lucetilogs | TERRACE Draft

Kurt was indeed in the kitchen and sitting at the head of the table, eating some birthday cake and a burger bomb simultaneously, at his blue and fuzziest. Around the table were a variety of familiar and friendly faces - Scott, Jean, Rogue, Kitty, Tabatha. Heck, even Bobby.

Professor X was even near Kurt in a wheelchair. He smiled proudly and put a hand on Kurt's shoulder as he read over a paper. "I have to say, Kurt. I haven't seen such exemplary work since my own days at the Academy."

"Don't sound so surprised, Charles," asked a very familiar voice as she strolled towards the table. Mystique, in her own seemingly natural blue form, stopped to rest a hand on her hips as she lent towards Xavier. "Did you think my own son would be anything other than a genius?" Her smile, her eyes, they all seemed oddly devoid of malice. She reached over to ruffle at his mass of blue hair.

"Mom..." Kurt sighed and rolled his eyes. But he was smiling, too.

Ororo had wondered what she would find. She supposed she shouldn't have been surprised to see that all Kurt wanted was to be surrounded by friends and family who loved him. And while she had a visceral reaction to the mere sight and sound of Mystique, she held herself back for a moment. Already she knew how this would need to end, and her heart ached for how he was sure to take things.

She would have liked to let him indulge in even a few more minutes' worth of this fantasy, but their time was sorely limited. So Ororo stepped into the kitchen, did her best to ignore the smiling, eager faces of Charles and their students around her.

"Kurt."

The others in the room seemed to not hear her at all. Not even Logan, who was leaning against the fridge and giving a warm chuckle in spite of himself.

Only two people showed signs of hearing her. Kurt looked up to her, with his eyebrows furrowed in confusion. "Storm? I thought you went to get the party favors..."

And Mystique's eyes flitted towards Storm's, briefly, before she rested her arms on Kurt's shoulders. "You have to look over the guest list for your birthday. Can't leave out any of your friends, can we?"

"Kurt looked over a slip of paper and nodded along. "Looks good! You even got Billy, Mia and Vivi." And then he gave a joking smirk. "Just one problem, it looks like you accidentally invited Rogue."

Rogue and Amanda were both sitting on either side of Kurt, and they both laughed at his obviously hilarious joke. "Oh shucks, an' now ah'll have to ship you your present in advance," Rogue added before playfully punching his shoulder.

"Now, now, children. Behave yourselves," Mystique said, smiling as she stepped between them.

Seeing Mystique in this capacity was confusing for Ororo. Though her main concern was Kurt, her eyes kept trailing back to his mother, waiting for the moment she would shift back to her normally antagonistic self. They didn't have the cleanest history, after all.

But this was Kurt's ideal world, and Mystique was warm and patient and kind... and wearing an apron. She shook her head at how absurd that image was. She needed to focus.

"Kurt," she tried again, reaching out to him as she drew closer. She made her way past her friends and family, and if the way none of them seemed to see her unsettled her, she didn't let it show. "Please, listen to me. None of this is real. We don't have too much time. You must come back-- we need you."

Edited 2013-04-01 03:59 (UTC)

"Come back?" he blinked and looked up slowly, as if registering a language he was barely familiar with. He looked towards Storm with wide eyes. "Who needs me...?"

But Mystique applied some pressure to his shoulder, quickly making him turn back to face the list on the table.

"We need you to look over this guest list," she said as sweetly as she could manage. "Then you can try to guess the surprise guest."

Kurt looked a little hesitantly towards Mystique, but then he shifted the gaze towards the list and cracked a smile. "I wonder who it could be. It's gotta be a celebrity!"

"It's been decades since mutants have had any reason to fear or hide from others. You should all be lucky to have been spared from that time, so we can focus on shaping your respective adolescences," Professor X calmly remarked with no prompting at all.

Ororo registered Charles' words with some trepidation. If this was Kurt's world, one without prejudice or discrimination, she would not want to leave it either. But as tempting as it was, she knew it wasn't real.

Ororo stepped forward, resting her own hand on Kurt's other shoulder to get his attention.

"Yes. The X-Men need you. We are in the middle of a terrible battle, and you've been caught by one of our enemies-- this world is a construct, Kurt. As wonderful as it seems, none of it is real."

