grasp, it cannot be held

Hank is eyeing her in a way that Kate would be annoyed at any other time.

Hank has also given her a shot of...something, she's not quite sure what, because she really did start hyperventilating when his words finally registered to her.

Every month, it's the same check-up, the same thing; two checkups from now is the deadline she and Piotr had agreed on for starting fertility treatments, and frankly, in her head, Kate recites the results of Hank's tests along with him, like she has every month.

The problem comes when this month, the words in her head do not match the ones coming out of his mouth.

It took her a minute.

"--Wait. Wait. Say that part again? --NO, HANK, NOT THE PART ABOUT MY WHITE BLOODCELLS."

He had looked slightly miffed at the shouting, but she feels, really, that was entirely understandable.

"...Oh. Um. Okay. ...Hank, you should probably call Piotr. I think I'm going to hyperventilate."

Which she then did, showing, Kate feels, that she at least has some idea of what's going on in her body, and then there was the shot, and then Hank called Piotr, and then--

Wow. My brain really doesn't ever shut down. And I babble in it, too. Huh.

She really hopes Piotr gets here before she drives herself crazy. Or drives Hank crazy. He might inject her again, then. She couldn't blame him, really.

...

She's not at all sure how to deal with this.

She's bleeding.

You don't think of it as bleeding, really. Or she doesn't, not most months. It's her period. It comes three months, regular as clockwork, when she's on the pill, and it's every five to six weeks when she's not on it. It's just part of a biological system.

But the reality, Kate thinks, is that she's bleeding.

If you bleed this much, people rush to help you. To bandage you up, to stitch up wounds. People recognize it as something being wrong, that the world isn't working like it should. They give you pain medicine and let you cry and scream, because it's a lot of blood, a lot of tissue, and that's got to be a horrible thing.

Unless it's this sort of bleeding. This bleeding from between her legs, she thinks as her hands form fists, and it makes her sicker to see the blood staining her panties than it did to see the blood gushing from a bullet hole in her chest. Than it felt to be gouged through with a beam and pinned to Piotr like a butterfly on a placard.

This is bleeding out, and it's bleeding out with hope, and no one will--

It's just a period. A period, something at the end, something final. It marks the end of one cycle, and now the next starts. It's just a period. A simple function.

Except it's bleeding, too, gushing blood and tissue and hope, more than anything, and since they made that damned cure it seems like Kate's seeing hope bleed out everywhere in ways it never should.

It's not that much blood, part of her wants to say, and it's so much blood she feels like if she stands here it will keep leaking down her legs, stain the floor, her skin, build up around her ankles and drown her whole. Like Alice and her tears.

She didn't know how much she was hoping and praying without words to a deity she doesn't much acknowledge that a baby would be conceived right away. That they'd be started.

She hit the period earlier than she thought she would have, but she hasn't been off the pill for a couple of years.

She didn't even have time to try out the pregnancy test this time. The best pregnancy test there is gave her the answer for free.

She's still bleeding on the floor, Kate realizes, because she's frozen since the moment she realized what was happening, and she quickly cleans up herself best she can, tile somewhat better, and then leans against the wall and closes her eyes.

And the worst part is that part of her is gong inside oh God, one more month, one more month I can't phase just as loudly as the part that's upset and demanding why they can't have their little boy or girl yet. Why they can't have their family yet. It's so fucking easy for so many people, and she knows it's hard for some mutants to conceive with each other, and she is praying to any god that might listen that they don't have that one too. Not that problem, not after all the others.

Sticking a tampon in hurts. In all ways; emotionally, because she doesn't want that little mess of absorbency in her, doesn't want to need it, and physically because Kate has a temper and is losing it, and shoved it in too fast and at the wrong angle.

Pain'll go away, and it's her own damned fault.

It still hurts, though, and it makes her slam her first one, two, three times against the wall, and then more till she's lost count and breathing heavily, shoulders shaking and chest heaving.

She should go out of the bathroom, she realizes, soon.

But first she closes her eyes and lets go for the first time in weeks, lets her body be intangible and her fingers drift through the sink.

There's no reason for the moment not to, after all, and part of her hates herself that she's grateful for this reprieve.

But that doesn't stop her from enjoying it.

They don't have sex all that much.

Sorta.

Kinda.

Ish.

...They have a healthy sex life, let's say, which is slightly healthier than normal when one of them hasn't seen the other for a month. (Even if the other hadn't seen his girlfriend for only a few days.)

But there are other things, too, and the post-coitus bit is just as nice as the coitus itself. Kate thinks so, anyway, as she lies curled up on her boyfriend, head on his chest and fingers drifting across said chest, his arm, his shoulder, back to his chest again.

His breathing is slow and even, far more so of both than it was a few minutes ago, and it makes her smile and kiss a spot near his collarbone to see how relaxed he is.

The reality, Kate is willing to admit as she scratches Lockheed’s back, is that she is, perhaps, not the best-behaved Jew the world has ever produced.

It’s been a long time since she thought about it as something religious, really. It’s hard to observe holy days when you’re in jail. Or a spaceship.

It messes with your sense of time, if nothing else.

