Chapter One
Kitty
Pryde tapped her foot nervously against the dingy, obviously unwashed,
and, more likely than not, rotting wooden floor that graced the ever humble
Brotherhood abode to a beat only she knew. Lounging in a ratty overstuffed
velvet seat a few feet away, Wanda Maximoff, whom Kitty would readily admit
any day scared the hell out of her, shot her a dirty look, ever suspicious
as to what an X-Geek could possibly be doing within five feet of the "other
mutants". Fortunately for Kitty, this time, the gothic vamp seemed content
with just glaring at her, and Wanda refrained from turning the unexpected
visit into a catfight and instead returned to her Fistful of Metal album,
blasting full-force on her headphones. Kitty winced as Anthrax continued
to blare, loud enough to shatter all the windows at the Brotherhood house--except,
of course, said windows had been taped over enough times with masking tape
to protect them from the loud speed metal blasting at ninety-plus decibels.
"So,
um, like, is Lance coming down anytime soon?" Kitty ventured nervously,
trying to strike up a casual conversation with the Brotherhood's new resident
vixen. Wanda pulled down her headphones, long enough to mutter, "He's in
the shower. Care to join him?" An arched eyebrow joined her second sentence,
to which Kitty blushed like a fire engine and immediately ducked her head,
pretending to be fascinated with the ripped carpet beneath her sandals.
"No--no--no,"
the pretty freshman stammered, horrified at Wanda's bluntness. The Brotherhood
bombshell, meanwhile, had shrugged, and replaced her headphones around
her ears, muttering, "Your loss."
At
the particular remark, Kitty couldn't help but wonder exactly whether Wanda
had ever seen Lance in the shower. But she didn't have time to ponder over
that particular thought for long, though, as Lance bounded down the stairs,
his longish dark hair framing his ruggedly handsome face in wet chestnut
locks to confirm Wanda's earlier excuse for him being late due to a shower.
"Hey
there, Kitty," Lance greeted cheerfully, leaning in to give his girlfriend
a quick peck on the cheek. Kitty wrung her hands uncomfortably, and wondered
to herself why exactly she was doing this. Studying Lance's profile, she
had to admit to herself that he was...well, as Tabitha would say, a total
babe. And when he wasn't busy picking fistfights with Scott or dropping
ceilings on Principal Kelly, Lance could be a really sweet, nice guy, who
genuinely seemed to care for Kitty. Which was going to make what she was
about to say all the much harder. Kitty raised her head, carefully avoiding
eye contact with Lance, as she stammered out nervously and almost timidly,
"I...I think we...we should...we should stop seeing each other."
To
a person who wasn't aware of Lance and Kitty's rather...interesting relationship,
the tall, dark, and handsome senior's reaction to the break up would have
seemed downright bizarre, as Lance shrugged the news off and then subsequently
said without a care in the world, "Fine, then. I'm cool with it." Kitty,
who had been squeezing her eyes tightly shut as if anticipating a confrontation,
promptly snapped up and demanded, in an almost insulted voice, "What do
you mean, fine then, you're cool with it?! Is that all you're going
to say?"
Lance looked surprised by her indignation.
"Well,
what do you want me to do?" he wanted to know. "Do you want me to throw
a temper tantrum and run out of the room?"
Kitty couldn't exactly respond to that, so she
instead mumbled lamely, "I...I don't know. Maybe show some feeling,
perhaps?
I mean, the relationship is over!"
"Kitty,
the relationship has been over fifteen times in the past thirty-five days,"
Lance spoke up, sounding more amused than heartbroken.
"That's
thirty-three days," Kitty corrected him huffily. Her now-ex-boyfriend
shrugged again, unfazed.
"Eh,
close enough," he mumbled. Then, in a cheerier voice, Lance added, "So,
when do you want me to send over the roses? Tonight or tomorrow?"
"Lance,"
Kitty spoke up softly, "there isn't going to be a tonight or a tomorrow.
Not this time."
