Log: Kurt & Tommy Who: Kurt Wagner and Tommy Kerri When: Morning, Sunday, February 3 Where: Tommy's room, Xavier's School What: After killing Riptide, Tommy is scared and anxious and hiding in her room refusing to see or speak to anyone. Kurt has decided he's had enough of that and goes to coax her out.
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Kurt didn't know what to do. He didn't know what to think. It had been days since the attack, since he watched Tommy fire an entire round into a man's face, long after he was dead. Screaming and whining and crying and acting like an angry, frightened animal. She had a violent, dangerous side that Kurt had never seen and it scared him.
He didn't know what to do with this spell of constant anger that he felt, but he would have preferred to deal with that as opposed to the fear that his girlfriend had snapped. His girlfriend... hn. Whatever they were these days. Kurt didn't really know. He just knew that he needed to talk to her and she had to quit avoiding him or they'd just keep dancing around one another uselessly.
"Tommy." Kurt knocked on her door once, twice. "Tommy, please."
Tommy hadn't really been talking to anyone, staying in her room with the curtains drawn and the lights off. Only one lamp was on, dull and eerie blue. For all the world, it looked like the tunnels again, like she'd wanted to be underground but was too afraid to go down to the basement in case someone showed up to kill her again. She could get out the window if they were in the building, but the basement only really had one exit. Tommy didn't want to feel trapped.
Tommy was scared, and it showed. She was under her covers in pajamas she must've had on for a while, like she'd just taken her showers and pulled on the same clothes again so she could run back to her room and get back into bed as fast as possible. It wasn't that she was just avoiding Kurt; she was avoiding everyone.
So when she heard him knock, she shouted, "Go away!"
Kurt's answer was short and sweet. "No."
"I mean it, Kurt. I don't have ..." What, time? She had time. More time than the Morlocks, who were all dead. More time than Riptide. She just didn't want to use it. "...---just go away."
Kurt knocked again, sighed, gave up-----and then with a bamf he was inside her room, leaning against the door with his arms folded. "Are you going to get out of bed?" He crouched down and crept on all fours over to her bed... and then stuck his head under the blanket. "How many days is it, now."
Tommy's answer was short and sweet. "No." She shifted, laying on her other side and facing away from Kurt. "It's dark here."
"And how does the dark help?" Kurt touched her hip, frowning. "Please. You are scaring me."
"I like the dark. Bad things don't happen when I'm in the dark." She'd been safe in the tunnels, safe in a world without the sun. The moment she'd stepped topside, people started dying.
"Tommy, look at me."
"Why?"
Instead of answering her, Kurt reached up and pulled the blankets off of her, throwing them aside. "You killed a man you killed before. You are hiding in your room. You are scaring me." He feared she would go the same way as Arla, stark raving mad and constantly drinking. "Come out of bed. Talk to me. If you talk to anyone, you should be able to talk to me, ja?" He sounded uncertain.
"Hey!" Tommy grabbed for her blankets, and when she found them out of reach, she grabbed a pillow. Her pajamas weren't exactly warm, and without her thick blankets, she was cold, curling around her pillow and shivering. "I just want to go home, but I can't because they're all dead and the Marauders just keep coming back. Give me my blankets back, I'm cold."
"This is your home," Kurt murmured, crawling up on the bed to sit next to her. "This is your home now. We are your family..." And here he thought he would argue with her over what the hell she was thinking, killing a man in the way she did. He pulled the blanket off of her head, looking down at her. "You cannot keep hiding."
"I want Callisto back." Tommy pulled the blankets up around her neck, pulled them close like a shield. "I want Callisto and Cal and Jack. Eve. ... Richard. I came here and everything stopped making sense."
Richard. Kurt knew that name, and Kurt knew that Richard had only been a short while dead when she'd started to involve herself with Kurt----and that wasn't a good thing. "Sometimes that happens," Kurt said as gently as he could. "Life does not make sense. Life is scary. Life... life is unfair. But hiding? Hiding is no good."
Hesitating, he allowed one deformed hand to stroke her hair. "Hiding makes you focus on the bad things that happened, that made you hide... when you could be awake and open and looking at the wonderful things around you. These..." He frowned. "These are difficult times. We are afraid. We are troubled. Bobby is still missing, Magneto rules us all.. the Friends of Humanity look to kill people like us. Your... your demons haunt you."
Kurt shifted a little, wrapping his tail around his body. "But Father Zeckhausen said to me... after the church was bombed... he said that even when something this terrible happens, it gives us a chance to come together and show love. To help one another. To... look and see the good things that we are taking for granted." He shrugged. "You can still be angry. God-----hah. God knows I am angry. God knows I am scared... but I am not hiding."
Tommy buried her face in the pillow, swallowing hard. Trying not to cry. Kurt was right, but ... God, she still didn't want to go out there. To stop hiding.
"I killed him," she breathed. "I killed him twice, and he just doesn't stop."
"He has stopped," Kurt said quietly. "I think you made sure of that." A twinge of fear, maybe bitterness. He'd thought better of her. "There... um. There has been word, rumors, that these people were clones... copies. He did not come back. A copy was made."
"It doesn't matter what he was, just that he was here to kill me. And I just---I just killed him back. That's all I did. I just killed him back." Tommy felt like she had to make excuses to Kurt. She knew she'd scared him. She didn't want him to be scared of her. "If they make one copy, they can make another. And then I'll have to kill that one, too."
"Why?" Kurt asked, twirling Tommy's hair around his fingers. "Why would someone go so out of his way... just to do this to you?" He gave the strands a little tug. "It is so unlikely... and it is no reason to hide. Just in case it might happen? That is no reason for hiding."
Tommy finally turned, sniffing hard and looking up at him. "You remember last year, when you asked that question about ... how ... do worms think differently knowing that they're someone else's prey?" She wasn't bursting into tears yet, but her nose was clogged. Her eyes bright. "They do. That's why they live underground. Even with Magneto in charge, humans kill us all the time. It only takes a couple months, if that, to make a copy. He'll be back. That's reason enough to hide."
Kurt touched her cheek. He knew what he was about to say would hurt. "Even if you hide... if someone wants to find you, they will find you. They found the Morlocks underground. Hiding from them is like waiting for them to come and get you. You can think only about this... or you can get out of bed and live your life."
"I just want to go home," she breathed, pulling herself in and burying her face against his neck. "I don't know if I can do this anymore. ...I'm sorry. I wish I could be someone you're proud of. I do. I really do." No matter how much sense Kurt made, Tommy had a paralyzing fear of leaving her room for too long. Of going out into the sun. It was enough to make her shake, and she hated herself for it.
Kurt wanted to say she was wrong, that he was proud of her.. but he couldn't find the words. Instead, he just held her, rocking her back and forth and rubbing between her shoulder blades. "Do you think you can come out for some food? Fred made danishes..."
Tommy was silent for a few painfully long minutes, swallowing her tears and clinging. It was pathetic; she'd be, what ... almost thirty soon? She had to grow up.
Eventually, she nodded numbly, swallowing hard. "...Let me get dressed."