And she feels stupid doing things on her own, and it’s not so much like sleeping with the large warm Russian boyfriend is something you can consider holy. She doesn’t have a clue of when she last saw a rabbi as anything other than someone just on the street.

And she kinda feels being an X-Man is sacrifice enough and abstaining enough to hold her for the rest of her life.

But being crappy at being Jewish doesn’t make her any less a Jew. In her head, it’s organized neatly: Daughter, Jewish, Genius, Dancer, Mutant. All of them were true from birth—even dancer she thinks was, just part of her, born with grace the way some people are born with double joints or the ability to run quickly, and the lessons brought it out—and some she knew sooner than others. Her earliest memories are of her mother and father; the ones after that are of grandparents, and with grandmother comes gold necklaces with Stars of David on them, comes prayers recited in words she didn’t understand yet.

She can’t stop being any of those things. They’re her.

And the thing about God is that she has no doubt He exists, and she’s pretty sure He’s not always a right bastard.

But she’s pretty sure He also can be whenever He likes. Or so she thinks; it’s the only way she can explain to herself how the world works.

So Kate doesn’t talk to God much, and likes to think there’s something of a mutual understanding going on there.

And then there are exceptions.

This is probably one. Which means she has to figure out where to start, and she’s never been good at that. There’s something about the way that Kurt prays that makes her jealous, in a way. She thinks it’s more being Kurt than being Catholic, but there’s something in the simple motion he makes of crossing himself and the way he says, “Amen” like he means it that always seems like he’s actually starting to talk to, well, God. That all the reverence is there, and that he is aware exactly who and what he’s daring to speak to.

And there are so many prayers for so many days, starting with Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha olam and it leading off into a dozen dozen different prayers and she’s even heard it by people who sounded like they really meant it, said it like Kurt says, “Amen” and Ororo says, “by the Bright Lady” and you know she means someone, Some One, who’s very real and there to her.

The thing is—well.

Kate’s not one of the people who can say things like that. She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t think she can be. It’s not natural.

She hopes, a little, that makes the attempt count more.

Lockheed’s on her legs, and Kate looks at him, silently, drifts fingers over his scaly wings, and whispers, “All right.”

Just that, as she gently shifts Heed to the side and bends to reach under her box. There’s a stub of a candle in it—she thinks it’s from an evening she’d made Piotr laugh by being ridiculously romantic, and that had been the point—and a lighter, both of which she removes and sets on the stand.

This isn’t really how anything should be done, but sometimes you have to do a thing now, because you’ve got the guts to do it now—and in a way this takes as much guts as anything else.

“For—for the son of Simon and Kaylee Tam,” she says, after a moment, and it’s not that it has to be done, it’s not that it fits exactly into any rite or ritual but—

So many different traditions light a candle to remember someone lost. And there’s a candle, and it’s what she has to try and make this feel right, feel formal.

Feel, admittedly, something beyond like she’s stumbling about on a path she’s never really worried about knowing all that well or not.

And it’s harder, because it’s not for her son, not for her loved one. It’s for that of a friend, and so she can’t even say the words the way she did in Piotr’s memory, say for the memory of her beloved.

Really, she doesn’t know what to say at all.

So she stares at the candle, for a moment, and then closes her eyes and doesn’t say anything at all.

Doesn’t, exactly, think anything, either. It’s not scripting it out in her head. Words matter—words matter so much—but she doesn’t have the words for this one, and so instead she thinks only Please and tries to put all her hopes and fears and desires behind it.

For it to get better for them. For the baby to be loved, wherever it is he is. For Simon to look less tired, and for him to not worry about his marriage on top of the rest. For it to not be a thing that needs to be worried about. For there to be less pain, and for grieving to take place. For the loss to never be less there, but to be something that doesn’t interfere with life continuing on. For the right things to happen for them, whatever that is—for their marriage to get better, or for it to not, but for it to be what’s right for Simon and Kaylee both. And if the right thing is one that hurts, then for the pain to be dealt with and something that doesn’t stop them from continuing to live or find joy, together or apart.

Please is the only word she has, because she doesn’t think she can say, thank you yet and doesn’t know if she’s going to be able to at all. She can’t say thank you for whatever God gives.

But normally she can’t even say please, so she hopes, a little, that she gets points for effort. If there are points.

This is why she doesn’t think about religion too much. She hates things she can’t see clear answers to.

But she tries to think on it a little more, now. Long enough to watch the stub of wax melt and the flame sputter out. And she’s not sure she knows how to end any better than she knew how to start with this, so she just nods once, and throws the wax in the garbage, and settles on the bunk again.

Lockheed crawls back onto her lap and she bends her head to kiss his snout.

And she thinks please once more, for herself and for Piotr, and then makes herself stop.

Because some prayers you know won’t ever be answered.

So Kate kisses Heed again, and she wishes that Piotr will come home to her soon.

(This she can’t pray for. And if she realized it, Kate would admit that really—that says everything about what she thinks of God answering prayers.)

Piotr's gone back.

Logan's gone with him.

Neither of these facts has anything at all to do with why Kate is throwing knives, small and silver and sharp and numerous, at targets.

Nope.

Not at all.