Change of Heart
AN – I'm really sorry for not being on here for ages, and even more for revamping this story instead of finishing the others I have left. I promise I will do it. I was re-reading this last night and realised I could write something much better and more believable!
I hope everyone enjoys this longer version; it is more drawn out, but let's face it, the original story was pretty much over before you realised you'd read it and it was very obviously my first. I've grown and I like to think my writing has too!!
Usual disclaimer – Don't own X-Men, just storyline and my characters.
Change of Heart
Chapter one
Pietro Maximoff turned over again and stared at the moon shining through the thin bed sheet that served as a curtain. He sighed and tried to fall back to sleep, hoping that it would quell the hunger pains that rumbled slowly in his stomach. It He had not eaten properly for a week now. Mystique had vanished, along with the money she provided for them, a little over two months ago.
Realising that he would receive no relief that night, he sat up and looked at the packed holdall by the door. It had been packed and sitting there for about three days, torturing him with its implication almost as much as his hunger was. He glanced at his watch, the digital display read 03.26 am.
Suddenly he had stood up and was reaching for his jeans before he even realised what he was doing. Pietro's body had made the decision he, himself, could not. It required food and warmth. And as much as it pained him to think it, his father was doing nothing to ensure Pietro and the others got it.
He pulled on a t-shirt and jacket and grabbed the bag. He didn't bother to turn on the hallway light. There was no point since the electric company had kindly shut off the power a day ago.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he looked across into the living room and saw, in the moonlight, the others, Lance, Freddie and Todd standing with similar bags, waiting for him.
"How did you know?" Pietro asked, crossing the room.
"We knew what you'd been thinking for a while now," Replied Lance, obviously the appointed spokesperson for the others, "And after the power company turned off the electricity, we just figured it would be the final straw."
Pietro nodded, "All thanks to my wonderful father". He hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and looked at the front door, "So this is it then?"
Without replying, the others gathered their meagre belongings and they all headed out to Lance's car.
Pietro took one last look after him, "God help me", he said before slamming the door and climbing into the passenger seat of the jeep.
Lance started the car and they drove away from the house without a backwards glance.
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As a loud siren rang through the Xavier School for Gifted Children, Professor Charles Xavier was jolted from his sleep.
His first, terrible thought was that his brother, Cain Marko had returned. He climbed into his chair, almost in a panic as his bedroom door flew open and Ororo Munroe stood in his doorway.
"Who is it Charles?" She asked, fearful of the answer
Xavier took a second to scan the area, he could sense the fear and confusion of his pupils as they rushed into the hallways.
To his immense relief, he sensed not his brother, but, rather, four younger minds. All of them, afraid and slightly angry. He knew who they were.
'Logan' He thought, projecting his telepathic power to find Wolverine. He knew that Logan would have immediately run outside to protect the Institute at any cost.
'Logan, stop! Deactivate the defences. We have nothing to fear.'
He showed Wolverine a mental image of the trouble causers, and Logan stopped and shook his head.
"I wouldn't be sure about that, Chuck!" He replied out loud.
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The four teenage boys, formerly known as The Brotherhood, sat in the main Living Room of the Institute. Charles Xavier sat opposite in his wheelchair, with Ororo Munroe at his left hand side, Dr. Hank McCoy, affectionately known as Beast, sat on the edge of one of the winged back chairs which usually faced the huge fire place. Wolverine merely paced up and down the room behind Xavier.
Lance explained, "Look, Professor. This isn't a trick. We just got sick and tired of being hungry and cold." He looked a lot older than he should have at that point, and Xavier realised that Lance had been taking responsibility for the other boys for a while now.
He scanned the other boys, very gently, as not to invade, but just to catch surface thoughts. They echoed Lance's, except for Pietro. He seemed to have some internal struggle. Xavier made a mental note to approach the boy at a later time.
After considering it for several minutes, a time and silence which caused the four teenagers to start to panic, Xavier spoke.
"You may, of course, stay. However..." He paused as the boys exchanged glances and began to speak. They fell silent again, "Living here will be quite different from your old home. There are rules to follow and punishments if they are broken."
Toad swallowed loudly, "Punishments…. Like whipping?"
Xavier sighed and shook his head, as if realising the extent of the boy's mistreatment at the hands of his former friend.
