He's never been a theorist in anything but politics and psychology. None
of the names would mean anything to him; all he can tell is that it works
just like the things his Kitty used to tell him were par for the course.
Normal if you wear an X or associate with those who do. When Kitty
answers, Pete looks back, watching her again. Watching her own tenseness,
then watching the shifting and the expression and the *need*, and he stubs
the cigarette out in the ashtray he's put on the windowsill; he walks
forward hesitantly. And he holds out a hand, tentatively reaching for her,
his fever-hot skin making contact with her face so very lightly. Shaking.
Tracing the line of her jaw. "I'm sorry I'm not him. But - I'm willing to
bet I'm close." Am I close enough? Do I have any right to even ask? Do I.


Touch collapses those possibilities into one, as is only suitable for
wrestling with quantum physics. And if that one is radio lyrics from
practically back when she was in high school - well, that just trips one
more absurdity circuit for the day, and Kitty reaches up and clasps
fiercely at his hand, turning her head to kiss the palm before pulling him
gently toward the couch. "Yeah. I ..." Words fail, and she ducks her head,
pulling the glove off her other hand with her teeth as Lockheed fans his
wings for balance. She holds that hand up, then. Shows him the bracelet
she wore under the glove. And the medal on it. Before she drops the glove
in her lap, and whispers, "/C'mere,/ you stupid git."


The absurd is what's allowed them to meet, the absurd is what's keeping
them alive. Wisdom's gaze lights on the medal on Kitty's bracelet, and he
stares at it even as he's pulled toward the couch, his hand held captive.
Immense jealous relief, sympathy, and a big old gladness that he's usually
a 'live in the moment' kind of guy - they just *flood*, floating off the
fear and the gutwrenching horror of the past few hours. He sits,
half-collapsing and half-controlled, and immediately reaches over to pull
Kitty into his lap, if she'll let him. All the better to possessively
cuddle you with, my dear. "Pryde." Quietly, disbelievingly. Joyfully.


Oh, she'll let him. She curls in his lap, light and slim, and puts her
free arm about his shoulders to return that possessiveness. "Mm-hm," she
murmurs back to him. "Covet me." Her cheek presses against his, not /warm/
by his standards but a whole lot warmer than the air, and she has to
swallow hard before she can keep her breath remotely steady.


"/Covet/ you. I've /got/ you, I don't have to covet you anymore," laughs
Pete, closing his eyes - yeah all right, only the one visible, but they
both close, dammit. He leans back in the couch, practically cradling
Kitty; he'd actually shaved reasonably late today, since he was trying to
look nonthreatening for Seravina. But it never lasts long on him, so the
cuddling's scratchy. "I never want to lose you again. I can't believe --
my luck, my -- I can't lose you again. I don't even want to consider the
odds of this, I just -- my god, Kitty." He loses the words. If she wants
to be businesslike, it's going to be a bit of an effort. Possible, but an
effort. "All I can say - If I'm sleeping, I'd better never wake up."
Stupid grin, and that weary, stubbly face turns next to Kitty's, so Wisdom
can *see* her again.


It /is/ an effort. She doesn't want to let /go/ of him. Or to lean back
even enough to let him see, but ... she straightens, stretching a little
without departing his lap. "You're not sleeping. Yet." The grin back at
him is quick, fleeting, and she brings both her hands up to catch his face
between them, leaning in for a brief kiss. Then a longer one. And /then/
talking again. "Don't worry about the odds. It happened. It's real." Which
of them is she trying to convince? Her eyes are wide and earnest enough
she might never have /stopped/ kissing him. Till the moment when she looks
- not disappointed, but almost apologetic, and draws one finger to lay it
against his lips, as if in a shushing gesture. "Wisdom - I need to know -
I'm /not/ going anywhere. But I need to know a little bit more about where
we're coming from. You don't need to say anything. I'm just going to list
- names, places, things - from the history I remember, and a yes or no of
whether you've heard of them is all I need. Maybe a dozen. And then we can
stop ... thinking, for right now. All right?"


