Very much NSFW fic continued from yesterday:
Fracture Forty-Two: Broken
Inside Kurt’s head, it was a brawl. The bars holding the monsters back had vanished. The hold that the Archivist had on the memories burst like a dam, flooding them with his past under Hess.
All of his Masks wanted to use the body at once, and none were co-operating.
Which was why he appeared to have epilepsy.
It must have been a post-hypnotic command. Hess knew about his masks, she’d have studied everything she could use against him. The only good demon is one you can control.
He was lucky that the people from the Institute were there for moral support. Otherwise, the paramedics would have given him the wrong medication. Perhaps put him in a coma.
Hess planned for everything.
The memories surged through him, making him want to scream. Making him want to vomit.
So filthy.
So unclean.
And he’d wanted to *touch* Katzchen…
Kurt could only howl out his misery inside his head.
*
“Just like before, Jean. We held him together during a smaller memory flood. We can do it again.”
Kurt was strapped down on the gurney, still twitching. He had a plastic bit jammed in his mouth. So far, he’d shown no sign of any awareness of the outside world.
Xavier sighed and was thankful that he’d worked hard on creating a small private hospital for the treatment of mutants. Kurt would be amongst friends. People who would help him, despite how he looked, instead of panicking.
Jean sat opposite him, on the other side of Kurt’s gurney. They linked hands, fingers intertwining for a physical bridge for their power. The Professor’s right to Jean’s left. Their other hand found Kurt’s temple, and they went in.
They were almost instantly lost in the maelstrom.
*
“I can’t hold them,” said the Archivist. He looked almost upset. The impression of his hands was bent and broken, even bleeding. “My hands… I can’t hold them. I can’t take them away.”
Das Kinder was holding his head and screaming for someone to make it stop. *Please*.
Even Ragdoll was keening in a mental corner.
Monsters were running wild. Everywhere. It was like a mad, howling cyclone of amorphous shapes with glowing eyes.
Kurt was holding on to the Archivist, trying to hold him up. Somehow, Hess had done something to stop them merging. If he could merge with Fight and the Archivist, he could have healed the damage. But there was no merging at all. No-one could co-operate.
So they fought.
He couldn’t hold up the Archivist and yell at the others at the same time.
“Listen to me,” Kurt said in the mask’s ear. “You have to focus on living. If you die, we all come undone. Please. Stay with me. Please.”
And then there were other hands, holding the both of them.
Jean. Professor Xavier.
Kurt almost fainted from relief. He couldn’t be weak. Not yet. He had to wait until the Archivist was better.
Jean took the Archivist’s hands in hers, petting them gently. “There, now,” she soothed. “We’ll make this better, soon. Just relax.”
The Professor took over the job of holding the Archivist up. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’ll help.”
The Archivist sighed. His hands were healing.
Kurt let go. There were others that needed help. He scooped up Das Kinder into his lap and purr-sang at the boy, rocking him back and forth.
Some of the simpler Monsters stopped their rioting in order to listen. Flight stopped baying. Fight slowed in his eternal battle against anything that could harm them.
It was working. It may have been working in tiny pockets, but at least it was working.
*
What was happening in the scenery of Kurt’s mind was an analogy for the mental torment he was undergoing. It was all perception.
The Archivist was close to psychic death, since he no longer held in the memories that fractured Kurt into the surviving personas. Hess' post-hypnotic command had done something to the Masks’ ability to co-operate, share, and help each other.
_I found it,_ said the Professor.
There was a painful snap, and all of Kurt’s personas cried out at once.
The Archivist healed spontaneously as he gathered the wild memories. He moved amongst the others, taking the memories that wounded them. The disturbance was nearly over, but the hazard wasn’t.
There was no restraint on the Monsters. It would take far more than they had at the moment to restrain them.
Xavier had enough work pulling Jean back into her head.
*
They ‘woke’ in a ward, a curtain pale enough to let the light in, but opaque enough to block people seeing inside had been pulled over the window.
“Good morning,” joked the attending medic. “You’re lucky our healer scoped him out when you came in. There’s nothing we can do medically for your student.”
Kurt was still twitching, but it was more in the manner of someone who was dreaming, rather than a full-on fit. He was a long way from healed, inside.
The Masks were battling, most likely the 'civilised’ masks against the wild Monsters, and none had the time to surface.
“Thank you,” managed Professor Xavier. Even though he was exhausted, he had to ask, “What news of the trial?”
*
“…yet *another* example of Hess sabotaging the witnesses, today. The victim in this case being long-time survivor Kurt Wagner.” Footage played of a spectacularly violent fit thrown in the middle of the courtroom. “Once again, the trial is suspended until the prosecution's key witness feels well enough to testify.”
“Good God,” Andrei muttered. They were only a few towns shy of a chartered flight to the States, and *this* had to happen.
If it was up to *him*, that Hess woman would have been hoofed into jam years ago.
To think, he’d actually given her *directions* when he was a child.
He’d let her find where Kurt lived; and never known what he’d done.
“Nasty mess,” said the cashier, trying not to stare at his hair-end. "Your tribesman’s stuck in the middle of all that. Such a shame.“
Andrei paid for the supplies. "That’s my tribesman she just attacked," he said. "My best friend.” _My near-brother… I’m sorry._
He felt sick at the mere thought of letting Hess near Kurt, let alone the whole Wagner family. _God, forgive me for what I did._
*
Kitty could barely control her tears as she listened to what the quietly-worded doctors had to say.
Kurt was still struggling for control. Neither science nor magic nor mutant power could do anything for him. The Professor and Jean had already exhausted themselves holding him together - more or less - during the 'memory flood’ he suffered in the courtroom.
Therefore, the only thing left was friends and family. Familiar voices, even though there was no indication that he could even hear what was going on outside his body.
He was hooked up to some elementary life support and a lot of monitoring equipment. His breathing was erratic, just like his movements.
They’d strapped him down.
Kitty resolved to stay by his side, if only so he wouldn’t panic when he came around. Kurt hated hospitals with a vengeance. They reminded him of his nightmares. She sat beside him and gently petted his hand.
His eyes focussed on her, but the minds behind those eyes were flickering like some ancient movie.
Flick, flick, flick, flick, flick, flick…
She could even tell some of them apart.
Das Kinder, unknown, Hure, the Perfectionist, unknown, Kurt, unknown, unknown…
Every single one of them focussed on her; and every time Kurt came up, however briefly, tears filled his eyes.
She could almost hear him appologising.
“Don’t be sorry,” she whispered. “It doesn’t matter what you did in the past. I love you for who you are, okay? I want to like, spend all the time I can with you. You *and* the people in your head.”
The unknown one currently behind Kurt’s eyes wept. “Forgive?” he croaked.
Kitty kissed him on the forehead. “Yeah. Even though it wasn’t like, *ever* your fault.”
He went under again with a faint sigh.
Kitty did her best to hide her tears. Damn Hess to every Hell that sentient life had ever come up with.
Hess had done this to him, and more likely than not, had no means of reversing the damage.
Kitty picked up his twitching hand and kissed it before she pressed it to her cheek. “Please, Kurt,” she begged. “Please get better?”