"No, Todd. All students have a curfew, based on age and the ability to act responsibly. All students must do a share of the household chores; attend school and danger room sessions. There is to be no in-fighting, no stealing and no using powers against each other."
He paused to allow this to sink in, "The only punishments we have here are grounding and extra chores. And of course, Wolverine's intensive Danger room training sessions." He added this last part with a smile. "Storm will now show you to your rooms, you may decide who shares with whom."
Lance and Pietro inched away from Todd and Fred, and stood next to each other. Fred was on the verge of saying something, when Wolverine moved across the room so quickly and quietly, you would have sworn he was Quicksilver himself. Logan grabbed the door handle and turned it, yanking the door open.
There was nothing outside except a very strong smell of brimstone.
Logan turned to Xavier with an eyebrow raised.
Xavier chuckled, "Well, at least they know!"
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Kitty Pryde climbed onto her bed and sat cross legged. She watched as Rogue removed her dressing gown and started to rearrange her pillows and sheets.
"Well?" The younger girl asked, after a minute of silence. Although she still knew little about Rogue, she knew that the southern girl must have had something on her mind. Rogue's idea of making her bed was throwing the duvet at it and hoping it landed in the vicinity.
"Well, what?" Came the reply. Rogue seemed to realise that Kitty wanted to discuss this strange turn of events, so she hastily got into bed and turned off her lamp.
Kitty followed suite, and lay in the dark. She lasted about twenty seconds.
"Why would they even come here? They hate us. They make that clear enough."
She heard Rogue sigh. She hadn't even wanted to go downstairs to eavesdrop at the door with her and Kurt, but gave in after Kitty announced she wouldn't go unless Rogue did and the older girl knew all Kitty would do was talk about it until she found out what had happened.
Rogue wanted the conversation, the whole idea of it all done with. She was having a hard enough time dealing with the fact that her ex-team mates had turned up at her refuge, she didn't need a hyped up sixteen year old analysing it at four AM.
"Ah don't know what they want. And ah aint gonna ask." Rogue delivered this statement carrying a heavy note so that Kitty understood the conversation was over.
Kitty turned over to face the wall, and pulled her stuffed dragon, Lockheed, to her. She had to be up for school in two hours.
'Stupid, selfish brotherhood. Why couldn't they come during the day?' She thought, before dropping into a light sleep.
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Kitty slammed her locker shut, and turned to walk down the corridor. It was the last class of the day and she was exhausted from being woken up so early. She was fed up and irritable and stared at the floor as she started to walk up the corridor.
She was shoulder-bumped by someone and banged into the row of lockers. Angry and in pain, she spun round to face whoever it was that had barged past her so unceremoniously.
She found herself facing Pietro Maximoff.
"Should have known." She spat, "See a shiny surface and get distracted, did we?"
Pietro was unfazed, he looked at her with a disinterested expression for a second, then replied, "Well, if you weren't so insignificant I would have seen you." With that he walked away.
Kitty's eyes widened with annoyance, she went to go after him, but the bell rang. Figuring he'd got lucky this time, she started towards her history class.
She entered and took her seat. Mr. Clark was running late, as usual, so the class was taking full advantage. A loud laugh pierced the air. Kitty turned to see Donna Michaels perched on a desk with her legs crossed, showing off an unladylike amount of thigh. She had as normal about five boys standing around her. Donna was Kitty's albatross in History. All because she was once placed with Kitty on an assignment. Having initially moaned (to Kitty of all people) that she should be working with someone more high profile, Donna quickly realised that Kitty was a very good student and she would receive a lot of credit because of it.
Kitty quickly realised as well that Donna was a dumb as she was beautiful. Blessed with a very rich daddy and a good looking mother, Donna had little to worry about in life. She spent the three study sessions Kitty managed to pin her down for, talking about her hair, fashion sense, car, house and what she really wanted in a boyfriend.
She also came up with a nickname for herself during this time. She had been reading Kitty's English to Italian dictionary trying to find a new way to say "Voulez-vu couchez avec moi?" because the French was "like so over" since the release of Lady Marmalade. She found out that Donna meant "Lady", and that Bella meant "Beautiful", so she coined the name Belladonna for herself, as she "had all this, like, amazing beauty". Kitty thought it more apt that Belladonna was also known as Deadly Nightshade and was poisonous.
