InsaneJournal

WHO: Erik Lehnsherr & Kitty Pryde
WHAT: Erik is affected by the fear toxin, and Kitty tries to intervene. Things get seriously out of hand.
WHEN: August 6th; Afternoon
WHERE: The X-Mansion
RATING: PG-13; contains character death
STATUS: Log; COMPLETE

It had been a progressive thing, creeping up on him and seeping its way into his senses before he'd even realized that it had happened. Erik had been so sure that if he'd stayed inside the manor, going outside only when absolutely necessary, that he would have been able to avoid the hysteria gripping the city, but when he’d stepped outside this time, what he returned to was not the manor that he left. Instead, Erik found himself approaching a burnt out husk of the place that he had left. Blinking against the image, Erik clenched his fists, breathing deep -- deeper than he should have -- against the rage building in his gut. He'd only been away for a moment, a moment, but Erik knew all too well that that was all it took for everything that you loved to be ripped away from you, destroyed in an instant, and as he pushed his way into the wreckage of the manor, his eyes looked around desperately for a sign of anyone, for some clue that they had survived, but as his foot caught on something, his gaze turned and instead found the exact opposite.

Corpses. Bodies. They were littering the place, some of them barely identifiable and others, others like Charles and Raven, only mangled in ways that didn't obscure their faces. Never mind that they weren't really there, and that his foot had actually caught on the edge of the couch instead of the leg of a person yet to be named, but for Erik, the sight was painfully real, and all of the serenity in the world wouldn’t calm the rage that was starting to make everything that might respond to him in the manor vibrate at a rapid pace.

Kitty had been in a constant state of worry since the whole mess had started. People were panicking, getting hurt and even dying, and every instinct she had told her that she should be helping people. And she had been, as much as she could. The problem was that while her ability protected her from the gas, it made it very hard to help other people when she couldn’t touch them. She’d had an incident or two where she’d returned to tangibility, dealing with the panic and paranoia long enough to help someone who really needed it, but she had focused most of her attention on helping the scientists. The faster they came up with some sort of antitoxin, the sooner they could help everyone, not just a few people here and there. She did what she could, but her field was physics and computers, not the sort of work that really helped in a situation like this. Still, she was smart and she picked things up quickly and she was managing to do her part. It helped her to feel a little less helpless in the face of a situation that couldn’t be fought like most enemies.

It was sheer happenstance that she wasn’t in the lab when Erik returned. She’d left the lab to check on things, considering bringing something down to try and get the scientists to eat. She had no doubt they’d work for days without food or sleep if she let them, and that wouldn’t do anyone any good. Maybe she’d do a quick check around the city too, just to get out of the house and away from the stress that came with scientists butting heads. She was just considering options when things started vibrating. It could only mean one thing and she ran to the front of the house before she could think about it. For all that they had been on different sides, she and Erik had always understood each other back home, and she couldn’t imagine what the toxin was doing to this version. "Erik?" she asked hesitantly, stepping into the room and looking at him with concern. This was bad. This was very, very bad.

His name. He’d heard his name. But everyone who should have been here was dead. They were on the floor surrounding him in every different state, but they were all dead. Who could possibly be trying to get his attention? Tensed, the vibration stopping as his nerves steeled, Erik turned towards the voice that he had heard, his eyes narrowing against the fog that swam in front of them until it slowly shaped the woman standing there into an image that he recognized.

“Moira. Funny. I didn’t think you were here,” Erik said, his voice tensing as he remembered his last encounter with the woman that he saw. Gun raised at him, firing without remorse or hesitation, intent on killing him when he had saved her life, saved all their lives by stopping the bombs that had been sent to fall on them. Of course she had picked a side. Of course it had been against them. Of course she was the one responsible for this massacre. That was what they got for trusting her with their secrets. “Decided to really make an entrance, I suppose,” He said, gesturing around himself before gritting his teeth against the urge to just kill her right then and there.

But he had to know why.

“He trusted you. They trusted you. And you killed them. What was the point?!” He yelled, his voice spiking on the last few words, a candlestick flying off a shelf unbidden and right towards her head, directed purely by his rage.

Moira? Somewhere in the back of her mind Kitty realized that Erik thought she was Dr. MacTaggart. She supposed it made sense in a way. She and the doctor had fairly similar coloring and, considering Moira would have been younger in his time, it wasn’t terribly surprising that his drug-addled mind would replace her with someone else. Someone human who would be a better target for his anger. Judging by his words, he thought everyone was dead. Why would he see her if he thought she had been killed. It really was amazing the leaps the mind could make. But now wasn’t the time to focus on that.

