[Excalibur, Kitty/Wolvie]

This story, "Infinite Loop," is the first in a series of which I
posted the second installment yesterday ("The Ghost of a Chance."). I
got a bunch of e-mail on it (thanks!!!), and which also contained
requests for the first one (double thanks!), and I realized I had not
posted it (D'OH!). Anyway, it IS archived, as is "The Ghost of a
Chance" on Lori's X-Men Page at
http://web2.spydernet.com/lori/x-men.htm (a million thanks to Lori),
but I also figured it would be pretty easy to just also post it like I
orginally intended (D'OH! revisited...)

For the continuity police: This story takes place after the recent
Pryde and Wisdom Limited Series, and right after Kitty visits
Westchester to come to terms with Doug's death. Since she and Pete
parted on a sour note, I figured he went after her that night to see
that she was all right. I also figured Kitty and Pete, as a couple,
were old news at the X-Mansion by this time, and introductions were
along the lines of "nice to finally meet you, be seeing you, we've got
stuff to do." In this story, Wolverine is at the X-Mansion. Make up
your own reason (he needed his favorite shirt and had left it in the
mansion, etc. Hey, it's more likely than that Goblin Queen
business...)

All characters copyright Marvel Comics, etc. etc. and used without
permission. This story is only for my own enjoyment, and not to make
big piles of money by utilizing it in a big confusing summer
crossover. It is also guaranteed to never be retconned. Any and all
comments may be sent to albie@nternet.net

*********************************************************************
Infinite Loop

by Allegra

Kitty sits at the computer, watching the screen-saver spiral and turn.
One of Doug's last toy creations, a surprise for her. It used to run
on her old 286, back when that was state of the art; now it lives on
her pentium laptop. She sometimes carries it on a diskette her with
her, like a good luck charm. She has been running some routine
database debugging for Moira, busy work that always needs doing,
borrowing a terminal in the basement of the Westchester Mansion that's
linked into Moira's system: Virtual Muir Island - all the comforts of
home, plus drinkable coffee.
She had gotten lonely, a sick, hollow kind of lonely, about an hour
back and stuck the screen saver in without even thinking about it. A
few hundred lines of code draw out and rotate the intricate images:
elegant, efficient, and beautiful code. Perfect code. It has traveled
from computer to computer, outdated, simplistic, unchanging for quite
some time.

She'd done a paper for class on fractals back when everyone lived at
the mansion and there were actual classes she attended. Doug had paid
close attention to her oral report, and he'd programmed a visual of
the essence of the chaos physics she'd described. He'd understood the
language. He understood all languages, any language, ones that didn't
even really exist in what a normal person would consider a tangible
form. That was more than his mutant ability; it was his art.

Kitty wonders what he could have done with this art, had he lived.
What unimagined uses could he have applied it to? He was no simple
translator - he could turn the abstract into the concrete, crack the
code, find a paradigm and shift it back and forth like other people
could absent-mindedly bend a paperclip, discover words, hear them, be
them. It was never lost on Kitty, that power of his. Nor was it lost
on her that it was not, so far as Doug used it, a power of
destruction. But it could have been, had Doug been different. If he
had lived, he would have stayed here and become different. Maybe.

Languages. They stump her more the longer she lives. Computer syntax,
battle jargon, tech speak, nervous jokes in the face of death or
worse. All the languages she's picked up along the way keep stacking
up in her brain. There are non-verbal languages she and Pete have made
up as they've gone along, natural and automatic, but still so apt to
misinterpretation, always. There's the painful language between Ororo
and her - it might as well be an ancient, long-dead tongue bearing no
resemblance to the words they used to use to speak their hearts and
minds. The change was, or course, in them both: they changed their
looks, their thoughts, their loyalties, their souls, but all of that
was ultimately carried in their language, and in its now-cold
undercurrent. It's certainly not the language of mother and daughter.
Maybe it never had been, and they had only pretended because they both
needed to.

Then there is Piotr and the language of old love, and heartbreak: a
tentative dialect, half-lost, half-remembered, brittle. Phony
friend-speak. It's easy for them both to pretend it's difficult to
translate, so they smile and nod, like foreigners on holiday, keeping
things pleasant.

