Coincidentally, this chapter is being posted the day after the wonderful LizzieTurbo's birthday. So let's all take a moment to tell her happy birthday. Just shout it out, I'm sure she can hear you. In her ~*~heart~*~

The following does not reflect the views or opinions of Marvel or the author known as 'Kinetically Charmed'.

Entry number twenty five:

Every year on my birthday, my mom calls me first thing in the morning. I was born at 5:42 AM, so apparently this means to her, that she needs to wake me up every year at 5:42 AM to wish me a happy birthday. Even with the different time zones we live in now, it's still an unwelcome wake up call. You can understand why I wasn't in much of a talking mood first thing in the morning... which is probably why I never bothered to get around to telling my mom that Piotr and I are no longer dating.

I realize how strange this must seem, it's been well over a month and a half by now, you'd think I'd have told my own mom by now. But the thing is, every time we talk on the phone she's always going on about wedding plans, and I didn't want to burst her bubble of romance with my bad news.

Plus I'm concerned she'll try to set me up with someone. She might live in Illinois, but she still has the power to drive me insane. Two words guys: David Stawitsky. You read about Doug's mom trying desperately to set him up with anyone, my mom's been trying to set me up with this closeted Dentist for years.

My dad on the other hand, calls me on the eve of my birthday, every year. And when I eventually broke the news to him, he seemed genuinely shocked. According to my father, Piotr sounded awfully serious about "us" during their little excursion out at the bar while I was trying to study, and that even though he wasn't you know, a musician, my dad really liked him.

I really liked him too.

So, I was determined to spend the rest of the evening, rodeo clowning myself from dwelling on how quickly my life had managed to go down the crapper. I was elbow deep in bathroom cleaning products when Rogue breezed into our room with a bright pink gift bag in her hand, freezing momentarily as she observed me. When I looked up from the bath tub and and gave her a smile, she blinked back into realization and smiled back, kicking the door shut behind her.

"Whatcha doin'...?" She asked, coming to a stop in the doorway.

"Oh you know, just some spring cleaning."

"It's... January..." She looked behind her at the mess in our room which was where I'd started 'organizing' only to get distracted by the dirty bathroom.

"Well yeah, I just figured I'd get a head start. No time like the present." I explained, going back to scrubbing the tub, "Plus I bought a bunch of those organizational totes, they were on sale. And they had these super awesome colours so I couldn't like, not buy them, you know?"

"Uh huh..." She looked back at me and crossed her arms, "And this wouldn't happen to do with a certain someone's birthday?"

"Hmm?" I feigned ignorance. As if I could some how manage to pretend that I'd forgotten. Rogue had gone the entire day without mentioning my birthday... as if she were just waiting for me to be the one to mention it first, and clearly this was not about to happen.

She raised an eyebrow at me, "You binge clean when you're stressed. Don't get me wrong, it comes in handy from time to time, but it's your birthday Kitty. You're not supposed to be holed up in your room cleaning the toilet for God's sake."

I sighed and shook my head, "It's just a stupid birthday, Rogue."

"No, it's not. It's your twenty first birthday. You should be out, purchasing alcohol legally."

I rolled my eyes and went back to scrubbing the bathtub. Seriously, I really didn't want to make a big deal of it this year. I just wanted to be alone, in my room, with my new technicolor totes, until the stupid day was over.

"Come on, I got you something." She motioned for me to follow her, and I reluctantly obliged, leaving the cleaning products spread out across the bathroom. I followed her to my bed, where I had all of my shoes organized by season and was planning on putting them all into separate totes, until Rogue shoved them all off onto the floor with one sweep of her arm. I sat down on my bed, muttering to myself about her ruining my process, when she stuffed the bright pink gift bag onto my lap.

"You really didn't have to get me anything." I knit my brow and tried to peer into the bag.

"Yeah, I did." She rolled her eyes, "You have no problem when your teacher buys you a Christmas present, but your best friend can't even get you a birthday gift?"

"He's not even a real teacher." I shot back in defense.

"Whatever, it doesn't make it any less weird."

"Really?" I asked flatly, "You really wanna talk about weird? How did your date with Magneto go yesterday?"

Believe it or not, I managed to act like I'd completely forgotten about the not-date on our drive home yesterday. I mean, obviously I hadn't forgotten but I figured I'd let her be the one to bring it up first. Which she never did.

She let out a long sigh and glared at me through the corner of her eye, "It wasn't a date. Now shut up and open your gift."

