fanfic100: Kitty Pryde / 071 / Broken / Blackbird
Title: Blackbird
Prompt: Broken
Word Count: 2,299
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Adapted from a post originally made for the RPG milliways_bar
If you knew you were going to die in a year, a month, a week, a dayhourminute second--if you knew this ahead of time--what would you do?
The problem with phasing when someone’s shooting a gun at you is that the bullet still has to go somewhere.
(bullet or claws, and some nights she still wakes up soaked by sweat, the sheets clinging to her as Piotr reaches for the light, and remembers the scream from behind her as metal sunk into Jean-Paul's chest)
And if there’s just a wall behind you? That’s not a problem.
People, now?
That’s a problem. Generally speaking, though sometimes Kitty thinks it'd be nice to just let some of them get hit, if they're dumb enough to be in the way.
(but she doesn't think that much anymore, not after the Northstar went out for good, and oh, someday, she has to face Aurora)
So when Kitty sees that the gun is, in fact, aimed at her, and she knows that Scott and Hank are behind her-Scott and Hank who are working with her to defuse the stupid bomb, and, of course there’s no one there to just deflect the bullet, and not enough time to yell, or even think or let her hear beat-
The answer is simple.
The bullet flies.
She doesn’t phase.
And Kitty doesn’t scream when contact's made, just grunts.
Most people, of course, don't get to know in advance.
The bullet pierces uniform, which it shouldn't be able to do, but does, in an instant, and then skin, muscle, blood already flowing, as it breaks a rib and then the pop that isn't there--you'd think there'd be a sound, even just in your head, but there's only overwhelming pain--as the lung is punctured.
Don’t scream. Don’t cry.
Don’t give them that satisfaction.
Hit my goddamned chest, she thinks, blankly, coughing up something-she really, really doesn’t want to know what-and absently noting the flash of red and pink that’s Cyke’s blast, and a blue form that her mind tells her has to be Beast, crouching over her--If you didn’t get the bomb already, I’ll kill you both--and
Wow.
This hurts. This hurts, and there's blood all around, and on her hand, even as she holds her own skin shut, best she can, and tries to breathe.
And can't, but oh, she tries. Air flows through her, and blood flows out of her, and her vision is dimming as she forces herself to stay here and not go to the Other Place where she does when she phases, not go to wherever it is part of her always is, and it hurts so much, and she hears them yelling, and rages, as her face turns true blue.
Cyanosis.
(you're turning violet, Violet)
She can't see whoever it was that shot her, but she thinks towards them, viciously, threateningly, as the world turns inside out, just like her chest.
Have your fun, now. The minute I can stand again, it’s my turn. And I intend to dance on your graves.
You, Katherine, aren’t dancing at all, any time soon.
Out of my head, Emma.
Sorry, darling, but you really shouldn’t get upset. You have a punctured lung, you realize.
Oh. Huh. No, didn’t. Ow. Explains why I can’t fucking breathe, I guess.
She has the bad feeling Emma’s mental voice is almost sympathetic. For her. Very heroic, that, taking the bullet. I’m sure your Logan would do the same. Of course, he has a healing factor. You may bleed to death and die as a result. Heroic. But stupid.
She can’t really see anything anymore, or at least, not enough to tell what it is, but if she could, she’d see the look of surprise on Beast’s face as she grins.
Yeah, well, if I were smart, I wouldn’t go around with a giant target on my chest, would I?
She almost thinks she hears a snort as her body gives up and she falls into darkness, hearing a faint, flopping sound in her chest, over the yelling.
Central cyanosis is more specific. Bluish coloration of the skin due to the presence of deoxygenated hemoglobin in blood vessels near the skin surface.
Central refers to it existing in the face and neck.
It will spread, though, unless the body is given oxygen.
Kitty wakes up to pain.
She knows why. If she’s drugged too much, her body has a hard time staying solid. She needs to be conscious and in control.
She knows why. It's too easy in cases of a punctured lung (pneumothorax) for the victim to be rendered unconscious and not wake up. Coma. Sleeping for ever, just like the beauty, and th-th-th-that's all, folken.
She needs to be in control.
There’s a tube in her chest. She’s on
(blackbird singing in the dead of night)
the plane and they’re going back to the mansion, she can tell. She knows. She knows because that’s what she’d do. She'd
(take these broken wings and learn to fly)
rush the victim to the nearest place able to help, and force air into the lungs, and do anything she can to keep him or her awake, and that's why there's light and pain and
(all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arrive)
the sticky feeling of blood already drying on her hands.