He wants to argue, but goddamnit, she's right. But then again, her being
right when he'd like to be stubborn, and vice versa, is one of the things
he'd missed so desperately. Part and parcel of the Kittiness of Kitty. So
he doesn't even open his mouth to start objecting, just tenses slightly -
then forces himself to relax. "Right. I - yeah. Yeah, all right. Once
you've got those, it'd - context. Context would be good. In case - well.
The bit with the Crosstime bollocks, with the mad counterparts -
brilliantly wonderful people with wretchedly cruel doubles, et cetera. Ad
nauseam." He's not making a hell of a lot of sense, but then, he's
scattered. Which has been part of what's so off about him right now. God
help them both if he's actually this way and it's not just a byproduct of
emotional exhaustion. He's still him, though; those fevered hands of his
rest possessively on Kitty's hips, as if warning that halfway through
business he'll give up being businesslike.


Kitty grimaces right back at him - there's no sign of recognition on her
face when he says 'Crosstime,' but she seems to be able to comprehend the
rest. "If Everett's theory holds water, /every/ possible world exists -
right. But for right now I'm going to gamble that - if we recognize each
other, speak the same language," feel the same, "our histories are similar
enough not to play /too/ many tricks. We can work out the details later."
When he's not so terribly scattered. She has a fervent belief that this
/must/ be temporary: his hands being just where they are is one of the
foremost pieces of evidence in support. Another kiss is stolen instead,
just in case, and she settles down against his shoulder: there, he can
look at her /and/ she can touch him. As much assurance as she can give him
right now. "Okay. Listing. Just yes or no, you don't even have to say it
out loud. The X-Men, or Xavier's school. Project Wideawake; the Sentinels;
the Purifiers. The Genome Protection Initiative. Black Air; Dream Nails -
and I /really hope/ you remember that one going up like a Roman candle."
Only the faintest tension in her back as she says that - wretchedly cruel
doubles were mentioned. "Muir Island. Sunfire. Magnus, or Magneto - and
that's the last." Naming major points taken almost at random, and her
voice stays almost calm as she goes through the list.


Either their histories are similar enough or they're merely similar in the
right places. Odd how that works out, isn't it? Her leaning against
Wisdom's chest is more than enough prompting for him to slide his hands up
again, this time settling around her waist, linking on top. And just hold,
solidly, his real arms around the real Kitty on him. "Twit," he says
reflexively, "you're not looking at me, I /have/ to say it out loud." It's
a back-of-his-head enough reaction that he won't even notice he called her
a name for about five minutes. "Yes or yes. No. Yes. No. No. Yes,
goddammit, yes and fuck yes." At the tension, his arms tighten in
response, though who it's reassuring is uncertain. "Yes. Yes, though not
personally. Bit of a prig, inne? And yes."


Kitty retorts, "Do /not/. I can tell how you're moving from down here."
Between what she can see and what she can feel, muscles in his chest and
shoulder moving under his shirt - /his/ body is familiar enough for her to
manage with that. And though she's careful not to let it show /too/
plainly up on the surface where he can see and feel, his calling her a
twit unknots one piece of worry altogether: not, she decides, permanently
broken. He'll be getting better. Just ... a bad time, and a very bad day.
"'Bit of a prig' is such an understatement," Kitty groans, burying her
face in his shirt again for a moment. "And he /wouldn't/ deal with me,
because bad eough that we were Westerners but I was a /girl/ - sometimes
I'm still surprised we got through that one at all..." Tangent right off
the subject: and that /is/ a sign of relief, as she starts chattering for
a moment, relaxing in his arms. "All right. All right. That's ... all I
needed, for right now." Besides this, besides you and the heat of your
body and the smell of cigarettes and Scotch and bad habits. "Your turn if
you want it. Or not if you don't." And her arms sneak around his
shoulders, just so.


Another kneejerk response, but this one is quite conscious and grinning;
Pete looks down at the Kitty snuggling against him. "You can tell how I'm
moving down there, eh? I'd be fucking worried if you couldn't." He expects
to get hit for that one, but the comment leaves him feeling strangely
displaced, and he exhales a bit more loudly than normal. A bit of a sigh.
As if to make up for it, he reaches up behind her and starts massaging her
shoulders, her stretched shoulderblades as her arms are up around his
neck. It was always something he did a lot, loved doing. Half for the
contact and half to get her to relax. But his eyes are shut tight. "Mn.
All right." Got through /which/ one at all? This Wisdom is far from
apolitical, but he never got around to moving the world. "Same deal.
Excalibur, Genosha, F.66, Ed Cully, the Crown. Project Easy Tiger. Amanda
Jardine. Cable and Domino. Douglock. Rachel Summers - wonder if I can find
you another slip and wrap like the ones you borrowed off her. Ah - your
mad Crosstime Capers. All those fucking clones, which I still don't quite
understand. Ogun." He tenses incredibly, now. "Piotr Rasputin."