I tore the tissue paper out of the bag and dropped it onto the floor with my discarded shoes. The first thing I pulled out of the bag was a bottle of cheap red wine. When I looked up at Rogue, she was giving me a shit eating grin.

"It's classy."

I snort laughed, setting the bottle down next to me on the bed, pulling the next two items out of the bag; a purple fuzzy journal with a glittery cloud on the front beneath the word Dream, and an aqua blue pen with feathers and a bobbling figure of Ariel on the end.

I looked up at her again, because seriously... I kind of wonder if she thinks I'm perpetually 12. She smiled back and took the purple fuzzy notebook to open it up and show me.

"It's a dream journal. You keep it by your bed, and write down your dreams, and then you can analyze them later. You now, like losing your teeth or hair in a dream can symbolize the loss of control or power. It's... really helpful..." She trailed off, and I'm assuming this was because she heard how lame she was sounding as she spoke.

I dug out the final item in the bag; a pink knit sweater, which honestly was a pretty amazing gift. Coming from Rogue. The girl who hates shopping for herself.

"I know you like basically anything from Forever 21." She explained, giving me a sheepish shrug, "And I figured it was pink... I don't know... you like pink... I mean if you don't like it, you can take it back. I have the receipt-"

"No, it's... totally sweet." I smiled, feeling my heart swell with gratitude for such an amazing friend, "Thank you, Rogue."

My lower lip began to tremble, you know, with gratitude, when Rogue let out a deep breath.

"Alright (eff) this." She said suddenly. "Let's go get you drunk."

"What?" I blinked back the tears and shook my head, "No. No I don't want to go get drunk."

She flicked a hand towards me and scoffed, "You clearly need-"

"Come on, I want to avoid a repeat of the... karaoke fiasco." I muttered shamefully. The first time Piotr and I broke up, Rogue and Emma had the brilliant idea to take me out and booze me up, and I wound up making out with Alex. And then of course, the baby shower debacle...

I'd like to avoid any public embarrassment. It's my New Years resolution; Don't make an ass of myself in public.

Rogue pressed her lips together and eyed me for a moment before nodding, "Yeah, that's a good point. Alright, I have an idea. You clean up this mess," She flicked a hand and stood up, making her way to the door, "I'll be right back."

It took me about fifteen minutes to clean everything up. I waited for another five, before going back to the bathroom and resuming my bathtub scrubbing. I finished up in there after ten minutes or so, at this point wondering if Rogue had forgotten about me as I flopped back down on my bed to wait.

Eventually, Rogue did return, with a plastic bag hanging off the crook of her elbow, a case of Logan's good beer, and a cake with a picture of a cartoon transport truck on it.

She dropped the cake onto her dresser and shrugged, "Sorry, it's all they had left."

"It's perfect." I smiled, feeling myself get misty eyed again.

"Oh God." Rogue muttered under her breath as she tossed the plastic bag at me, "Don't start that again."

I peeked inside the plastic bag and pulled out some plastic plates with Tinkerbell on them, some plastic forks, and five DVD's.

"That was all the chick flicks Redbox had, I hope there's something there you'll like." She said as she cut me a piece of cake, "Oh, shit. Am I supposed to sing Happy Birthday or something...? I didn't buy any candles-"

"It's okay." I laughed. I seriously can't begin to explain to you guys how awesome Rogue's been. She's completely out of her element, but she's been trying, and she's been doing a pretty good job at it too.

She dropped a piece of cake onto one of the Tinkerbell plates and handed it over to me with a grin, "I figured we could watch a few of those stupid movies on your laptop. Your pick."

I nodded as I read the back of one of the movies, shoveling a nice big forkful of vanilla truck cake into my mouth before setting up the laptop at the foot of my bed.

"So... how was your not-date?"

Rogue's shoulders sagged and she let out a deep breath, "Are we really gunna do this?"

"Are you kidding me?" I snorted, "Oh ah am lookin' forward to eatin' lunch with you this fra-dayuh, Erik. Heck yes we are. I want details."

"Alright first off, I don't sound like that." She rolled her eyes, "And secondly, there are no details. So can we just drop it? Please?"

"No details..." I pressed my lips into a thin smile as the movie started, and got myself comfortable on the bed, "Yeah right."

"We talked about my genetics teacher a bit. That's all." She added, taking a mouthful of beer to punctuate her sentence.

"Sure. That's all." I grinned.

"He asked about some of my other classes." She continued, sensing that I wasn't being nearly as agreeable as I sounded, "You know he's really interested in art history."

"Of course he is, he lived it."

