A/N: A song that I felt really expresses the feelings in this chapter is "Ribs" by Lorde...check it out if you want/if you don't know it. Thanks for sticking with me!
Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men.
Not too long after the discovery of the cure, Kitty gets a call from her father.
The day of the announcement, the mansion is in turmoil. Some of the students, especially the younger ones, seem completely oblivious, but they're the minority. The adults whisper privately to each other while kids eavesdrop. The news channel stays on all day and no one tries to change it to MTV or Cartoon Network.
Kitty goes from class to class and tries not to think of what this means. To their credit, the professors go on teaching as if nothing has happened, though they're a little quieter, a little slower to respond. But, at least to Kitty, the atmosphere feels charged.
Everything can change in an instant. It's been too long, she's forgotten: she's grown too accustomed to her life here. Everything can change in an instant and she should never have thought this time would be different.
In Mutant Ethics the next day the Professor carefully brings up the topic, talking about it almost as though it were theoretical instead of very, very real. However, all the students know about it, and the Professor's calm and reasoning manner is soon drowned out by heated, sloppy discussion. Sloppy, Kitty thinks, because pure emotional responses are coloring most of the debate. The majority of the kids actually agree with each other and they don't even realize it. Kitty would laugh if the topic weren't so serious.
For some reason, the Professor doesn't say a word to reign in the students: he just watches, silent. To anyone else his expression would seem observant, maybe calculating. But Kitty detects a disquiet in his body language, a troubled look in his eyes, uncertainty in the set of his mouth. It unsettles her.
The bell cuts through the passionate and angry voices of worked up students and, startled, they gather their things and leave. Kitty makes no move to get up. She has a free hour after this class anyway.
Thoughts are running frantically through her mind, thoughts she's been trying to push away, stubborn, troubling thoughts that the class discussion only just began to address. She taps her pencil against her notebook without really paying attention. Since yesterday she's been fidgety, tense. A feeling of unease has settled over the mansion.
The Professor is gazing past her, his mind far away. Kitty's always felt safe and secure around him, but now she just feels worried.
"Professor?"
He turns her way with a start. "Ah, yes, Kitty."
Kitty bites her lower lip, an old nervous habit. "Professor, are you all right?"
Now, for some reason, she has his full undivided attention. He smiles reassuringly at her, though it only makes Kitty feel marginally better. "Forgive me for how I have been acting, Kitty. These are troubling times. I fear that the discovery of this so-called 'cure' will have widespread ramifications. Not only for mutants, but for humans as well." He pauses. "But I don't want my students to worry."
Kitty frowns. "They should be prepared."
"Yes," Xavier sighs. "They should." He looks back into the distance. He's always been unreadable, but now he seems worlds away. "It is my deepest regret that these children live in a world where, by necessity, they must be bitter and cynical just to survive."
"It's not cynicism, it's realism," Kitty protests, the words coming out sharper than she intended. Her frown deepens. "I mean—how long until they put the cure into guns? Or turn it into some kind of vaccination? Your students can't hide forever. Either they're ready to face reality, or…they get eradicated."
The Professor raises an eyebrow at her.
"Even the name 'cure' makes it sound like we have a disease," she says, quieter.
"Katherine Pryde. When did you become a…'realist'?"
Kitty smiles faintly, looking away. "I had to. Just like they're going to have to." Her gaze back shifts to meet his eyes. "Professor, I want to survive."
"Of course," he replies smoothly. There's a depth in his eyes that goes beyond his words, a depth that speaks to all the things he's lived through that she doesn't know of. She thinks he understands.
"I want to change things," she tells him, realizing the truth of her statement as soon as she says it. "I want to make sure that mutants like me don't have to be afraid."
Xavier smiles at her, a smile vaguely tinged with sadness. "You will." Something tender floats in his eyes. "I'm proud of you."
"It's because of you," Kitty says honestly. Then she ducks her head, embarrassed, and starts packing her bag. She doesn't ask him what he thinks will happen. She doesn't ask him if he thinks the cure will ever cease being voluntary, or if he thinks any of the students will take it, or what he thinks this discovery means for their future. It all feels too big for right now.
"Bye, Professor."
As she walks through the door, she hears his fond echo behind her: "Goodbye, Kitty."
The call comes just long enough after the announcement to suggest that he's been mulling it over, that he's had to think a while before asking.
