strangetrip | [GP] Check-In and Check-Out?

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[GP] Check-In and Check-Out?

For several days the doorway to Room 137, The Caveman Room, has been glowing. Then last night the occupant of Room 137 was assigned to a different room. Today, the room is open and at the back, instead of a wall, there is daylight.

Bird song fills damp, tropical air, heavy with sweet floral perfume. From all sides, voices rise and fall in a pattern universally recognizable as haggling in a marketplace. Fresh citrus wars with the copper and iodine of freshly butchered fish and shellfish, freshly baked bread, and newly tanned leather. A fountain with a cupola tiled in jade green and gold rises in the center of an oval space surrounded by a riot of colorful stalls and from the far side you hear the ringing of metal on metal.

Those who investigate find themselves amidst several hundred shopkeepers and their patrons dressed in colorful fabrics and leather boots. Beyond the market lies a city of thousands, and beyond it, an ancient temple and vast jungle that opens into what the natives call "The Land Out of Time."

~ * ~
As much as Kitty wanted to investigate this new phenomenon, and she would, it seemed especially important to have at least one person in the cafe in case of new arrivals. It was her turn, so whether Caroline and the others joined her or not, Kitty would spend at least part of the day here behind the bar. Hopefully, whatever it was wouldn't swallow anyone up. Or if it did, Lara or Wyatt or both would come get her.

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How long had it been? A month? Two? It was hard to count the days in a windowless cell too small to lay down in. What were the words they had used? Solitary confinement, that is what they had called it...because of course, the only cell strong enough to hold him was the one where he could not see the sun.

But god, he missed the sun.

Closing his eyes, he tilted his head toward the fluorescent bulb hanging out of reach and tried to remember what it was like - how his skin would warm slowly but eventually he'd feel that prickle as the tops of his shoulders would begin to burn after standing at his easel in the lawn.

It took a minute, but suddenly he could actually feel warm as sweat began to bead on his forehead. Snapping to attention, he opened his eyes and took in his surroundings. The cell was gone and he found himself standing on a deserted road and looking at some sort of hotel in the distance.

"Either I have snapped" He murmured to himself as he began walking towards what he thought must be civilization, "Or there this is very strange rescue attempt."

Content with not knowing the answer, he broke into a jog to stretch his muscles. By the time he made it to the lobby, he wasn't even out of breath, but he was dirty, unshaven, and in nothing but a pair of ragged orange pants usually only reserved for criminals.

Back against the door, a tray of glasses in her arms, Kitty pushed through to the cafe. Her gaze slid across the space and found only Dot. She sighed. Being here was the right thing to do, but she would so much rather be trying to figure out what the hell was going on with the portal to Wherever World.

She just set the glasses down when her attention snagged on a man jogging in, bare-chested, unshaven, dirty, in prison slacks, and oddly familiar. "Hello," she called out in a friendly tone, a hint of a question in her voice.

That voice - it was like something out of a dream. But somehow the familiarity of it managed to pierce the haze that came from confusion, malnutrition, weeks of torture, and suddenly finding himself surrounded by more pink than he knew existed.

Barely letting himself believe it could be true, he slowly turned to find the source. His eyes found her in an instant and the first real smile he'd managed in months bloomed across his face.

"Katya!" He closed the distance between them and bent to grab her hands, just to make sure she was real. It didn't matter where he was or how he got there, he was just so relieved to see her again. "It is you! But how? How are you not dead? I was told you were in New York with Peter when the wave hit."

At least a hundred thoughts chased each other around her brain, questions, explanations, hurt, welcome, wonder, confusion, concern... Kitty hopped up over the bar (Dot would faint if she went straight through it) and flung her arms around him.

Yeah, he smelled and was dressed like a convict and hadn't shaved and didn't look exactly like her Piotr and probably wasn't her Piotr, but he recognized her and that was close enough to home for her.

She backed a step and grinned up at him. "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the worlds..."

He held her close, arms circling around her waist but was extra careful not to squeeze too tight.

"Is that what this is? Gin joint?" His brow wrinkled as he tried to piece together the rest of what she'd said. "Does that mean there is no vodka? Because I could use a drink."