She fought back a smile and gave her head a shake, "We have similar interests. It was nice to talk to someone who understands me a little bit, but that's it. It was no more a date than your lunch rendezvous with Remy. You guys have your simple minds in common, you can't help it."

I scoffed, "Simple minds..."

"Hey, I don't judge. You guys like talking about the hidden metaphors in the Twilight series and your thoughts on Jennifer Aniston's love life, that's just your thing." She smirked at me before taking another sip of beer.

"And I'm sure you don't have plans to get together again at some point in the near future." I said, choosing to ignore her attempt at distracting me from the matter at hand. When she scrunched up her nose and looked away with guilt written all over her face, my jaw admittedly dropped. "Seriously?!"

"It's not a date." She repeated, "He just... offered to help me out a bit with one of my Psychology papers. You know that he's incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to Psychology-"

"You know who else is? Professor Xavier."

She simply rolled her eyes at my very valid point.

"You know you're gunna have to tell Remy about this." I pointed out to her with a head shake, "I mean, I realize that you guys aren't dating any more, but when-"

"I already did." She interrupted, which caught me completely off guard. I stared at her for a few seconds before knitting my brow in confusion,

"Did what?"

"I already told Remy." She shrugged, "We talk on the phone from time to time and it just came up. I told you, it's not a big deal. No need for secrets and high jinks."

"And he... exploded?" I asked with a frown.

"No. Not... I mean... he hung up on me, but I'm pretty sure he didn't explode."

"He hung up on you." I repeated.

"Yeah. It's really not a big deal, he's hung up on me dozens of times before, it's how he operates." She muttered as she pushed a piece of cake around on her Tinkerbell plate. "He's going away for some "job", it'll give him some time to cool down about it. Trust me, he'll get over it."

"Well at least I don't have to lie to him about it or anything." I said as I shoveled some cake into my mouth.

"Yeah, you two are kind of soul mates, aren't you?" She smirked again.

"Oh shut up." I grumbled, "I just don't need any more drama in my life right now. No more drama. Mary J Blige."

Rogue let out a laugh, "You are such a geek."

The rest of the evening was pretty much a blur of amazing discount cake, alcohol and crappy chick flicks. Rogue made it all the way through three and a half movies before eventually passing out cold. Given the fact that she'd consumed the majority of the case of beer on her own, I can't say I was surprised. But I definitely knew she was gunna be regretting that move tomorrow morning during our Danger Room sesh.

Anyway, once Rogue had passed out I decided to cut the last movie short, because there's only so much Rachel McAdams a person can take in one night, pushing my laptop shut and sliding my legs off my bed. I was pleased to see that two beers had not incapacitated me to the point that I was unable to stand. You guys can laugh all you want, but we all know I'm a total light weight. I guess all the cake I ate soaked up most of the booze from my blood stream.

And yeah, that's totally the way the human body works.

Upon realizing that I was capable of regular human function, I went about cleaning up our mess of empties and discarded cake plates, piling everything into the plastic bag and bringing it out into the dimly lit hallway, where I immediately noticed Scott. He had Rachel all bundled up in a soft purple blanket and he was gently bouncing her as he slowly walked towards me. He stopped suddenly when he caught sight of me and Rachel let out a quiet little whimper of protest which caused him to resume the bouncing.

"What are you doing up so late?" He whispered when I came to a stop.

"Birthday party. Just cleaning up." I held up the plastic bag of garbage, peeking at the almost sleeping baby in his arms, "You two out for a two AM walk?"

He gave me a tired smile, "Yeah. Whatever works." He looked down at her and shook his head, "She's getting better with her sleep, at least Jean can get a bit more shut-eye now."

I smiled, "You're such a good dad."

He looked back up at me and offered me a tight lipped smile before slowly starting back down the hall in the direction I was headed, "So how was your birthday?"

"It was alright, Rogue and I watched a bunch of girly movies," I giggled softly as I fell in step next to him, "It was hilarious. You could just tell she was horrified to be sitting there watching this stuff..." I giggled some more and shook my head, "But she powered through."

Scott chuckled, "Kind of like that time she accidentally absorbed Jubilee and couldn't remember if she was attracted to Channing Tatum or not."

I burst out into silent laughter, "She'd just sit there watching him on TV with this confused look on her face..." I trailed off into a fit of giggles at the memory.

"Well, it's really good to see you happy." He said quietly, "Just make sure you..." He cleared his throat awkwardly, "You know, stay away from Alex."

I snorted, "Why?"