After the assignment, she had Kitty move next to her to copy from, but thankfully it was only in that class and Kitty gladly avoided Donna and her bunch of "Mean Girl" wannabe friends any other time.
Donna slid into her seat next to Kitty's and smiled her full wattage smile at the younger girl. Kitty knew this smile. It meant a request was coming after it.
"Kitty, Sweetie. I was wondering if you could do me the teeniest favour." She smiled again, and Kitty wondered exactly how much her parents had spent at the dentist over the years on her behalf.
"Yes, Donna?" She sighed, mentally rolling her eyes.
Donna leaned in, as if taking Kitty into her confidence, her voice saccharine sweet, "Silly, I've told you its Belladonna or Bella for short.
Anyway, I was wondering if you could just scoot over to another seat for a while. Only I kinda told Pietro Maximoff he could sit next to me."
She tilted her head to one side, this time with a smaller closed mouth smile. Kitty was reminded of a Labrador.
"Sure." Was all she said, gathering her books and swinging out of her seat. As she past Pietro walking towards her former place, she saw an opportunity for revenge and shoulder-barged him, pushing him into a desk.
"Miss Pryde!" A voice rang out, sounding shocked. She cringed inwardly, Mr Clark had arrived. She knew what was coming. He was very much a member of the "positive thought" brigade, having spent his years growing up in California with hippy parents. He also never used anyone's first name, just Miss and Mr So-and-so.
Kitty turned, as Pietro righted himself and walked past smirking.
Mr Clark raised an eyebrow and carried on, "I'm very surprised at you, Miss Pryde. This is not your usual behaviour. Please apologise to Mr Maximoff."
Kitty took a deep breath, and looked towards Pietro who was leaning back in his, correction, her chair and still smirking. The whole class was watching too. She could not have been more embarrassed if she had suddenly been naked.
"So sorry, Pietro." She said, in an almost snappish tone. She quickly sat in the nearest seat, only to discover that her new neighbour was Todd Tolensky, the human toad.
'Just great' She thought, flipping open her note book and trying to ignore Todd's pungent body odour. She wanted to concentrate on this class. They had recently started to discuss World War Two, with emphasis on the Holocaust. Her paternal grandfather had been held in a concentration camp and Kitty was particularly interested in finding out more about the subject.
Mr Clark cleared his throat and all the noise stopped, "Right, so as you know, last time we were discussing Hitler's prejudices and how that showed in his treatment of certain ethnic groups during his reign. Can anyone give me an example of this?"
Kitty raised her hand, "His behaviour at the 1936 Olympic Games."
"How so?" asked Mr Clark, moving round to sit on the front of his desk, as he often did when he expected a debate to spring up.
"Well, he only allowed Aryans to compete for Germany and notoriously snubbed Jesse Owens when he took the gold." Replied Kitty.
"Ah, but wasn't it also true that he didn't shake hands with any of the competitors to in an attempt to maintain neutral?" Said a voice from across the room. Kitty turned and scowled at Pietro, who was still lounging in the chair, this time looking, if possible, even more smug. Mr Clark shifted slightly as if getting comfortable.
"Not so, he shook hands with the German visitors, yet left before greeting Cornelius Johnson, who was also an African-American. And when given the choice between shaking hands with everyone or no one, he chose the latter."
"Well played, Miss Pryde." Cut in Mr Clark, "He also had to remove a hell of a lot of signs removed from tourist attractions which stated that Jews were "not wanted".
The teacher moved from the desk and picked up a stack of paper. He started to hand them out.
"Now, our first assignment in this subject is to discuss these prejudices of Hitler's in more detail, with particular emphasis on the Holocaust and concentration camps. I'm putting you into teams to work on this.
Try and look at both sides. I know a lot of you think Hitler as the villain of the piece, but try and dig into his history and see if that has any bearing on what happened."
He finished handing out the assignment and returned to the front of the room once more.
"So, then… Teams!!" His eyes lit up mischievously. He began to pair people off. Kitty noticed with a growing dread that no friends were paired together.
She slouched in her seat, as if it would make her invisible. She would have phased through the floor, if she could have.
'Please no, please no, please no' she thought, realising the list of potential work mates was getting smaller by the second.
She heard Donna's cry of horror as she was paired with Todd, and glanced up to see Mr Clark looking directly at her.
"And finally, Miss Pryde and Mr Maximoff. And remember, this whole war was started over intolerance to others. So let's all try and be a little more understanding of our partners." He shot a loaded look at Kitty, while saying this.