Kitty sniffed and wrinkled her nose at him. "You could use a shower is what you could use," she teased, and then patted a stool. "Sit, big guy. I'll get your vodka." He would definitely need it to get through the explanations.

"I might even join you." She might need it to get through the explanations too.

"Da." He glanced down sheepishly at his bare chest, the only clean skin showing where they'd attached the electrodes during his last session. The sight caused his embarrassment to burn away, replaced with a seething anger for the ones who had done this to him. "I could walk though one of those car washing tunnels and still not feel clean."

He sat down delicately on the stool to make sure it could hold his weight (something that had become a habit) and watched her go through the simple
motions of pouring. It was easy for him to keep quiet and focus on her body language because something was off. There was a hesitance to her actions that had nothing to do with his smell. Not to mention the fact that she had avoided his earlier questions about how she'd made it out of New York alive.

"Katya, what is going on?" He asked softly, imploring her to help him fill in the gaps.

Kitty poured them each a glass of vodka but splashed OJ in hers. Too early still for drinking it straight. When she set his down, she let out a quiet sigh and then looked him over. He wasn't her Piotr, obviously enough, but what did that mean about who he was?

"Let's start with the easy part." She stifled a pained laugh that the Inn was the easy part. Her life had never been normal, and if he knew her well enough to be calling her Katya, it was unlikely his had been either. Even without the prison issue pants to warn her.

"This hotel is called the Madonna Inn. It used to be in San Luis Obispo, California. Now it's in a pocket dimension that's measured in time rather than distance. You can go four hours in any direction from the Inn, whatever speed you go, and in four hours, you'll arrive back here. When you go up to the desk, there'll be a reservation in your name. And now that you're here, you can't leave. We've got all of the necessities, for free, but that's about it. If you've ever heard the song Hotel California, it's kind of like that."

Edited 2017-04-05 19:51 (UTC)

He took the glass thankfully, looked at it for a moment, then swallowed the entire contents in a single gulp. If he'd been asked, he would have the action was a reaction to Kitty's apprehension...but truthfully he just needed it.

But as she kept talking, he realized he should have waited because he needed it even more now. Her words made almost no sense, so he closed his eyes and pictured the funnel shaped diagram that had been used to teach him about pocket dimensions. "We are imprisoned in bubble at bottom of wormhole?" His brow furrowed, "but bubble did not keep growing? It stopped at this Inn and we walk in circle if we try to escape? Am I even close?"

Kitty grinned at the translation from Science to Piotr. "Not bad. I'm not sure we're dealing with science and not magic, but it's close enough." Fuzzy wasn't Kitty's preferred logic for anomalies, especially anomalies that ripped her and friends from their worlds. "The end result is that we're stuck here." At least until she could get some decent lab equipment to study it with, but that wasn't today's problem.

"The more complicated part is that most everyone here comes from different worlds. Including you and me." No pulling punches, not with Piotr. It wasn't how they did things. "I'm not the Kitty you know. At least, not unless we're from different parts of the timeline instead of alternate universes."

"We are X-Men," he shrugged, "Science or magic are all in days work for us." He smiled at her gently. "I would bet you have already found way to help people, da?"

Being stuck in a pocket prison was an odd thought, but it was far better than the prison he had just left. He would likely think differently later, but for now he was able to accept that he was stuck.

The second batch of news left him with even more to sort through. Different worlds, different times, different realities all trapped together was something he'd never heard of...but most of the things he dealt with were new and seemingly impossible. Acceptance of the new information came faster than he'd thought, but what was the saying? In for a penny, in for a pound

After deciding to believe her, he spent a few seconds watching her and realized that she was different from the woman he considered a sister. "I do not think we have met, but you are still the Katya I know." He smiled fondly at her. "I can tell you have same soul, like different shades of same color."

Edited 2017-04-06 02:56 (UTC)

A knot loosened in Kitty's chest at hearing that and her face softened into a fond smile. "You always did have a way of cutting through the crap to get to what mattered." She loved that about him.

