Minister and PIU's been cracked open and cleaned out of Black Air personnel again. Apparently they'd raised Sethanek for the right reasons - to kill a lesser demon that'd escaped, but once he'd got free they didn't know what to do - so they just sat on their hands and let it go on killing people.' She patted at Pete's hands gently. 'You should have seen his face,' she said. 'He was waiting in his little cubicle at work, waiting for the news two more bodies had been found, and instead the DCI came in and arrested him with me scowling over his shoulder. He couldn't believe it when he saw me - or when I told him you were still alive.' She shuddered. 'The DCI's very angry at me.' He had let her know what he thought of going to the address in no uncertain terms - she wouldn't be making a mistake like that again.
Pete nodded, closed his eyes wearily.
'You're not angry at me?' Kitty asked, timidly. 'Please, Pete, I'll never do anything like that again. You were right - we're not supposed to be the heroes when something like this happens. Please forgive me.'
'Nothing to forgive,' said Pete, quietly. 'Faced evil, Kitty. You weren't to know. I don't blame you at all.' Kitty's eyes overspilled with tears suddenly - relief seared through her body. She had not realised until that moment how desperately afraid she was that Pete would not forgive her.
'There's more,' she said as, unable to put her relief and sudden joy into words, she descended to the mundane. 'I know you're tired, but there are things you need to know. Apparently the blood loss you suffered was immense and it caused some major problems with some of your organs, particularly your kidneys. You're going to be in hospital for a while, Pete.'
Pete grimaced. He hated hospitals. They wouldn't let you smoke.
'Pete,' said Kitty and he looked at her. 'It's not going to be easy, Pete. I know you're tired, I know you've been through - something I can barely imagine. But you're going to have to fight to stay alive. Will you fight to stay alive, Pete?'
He looked at her, about to scoff, and then thought about her words. He was tired, so tired. His body was going to take a long time to heal, he knew it, and it may never be really right again. And if he closed his eyes he saw again the monster coming for him, coming to eat his flesh and blood, to murder him and he suddenly wondered if there was all that much to fight for.
'You told me once,' said Kitty, breaking into his reverie, 'that you understood the true nature of evil, but you never told me the true nature of love. I know it now,' she said. 'You showed me. Logan gave me the words,' she glanced at the back of the ward and Pete suddenly realised that someone else was also there, but he couldn't focus well enough yet to see. Logan had said a lot of things to Kitty while they waited to see whether Pete would live or die - most of them she had already known. 'Logan told me the true nature of love is that you love someone if you're willing to die for them, selflessly, utterly - or if you'll sacrifice your life for them.' She stroked Pete's unruly hair back from his forehead and smiled at him. 'You were willing to die for me, Pete, willing to give up everything without even thinking. And I'm willing to die for you, Pete - so long as you promise to live for me. I love you, Pete Wisdom. Will you live for me?'
He wrapped his fingers around hers, slowly, carefully. 'How can I refuse an offer like that?' said Pete. 'They do think I'll get better, don't they?'
'If they can't fix you here,' rumbled Logan's voice suddenly from the background, 'the X-Men are all happy to have you back at the mansion, fix you up with a little Shi'ar magic.'
'Oh no, no,' said Pete, shaking his head as best he could. 'I'm not joining the Spandex brigade, Pryde, no way.'
'I don't want you to,' replied Kitty, her voice soothing. 'I'm leaving the X-Men, Wisdom. Logan knows, the rest will soon. I can't stay there any more - I can't believe in "the Dream" any more, not after what I've seen here. I can't go back to what I had there. With the X-Men I only have half a life - with you, for the first time in a long time, I feel like I'm fully alive, like I'm a real person again. And I like your friends and I know people here and I want to help you with your work and I want to help catch murderers and I want to use my brain and I love you and I don't want to fight any more. So, we'll only go to Westchester if you need medical help. Otherwise - otherwise, I'm moving over here. To England. With you. To help you out with your consultancy. Besides, you need someone to keep the money coming in while you're laid up like this,' she grinned at him.
'What makes you think they'll give you a working visa, Pryde?' asked Pete, stunned by what Kitty was offering.
'They'll have to,' she whispered. 'They have to give me a working visa - if you marry me, Pete Wisdom.'
'Marry you?' said Pete, his voice very small. He looked at Kitty with wide, startled eyes.
'I hurt you once,' she said. 'So badly. I pushed you away and out of my life and it was only when I saw you again that I saw how much you hurt. I know you're terrified I'll walk out on you again. But I nearly got you killed - and that made me realise that I can never, ever risk losing you again. So I'm offering you the only reassurance I can, Pete. I want to marry you - because if I marry you, you never have to worry about me walking out on you again. It's all I can offer you, Pete. Will you have me?' And the smile she bestowed on him was filled with love and happiness and a desperate hope.
He reached out a shaking hand to her face, touched her cheek gently. 'I've loved you for so long,' he whispered through the fog that was beginning to descend on him. 'Kitty. My lovely Kitty.'
'I love you, too, Pete,' she replied and smiled again. 'So, what's your answer?'
He couldn't answer her, his body succumbing to the drugs that lured him into a dreamless, peaceful sleep. But his hand held hers tightly and even in his sleep he knew that nothing and no-one would ever make him let her go again.
The End