Doug, Illyana, Rachel - the language of the dead. Now, there is a
tricky one. A very tricky one indeed.

There it is, laughing at her from the screen, dancing in mandlebrots
of more colors than you could ever count - a whisper from a boy who
would now be a man. The thing about the language of the dead is that
it travels in one direction only - you can hear it loud and clear, but
you can't talk back.

She thinks about Pete, upstairs, sleeping peacefully. She has talked
to him about this so many times, her dead friends, what they were
like. But she hasn't had a chance to talk to him about something that
has been preying on her since they got back from England - she had
tried to save a mad killer, and had failed, but when she saw him die
she felt as if...as if she doesn't want to think about how she felt
anymore. Pete has come to terms with this - his demons, his guilt.
That's the language of "been there, done that, can't do a soddin'
thing to change it." He has it down. He has had a lot to get down,
too. It is one of the things she loves about him, that he doesn't make
excuses for what he's done. He simply faces it and moves on.

Kitty has thought for so long that the dark things in her past were
only trials she came through, grief and loss she has had to bear,
injustices she witnessed and couldn't stop, but not crimes or sins for
which she has to atone. Certainly she thought she had no inner demons
to live with.

Not like Pete does. Not like Logan does.

Now, she's not so sure. Had she tried to save Gideon soon enough? Was
that a feeling of relief and smug satisfaction when she heard him
scream? Whose voice keeps saying, "Face it Pryde - you grieve over
your lost friends, but you don't flinch from death. You don't mind
murder, you just like to choose who lives and dies. You watched a
group of men blow their brains out right in front of you when you'd
beaten them in a fight. Didn't exactly ruin your day, now did it? Nah,
you were kissing your boyfriend two hours later without a second
thought." This is a language she finally admits she can speak. Those
she loves best of all speak this particular language of killing; they
speak it well and so have learned to live with themselves. All but
one.

She said goodbye to him tonight, she thought. Goodbye means someone is
lost to you, doesn't it? Doug is lost. Wasn't that was this trip was
about? Well, Doug, it seems, has finally found her, just when she
thought she had let him go. And like the Doug she remembers so well,
he will not shut up for one second; she strains to catch his words,
his thoughts, but they bounce off her. Gibberish. She knows it's some
sort of goofiness, and thinks for the umpteenth time that maybe the
reason she and Doug never got together was that he was so naive and
innocent that she just didn't take him seriously. And here's another
big surprise: Illyana is behind him, sitting there with that
half-amused, superior look of hers, a look Kitty always wanted to be
able to wear with such confidence. Whatcha gonna do, girlfriend? Got a
dark side after all, do we, roomie? Always knew it. Told you.

And she had told her. One night they'd stayed up talking, Kitty musing
about Logan and how he was such a good man, but could be so terrifying
at the same time. Illyana smirked and told her that Logan was not as
scary as Kitty herself was. "He's got berserker rage, Pryde, for sure.
But he's spent all his life with it in his own face. Nobody sees
yours, not even you. It's...incubating." Illyana switched to a Vincent
Price late-night horror movie voice for this last word, perhaps to
soften it, perhaps to try to take it back, too late.

"How do you know it's there? Who died and made you judge of souls?"

"Uh, Belasco?"

"Not funny. And you can't know what kind of soul I've got. You're
good, but you're not that good."

"I just know it. And you ought to, you really ought to." Illyana was
serious again. "Remember it."

"Well, what about you?"

Patented Illyana eyeroll-and sigh combo: "Oh, no, it's not like the
Queen Bitch of infernal fire and brimstone Limbo has a dark side."

"That's not funny," Kitty repeated.

"Smile when you say that, genejoke."

"It really isn't funny."

"OK, so half of me is eaten up with pure evil, and the other half is
pretty much OK. I'm working through it and just kind of going with it,
you know? I'm aiming for 'Most Improved Tainted Soul' in the yearbook.
That, or 'Most Likely to Rule Her Own Evil Realm By Default.'"

"Dammit, Illyana, that's really not funny."

"Well, what are we gonna do about it? Don't be so negative. You'll
probably get named president of the computer club, and 'Least Likely
To Marry a Nice Jewish Boy Like Your Mother Wants You To.'"