There’s a tube in her chest, air flowing in, maybe, or water, or new blood--not new blood, not red, blood's red, except when you're a mutant it isn't always--but something, and something flowing out and she can't dream.
She can’t dream.
She meant to think that she can’t breathe, she thinks, if she could think, but that works too.
She can't dream, can't ever give in, because she wants to, wishes she could, and she can't, because that's not for her, not when there's The Dream, still.
Kitty thinks she’d
(take these sunken eyes and learn to see)
scream now, if she had the breath to do it. If she had breath at all, but she doesn't.
The tube, she notes, from a distance, away from the mixture of pain and the few drugs they will give her, not nearly enough, is pumping air in. She thought it might be, and
(all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free, to let go, deep breath in, all molecules out, into the black and red and haze that's the Other Place)
now she's sure it is. Except maybe it isn't, but it's clear, like air.
But red liquid is flowing up into it, too.
She’s starting to black out. Before the vision goes really black, it's blurred and red, like blood, and you can see the pulse, if you look, the change in light changing with her heart, she thinks, but she can't think, and can't see.
She's starting to black out.
So it doesn’t surprise her there’s a needle, another one, rammed into her chest, and different drugs pumped into her system.
And now she gasps a noise that would be a scream, if she could scream-can’t though, and maybe she won’t ever be able to again don’t think that-because with the burst of awareness comes
motherfuckerthishurtsohGodmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop
the pain again, with nothing blocking it. Delirium is shoved away for reality, and it sucks so much.
Kitty realizes in this moment that she’s dying.
She wonders how many of her nine lives she has left.
What would you do, if you knew that your lung was gone, that your blood was covering table and skin and fur and wouldn't stop flowing, and that you were going to die in a small fistful of time?
Beast is talking to her. Scott is flying and Emma is something-who the hell knows?-and Beast is talking to her, soothingly, as he does things.
“I’m going to inflate the lung now, Katherine-Kitty? Kitty, stay with me, this is going to hurt-but I have to do it.”
She’s not really listening and then-
FUCK
pain pain I want my mom pain and-
It’s funny.
She knows she’s dying.
And she glares at the ceiling.
I’m not done yet. Sorry.
She almost thinks she hears a laugh.
It’s possible she’s hallucinating all of this.
The pain is making it hard to think anyway.
If your body goes too long without air (hypoxia), the result is loss of consciousness and coma.
In addition, shifting of the mediastinum towards the site of the injury can obstruct the aorta and other large blood vessels, depriving distal tissues of blood.
It’s funny.
Well, no. It’s not, really. Nothing’s funny when there’s a tube in your chest and pain blurring your vision and you’re completely and absolutely aware that you’re in the process of ceasing to live.
It’s messed up, though. The things you think now.
She’s thinking about Piotr, and she can hear his voice.
She’s thinking about how, even right now, she just wants to be curled up next to him instead of on her back in a medlab-she’s still awake, still feeling everything, and there’s no way around it, but oh, sweet Lord, it hurts-though okay she’d rather be anywhere but here but
I love you
she wants to be with him.
She’s thinking that if there were ever a person she’d give in on her “no kids” rule with, she kinda thinks it would be him but
little blonde Snowflake lying dead on a table
that can’t happen. Not the way he wants, really. Not the way she wants, and now she admits, coherently to herself that oh, God, yes, she wants to be a mother, she wants to have a baby, someday, and she can’t, because of the same reason she’s here in the medlab right now, because of the life she chose, chose as much as it was pushed at her, and she still wants.
She’d marry him in a heartbeat
I want to hit something--don't say it, Piotr. Never would I, Katya.
except she wouldn’t, maybe, not really, because marriage isn’t something you decide in a heartbeat, and it’s still not long enough, but she’s dying for christ’s sake, and if ever there were a time she should be not logical, it should be this and
I think too much
she still is.
Her chest is open.
She felt them cut it open, peel the skin away from the bones that make a pretty curve, though the one is broken, and maybe that's what punctured her lung, she hears them say, she thinks, and it’s open now and if she looks-she can’t not look-she can see it clearly and she can’t look, either, or she’ll be ill and that will just make it worse.