Storm takes the call. When she hands the phone over, Kitty sees that barely concealed anger that's been brewing in her, folding into her features, ever since the announcement. Her mind is on these little signs when she answers.
Her father talks to her as if the last two years never happened. He sounds so earnest and eager, it's easy to forget her last conversation with him. It's easy to forget that he's talking about taking away some fundamental part of her.
He tells her to come home—to get cured and come home. Not for the first time Kitty thinks about it, in an idle way, the way she'd theoretically think about something she would never do. The second she heard about the cure, she knew she'd never take it willingly. It's funny how Kitty's perspective on her mutation has changed. At first she was so afraid of it—afraid that one day she'd start falling and never stop. She can't deny that in the back of her mind the thought still frightens her, and probably always will. But her mutation has become her escape mechanism and now what she fears most is having it taken from her, becoming so solid, so vulnerable. So incredibly trapped.
Now that the cure has been discovered, that particular nightmare is rapidly becoming a very real possibility.
She's silent as her father talks, letting his words float. Hoping he'll hear himself. She phases her fingers one by one through the wall behind her, a secret act of defiance, and listens and listens and listens.
"Katherine?" he asks, expectant. "Kitty? Are you still there?" There's a pause, full of waiting. "It's not an easy life for people like you." She hears him shift on the other end of the phone; she hears a shift in the conversation, a more tentative, sincere touch to his words. "I hoped you would see that, that you would get there on your own. It's hard for your—for your kind. I see it all the time on the news. I don't want that for you."
"I didn't choose this," Kitty says quietly.
"I know." There's a muted tenderness in his voice that throws her off. "But now you have a chance to change it. Come home, Kitty. Things could go back to the way they were before—before any of this happened."
And all the thoughts Kitty's had and hasn't wanted to admit—thoughts that he was just angry, he didn't mean it, she could go back home if she really wanted to—dissolve instantly. They might have been true, but it doesn't matter at all anymore.
She doesn't want to go back. From the very beginning she hasn't wanted to go back. Even when she tried her hardest to be invisible, even when she felt hopelessly small and useless, even when she was scared out of her mind and couldn't see the future in front of her, she didn't want to go back. She's only ever wanted to move forward, to move until something changed.
"Dad," Kitty starts, but loses her strength and has to start over. "Dad, I've always been a mutant. I was a mutant before I even knew it; it's in my DNA. I didn't choose this, but it's a part of me, and I don't want to change it." She fiddles with her sleeve, searching for the courage to keep talking. "Nothing can go back to the way it was before. And I don't want it to. And—and if you love me at all, you'll understand."
There's a pause on the other end of the phone that lasts too long. "Katherine," he says finally. His voice is gentle but so condescending, as if he still knows best, after all these years. She can't stand it.
He isn't wrong, though; she knows that. It isn't an easy life. It won't be easy for her, but that's not enough. She's no coward, not anymore.
"How did you get this number?" She asks him, just to change the conversation, just to keep talking to him before what she knows will be the inevitable end.
He stiffens audibly. "Your—your headmaster, the man who came into my house, he left a brochure here."
"And you kept it?" Kitty says in a small voice. She's not sure how to feel about this. A tiny part of her is awed and she has to push it away.
"I did," he answers. "We may have our disagreements, but I'm still your father."
The honest, unguarded quality his voice had is gone, and Kitty remembers how long she pretended around him. All that time, he was pretending too.
But to what end?
She takes a deep breath. The end of their conversation is approaching and she can't stall any more. Closing her eyes, she leans back against the wall. "I can't do what you're asking me to."
"I guessed as much," her father replies. He sounds resigned.
"I'll be here," she ventures awkwardly, "if you ever change your mind."
"You know where to find me if you ever change yours."
"Yeah, well," Kitty says. She blinks back the sudden tears that spring, unbidden, into her eyes. It would have been better if they had yelled. It would have been easier to push him away. "Don't waste your time waiting."
Only the steady sounds of breathing—in and out, in and out—answer her. Carefully, slowly, steadily, gently, Kitty hangs up the phone.
She emerges, blinking, into a subdued world. The mansion feels so still, after. Kitty just stands there for a while. She feels like she needs to reorient herself, find the way she fits again.
She wishes she were angry right now. But, minute after minute as she stands unmoving, she isn't. It isn't anger that clouds her vision and forms the lump in her throat. It's something more difficult.