So they had laughed, because there was not much else to do, but Kitty
had secretly hoped Illyana was wrong about it all.

Yeah, right.

Illyana was so spooky sometimes when that cryptic shit came out. But
had she really been cryptic? Or did Kitty just feel better pretending
to be baffled? She'd give anything to talk to her right now. It's not
that she can't confide in Pete; she just really needs to talk to
Illyana. Watcha gonna do about it, girlfriend? Loud, empty, and
unanswerable.

"Whatcha doing there, punkin?" She isn't startled by the voice behind
her, a gruff, mean voice that doesn't fit the affection in the words
it carries: language. The endearment makes her smile.

"Now there's something I haven't been called in quite some time."

"Doesn't seem to fit, anymore. But you look like you're taking a
little visit back to your punkin days here lately, darlin."

Kitty pushes herself away from the computer, pulling her glasses off
in one smooth, practiced motion and tosses them onto the desk in front
of her. "I can't go back, though, that's the problem. I might have
seemed to...never mind. I can't talk tonight. I just keep getting
tongue-tied. Or something. Pete said I was driving him crazy. He said
listening to me tonight was like channel surfing on Japanese cable-
TV. I can't get my thoughts together. But I feel like I need to. It's
just me, there's nothing anybody can do or anything."

"Oh. One o' those nights. Welcome to Post-Punkin land, punkin."

Logan perches on the edge of the desk, his short legs not reaching the
floor. Kitty notices that he most decidedly does not look like a small
boy swinging his legs off a chair too big for him. Kurt had told her
that his voice had gotten strange when his feral transformation took
place, but he sounds just like he always has to Kitty. "I think you
did good with that boyfriend you dragged in. I know Kurt likes him,
but I wanted to meet him myself. Talked to him awhile while you were
with Rahne and Douglock. I gotta say that I respect the fact that he
came here to get you. Probably the only mutie in these parts ever came
to Westchester on a commercial flight. He's worried about you. He
ain't by himself on that one, either." He waits. Logan can wait like
nobody else.

"Don't pay attention to me," she says finally, smirking, trying to
make light of herself. "I'm up too late, I'm punchy, and I'm going off
on some philosophical trip that is better left alone. My mind is just
weirding out on me. Must be the time difference, jet lag....."

"No, darlin - this is just the hour for it. You 'mornin people' always
seem surprised by that pit you can fall in about 2 am. Those up at
dawn rise and shine types-I never thought that fit you. Who in blazes,
besides you, would name themselves 'Shadowcat' and then get up at 5:30
every morning, anyway?"

"Hey, I stay up late all the time!"

Logan laughs, good-naturedly. "Well, I suspect that's recent. And I
suspect when you are up, you're not sulking around by yourself, and
I'm reasonably sure there's not a lot of philosophy talk going on."

Kitty smiles absently, relieved Logan has gracefully accepted the fact
that she's not a child anymore. She shrugs, and takes a sip of her
coffee. "True."

"So where is ol' Pete - he came a long way to see ya, I'd have thought
he wouldn't let you out of his sight."

"He wouldn't. But he was exhausted. He's the only person I know who
sleeps less than you, and sometimes it catches up with him. Out like a
light. I think we've switched roles tonight. Nocturnal brooding is his
specialty." She pauses, takes more coffee. "Logan, do you think that
if ...well, let's put it this way. Do you believe that when people die
that they can come back, somehow, come back and maybe finish things
they left undone?"

"It's not him, Kitty."

"What?"

"Dougie's gone. Been gone. Harsh, but true. And he ain't no ghost of
Christmas yet to come, neither. You and him, you may have been alike
in some ways, but you weren't in the ways that matter. You're going to
live the life you're living. That's just fate. You grew up, you chose.
Maybe we chose for you one time, maybe not. But now you've chosen for
yourself."

"Great," Kitty says. "Yet another Psi surfaces."

"Nah, just somebody who's been there."

"Well, I came here to make sure of that. It isn't him. I know that
now."

"You feeling guilty?"

"No. Why should I?"

"Why should you? Good question." Logan lights a cigar, ignoring the
no-smoking policy in the computer room. What is it with me and smoking
men? Kitty wonders.