And he /does/ get hit for that one - an utterly familiar wince and groan,
and a light smack on the top of one shoulder. Lighter than usual, but it's
been a very long day for both of them. The sigh is echoed in a faint
wince, less pained than apologetic: he'd just told her, and she /still/
tripped over it. Mouth moving on autopilot again. But warm hands against
her shoulders tell her he's not holding it against her, and she's not shy
about the soft groan of appreciation. "... fictional sword, which I don't
think is what you mean. No. Yes, but vaguely. Yes, yes. Yes, and they
/were/ bloody aliens. Yes. No and no. No. ... No, but someday I want to
hear /that/ story. No on the capers and the closest thing I can think of
to a clone is the creepy coincidence of Scott's last girlfriend, but I
blame that on Scott being obsessed, personally. No." And then she lifts
her head a little to look up at him, her eyes widening a little and her
voice a little smaller. "... yes. Pete, what's wrong?"


Oh, it'll /all/ come out, eventually. Most likely over Scotch and Coke and
a very full ashtray, with Kitty taking reams of notes and comparing
timelines for where the variances lie, while they completely fail to
notice that several hours have gone by since the last time either of them
looked up. Ahahaha. But for now - for now neither of them is quite him or
herself. And Pete? Right now, Pete is very much gone wrong, somehow; she's
looking up at his face, so she'll see his expression quite clearly. And
the fact that his eye's gone a dull red, a sullen, smouldering red - but
then he tilts his head back and makes a *supreme* effort, and when he
looks down at her again, the only thing he looks is infinitely weary and
about twenty years older than he should. "He killed you, love. He killed
you because I gave you a ring, and asked you to marry me, and you said
yes. And he came after me - suppose he thought I'd be offbalance and easy
to take out if he took you out first. The only reason he /could/ -- the
only reason he could is you trusted him. And I wasn't looking. I wasn't
fucking looking and I looked back and it was over already, it was over
before anything. And he came after me but he was off, I think maybe it was
getting through his thick fucking Russian skull, what he'd done, and he
was still coming, and he'd nearly killed me the last time, so I killed
him." The weary, yes, the exhausted - but still the painfully tense. "And
there's a counterpart here, Kitty, there's a Rasputin here. And I met him.
I met him and I was fucking /wretched/ to him, I made him cry. He cried.
He's a goddamned 'nice guy'. I can't -- He's nice. And he called you the
love of his life. And he took the fucking blame for his counterpart's
actions. Pryde...shut me up, I don't want to keep talking. Please. He took
the blame - and he said, he fucking /said/ to me, he said, 'I wouldn't
have your restraint in my presence, were I you'. He said that. Make me
stop fucking talking..."


Kitty tenses at the sight of his expression ... and does /not/ pull
herself out of phase: an effort nearly as great as his, overcoming the
reflex reactions. But he needs her solid, needs the contact, needs the
reassurance that she /is/ real. And so she trusts him to keep the heat
under control. The first words he speaks are enough to send her face stark
white, her eyes wide and painfully dark in contrast, and she holds her
breath for much longer than she should while she listens: shaken, if she
were standing she might have stumbled, and her hands tightened against his
shoulders and back. Even the first time he asks her to silence him, she
/can't/ - she can't, physically, move. The first time, and the second, and
at the third she's finally jolted into breathing again, lifting a hand,
covering his mouth with it, pulling herself up to embrace him sharp and
hard and painfully tight. "Shhh. Shhh. I've got you." She's twisted
herself this time to keep on his sighted side, so he can /see/ as well as
feel. "Look at me. Touch me. I'm bloody /real/, I am. And I am not about
to let /anybody/ change that. You hearing me, Wisdom? I --" She lets her
hand slip again, leaning closer to kiss him in its place, quick and hard,
and she straightens up again. "I'm not losing you another time, /damn/ it.
I'm not. So you /have to keep it together/, Wisdom, I'll help, I'll hold
you together with my bare /hands/ if I have to, but you have to." One more
breath, finally, and dizziness isn't helping the whiteness of her face,
but she looks up at him anyhow, and her eyes are steady even if she isn't.
"I need you." Funny. Breathing isn't helping her get any steadier. Or
making her chest any less tight. The blur in her vision doesn't have
anything to do with her contacts, either.