There’s another tube in her throat-up her nose down her throat and there’s blood flowing up that one too-and the technology is so advanced, but there are still only so many things you can do and nothing’s instantaneous and Warren isn’t here, he’s in Genosha, and she can hear Wolverine yelling to find a goddamned blood sample of his, miracle blood, say hallelujah, praise the Lord, amen, all those things Sam told her about in the revivals, but there isn’t any miracle blood about to be had, and Elixir, Elixir isn't there, day trip to the city, no miracle waiting for this kitten this time and and and oh God it hurts and
Hank is yelling for someone to hold her down. Which is funny, because Kitty doesn’t remember starting to move, but apparently she is-can they blame her?-and Piotr’s the one holding her down and oh, the pain-that’s why she’s moving, they filled her with adrenaline or something again to keep her awake and her blood is pouring out from her chest to the table, and everything's red-and oh, Piotr, Piotr
Don't leave me like I left you.
is whispering something in Russian and she knows what he’s saying and hope she doesn't have to because she couldn't--
she couldn’t
I don't know that I have a choice.
and she has to stay awake, but she feels the darkness again, even as she retches and vomit and bile and blood flows out her mouth and up the tube and over Piotr's back and into Hank's fur and then the coolness of a Genoshan collar, the new nausea and instant migraine it brings, and blessed, blessed darkness brought by the prick of a needle and drugs in her veins, so many, counteracting adrenaline and god knows what, and maybe it's stress on an already stressed system, and maybe there are words like "cardiac" and stuff in the air, but the blackness surrounds her, and she doesn't really care.
Untreated, a severe pneumothorax can lead to death within several minutes.
I’m not done yet. Come back later.
In the end, of course, pretty much everything leads to death.
Sometimes, however, it takes longer than others.
There’s a tube in her chest and one down her throat, and her breathing is in rasping gasps when it comes.
But it does come.
It still hurts. And the blood is still flowing every now and then.
And there's her knight in shining (skin) armor, next to her bed, and holding her hand, and maybe she should have let go. It would've been easier.
But she’s not done.
Not yet, anyway.
It still gets you, in the end.
But you get a few more moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years.
A little bit more to add to that lifetime.
Not quite yet.
Prompt: Broken
Word Count: 2,299
Rating: PG-13
Author's Note: Adapted from a post originally made for the RPG milliways_bar
If you knew you were going to die in a year, a month, a week, a dayhourminute second--if you knew this ahead of time--what would you do?
The problem with phasing when someone’s shooting a gun at you is that the bullet still has to go somewhere.
(bullet or claws, and some nights she still wakes up soaked by sweat, the sheets clinging to her as Piotr reaches for the light, and remembers the scream from behind her as metal sunk into Jean-Paul's chest)
And if there’s just a wall behind you? That’s not a problem.
People, now?
That’s a problem. Generally speaking, though sometimes Kitty thinks it'd be nice to just let some of them get hit, if they're dumb enough to be in the way.
(but she doesn't think that much anymore, not after the Northstar went out for good, and oh, someday, she has to face Aurora)
So when Kitty sees that the gun is, in fact, aimed at her, and she knows that Scott and Hank are behind her-Scott and Hank who are working with her to defuse the stupid bomb, and, of course there’s no one there to just deflect the bullet, and not enough time to yell, or even think or let her hear beat-
The answer is simple.
The bullet flies.
She doesn’t phase.
And Kitty doesn’t scream when contact's made, just grunts.
Most people, of course, don't get to know in advance.
The bullet pierces uniform, which it shouldn't be able to do, but does, in an instant, and then skin, muscle, blood already flowing, as it breaks a rib and then the pop that isn't there--you'd think there'd be a sound, even just in your head, but there's only overwhelming pain--as the lung is punctured.
Don’t scream. Don’t cry.
Don’t give them that satisfaction.
Hit my goddamned chest, she thinks, blankly, coughing up something-she really, really doesn’t want to know what-and absently noting the flash of red and pink that’s Cyke’s blast, and a blue form that her mind tells her has to be Beast, crouching over her--If you didn’t get the bomb already, I’ll kill you both--and
Wow.
This hurts. This hurts, and there's blood all around, and on her hand, even as she holds her own skin shut, best she can, and tries to breathe.