She turns back to the computer. Doug's creation spirals away, as if it
has a life of its own.

"It seems like, sometimes, with Doug, or Douglock..."

"Ain't him."

"But it might as well be! I mean, it's eerie. Of course, he's not a
carbon copy, but you know, he was one of my best friends. I loved him.
I mean, not like Pete, or even like I thought I once loved Piotr, but
I..." she stops, toys with her glasses, mutters under her breath.
"Shit."

"I know. It's a real bitch, ain't it?"

Kitty finds it surprisingly comforting, remembering that Logan always
understands her; problem is, she's not sure what she's trying to say.
"You don't know what it's like, around him all the time, like a
constant reminder of things I could have said, should have said, all
those things you think about, you know? Too late. I didn't realize how
much we were alike until he was gone."

Logan nods, and they sit there in silence for awhile, the colors
swirling away on the screen.

Finally he exhales a stream of smoke and clears his throat. "You may
have been like him on the surface, and maybe I used to think you were
alike in other ways. But you and Doug - not even the same planet. Nice
kid. Really. Real shame. But it was so damn obvious that you two were
a match, for awhile, that it was real easy to lose sight of the fact
that he would have been a nice match for the Kitty your mom and dad
thought you were back in Deerwood. . ."

"Deerfield."

"Whatever. Point is, you fell into this life, whatever it is, like you
were born to it. Maybe you were. Big popular subject around here
behind your back for a long time was how we kept forgetting you were a
kid."

"I remember it differently. The subject was always how no one could
accept that I wasn't a kid. I was constantly reminded of it."

"That's because we had to keep reminding ourselves. Well, some did. I
didn't. You went through too much, too soon, too fast to be a kid.
And, like I say, you were different to start with, as far as I'm
concerned. You're made up of something different than pour ol' Dougie.
You wouldn't have stayed in Deer Park. . ."

"Deerfield."

"Whatever. You would have gone stir crazy there."

"Maybe not. Maybe I would have just gone on to some normal life."

"Uh huh. Believe that?"

"No."

"Tell you something else that might surprise you, since this thing has
turned into a goddamn Oprah episode - shame about what happened to
Petie's little sister, and I know you two were tight. But what
happened to her -- it wouldn't have happened to you."

Kitty drops her glasses back on the table. "You really give me the
creeps when you do that."

Logan laughs. "I been knowing you a long, long, time, punkin. I can
just figure how your mind's probably been working."

Kitty contemplates telling him what the rest of what she's been
thinking about, the things about Illyana that keep going through her
mind, but then figures there's not a lot of point. "Why wouldn't it
have happened to me?" She looks down, breaking eye contact. "Give me a
damn break. Not only would it have happened to me, it would have been
a hundred times worse with me. Illyana started out good, she was..."

"Weak. Harsh but true."

"You can't know I wouldn't have. . ."

"Oh yes I can. I saw it in Japan. Same movie, different locale,
darlin'."

She sighs and looks at him again. "Well, there are all my concerns
just laid out and dissected. I guess I haven't changed any since I was
thirteen."

Logan laughs. "There's where you're wrong. Gives me a start every once
in awhile. You were never a kid, not since I knew you. But now you're
a grown woman. Makes me feel old. And you've changed. I remember when
you couldn't stand to be in the same room as Kurt cause of how his
looks spooked you so bad, and now here you are, the only person who
doesn't look at me like I stepped out o' some Lon Chaney movie, since
I, uh, went native. They cover it, but it flashes up in their eyes.
All of 'em. But not you. Didn't even seem shocked the first time you
saw me after it happened."

"I'd already seen it," she says quietly.

"I'm sure they sent pictures left and right to ol' Moira. . ."

"No," she interrupts, still speaking softly. "In Japan. That once.
Only that was worse because I hadn't known until then."

Logan takes another drag off his cigar. "Still, seeing me mad ain't
like seeing me like this."

"You weren't just mad. You were. . . like this. But worse. It came out
of your insides. So I knew. And then in my mind it was part of you."

The look on his face is completely unreadable, and his voice is flat
when he speaks again. "You knew, I mean you _really_ knew, and it
didn't scare you off."