Her hug - sharp and hard and painfully tight? - it's a /good/ pain, it's a
reassuring solidity and reality and if it weren't real it wouldn't hurt.
And it's Her, with her arms around Pete, and Pete thought he couldn't cry
anymore, so furious and exhausting was his breakdown in the alley. But
apparently - apparently it wasn't quite thorough enough. Because when she
keeps him quiet, holds him, kisses him, talks to him - even as he does as
she says, even as his hands reach up to touch her face, then trail down
and drop to her shoulders, and finally end up on her waist again - even as
he watches her every movement and memorizes her face and her lines and her
curves all over again - he's crying, silently. When he finally speaks,
after she tells him she needs him, it's in a voice quiet enough that she
can barely hear him. "I'm afraid I've gone mad, Pryde." Then slightly
louder, again, apologetic and frightened and tired. "I don't know what to
trust and what not to trust, any longer. When what I see and hear is so
real, but is so false, and when nothing is the way I knew it but is
similar nonetheless - when things just fucking disappear - in anyplace
real, it would be madness. But it's /normal/ here. Either I'm mad or the
world is, and if I am then I don't know if I'm enough for you. If the
world is, then I don't know if I can /keep/ you. It's been twice I lost
you, and once I missed you entirely." Yeah, open. Hopelessly, helplessly
open. Because if she's /not/ what she says she is, then it won't matter if
he tells her everything - because it won't matter if he winds up dead as a
result. This is why it's a good idea to let him wake up next to Kitty and
/then/ continue the conversation. After such a mad day, a surreal and
horrifying and false day, dredging up insta-break memories is a surefire
way to make a guy completely useless. "I'm sorry, Kitty, I'm so sorry.
I've been. I've been keeping it together, I've been." But reality is this
eggshell surface.


Reality for him. Sanity for her, trembling and out of place, but - oh, but
the parts that aren't making sense for him are for her, it's a kind of
insanity that she's /used/ to dealing with. Not the way his Kitty was, not
thanks to having small mad robots drag people on a magical mystery tour of
spacetime; but the possibility of a place like this existing was, in its
tiny, tiny way, implicitly contained in the very discipline she tried to
drown herself in studying the last few years. Accept the evidence of her
senses, and everything else ... follows, impossible, real. Solid as the
air she can stand on. "You have been," she whispers back to him. "Just
long enough. Just ... I've got you. Believe that." She wants to touch his
face, brush tears away, but that would require letting go of him, and at
just this moment she's not sure herself if anything but that hold on him
is real. "We made it. Both of us. And you can lean on me for a while. I'll
watch your back. And then we can sort all of this bloody crazy place out
together." She closes her own eyes, the memory of his fingers' touch on
her face alost as strong as the reality. "Together. Just ..." Let me catch
you if you need to fall. "... I've got you. And I'm not letting you go."


And the killing irony is that he /had/ been accepting the evidence of his
senses. But he had to force himself not to - and he couldn't, really -
tonight. Had to, because he knew he couldn't - even though he didn't
/really/ know. See where this goes? It goes to a dark, cold, place.
Honest: 'This way lies madness'. Pete lets out a slightly hysterical
half-laugh, half-sob, and hugs her again almost convulsively, it's so
desperate and awful. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry." He hasn't been able to
break, and then there was that whole fucking teenaged thing where he /did/
snap but it wasn't /real/, it wasn't real except to the people who died
because of him. Which made it worse. But he hasn't been able to let go,
and now that it turns out he doesn't have to let go anymore, it's all he
can do. And the laugh-sob is immediately followed by a self-deprecating,
"Even if you need me, you sure as fucking hell don't need *this*, right
after having come through a fucking portal. Pryde, how you put up with all
this fucking bollocks is so far beyond me. I'm lost without you, I'm so
lost without you." Lost - yet still somehow able to function. Half the
time only dimly aware of it.


The difference is, ultimately, that /this/ evidence is willing to shake
him when need be. Deep breath, and one more fierce hug, arms left draped
around his neck and her mouth only a couple of inches from his. "Then it's
a /bloody/ good thing you've got me. Idiot." She kisses him more lightly,
gently, and murmurs, "C'mon. Come to bed. I bet you haven't gotten a
decent night's sleep in just about as long as I haven't." And it's always,
always easier to handle the nightmares that way, somehow, even the waking
ones. "Besides. You /know/ how I put up with it. Your feet are warm." Ease
him up out of the darkness, now, a little at a time.