And can't, but oh, she tries. Air flows through her, and blood flows out of her, and her vision is dimming as she forces herself to stay here and not go to the Other Place where she does when she phases, not go to wherever it is part of her always is, and it hurts so much, and she hears them yelling, and rages, as her face turns true blue.
Cyanosis.
(you're turning violet, Violet)
She can't see whoever it was that shot her, but she thinks towards them, viciously, threateningly, as the world turns inside out, just like her chest.
Have your fun, now. The minute I can stand again, it’s my turn. And I intend to dance on your graves.
You, Katherine, aren’t dancing at all, any time soon.
Out of my head, Emma.
Sorry, darling, but you really shouldn’t get upset. You have a punctured lung, you realize.
Oh. Huh. No, didn’t. Ow. Explains why I can’t fucking breathe, I guess.
She has the bad feeling Emma’s mental voice is almost sympathetic. For her. Very heroic, that, taking the bullet. I’m sure your Logan would do the same. Of course, he has a healing factor. You may bleed to death and die as a result. Heroic. But stupid.
She can’t really see anything anymore, or at least, not enough to tell what it is, but if she could, she’d see the look of surprise on Beast’s face as she grins.
Yeah, well, if I were smart, I wouldn’t go around with a giant target on my chest, would I?
She almost thinks she hears a snort as her body gives up and she falls into darkness, hearing a faint, flopping sound in her chest, over the yelling.
Central cyanosis is more specific. Bluish coloration of the skin due to the presence of deoxygenated hemoglobin in blood vessels near the skin surface.
Central refers to it existing in the face and neck.
It will spread, though, unless the body is given oxygen.
Kitty wakes up to pain.
She knows why. If she’s drugged too much, her body has a hard time staying solid. She needs to be conscious and in control.
She knows why. It's too easy in cases of a punctured lung (pneumothorax) for the victim to be rendered unconscious and not wake up. Coma. Sleeping for ever, just like the beauty, and th-th-th-that's all, folken.
She needs to be in control.
There’s a tube in her chest. She’s on
(blackbird singing in the dead of night)
the plane and they’re going back to the mansion, she can tell. She knows. She knows because that’s what she’d do. She'd
(take these broken wings and learn to fly)
rush the victim to the nearest place able to help, and force air into the lungs, and do anything she can to keep him or her awake, and that's why there's light and pain and
(all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arrive)
the sticky feeling of blood already drying on her hands.
There’s a tube in her chest, air flowing in, maybe, or water, or new blood--not new blood, not red, blood's red, except when you're a mutant it isn't always--but something, and something flowing out and she can't dream.
She can’t dream.
She meant to think that she can’t breathe, she thinks, if she could think, but that works too.
She can't dream, can't ever give in, because she wants to, wishes she could, and she can't, because that's not for her, not when there's The Dream, still.
Kitty thinks she’d
(take these sunken eyes and learn to see)
scream now, if she had the breath to do it. If she had breath at all, but she doesn't.
The tube, she notes, from a distance, away from the mixture of pain and the few drugs they will give her, not nearly enough, is pumping air in. She thought it might be, and
(all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to be free, to let go, deep breath in, all molecules out, into the black and red and haze that's the Other Place)
now she's sure it is. Except maybe it isn't, but it's clear, like air.
But red liquid is flowing up into it, too.
She’s starting to black out. Before the vision goes really black, it's blurred and red, like blood, and you can see the pulse, if you look, the change in light changing with her heart, she thinks, but she can't think, and can't see.
She's starting to black out.
So it doesn’t surprise her there’s a needle, another one, rammed into her chest, and different drugs pumped into her system.
And now she gasps a noise that would be a scream, if she could scream-can’t though, and maybe she won’t ever be able to again don’t think that-because with the burst of awareness comes
motherfuckerthishurtsohGodmakeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop
the pain again, with nothing blocking it. Delirium is shoved away for reality, and it sucks so much.
Kitty realizes in this moment that she’s dying.
She wonders how many of her nine lives she has left.
What would you do, if you knew that your lung was gone, that your blood was covering table and skin and fur and wouldn't stop flowing, and that you were going to die in a small fistful of time?
Beast is talking to her. Scott is flying and Emma is something-who the hell knows?-and Beast is talking to her, soothingly, as he does things.
“I’m going to inflate the lung now, Katherine-Kitty? Kitty, stay with me, this is going to hurt-but I have to do it.”