"No, because I knew that wasn't all you were. Look, we were - still
are, I hope - really close. When I look back, you were probably the
only real friend I had here. Ororo doesn't count, that was . . ."

"Yeah, that was, " Logan says.

Kitty laughs. "OK. So no need to rehash the Made-For-Lifetime-Network
movie of the week. But you were not some father figure, Logan. You
were probably the first real friend I ever had. And everybody
thinks--I know they do--everybody thinks you were this warped
surrogate father that somehow made me into this corrupted warrior, and
then there is no end of speculation to Pete being a surrogate you.
It's really not as complicated as that."

"Nope."

"And for the record, to change the subject, they may all look at you
like they're afraid of you, but there's a very important exception to
that. Jean doesn't. She doesn't look at you any differently. And she's
the only one who would really matter to you."

Kitty doesn't think she's ever, ever seen Logan taken off guard, until
now.

"Now we got us another Psi surfacing."

"No, just grew up and came back. Things are weird. I don't know why I
never saw any of that before. It doesn't matter." She shakes her head.
"Forget I said that, it's none of my business," she says quickly, and
continues on without giving him a chance to speak. "I just realized
something, though. Part of what I am is not all of what I am. But
there have to be some people, one or two, somewhere, that know all of
what I am. Good, bad, or whatever. Piotr could never know me, and
neither could Doug. But Pete does, and always has, probably more so
than I know myself. And it's not the same kind of thing, but you know
me, too."

"Yeah, well, as Jubilee would say, 'no duh," Logan says, smiling. "But
you can back up a little bit, about Jeannie. I guess that is your
business, if it's my business. But there is nothing going on, not now,
not ever."

Kitty waves the comment away. "I know that. It's part of what's so
weird everytime I come back here. I see all these things that have
always been here and wonder why I never saw them before. I mean, it's
just us talking, right? Scott - and I'm not even going to get into the
fact that he just abandoned Madelyne and the baby, because I'm trying
very hard to still like him - but he just sees Jean as this perfect
figure, like this damn pristine shaft of divine light or something.
But she's more like you than she is like him."

"Maybe."

"And I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"I'm just sorry. It must be hard to deal with."

Logan coughs and stubs out his cigar on the cement floor. "Well, you
know, everybody always knew Scott and Jean were made for each other,
like two peas in a pod."

"Like me and Doug. Isn't that what you said?"

Logan doesn't answer. He just looks at the computer screen as the
fractal program spins and spins. Kitty watches it, too, without really
seeing it. Doug is gone. Finally. And Illyana is leaving, she thinks,
she hopes. Took you long enough to figure it out, Pryde. You'd think a
little bit of my savvy would have rubbed of on you all that time we
hung out. No biggie. I'm outta here. You people think too much.

"Whatcha smilin at?" Logan asks.

"Something Illyana just said."

"Run that one by again?"

Kitty shakes her head. Reality check. "I meant, I guess, remembering
something she said when she was, you know, here. Nothing. Not
important."

"That thing is making me sea sick," Logan says, indicating the
computer screen.

Kitty reaches over and jiggles the mouse, bringing the database screen
back into view.

"That's even worse," Logan mutters.

She shuts the program down and turns the computer off, thinking of
Pete sleeping upstairs, still and quiet. It's amazing to her how he
never moves in his sleep, like he's not even real. No one else would
believe it, but when Pete Wisdom is sleeping, he is the very picture
of absolute peace and innocence: a part of him that is not all of him.
She ejects the screen saver disk and sticks it back into her laptop
bag.

"Done for the night? Or mornin I should say?" Logan asks.

"Yeah, all done."

"You know, punkin you wanna watch that habit you got of thinkin way
too much about things that nobody can do nothin about."

"I know."

"Sleep is good for that, I been told."

"Are you telling me it's past my bedtime?"

Logan shakes his head. "No, I'm tryin to be tactful and tell you
somebody might be waitin on you."

Kitty smiles and gets up from the chair. "You ought to go to sleep,
too."

"So I been told my whole life," he says.

She impulsively leans over and kisses him on the cheek. "Goodnight,"
she says.

Logan quickly but gently pulls her into his arms and gives her a
brief, tight hug. "You grew up real good, you know?" he says to her
quietly, and then lets her go.


end