"T'make up for your plates of ice, yeah?" Pete's easily persuaded to leave
the conversation - it hurts. And when the alternative is going to bed?
With Kitty beside him? There's no contest, there's simply none at all.
"And it's a fucking incredibly good thing, yes. A horribly lost wandering
Rincewisdom is something no one needs." There's a slight pause as he's
thoroughly tempted to persuade Kitty to let them just fall asleep here, on
the tatty old couch, but the added annoyance of a crick in the neck upon
waking is not something either of them particularly needs. So, swinging
his legs over the side with Kitty still on his lap, he starts to get up -
then pauses /once/ more. And one arm reluctantly slides off of Kitty, the
hand reaching up to his own face. The reason pirates don't cry? The real
reason? Eyepatch chafing. He hesitates. "Tell me if you don't -- if I
shouldn't." It's funny - once he's got /her/ reaction, he could care less
about anyone else's.


That particular line of thought had occurred to Kitty, too - Pete's hard
enough to deal with in the mornings. And the reminder that some things are
the same ... helps. So does Pete's, sparking a very small laugh. "You and
your Pratchett," she murmurs back to him, before lifting her head again at
the start of his pause. She tugs one hand of her own free, leaving the
other around his shoulders, and lifts it to touch the back of his with his
fingertips. "Go ahead." Simple as that.


With the added physical prompt, the hesitation ends and Pete takes his
patch off, briefly rubbing his eye. Stupid eye-leakage during times of
high emotional stress, dammit. A deeper blue, jaggedly scarred around,
scarred through, sightless. But the crow's feet at the corner match the
set on the other side, and though the biggest scar runs up through his
eyebrow, it's still just as expressive as the other. "I'd - considered.
Replacing it. With something fucked up, right? Fucked up; lift the
eyepatch and there's a mini magic 8-ball there or something..." Completely
deadpan. Completely. Except for the fact that there's yet another flicker
of the completely tasteless humor back there, and laughter flickering
behind his eyes. Eyes - because even if he can't see out properly, she can
still see in.


/Completely/ tasteless humor - and Kitty groans softly, even as her
fingers trace light lines down his cheek. "You are /disgusting/," she
tells him, fervent ... and warm. Warm enough to make it utterly clear that
it's the joke she's answering, not his eye. And no, she doesn't ask how it
happened. "So entirely gross. Ew." Which would be far more convincing a
protest if she weren't nestling in to kiss him again as she says it. It's
disturbing - yes. But it's still an improvement over the image of him
previously scarred into her memory, and it's equally an improvement over
emotional wreckage, and on the whole, it's something she's able to accept.


Emotional wreckage is so alien a concept to the controlled man Wisdom
keeps himself as that even as he lets go, he's fighting to rein it in
again. And he's doing it now, he's doing his best. And going to bed is
/such/ a step in the right direction. Pete kisses Kitty back, gently and -
and almost carefully - and slowly stands; he does that carefully, too, so
as to prevent Kitty from being dislodged gracelessly. He'd go to carry
her, just because, but there's this whole desperate exhaustion combined
with shakiness from that whole breakdown thing. So instead, he leans a
little every time he feels like he's going to lose his balance. "Yeah," he
says, lopsided smile on his face. "And people could ask me questions about
the future, and I'd shake my head really hard and then go look in the
mirror and then say, 'Reply hazy. Ask again later.'"


Kitty is entirely capable of putting her feet on the floor - and, thank
you years of practice, of getting up from his lap to stand next to him
/without/ actually letting go. Not for a second. "And if you stayed by a
telephone," she says dryly, "you could be a psychic hotline." And yes, she
can take being leaned on. By him, most of all. Not letting go. Not letting
him fall. Physically any more than any other way.


"My sources say no. Concentrate and ask again. Very doubtful. I couldn't
fake a half-Scottish half-Jamaican accent if you threatened me with
eternal ABBA," replies Pete, now letting himself run on the sillier kind
of reflex autopilot. And opening the door to the bedroom. And getting them
both through without either having to let go and without banging his elbow
on the doorframe or anything retarded like that.


Kitty doesn't say a word. Not till she has the opportunity to club him,
very gently, with his own pillow.