She gestured towards his friends, all smiling the same sweet, cheesy smile. "Why else do they not seem to see me?" And if he took a better, longer look at her he might notice just how out of place she seemed among the others, in her dirt-stained uniform. Her cape was frayed at the ends, and there were superficial cuts along her arms. She even smelled faintly of gunsmoke and ozone.

He felt her arm on his shoulder and looked up, alarmed. Something about it, its substance, it felt different from the hand of Mystique. And it made everything around him seem... offset, somehow. And he looked at the faces, going through their generic patterns, Scott and Jean consuming each others' faces, Kitty seeming to chat up the thin air, Hank McCoy dangling upside down from the chandelier without any set purpose...

"Not real? But then - then what's different?" Kurt looked to her eyes with a deep frown.

And Mystique quickly seized his other shoulder with a slight amount of force. There was now more of a familiar roughness in his voice. "You are upsetting my son, Storm. Leave."

"I don't understand..." Kurt mururred as he looked between them.

The familiar edge in Mystique's voice was enough to put Ororo on the defensive. She sent the other woman a glare, her grip on Kurt's shoulder tightening protectively.

"This will be difficult to hear, Kurt. But I know that you are strong enough to hear it, even believe it. Most of these people are your friends, but you-- we have been drawn together by far more terrible circumstances," She paused, turning back to the younger mutant, her gaze imploring him to remember.

"The world is not as accommodating of mutants as you believe it to be. You know this. You've experienced this firsthand, since you were a child, because of the nature and color of your skin." Despite the hardness of her words, Ororo gentled her voice. "But that treatment is what brought all of us together. Professor Xavier opened this Institute with the purpose of training you not only to use your powers well, but properly - to help show mankind that there is nothing to fear and hate about us..."

Kurt looked up towards her, thoughtfully, blinking as he grasped at shadows of memories and concepts. "Storm, I..." He looked down towards his fuzzy hands, then up towards Amanda. Could it all be a lie? "What is this, then?"

"Kurt. That's enough," Mystique stated more firmly. "Something's wrong with Ororo, isn't that right, Professor?"

The Professor, as if just remembered that he was existing, spoke, "Yes. Storm appears to have some sort of psychic infestation manifesting in her cerebral cortex. I'll clean her mind up all in due time, but first of all, Kurt, you need to stop listening to her."

And Logan similarly looked at him with a smile and a thumbs up, "Don't worry about it, Elf. This'll all blow over in no time. Just stay put for now."

Mystique smirked and tried to shift Kurt's seat away from Ororo's hand, before she leaned in to whisper to him. "Just stay put, alright, my dear?"

No. She was not going to lose him. Not now. Ororo kept a hand on Kurt's shoulder even as Mystique tried to jerk him away. "We are in the middle of a battle, Kurt. With fierce enemies, some of which having terrible telepathic abilities, not unlike the Professor's," she paused to glance at Charles who continued to look at her vacantly. What a frightening expression. "But unlike the Professor, they have no qualms about using their powers without a thought - they enter one's mind and taking our deepest desires, using them to trap us in a false reality..." Ororo glanced again at Mystique, but this time her gaze was only partially suspicious and part, well, partially sad.

"This world around you is an illusion, Kurt. A construct. I know that it is hard to believe, and that the truth is hard to hear but you must believe me. This world is not real; these," - she gestured towards the gathered people, "are not really our friends and she," - a pointed glance at Mystique, "is not your mother."

Edited (english woes) 2013-04-02 07:11 (UTC)

The words hit him sharply and confuse him, especially against the background noise of his friends chattering. He looks up towards Mystique in concern - the face he's sure was there for him every day of his life. Well, usually that face, when she wasn't shifting it into a goofy face for his amusement. Not to mention that she made a great Santa.

But those memories, something about them seems off - so vague and so oddly pieced together when he focuses on them. "Mom... Is this true?" the fuzzy boy asked of her, even as he was growing unsettled by the look of anger in his face. Even as her nails dug into his shoulder.

"Not a single word, Kurt. Just stay put until tomorrow, and you can meet the special guest." She glared at Ororo. "You're not welcome here. Leave."

But Kurt found himself squirming out of the blue mom's hold, and he stood up to face Storm. "Storm, I think I..."

"Your father, Kurt." Mystique stated simply, with her maternal grin back in full force. "That's who will be coming tomorrow. He saw your grades and was thrilled. He can't wait to spend time with you."

Kurt froze mid-word, not quite sure what he was going to say to Ororo anymore. So he slowly turned to face Mystique again.

