DISMAL ANGEL REVELATIONS

EPISODE 4 – CONNECTING

Chapter 1 – Responsibility

"Kitty, y'know, I think...maybe this is a bad idea."

"What could possibly be bad about it?" Kitty asked quietly. She was standing at the top of the stairs beside Remy LeBeau and they were staring down the long double wide staircase to where Jessie Crowell was sitting on the bottom step playing with a Barbie doll and oblivious to the conversation on the floor above.

"I just...I don't know, I told you, I'm not good with kids..." Remy LeBeau sighed, he tried to remember how he'd let Kitty Pryde talk him into this. Maybe the painkillers Hank had been giving him had something to do with it, the things seemed to make him so relaxed and carefree that he'd agree to almost anything – and apparently had.

But why did I have to agree to take this kid out for ice cream? He thought. This kid who wasn't his, this kid he didn't really know, this kid who didn't trust him, who thought his eyes were scary.

"Look, we both know that's bull, Remy," Kitty sighed, she adjusted the collar on Remy's brand new leather coat. The smell of new leather was still thick on it, and he didn't like it, he missed his old worn and cracked leather coat, the one that had been damaged by the laser that had scarred him only a week ago.

"But...I mean...you know how people talk, petit – when a man puts a certain interest in a young girl, it's never a good sign. I got a bad enough reputation as it is, especially since everyone knows I was nineteen and Rogue was only fifteen when we started getting interested in each other. If I could like a girl that young when I was legally an adult, then...they be thinking that I could this time...I dunno..."

"Remy, stop worrying. No one is going to get the wrong idea, trust me on this," Kitty said, a little impatiently. "I got a lot to do today – I have to book like eight flights, and four taxis. It's Jessie's birthday – she's seven today. I just...I don't see what's so bad about you and her going for ice cream."

"I'm not even fit enough to drive."

"Now you're just talking out of your A. S. S.," Kitty spelt the word out since Jessie might overhear from where she was. "You've been walking around this mansion for a week and a half through all that pain, if you can walk and move around in that much agony, driving shouldn't be too much of an issue."

Remy stared down the stairway, Jessie was brushing Barbie's hair with a tiny pink brush, and humming the tune to the Brady Bunch under her breath – it had been the last thing she'd watched on television that morning. "Again, I gotta say it...I suck with kids."

"Remy, for god's sake, she's--" Kitty cut herself off, looking almost horrified for a moment, "she's just a seven year old...she's quiet, all you gotta do is make some conversation, buy her an ice cream Sundae and your job is done. How hard is that?"

"Kids are a lot of responsibility, Kitty," Remy reminded, "I mean...keeping an eye on her every minute...taking her hand when we walk out on the streets? I don't know if...I feel comfortable with that."

"Well I do it every day, so...suck it up," Kitty winced at a particularly hard kick from baby Pryde snuggled warmly in the large bulge of her pregnant belly.

"Kicking again?"

"It wants out...I could drop any day for all I know," Kitty admitted, "sooner the better," she added, she paused. "You're complaining about having to spend one day with a pretty mature seven year old – I have at least eighteen years guaranteed of parenting to do here, you don't even gotta change diapers. All you have here is one day of responsibility, and I'll have a lifetime of it, so go just be an adult and level headed for one day and stop complaining already."

Remy pursed his lips together sourly.

"Now...go make a seven year old happy and take her out for goddamn ice cream," Kitty said irritably. Her moods had grown increasingly cranky in the last week – Remy felt it might have something to do with nerves. He imagined although she couldn't wait to have the child, that she was terrified of the pain she would be in while giving birth. She'd admitted several times she was very uncomfortable in her own skin – constantly needing to pee, constantly suffering aches in her back and struggling to get comfortable at night with the baby kicking all the time.

But he sympathised, it couldn't be easy going through the pregnancy alone, trying to be a mother was going to be difficult, especially in a mansion full of mutants that always risked being infiltrated by any number of enemies despite the best security affordable.

Maybe...maybe Kitty is the one who needs me, Remy thought, thinking of what Betsy Braddock had told him, words straight from his daughters soul. Someone else needed him...someone other than Rogue. Kitty seemed pretty much in need around now, it seemed to make sense. Unfortunately being needed meant making sacrifices.

"Okay...fine," Remy sighed, he accepted the keys to Kitty's car – a small Mini cooper that he was sure was going to cramp his tall frame. He hated dinky little cars, although he could see the logic of someone as small as Kitty owning one.