She flinched as the candlestick nearly hit her, quickly becoming intangible to avoid a nasty head wound. But she couldn’t just keep dodging metal objects when there was every chance someone else who couldn’t simply pass through things might come in and actually get hurt. Steeling herself, she moved closer to him, keeping herself phased in case of any more nasty surprising, speaking in a gentle tone all the while. "Erik," she said softly, but with an urgency to the words, "everyone is fine. Nobody is hurt. You need to calm down. It’s the toxin, it’s making you see things. None of it is real. You have to believe me." Part of her wanted to call for the professor, but there was no way she was risking him being hurt. Erik would never forgive himself like that.

Stepping into Erik’s space, she became tangible again and put her hands on his shoulders. "It’s me," she told him. "Kitty. I’m not Moira. Please just listen, Erik. You have to let me help you, before someone gets hurt. You don’t want that. None of us want that."

The words. He couldn’t quite understand them. Or, rather, he could, but they weren’t making any sense in his mind. Everyone is fine? Nobody is hurt? Like hell they weren’t. They were in pieces. Burnt, bloodied, ripped apart. They were little more than lumps of meat that used to be his friends now, individuals who were once truly good and worthwhile people reduced to nothing more than their component parts, and she was telling him to calm down! Erik wasn’t sure how she’d dodged that candlestick. It had looked like it should have hit its mark, but instead, she was by his side, seemingly unharmed in the next second, and this was unacceptable to his enraged mind.

Hands shooting up to the ones that he rested on his shoulders, Erik wrapped his fingers around her wrists, twisting to pull her touch off of him, “Don’t you dare touch me! You lost that privilege the second you fired at me, the second you chose to side with them over us, and now, you’ve decided to finish the job, I guess. Too bad for you that you missed one,” He said as he gave her a sudden and violent shove just as he pulled everything metal that he could reach down immediately on the spot where she stood. He was too angry in the moment for control. Maybe if he didn’t crush her in his madness, he’d get back there eventually, but now, he might as well try the cruder methods.

"Erik!" Kitty resisted the urge to phase out of his hold, worried about how he would react to that. She didn’t want to set him off even worse, or he might well bring the house down around them. She couldn’t risk something like that, something that really could lead to massive casualties. Instead, she just hoped that she could make him see reason, or at least distract him until the toxin wore off "Erik, let go! You’re hurting me!" She was reminded of the one fight, early in her days as an X-Men, when he had nearly killed her before stopping himself. She worried he might not be able to do that this time, but she wasn’t about to leave him alone with his panic.

"Erik, you need to stop!" she insisted. "Someone is going to get hurt." And she was starting to worry it would be him. She could take him down if she had to, but she didn’t want to do that if she didn’t have to. Still, if the alternative was letting other people be hurt or even killed, she’d do what she had to in order to stop him. Phasing once again, she avoided the barrage of objects that he had hurled at her. Being bludgeoned to death wasn’t really something she wanted to experience any time soon. She came back out of her phased state, stepping back toward him with her hands up to show she wasn’t a threat. "Erik," she said, her tone soft but heavy with worry, "I need you to trust me, please. You’re being affected by a toxin. None of what you’re seeing is real. You just need to -"

She cut off with a sharp breath as a sudden explosion of pain took her by surprise. She looked down, staring in shock at the metal poker sticking out of her chest and the red stain spreading rapidly along her shirt. She’d become tangible too quickly, she realized, judging by the sharp metal impaling her and the overwhelming pain. "Oh..." she gasped, falling forward against Erik. She should have been more careful, she knew that. She’d been doing this for long enough that she knew she should have remained phased. It had been drilled into her for years, to stay phased in hostile situations. But she’d been so concerned about Erik, about helping him so that the others would be okay, that she’d let her guard down. She would have felt incredibly stupid if she hadn’t been distracted by the pain.

Fear. Pain. Each of those things in turn delighted Erik at seeing them cross her features, It wasn’t something which should have been so satisfying, but Erik was, if anything, a man who held deep and intense grudges, and Moira had placed herself rather firmly on his bad side. And this, well, this had only made that so, so very worse. Frustration had risen when she’d avoided the majority of his objections, but it had been muted in a moment by the concern that she seemed to be expressing. That was wrong. That didn’t align. Her trying to convince him that everything was fine. That made sense, at least, that she might not consider the deaths of everyone that he cared about to be a matter for concern, but the fact that she seemed to be trying to help him just didn’t fit.

Unfortunately, Erik didn’t have time to consider that thought before she was falling against him, the remnants of his anger having proved the last few metal objects in the room to fly at her, at least one of them proving lethal. Blinking against the image in front of his eyes, the brunette slumped in his arms, holding her up as her entire weight sagged against him, the fog slowly started to clear. Whether it was from him being inside long enough that the fresh air cleared his system or the shock of what had just happened, but the images around him started to fade, haze out until Erik was able to see that they were nothing more than shades, the only destruction in the manor having been wrought at his own hand.