She’s not really listening and then-
FUCK
pain pain I want my mom pain and-
It’s funny.
She knows she’s dying.
And she glares at the ceiling.
I’m not done yet. Sorry.
She almost thinks she hears a laugh.
It’s possible she’s hallucinating all of this.
The pain is making it hard to think anyway.
If your body goes too long without air (hypoxia), the result is loss of consciousness and coma.
In addition, shifting of the mediastinum towards the site of the injury can obstruct the aorta and other large blood vessels, depriving distal tissues of blood.
It’s funny.
Well, no. It’s not, really. Nothing’s funny when there’s a tube in your chest and pain blurring your vision and you’re completely and absolutely aware that you’re in the process of ceasing to live.
It’s messed up, though. The things you think now.
She’s thinking about Piotr, and she can hear his voice.
She’s thinking about how, even right now, she just wants to be curled up next to him instead of on her back in a medlab-she’s still awake, still feeling everything, and there’s no way around it, but oh, sweet Lord, it hurts-though okay she’d rather be anywhere but here but
I love you
she wants to be with him.
She’s thinking that if there were ever a person she’d give in on her “no kids” rule with, she kinda thinks it would be him but
little blonde Snowflake lying dead on a table
that can’t happen. Not the way he wants, really. Not the way she wants, and now she admits, coherently to herself that oh, God, yes, she wants to be a mother, she wants to have a baby, someday, and she can’t, because of the same reason she’s here in the medlab right now, because of the life she chose, chose as much as it was pushed at her, and she still wants.
She’d marry him in a heartbeat
I want to hit something--don't say it, Piotr. Never would I, Katya.
except she wouldn’t, maybe, not really, because marriage isn’t something you decide in a heartbeat, and it’s still not long enough, but she’s dying for christ’s sake, and if ever there were a time she should be not logical, it should be this and
I think too much
she still is.
Her chest is open.
She felt them cut it open, peel the skin away from the bones that make a pretty curve, though the one is broken, and maybe that's what punctured her lung, she hears them say, she thinks, and it’s open now and if she looks-she can’t not look-she can see it clearly and she can’t look, either, or she’ll be ill and that will just make it worse.
There’s another tube in her throat-up her nose down her throat and there’s blood flowing up that one too-and the technology is so advanced, but there are still only so many things you can do and nothing’s instantaneous and Warren isn’t here, he’s in Genosha, and she can hear Wolverine yelling to find a goddamned blood sample of his, miracle blood, say hallelujah, praise the Lord, amen, all those things Sam told her about in the revivals, but there isn’t any miracle blood about to be had, and Elixir, Elixir isn't there, day trip to the city, no miracle waiting for this kitten this time and and and oh God it hurts and
Hank is yelling for someone to hold her down. Which is funny, because Kitty doesn’t remember starting to move, but apparently she is-can they blame her?-and Piotr’s the one holding her down and oh, the pain-that’s why she’s moving, they filled her with adrenaline or something again to keep her awake and her blood is pouring out from her chest to the table, and everything's red-and oh, Piotr, Piotr
Don't leave me like I left you.
is whispering something in Russian and she knows what he’s saying and hope she doesn't have to because she couldn't--
she couldn’t
I don't know that I have a choice.
and she has to stay awake, but she feels the darkness again, even as she retches and vomit and bile and blood flows out her mouth and up the tube and over Piotr's back and into Hank's fur and then the coolness of a Genoshan collar, the new nausea and instant migraine it brings, and blessed, blessed darkness brought by the prick of a needle and drugs in her veins, so many, counteracting adrenaline and god knows what, and maybe it's stress on an already stressed system, and maybe there are words like "cardiac" and stuff in the air, but the blackness surrounds her, and she doesn't really care.
Untreated, a severe pneumothorax can lead to death within several minutes.
I’m not done yet. Come back later.
In the end, of course, pretty much everything leads to death.
Sometimes, however, it takes longer than others.
There’s a tube in her chest and one down her throat, and her breathing is in rasping gasps when it comes.
But it does come.
It still hurts. And the blood is still flowing every now and then.
And there's her knight in shining (skin) armor, next to her bed, and holding her hand, and maybe she should have let go. It would've been easier.
But she’s not done.
Not yet, anyway.
It still gets you, in the end.
But you get a few more moments, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years.
A little bit more to add to that lifetime.
Not quite yet.