"You're still you, too." But not in every way. "Mostly." She poured him another glass of vodka. "The orange pants are new."

Piotr shrugged away the compliment, "It is easier than filling the air with pointless words, especially in English."

He swallowed another mouthful of vodka but decided to take the rest slowly. It took a lot for him to get drunk, but he hadn't eaten in days so it was best to be careful.

"Mostly? Did I not look this good in orange pants in your world?" His face stayed completely straight, but if she truly knew him then she would be able to catch that he was joking.

But thinking about where he'd just left caused the levity to fade away as quickly as it had come. "In my world, after the death of most of the mutants, the government imprisoned the rest of us in a concentration camp named Camp Angel."

Kitty winced, heart clenching at the words, and she reached out to cover his huge hand with hers. "Oh, Piotr, I'm sorry." The anger raged behind the sorrow, rising up to throb in her temple and at her throat. "What happened?" she asked tightly. "How did we die?"

We, not they. Mutants always, everywhere, were we. As were Jews.

Edited 2017-04-08 01:18 (UTC)

"It is..." His throat closed for a moment, overwhelmed by the pain and anger. He'd never tried to put it all into worlds and it was harder then he'd thought it would be. How could he talk about all of the graves he'd watched filled? Turning his wrist, he took her hand in his and gave it a gentle squeeze. "It is long story, Katya."

Finding solace in the drink, he used the vodka to help loosen his tongue. "Magneto unleashed wave of natural disasters on cities around the world, including a tsunami on New York. Most of our team was there, or went to help and died in process. Then more died when we went to fight Magneto. Then Sentinels were sent to the manor and more died. Then Scott was shot in head during speech but Magneto's son. Then government said all mutants must turn ourselves in or be shot on sight."

In the silence that followed, he finally noticed the faint tinkling noise that was coming from the web of cracks spreading from where his fingers had tightened unconsciously around his glass. Luckily the hand that was still holding hers hadn't reacting the same way. "Like I said, long story."

Kitty noticed before Piotr did that he was breaking the glass, but it wouldn't hurt him, and she simply phased her hand in case he accidentally subjected her hand to the same treatment. "And I was in New York," she said quietly when he finished.

"Don't give up hope of seeing me...the other me...again. We both have a way of turning up when we're least expected."

She didn't want to rehearse the whole story of Genosha, her father's death, his multiple deaths now on top of his world-hopping after an escape from a concentration camp, so she only told him, "You'd only recently come back from the dead in my world when I arrived here," and left out the part of him turning her down again and her going off to university to lick her wounds.

"Da. You left mansion to fight crime with the Spider man. " He murmured, setting the fractured glass down on the table. "You were very happy with Peter and would talk for hours about your adventures." A fond smile tugged at the corner of his tired lips, remember the hours they'd spent talking about their romantic exploits.

"I came back from dead?" His eyebrow arched slightly, though he wasn't actually that surprised. X-men had a tendency to cheat death. If he hadn't watched so many of his teammates lowered into the ground, he would keep up hope that they would do the same. "Did I die well?"

He could tell that there was something deeper going on with Kitty. Something was fundamentally different between his version of her and the one sitting in front of him, but he was far too tired to pinpoint what it could be.

"Which time?" Kitty asked, painfully wryly, before shaking her head. "No one dies well, Piotr. They just die." Death always came too soon, the wrong way, unexpectedly, and painfully and leveling.

"You're alive at home and here, so let's not talk about it." After all, it hadn't changed anything. He'd still loved someone other than her. Her lips pressed tightly together, pain creasing the corners of her mouth and dulling her eyes. "Not today, anyway."

Cruel enough he'd been dropped into another prison from the one he'd just left. No need to dwell on his alternate life's other cruelties.

A year ago, he would have argued...that dying in the protection of those who could not protect themselves would have been an honour...but apparently he'd lost that option. Probably somewhere after the tenth grave he'd dug.

"Katya," Piotr rumbled, concerned as he watched her struggle. Without thinking, his thumb began tracing a line back and forth across the back of her hand. "Your words say you do not want to talk but your face tells different story."

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