Before Lance, who had opened his mouth to respond
to her particular words, had a chance to question her, Kitty hastened to
explain.
"Lance,
we're not just going to break up for thirty-six hours, and then kiss and
make up," she said gently. "It's just not going to happen. Not this time.
Not ever again."
Lance looked stunned, and Kitty felt a flash
of guilt go through her as she gazed upon his surprised features. She thought
she saw a bolt of hurt go through the dark depths that were his gorgeous
eyes, but she wasn't sure.
"Wow,
that was certainly a nice anniversary present," Lance muttered, and the
sudden realization that she had ended their relationship on their anniversary
only made Kitty feel guiltier than she already did.
"Lance,
I'm really sorry about this, but--" she started to say, fumbling for the
usual excuses a person used when breaking up with that special someone.
"Kitty:
is there someone else?"
Lance's question caught her off-guard, and Kitty
nearly stumbled backwards in her surprise.
"What...what
do you mean by that?" she wanted to know.
"Kitty,
I know we've broken up over some pretty silly reasons in the past," Lance
began to say. And it was true, too. Once, Kitty had ended their relationship
because she'd been harboring a secret celebrity crush on Josh Hartnett,
and felt that she would only been stringing Lance along if she kept dating
him; another time, they'd broken up because Kitty had gotten mad when Lance
made a reasonably innocent remark that he thought Carmen Electra was sexier
than Pamela Anderson, which had subsequently alerted his girlfriend that
yes, he did notice when an attractive specimen of the opposite sex
appeared.
"But
this time, there must be a far more serious reason for you to be ending
the relationship for good, and it's not just because you think you're cheating
on me because you're secretly in love with an old picture of young Elvis
or whatever," Lance finished. At this, Kitty dipped her head guiltily,
feverishly avoiding eye contact. Lance arched his eyebrows.
"So,
then." He sighed. "Who is it?"
After five minutes of fidgeting and stalling,
Kitty finally coughed up an answer.
"Well,
if you really must know," she sighed, and then paused, his name on the
tip of her tongue. Finally, she had the courage to squeeze out, "It's Kurt...Don't
kill him!"
Kitty
didn't know what to expect. Half of her was waiting for Lance to throw
back his head and start laughing, the other half feared that he might go
berserk and hunt down Kurt, and subsequently make him suffer a very, very,
very
miserable end. She was surprised, and surprisingly offended, when Lance
took the news by doing what he'd been doing ever since she'd announced
her desire for them to break up: he simply shrugged.
"Fine,
then. That's cool with me," he muttered, and he really did seem
to be cool with the whole situation. Kitty was insulted at first by his
lack of emotion over the fact that she was ending--for real, this time--their
almost Romeo and Juliet-esque relationship by breaking up with Romeo to
go with a blue-furred German version of County Paris. But then, when she
pictured a black-and-bluer Kurt dangling by his underwear from the
school flag pole, she decided that relief was the better emotion to dwell
on rather than indignation.
"So...you're
not mad at me?" she ventured timidly. Lance looked like he couldn't care
less about how their relationship was ending--supposedly for good this
time.
"Course
I'm not mad," he replied. "Why would I be?"
Kitty looked immensely relieved, partly because
of how well Lance had taken their break up, mostly because now she didn't
have to worry about having to date both Kurt and his hospital bed.
"Well,
then...I guess I should go now," the chestnut-haired X-girl muttered, and
jumped up to scurry out of the Brotherhood house, partly because she didn't
want to be around in case Lance decided to change his mind and throw a
tantrum after all, partly because Wanda and her Anthrax were still scaring
the hell out of her.
As
soon as Kitty had left, Lance turned around and started upstairs, toweling
his still wet hair off as he walked.
"So?"
The gruffly-spoken word caught his attention,
and the leader of the Brotherhood stopped in his tracks and turned around.
He'd forgotten that one bewitching vamp--pun fully intended--had been in
the room as well, and had overheard the entire exchange between himself
and who was now his ex-girlfriend. Lance stared at Wanda, who'd pulled
off her headphones and was arching her eyebrows questioningly at him.