Kitty finds herself in the computer lab later, settling into the familiar space. But instead of doing homework, she pulls up the search engine and types in her father's full name, rusted with time.
Amid the comforting, subdued sounds of other students working, she dives in diligently. She's been teaching herself to hack so nothing is hidden from her anymore.
Her father still works for the same insurance company, but he's been promoted. Despite the mood she's in, Kitty still whistles a little at his new salary. He hasn't remarried, hasn't moved. Kitty's mind wanders to her empty room, to the house that used to hold three people and now only holds one. How lonely that must be. She thinks about the information she's found, digits and numbers, pages of facts that, in the end, tell her next to nothing about her father's life.
After a moment of hesitation, she goes back and types in her mother's name.
She's reading all this impersonal information about her mother: her address in Boston, her psychiatrist's name, her marital status (remarried, which stops Kitty's heart for a brief moment), when she realizes someone's standing behind her. She cranes her neck to look.
"Hey," Bobby says. He sounds a little off. "What are you doing?"
Kitty wipes a hand nervously across her dry eyes. "Nothing."
"Come on. Who are you spying on?"
Kitty bites her lip again—she's been doing it too much these days. She forces herself to stop, lets out a slow, soft breath. "My mom."
"Oh." Bobby moves to the seat beside her. She notices how he stops trying to look at the screen. "Sorry."
"It's okay. Maybe I shouldn't even have looked."
"I get it," he assures her. "What made you think about it, though?"
"My dad called," she says. It doesn't even occur to her to lie to Bobby. But his face changes as soon as the words leave her mouth, and she looks at him with a new sort of uncertainty. "Did yours—did your parents call you?"
He looks away. "Yeah."
"They wanted you to take it?"
"The cure? Yeah. My mom didn't try to blackmail me into it or anything, but she really thought I would be on board." He looks up to meet her eyes. "Yours too?"
"My dad, yeah." Kitty doesn't elaborate; it's too fresh.
Bobby sighs. "I guess that's just the life of a teenage mutant."
She cracks a smile. "And we're not even ninjas. Or turtles."
He laughs even though the joke is pathetic. It's easy, being around him, just as easy as ever. "So," he says, his tone lighter, "anything interesting on your mom?"
It's even easy talking about this: there's hardly any connection there anymore. "No arrests or anything exciting, sorry. She's just a regular person with a house, a husband, a job, and…" she examines the latest information she's pulled up, "one outstanding parking ticket."
Bobby squints at the screen. "God, it's freaky what you can find out on the internet."
"Especially when you actually know what you're doing," Kitty adds, smiling lopsidedly.
"Hmm." Gripping his chair from its underside, he scoots closer. "I think I may have some ideas for how to put your skills to use."
They end up stalking a lot of people: a second cousin who always used to pick on Bobby (attending a prestigious college, making only average grades), Kitty's former friend (winning soccer championships, putting too much information in her blog), and even Sydney, who only recently graduated from the school. Throughout it all, the joking and laughing and occasional mild surprise, Kitty keeps glancing over at Bobby and just being enormously thankful that he's there. She's been so on edge throughout the last couple days—they all have—that something as simple as this makes all the difference.
Only later does it become apparent just how deeply the news about the cure has affected everyone in the mansion. Kids go around in various states—hopeful, dubious, scared, confused. Calls come in more frequently than usual, brining confrontation, support, rejection. Everyone reacts a little differently, but everyone reacts. Even Scott, withdrawn as he's become, sits and watches the news with the rest of them, waiting for the footage of cure clinics setting up, unpacking supplies, preparing to open their doors. The imagery is quickly becoming less and less surreal.
Kitty watches Rogue in particular. She sees the other girl's initial hope become conflicted, recede, and then resurface as strong as ever; she sees Bobby's concern. Kitty doesn't know what Rogue will choose. But whatever choice she makes, it will be hers. Rogue's an independent person, even if it doesn't always show.
Now all that's left is waiting. Waiting for the inevitable protests, the retaliation, whatever comes next. Kitty knows there will be something. She feels it the way she knows unexplained, completely illogical things in her dreams: instinctively. In the following few days she trains with a long-buried fierceness and crosses her fingers for the hardest Danger Room simulations. The catalyst has come. Now for the rest.