Ororo let out a frustrated breath. This was proving to be more difficult than she thought. She raked her brain for ideas; having lost her own birth parents at an early age, she knew that the desire to see them and the idea of having grown up in a happy family were both too good, too tempting...

But there was a difference between herself and Kurt. And that was...

"Kurt, no. Whoever it is that Mystique is promising to show you, that is not your father. Nor is she your mother, even in what we know to be rule." She squeezed Kurt's shoulder insistently. "Listen to me. I do not know the circumstances, but what I do know is this: Mystique had abandoned you as an infant. You never knew her, or the man who sired you."

"And though it was hard, you were all right. Do you not remember? You were taken in by an old couple in Germany, and they are your true parents, Kurt, in every way that counts. Have you forgotten them so easily?"

"Don't listen to her, son. We're your family," Mystique pleaded. But there was something off. She didn't belong there. He could feel that much at least. And Storm's words... on some level, they rang true.

When he tried to imagine his father, it came up blank. But thinking about what she said - foster parents. Germany. It sounded right. He blinked. Remembering.

He turned to face Storm with uncertainty etched across his face. He tried for a weak smile that quickly disappeared. "They're gonna be furious with me if they find out about this." He then continued on with a serious tone. "Storm, we... we have to get out of here."

Ororo returned his weak smile with one of her own, relieved. But it was short-lived, because she remembered what else being in a Shift like this entailed. She lifted a hand to rest against his cheek, looking at him seriously.

"Yes. I'm glad to hear you say that, Kurt, because we are only getting out of here if you want to get out of here." She glanced at Mystique, still pleading with her son. "Our enemy has disguised himself in the form of your mother, and you are the only one who can hurt her." So as much as she wanted to fight this battle for him, to spare him any more pain, she couldn't.

He looks back at her briefly - sneering now, she looks much more familiar. And Kurt looked back at Storm, trying to stay calm.

"You mean... you mean it has to be me?" In a way, he knew. Remembered. But there was a knot twisting in his stomach that made him wish he could be remembering that briefing wrongly.

Mystique was advancing forward anyway, ready to tug on his shoulder again.

Ororo nodded grimly. "Believe me, Kurt, if I could take this fight away from you, I would." She's gone one on one with Mystique before, she knew she could do it again.

"But I know you can do this, Kurt. You're strong, and brave." She gave him a reassuring smile. "... And I'm sure Logan would agree with me when I say that you've been trained by the best."

"I have been. I know that much." His smile was weak, and his resolve was already crumbling. But he nodded.

And he turns to face her.

She spread her arms at. "Son. Forget her. Come back to me. I never abandoned you, and you intend to abandon me? That's foolishness, Kurt. Let's all be a happy family here, together."

"No!" He found himself crying out, as if it were the only way to counter all those claims. In a way, it was. He channeled all of his true memories - all of his desire to reclaim that life instead of stagnating in this empty dream - into that shout and his own charge forward. He winced his eyes shut as he shoved at her, pushing her through the nearest window.

And he only felt the sensation of falling through it for a moment, before it all faded away. There was TERRACE again. And a fallen Shifter.

There were his sets of three fingers, covered in gloves, as he fought back bitter tears, now on his knees.

Ororo reacted immediately once the false reality faded away around them. She rushed forward on a brisk wind, hurling a lightning bolt - no, two - at the fallen Dream Shifter. And once she was sure it would stay down, she approached it with her scanner. Her motions were swift and curt, done in a matter of moments.

Business done, she turned to Kurt, eyes still snapping with residual electricity. They faded back to their regular blue when she saw him on the ground still. She crossed the distance between them quickly and knelt next to him.

His hands were on the ground now, as he thought that life. And how he'd ended it. Killing that ideal of his birth mother himself. Some tears were already slipping through when Storm came to him. He quietly looked up towards her, and abruptly he stumbled forward to wrap his arms around her tightly.

"Oh, Kurt..." Ororo returned the hug gently at first, then leaned over him a little, like a mother bird protecting her young. The fighting wasn't over, but they had a quiet moment to themselves for now, and she would spend it with Kurt and wishing she could have done more to help him.

He only gives a quiet, "Thank you," exhausted by this. He'd have to be taken to medical attention shortly afterwards. His arm already felt so sore just going through the hug. But right now he needed that comfort - that reminder that there was someone in this reality who was still there for him. So he held hug up the hug for some amount of time.

TERRACE Draft - Remaining Days

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