"What
do you mean, so?" he wanted to know, a bit irritated by Wanda's attitude
but too scared of her hellish personality to let said irritation show.
Although, naturally, he would never, ever admit to anyone the degree
to which the bitter goth scared him, but he had a feeling that everyone--especially
Wanda's own brother, Pietro Maximoff--was intimidated by said goth.
"Are
you just going to let her walk all over you like that?" Wanda wanted to
know. Lance tightened his hands into fists at her remark.
"She
wasn't walking all over me, she just ended our relationship, that's all,"
he said hotly.
"She
betrayed you--the person she was supposed to love--by having an affair
with that furry blue salamander, and you're just going to be Mr. Cool and
let it slide?" Wanda demanded angrily, acting almost as though Kitty and
Lance's break up had affected her on a personal level. Lance cringed under
the vixen's scathing verbal assault. For some reason, Wanda had a thing
about traitors amongst loved ones, but he wasn't exactly sure he wanted
to find out why.
"Well,
that's certainly a new, interesting description of the Elf Boy," Lance
muttered. Wanda turned off her Walkman, something which would have immensely
relieved Kitty but not Lance since he wasn't exactly all too bothered by
Anthrax or speed metal in general, and stood up.
"You
know what you need to do?" the newest Brotherhood recruit demanded, hellfire
burning in her darkly-colored eyes.
"No,
but I think I know what you're saying," Lance mumbled slowly, then started
speaking in a rapid rush of words as an idea suddenly occurred to him.
"You're saying that I can't let the fuzzy blue elf, with his obviously
fake German accent and his girly clothes, take my girl away from me, and
I should turn the tables on him and steal Kitty back!"
Wanda snapped back, looking somewhat surprised.
"Actually,
I was going to say that--" she started to say, but was cut off by Lance,
who turned around and pumped her hand enthusiastically.
"Thank
you very much, Wanda," he said brightly, finally letting go his handshake--if
it could even be called that. "Let it be known that today is the day that
I, Lance Alvers, a.k.a. Avalanche, a.k.a. the Earthquake guy, a.k.a. the
hottie with the fruit bowl shoved over his head (which, by the way, is
not my fault--Mystique made me wear that thing!) steal Kitty Pryde from
Kurt Wagner!"
Wanda, who had been trying to convey the message
that she was suggesting he get revenge on Kitty and Kurt (and when she
said revenge, she meant beating them to a bloody pulp and then ignoring
them for the rest of their lives), finally gave up, and returned to her
Anthrax while Lance was still ranting about stealing girlfriends and Mystique's
obsession with salad bowls. Or was that soup bowls? However, as Fistful
of Metal resumed to blaring at ninety decibels, Lance, who was apparently
re-energized by his new mission in life and had forgotten that he was supposed
to be scared of the hellish vamp, quickly grabbed Wanda's hand and pulled
her out of her seat.
"And
you,
Wanda Maximoff, a.k.a. the Scarlet Witch, a.k.a. the other gothic
beauty, a.k.a. Pietro's crazy femme fatale sister, are going to help me!"
I can't believe I missed The HeX Factor! Wah! All I know, from the little snippets I've read in discussion boards and episode reviews, is that Tabitha leaves the Brotherhood (too bad, I had originally slated for Tabitha to be Lance's love advisor, and not Wanda), and that Wanda, who looks like a short-haired, angrier version of Rogue, makes her grand entrace by beating the living crap out of the X-Geeks, who promptly return the the mighty chrome dome in the sky (oops, did I just say that? I meant Professor Xavier) and throw temper tantrums for *gasp* losing their first ever battle against the Brotherhood! Oh, and there's also a Kurtty moment with bouncing muffins and everything (I meant that literally, you perverts!), and what I'm told to be an absolutely adorable chibi Pietro! Still can't believe I missed that episode! If I didn't love myself so much, I'd be kicking me right now! Oh, well. At least I kind of feel better, now that I've started a new ficcie and everything. ^_^