"Because if he sees you all giggly and giddy... It's like a written invitation for him."

I chuckled and gave my head a little shake, "I'm pretty sure I could control myself."

"Yeah." He cleared his throat and shrugged, still managing to bounce the baby in his arms, "I just thought... you know-"

"I know, I know." I held up a hand and rolled my eyes, "Past experience."

The corner of his mouth tugged up, "Jem."

"Shut up." I whispered with a smile as we reached the foyer.

The sound of a familiar voice, hissing presumably a Russian curse word, caught our attention and made both of us stop in our tracks. Scott's team leader instincts kicked in, and his one hand flew up to his shades, while still managing to bounce Rachel carefully in his other arm,

"Who's there?" He asked in that firm authoritative tone of his.

"It's just me." Came the tired reply.

Scott quickly moved over to the wall and flicked the lights on in the foyer, "Piotr, what the hell?!" He hissed and frowned disapprovingly, "I almost blasted you to smithereens!"

Piotr rolled his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face, "I am sure it was not that hard to tell it was me-" He began, stopping momentarily when he noticed me standing there with my garbage bag. He looked back at Scott and continued, "How many enemies do we have that can speak Russian?"

"That's not the point." Scott hissed as he bounced Rachel soothingly, "We're trained not to make assumptions. And we're also trained not to be sneaking back into the house at two in the morning."

Piotr squared his jaw, "I wasn't sneaking."

"You know the rules. You're not supposed to be out without someone knowing where you are for emergency purposes. You know that." Scott relaxed a little, having spoken his peace and let out a breath as the awkward silence stretched between the three of us. It was awkward for me at least, I can't speak for the other two.

Considering the way Scott seemed perfectly unaffected, it probably wasn't awkward for him. Which is likely why he wouldn't shut the hell up.

"Where have you been, anyway? Is that paint on your neck?" He furrowed his brow, "You shouldn't be staying at the studio so late, it's going to start to interfere with your work around here. We've got a Danger Room session first thing in the morning, remember."

Piotr pressed his lips into a thin line and gave him a terse nod, as he "absently" rubbed the "paint" off his neck.

I wasn't born yesterday. Scott might be colour blind thanks to his shades, but I know lipstick when I see it. And the studio does not smell like cheap drugstore perfume.

I just stood there dumbly gaping at Piotr like an idiot as Scott continued to lecture him on his responsibilities as a functioning member of the team. That's when I was suddenly overcome with this bubbling sensation of outrage. I clamped my mouth shut and looked over at Scott with a frown,

"Oh please, he doesn't give a rats ass about his teammates." I sneered back at Piotr, "He doesn't care about anything but himself."

Scott looked over me, understandably shocked by my sudden outburst before turning back to Piotr, "It's probably not a bad idea to... get home from the art studio at a reasonable time."

"Look at him!" I threw a hand towards Piotr, with his wrinkled shirt and unkempt hair, wreaking like Ke$ha's celebrity scent which if it existed, would undoubtedly smell like stale tobacco and baby powder. "He wasn't working late at the art studio, Scott, don't be so naive. The only work he's been doing at the studio is banging the art groupies and playing naked paint Twister to make modern art with the other moronic art dipshits!"

Scott's face went red and he momentarily stopped bouncing Rachel, looking back at Piotr as he put the pieces together. Finally.

"I don't think it's any of your business anymore." Piotr clipped with that eerie calm kind of anger he does so well.

"It's not my business that you don't care about anyone but yourself?! That's funny, because the last I checked, we were supposed to be on a team! And when we have group exercises where your goddamn unconcerned, selfish attitude will put my friends in danger, then you bet it's my business!" I ground out, trying my best to stay as quiet as possible for Rachel's sake.

"This has nothing to do with the team, Kitty. Why don't you just admit that you are only angry because I no longer care about you." He shot back.

"Enough!" Scott whisper yelled, "We're not going to work anything out at two in the morning. Let's just... go to bed. Alright? Goodnight, Piotr."

He let out a breath and gave Scott a silent nod as he turned to walk away, glancing back at me with the tiniest trace of a smug little grin and said, "Happy birthday."

I'm pretty sure that was the exact moment that my heart shattered into a million pieces.

A/N- This chapter... was pretty difficult. So you know what would sooth my broken heart after writing this emotional chapter? A review. Maybe favorite the story too, while you're down there, hmm? That'd be great. Thanks. ;)
PS. Look for Kitty on Twitter The_Kittiot. Kitty and I don't really *get* Twitter... but we're trying our best.