xp_logs | A little before lunch, Angelo goes looking for the missing Kitten...

It had been a long night, and Kitty hadn't even remembered a sweater this time when she phased out and fled her room through the floor after Storm's last comment. The hour had been spent pacing frantically back and forth, the action of her feet reflecting the action of her mind. The next two hours had found her seated on the ground, staring at what would seem like a normal piece of wall to anyone else. That's the way into his lab, she thought, face blank.

A few hours later the pacing started again, but this time it was to ward off the chill of the basement labs. But by the morning she'd given up, and was back to sitting against the wall, still intangible, staring off into space and occasionally shivering while inside her head a furious argument was raging. Her body was exhausted - she'd been awake more than two days - but sleep was not an option.

That was where Angelo found her, having gone looking after the argument died down on the journals, reasoning that she might need to see a friendly face, wherever she was. After looking in all the likely places he could think of, he finally made his way down to the physics lab and stuck his head tentatively round the door. "Kitty?"

She was seated within view of the door, which is probably the only way he would notice her. The only reaction to her name was a blink of the eyes.

Angelo frowned, worried, and walked into the room and over to her side. "Kitty? Are you OK?"

The feet and legs standing beside her registered, and without looking up she said, "I'm fine," her voice devoid of any emotion.

Angelo raised an eyebrow, not convinced, and promptly sat on the floor by her side. "Sure you are. But I thought you might need some company anyway."

Kitty didn't respond as he sat down, neither flinching away from him nor moving towards him.

Angelo, still worried, took her lead and just sat, letting the silence continue for a few minutes, hoping Kitty would break it.

But the silence just stretched on, as Kitty continued to stare at the wall. Inside her head there might be furious activity, but from all anyone could tell watching her, she could have been in a coma herslef. Her eyes didn't even flicker away from the wall.

Angelo, finally unable to take the worrying silence any longer, spoke. "You know, not *everybody* thinks you were wrong to do what you did."

"I know." The same dead tone.

"Do you really?" he asked seriously. "Then what are you doing down here by yourself, instead of upstairs with your friends and Jamie?"

"Yes, I do," she answered the rhetorical question, and without a pause added, "Thinking."

"Thinking", Angelo echoed. After a pause, he asked, "Want to tell me about what?"

This finally gets something of a reactin as Kitty turns her head to look at Angelo for a few seconds, not saying anything. Finally she turned her head back to the wall. "Not really."

Angelo sighed, having hoped for a better result than that. "OK, it's your call. But Kitty, it may end up being talk to me now, or regret not talking to anyone later..."

She blinks at his words, clearly hearing them and probably thinking about them, but she doesn't say anything else.

Angelo takes note of her reaction, hoping it means he's breaking through the walls, and waits.

And again the silence stretches. It's unlike Kitty to be so apparently uncaring of other's comfort levels, but for once it seems she just doesn't notice when the silence starts to become uncomfortable for Angelo.

Angelo sighs again, realizing he was wrong, or that he made the wrong choice in letting the silence last. He does the only thing he can think of, and reaches to wrap a -- hopefully -- comforting arm around her, only for it to pass straight through.

There's another blink, almost a twitch at this, although she doesn't move away even to get his arm out from inside her. "Sorry."

Angelo pulls his arm back to his side. "Why are you phased? Did someone come down here before me?" he asks, thinking of Storm and screaming matches.

"No, I've not seen anyone since I left my room." It's the longest thing she's said yet, although she clearly hasn't answered his first question.

Angelo frowns, still worried and now confused as well. "Then... why...?"

"It's more comfortable." Angelo wasn't hear when she was having trouble staying phased in, back when her nightmares and loud noises would startle her into insubstatiality, and didn't see the fight she had to gain control, so the idea that she's comfortable like this might not have seemed as strange to him as to others.

"Fair enough", Angelo says, and hesitates before asking, honestly curious, "Why is that?"

Kittys head turns and she honestly seems to be _seeing_ him as she answers, "I can't mess anything up if I can't touch it."

Angelo senses that he's made a breakthrough, and quickly continues talking before she sinks back into thought. "Kitty, you *didn't* mess anything up. You did the best thing you could, as you saw it. And you might even have helped."

She sighed a little as she dropped her head to her knees. "I don't think that matters," she answered, and her voice was tinged with some emotion, although it would be hard to pin down what it was.

"Of course it matters", Angelo tried to reassure her, instinctively reaching out once again, then remembering and dropping his hand. "It's just all too fresh for them right now."

"Yeah." It was a simple answer, but it didn't have the same dead quaility to it as some of her earlier statements.

Relieved, Angelo carried on, looking sideways at her, trying to judge her reaction. "They *will* come round, Kitty. It'll be OK."

"Maybe," she answered, still sitting with her head on her knees. "I hope so."

"Listen", he said seriously. "Whatever Dr. Essex told you to get you to take Ms. Braddock out of here... it must have been something big, and it must have been convincing. Nobody here thinks you're stupid."

Kitty is quiet for a moment, then, "She was dying. In the med lab, with no one able to do anything she was just wasting away."

Angelo nodded. "I don't know enough about this whole thing to judge, but if you believed that, then I believe you. You did the right thing, Kitty..."

Sitting up again she managed a little smile as she leaned seemed to lean against the wall behind her, still insubstantial. "Thank you."

"Hey, what are friends for?" Angelo answered, grinning slightly in relief. "You up to going back upstairs? It's freezing down here."

Kitty ran a hand through her hair, looking at the wall again, although not with the same intensity as before. "I don't know. It's not that cold." In truth, some of the cold has simply seeped into her and she doens't really notice it anymore.

"Says the intangible girl", Angelo teased. "Do you even feel the cold?"

"Yes, I feel it." Her voice is quiet, almost inaudible.

Angelo looked over at her, his grin now vanished. "Well, we don't have to go upstairs if you don't want. But whether you want to talk to me or not, I'm not leaving you down here alone."

She sighs faintly. She couldn't go back to her earlier state now, especially not with him there, and Kitty wasn't even entirely sure she would want to. "You're cold," she said, climbing to her feet without ever phasing back in. "Come on."

"Hey", Angelo said suddenly. "Phase back in for me. Please?"

"Why?" she asked, curious if he'd noticed how her feet didn't touch the floor.

"Just do it. Come on."

"Why?" she says again, looking a little worried.

"Seems to me like you need a hug. Can't give you one if you stay phased."

The worry in her eyes seems to grow for half a second, and then she looks away, down at the ground. "I... I don't think I want... I don't want to be touched right now," she finally managed.

Angelo looked at her sadly. "Okay", he said simply.

Without saying anything else she turned towards the door he'd left open and headed out of the lab, ready to at least try to face the world again.

Angelo followed her, still worried, but reassured that she had at least agreed to go back upstairs to join everybody else.