"And remember, Jessie can't sit shotgun, you gotta put her in the booster seat in the back, and you need to make sure her seatbelt is secure..."

He made a face, "okay, okay."

"Thank you, Remy," Kitty smiled serenely and kissed his cheek – he wished she hadn't, the sensitivity in his skin was still heightened and even an innocent friendly kiss was enough to distract him, "you don't know how happy you'll make her."

Rogue felt a hard plastic ball hit her in the back of the shoulder for what felt like the fifth time since the training program had started. While she was pretty invulnerable and the ball could cause her no real harm – the plastic balls, harmless bullets and paintballs were used for student training purposes only – the fact that they kept hitting her when she was standing in the sideline area away out of the general area of any danger seemed to indicate something was wrong.

"What the hell, Bobby?" she called up to the control annex that was overlooking the danger room from up high.

Bobby Drake was the one in control of the danger room for her and her students. But she wasn't meant to be part of the training program, she was only meant to be instructing her students on how to survive the program. It had been the third time something had come her way without her warranting it.

Trying to ignore that feeling in the back of her mind that Bobby was still angry at her for their breakup over a week ago, she instead made an attempt to focus on what her students were doing. Monet St. Croix was up in the air, flying gracefully, dodging paint balls, and hitting the hard plastic balls back at the machine firing them. Alison Blair was too busy watching one of the boys, and a paintball hit her squarely in the back of the head, causing bright pink gooey paint to explode onto her head.

"Okay, pause the program!" Rogue yelled up to the control annex and waited, giving it ample time to stop before she stepped out into the middle of the room, "okay, so...can anyone tell me what was wrong with that exercise?" she asked, folding her arms and staring around at her team of five students.

Illyana Rasputin's cheeks turned pink, Alison tried to comb the pink goo out of her hair while Everett Thomas wandered over seemingly annoyed and Jay Guthrie seemed more confused than anything as to what had happened.

Monet dropped down from the sky, "I can."

"Anyone other than Monet," Rogue added.

Everett frowned, "Dazzler wasn't paying attention."

Rogue nodded, "you got it on one," she praised. "Alison was busy staring elsewhere instead of keeping an eye at the cannon on her back. With the result..." Rogue ran a leather gloved finger along Alison's head and held it up so everyone could see the pink gooey paint, "splattered."

Alison pouted.

"If this had been a real cannon...you'd be mourning the death of a team-mate around now," Rogue admitted, "and you would be missing a head," she looked angrily at Alison.

"Okay, so I screwed up," Alison stood up, the force of the paintball in the head had sent her to the floor, "and these things hurt," she rubbed the back of her head.

"You think that hurts?" Rogue asked, "this is nothing compared to what's out there for you..." she gestured to nowhere in particular, "do you think Magneto will be throwing paintballs at you? Do you think the Friends of Humanity are going to give it a second thought when they see someones back turned and have an opportunity to blow someone's head off?"

"Okay, okay, I get it, geez," Alison rolled her eyes.

"She's right," Everett pointed out, "look what happened to Gambit, he got hit by a laser in the chest while in combat – now he has a hole in his chest. If it can happen to him – and he's a trained X-Man – then it can happen to us...and we might not be as lucky as him. Can't fix a blasted skull."

Rogue didn't like their using Remy LeBeau as an example, but Everett was right. If someone as talented and fast as Remy could be hit during combat – then it could easily happen to any one of her students.

"I know you all think I'm being hard on you. I know you're going to leave this session room callin' me all kinds of names," Rogue said, trying to focus once again on her students, "but it's my responsibility to get you through this – alive. It's my job to make sure you're ready for whatever is out there. You all want to be X-Men, and if that's gonna happen, you need to be prepared."

Alison was looking away, angry.

"In three months, Wolverine will be back in Bayville, and when he's back, he'll be takin' over your training two days a week. And let me just tell you kids now, if you think I'm a hardass..." Rogue frowned, "that's nothin' compared to the yellin' you're gonna hear, and the gruelling workouts you're gonna be put through when Wolverine takes over as your instructor. So you better shape up and prepare yourselves. You can all go now, get showered and get ready for your afternoon classes."

The kids left single file, quiet, reflective. Alison throwing dirty looks at Rogue on the way out.

Rogue sighed. Maybe I am being far too hard on them, she thought as she made her way to the elevator up to the control annex. When she arrived there, there was no one in sight, just a cup of coffee that had been frozen solid, and a slight chill in the air to indicate Bobby Drake had been there. Guess Alison isn't the only one mad at me.