He then proceeded to make everyone move into their pairs and told them all to spend the rest of the lesson discussing the task.
Donna was almost in tears, when Toad jumped into the seat next to her and said, sycophantically "I can see why you call yourself Belladonna."
Kitty was in the same frame of mind as the older girl as Pietro walked up the aisle and sat in Toad's seat. He wrinkled his nose at the smell.
"It's not me!" Kitty stated before he could open his mouth.
"I never said it was. I lived with him for a year, remember. I know how bad he smells." Said Pietro, "Are you always this defensive?"
"Only when I expect an attack." Kitty retorted. She pulled her note book to her and started making copious notes.
Pietro left her alone for a few minutes, enjoying watching Donna throwing tearful glances in his direction, while Toad tried everything in his limited experience to chat her up.
Pietro liked Donna well enough. She was beautiful and rich. She was also, unfortunately, a complete air head. He thought she'd do for now, but if he ever did want to get serious, and he shuddered at the thought of monogamy, he wanted a girl who had spirit as well. A girl with bite in her. But not too much, he didn't need everything turning into a big deal.
His thoughts were brought back to reality when the bell rang. Pietro stood up, collected his books and walked out of the room. He turned to Kitty outside.
"I know that I live at the mansion now, and you probably think you'll be able to have regular access to me, but I have a life. So if you want to study with me for this piece of crap assignment, then it'll be on my schedule."
Kitty raised her eyebrows at him. She had imagined that she would be doing the majority by herself, given Quicksilver's love of anything but school.
"Why on earth would I ever want "regular access" to you?" She drew herself up to her full height of 5"4' and scowled up at him, "You just carry on with your parties and flirting and forget about all of this, OK?
I'm perfectly capable of doing this assignment by myself. And I don't want or need any help from you. So buzz off!"
She turned on her heel and stalked down the corridor towards her locker.
Pietro watched her round the corner, slightly taken aback. He never knew that Kitty Pryde had moxie. Girls never usually spoke to him like that. He also didn't like the implication that she saw him as nothing but a "party boy". Why it bothered him though, he had no idea.
'Screw her!' He thought, realising he had spent a full minute analysing Kitty. 'Let her do it herself. Less work for me.'
He turned in the opposite direction that Kitty had walked off in, and headed for Lance's jeep.
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Kitty was in no better mood when she was back at the mansion. She sat at her desk, banging the keyboard of her laptop and slamming books about.
The assignment was touching on some raw nerves, which were already slightly frayed and sleep deprived.
There was a knock at the door, and Jean Grey popped her head round.
"Kitty, a parcel arrived from Chicago. It's downstairs."
When Mr Clark had announced the subject of the term, Kitty had called her parents and asked that her computer be sent to her from her parents house. Knowing how Kitty was about computers they complied and shipped it over to Bayville.
Her grandfather had passed away six months ago. Kitty knew he had written a lot of his experiences down. She had walked into the study, while she and her parents were visiting at Hanukkah, and found him crying while he slowly typed at his computer.
She had asked if he was ok, walking closer to the desk. She looked over his shoulder and saw the word 'Mengele'. He grandfather realised she was looking and shut of the monitor. He turned to her and told her that he was writing about his past in the hopes that it would help heal his soul.
Kitty inherited that machine. She had looked at it briefly, but saw no real sign of the document he had so carefully typed out. He had deleted it.
But he had not counted on the fact that Kitty was a genius with computers and could locate nearly anything that had been lost.
She ran downstairs and saw the large box in the main hallway. Wolverine walked into the room and offered her a hand in taking it to her room.
Kitty eagerly accepted and as soon as Logan had left, she had ripped the box apart and was setting up the machine.
Her pulse raced as she entered the first lines of code, searching for the document. She wasn't disappointed. Within a few minutes she had recovered the document and safely saved it onto a CD.
She then printed out a hard copy, knowing that it was likely to be long and sitting staring at a computer screen would do nothing for her eyes. Nearly forty pages later, she held it in her hand.
She was excited, wanting to read it immediately, but she shared a room with Rogue and didn't want to be disturbed. She made her way out into the garden and sat on the terrace, facing the ocean and began to read.
Hope you guys like this better!! I've done a lot more research and a lot more thinking about the plot!