Just when the chaos is beginning to die down, she and Piotr return from their college classes to find Scott missing and Jean, intact and very much alive, down in the med bay. Kitty runs around in a frenzy trying to figure out what happened, hating that she wasn't there, but no one seems to know much. Everyone she asks describes a horrible piercing noise flooding through their minds that sent the teachers running. Storm and Logan were dispatched to Alkali Lake and returned with only Scott's glasses…and Jean. The students Kitty asks say Jean's name with a note of wonder, a disbelieving whisper. Kitty isn't sure what to think.
She missed Jean, of course. They all have. But this isn't right; it shouldn't be possible. Just the thought of Jean laying there, the secrets of her circumstance locked inside her consciousness, feels like a bad omen to Kitty. She gets an uneasy feeling every time she thinks of it. Jean shouldn't be alive. She shouldn't be here.
When Kitty thinks of Jean, she thinks of three separate episodes.
Number one: when Kitty first came to the mansion and found Jean a bit intimidating. It was all so new to her as she sat in the infirmary waiting for her first checkup, and Jean was in her element, whirling around the lab collecting files, tools, using telekinesis to move things around (making Kitty jump), typing in long strings and bursts on her computer. She asked Kitty all the standard questions: if she had any allergies, if she'd gotten all her vaccinations, if she could call her pediatrician and have her medical records transferred. Her manner was friendly enough, but Kitty still found herself nervous, biting her lip too much, tapping her fingers uncontrollably against her chair. And then, as she finally left the med bay, Scott walked in. Kitty turned as she left and saw him talking to Jean, laughing, an arm around her waist; she saw the way they drew close to each other like two magnets, the new light in Jean's eyes. Such a small thing, but after that it was easier to see Jean as more than just a strict professional. She's since learned that small things can make all the difference.
Number two, just months later: Jean back at the school after speaking at the Senate hearing, a dejected air about her, muttering frustratedly into Scott's embrace. Telling him that the Mutant Registration Act was going to pass, that no one wanted to listen, that fear mongering won over facts every time. Kitty, who knew she shouldn't be listening but happened to be doing some homework far too close to the front door, stopped paying any attention to the equation she was supposed to be solving and eavesdropped unabashedly. She was still settling into her new life and wasn't picky about where she got information. Then Jean dissolved into a muffled tirade about how she should have done better and Kitty, embarrassed, turned back to the safe predictability of her textbook. Minutes later, a newly composed Jean was telling her in an offhand manner that a senator had mentioned her—"a girl in Illinois who can walk through walls", a potential bank robber—and Kitty wanted to feel famous in a strange ironic way but could only feel chilled. Who had documented her? She wasn't much of a secret in her old school, but it unnerved her to think someone had made a note of her. Jean must have sensed this because she touched Kitty reassuringly on the shoulder and then tried to make a joke about it. Jokes weren't her strong suit. She ended up baking cookies instead; Kitty could hear her and Scott laughing from the kitchen as they baked, setting the day's events aside for the moment. Stupid as it sounds, there was something magical about those cookies.
Number three is the simplest: Jean not long before her disappearance. Disturbed secretly by the winds changing, working late into the night, serving out periods of seclusion she thought only Scott would notice. Kitty ran into her one night in the kitchen using her telekinesis to make a mug of instant coffee. A drawer opened and a spoon levitated out into Jean's waiting hand, and Kitty, who'd been hoping to find Bobby there, hesitated in the doorway. Jean turned, sensing her there, and smiled vaguely. Kitty shifted from foot to foot. The powdered smell of the coffee rose through the air, Jean turned back to it, and before Kitty thought about it she was sitting down at the table. Her teacher joined her seemingly without a second thought and they proceeded to have the longest conversation they'd ever had up to that point. Kitty still doesn't know why. But she's glad it happened.
This Jean, though, the one Storm and Logan returned with just now, she's none of them. Kitty doesn't know who this Jean is.
And then there's Scott.
Missing, but with a feeling of finality. Kitty's instincts tell her he's gone; the turmoil in the mansion says the others have the same suspicion. So they've gained this—this shade of Jean, but at the expense of Scott. Broken down, withdrawn Scott, but still Scott, someone who's helped Kitty tremendously, someone she respects and looks up to. Gone.
Is this how it's going to go? The mentors and professors Kitty loves and trusts are going to disappear, one by one? One by one by one until no one is left?
These questions without answers plague her, hammer at the sides of her skull. No matter how she pushes them away, they keep needling at her. Because everything can change in an instant.
Kitty knows this is something she'll never forget again.