And the woman he was holding up wasn’t Moira MacTaggert.

It was Kitty.

“Oh, god,” Erik gasped out, sinking to his knees under the realization of what he’d just done. He’d killed her. He’d killed her with no consideration of his actions. No one was ever going to forgive him. He’d be lucky if he ever managed to forgive himself.

It hurt. It hurt so much. It wasn’t that Kitty had never been hurt before, she had plenty of times, but this was so unexpected, and it felt impossible to breathe around the piece of metal sticking out of her. Her attempts came out as weak, wet gasps and her hand grabbed for Erik’s as he finally seemed to come back to himself. She didn’t blame him, any more than she would have blamed anyone affected by the Fear Toxin. He hadn’t been in his right mind, and none of this was his fault. She wanted to tell him that, but it was so hard to get the words out. She gave a wet cough, blood staining her lips as she tried to speak.

"Erik," she gasped, holding tightly to his hand. "You didn’t...it’s not..." She took another shuddering breath. "Not your fault. Are...are you..." Her inability to get the words out was frustrating her, but she needed to know that he was really okay, that he understood that she didn’t blame him.

He already knew what she was going to ask. She didn’t need to say the words. She wanted to know if he was all right, if whatever had taken claim of his mind had been cleared out of his system and that he was thinking clearly again. Because as long as he was, there was no chance that someone else could get hurt, that he could bring harm to someone else who happened to wander into his path. And as much as Erik wanted to tell her to hush, to stop worrying about him when she was the one who was hurt, the one who likely wouldn’t be able to hold on for any type of healing to come in time because they didn’t have someone capable of such a feat inside their walls, as much as he wanted to say all of that, he didn’t, and instead, just hugged her carefully, leaning his forehead down against hers as he nodded and tried to ignore the tears stinging at his eyes.

“It’s gone. I can still see it, but I know it’s not real. I know it’s not... Oh, god. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

"I know," Kitty managed. "I know you didn’t. I’m sorry...I’m sorry...I just...I should have...it’s not your fault, Erik." She stopped, that brief burst of speech taking too much out of her. She felt tired and cold and scared in a way that had nothing to do with drugs or toxins. She didn’t want to die, even if people seemed to take death as a temporary thing in this city. She closed her eyes, relieved at least that Erik seemed to be back in his right mind. She was glad in some way too because it meant he was holding her and talking to her and that she wasn’t alone. She really didn’t want to be alone. Her hand still gripped his, albeit weakly, as if she was afraid he would leave.

"Stay," she said softly. "Don’t...don’t...want to be alone." It was more than just right now, and she hoped he would understand what she meant. He understood traditions, or she hoped he did. She wanted to believe he understood what she was asking. "Please." She wanted to say more, but she was so tired and she didn’t think she could hold on much longer.

It took Erik a moment, grief, shock, and guilt all mingling into one massive mental distraction, to really understand what she meant, but it was clear when it dawned in his eyes. None of the others would know much less understand the things which needed to be done, all of the small things which might have seemed inconsequential to someone who didn’t know just how important that they were in the long run. And while it was confusing, her placing all of this trust into the very hands that were responsible for her death, Erik knew that he couldn’t, wouldn’t, let her down.

“I promise,” Erik said softly, forcing himself not to close his eyes against what he knew was coming as he swallowed hard against the grief welling up in him. “I’ll make sure you’re not alone. I’ll make sure it’s done right. I promise.”

"Thank you."

She was relieved and she was tired and she knew that Erik would take care of things and make sure everything was all right. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Her body relaxed against him as she stopped holding herself so stiff with pain, her breaths growing fainter until they stopped completely. She didn’t look peaceful, because it was hard to look peaceful when you were covered in blood with a fire poker sticking out of your chest, but she didn’t look like she was in pain any more as she stared sightlessly up at Erik.

It didn’t take much after that. Considering she’d been impaled through the chest, it had been surprising that she’d lasted this long, but that wasn’t something that Erik wanted to think about. Shifting her weight carefully, pushing the poker back out of her body to make it possible to lay her down, Erik carefully laid Kitty’s body out on the floor, allowing the tears that had been threatening him to finally fall as he reached out and carefully closed her eyes, mindful not to smear blood on her face before moving to the window, not consideration for how it might look to those outside as he ripped down one of the curtains to cover her. He’d promised he would do this right, and he was intent on doing so.

Settling himself down next to her body, shrouded in the curtain and modestly concealed from view, Erik crumpled in on himself. He had to tell the others. He had to, but how in the world would he explain this? She had only been trying to help him, and he had slaughtered her where she had stood. How in the world was anything ever supposed to be okay after that?