Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men.
29
Kiara sat on the edge of the baseball diamond silently and Kitty sat beside her. They were supposed to be playing a game of baseball without using powers, but it hadn't taken long for the students to decide otherwise and Beast had given up on trying to change their minds.
Time seemed to be passing slower now that Kiara knew that Kitty and Kurt were going to the dance together, and the mood between the three of them was suddenly tense.
Kiara had been quiet since she had found out. She rarely spoke to anyone and carefully avoided looking at either Kurt or Kitty. Her gaze was distant. Her expression was unreadable.
No one knew how Kiara really felt and no one wanted to ask, but Kurt had already decided that it was up to Kitty to find out since she was the one who had caused the problem.
"So," Kitty said. "You're, like, okay with me going to the dance with Kurt, right?"
"I'm fine, Kitty," Kiara said without looking at her. "Kurt can go to the dance with whoever he wants."
"Are you, like, sure?" Kitty said. "Because Kurt's kind of, like, worried that we might have, like, hurt your feelings. We didn't, did we?"
"Why would my feelings be hurt?" Kiara said, looking at her for the first time in hours. "Kurt wanted to go to the dance with me. Then he changed his mind. No big deal."
"Oh, well, okay," Kitty said, smiling uncertainly. "If you're, like, sure."
"Don't worry," Kiara told her. "I'm sure. Besides, I don't even have a dress to wear, remember?"
"Right," Kitty said. She opened her mouth to remind Kiara that she and Rogue had invited her to go dress shopping last Saturday, then she thought better of it and changed her mind.
"I'm going inside," Kiara said, getting to her feet.
"What?" Kitty said, looking at her. "The game isn't even over yet."
"Beast won't mind," Kiara muttered, walking away from her.
Kitty looked up silently as Kurt appeared beside her in a cloud of smoke. "Well, how is she?" he asked her. "She isn't upset, is she?"
Kitty shrugged. "She said she was fine," she told him.
"Yes," Kurt said, "but did she seem fine?"
"Well, actually," Kitty said, her smile fading, "she kind of seemed, like, too fine. Almost like she doesn't care."
"Wait," Kurt said, frowning. "What do you mean, she doesn't care?"
"I mean," Kitty said, "that she doesn't care. She must have gotten over it. I think you should probably, like, talk to her yourself, though."
"Yeah," Kurt said. "You're probably right. Do you know where she went?"
"No, sorry," Kitty said, shaking her head. "She just said that she was, like, going inside."
"Well," Kurt said, trying to think of where Kiara might have gone. "I'll try her room first. Then the library. She spends a lot of time there."
Kitty nodded silently as Kurt disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
Kiara lay on her bed silently. She sighed and pulled her blanket over her head.
Kurt and Kitty going to the dance together.
Kiara should have known something like that would have happened. Kurt had never really wanted to go to the dance with her to begin with. She just wished that he would have told her how he felt instead of letting her believe what everyone else said. If he had then maybe she wouldn't feel so -- so what?
Kiara sat up and shook her head. She didn't feel anything. So Kurt wasn't taking her to the dance anymore. So he was taking Kitty now and everyone had been wrong. Who cared?
It was no big deal.
"Kiara!"
Kiara felt her body stiffen as Kurt called her name through the closed bedroom door. He knocked twice. She lay down and threw the blanket over her head. She didn't want to talk to him. She couldn't talk to him. She just couldn't.
Kurt knocked on the door once more. A moment of silence followed. Then Kiara heard the sound of him teleporting away, and she knew he was gone.
The next morning, Kurt stood impatiently outside of Kiara's bedroom door. He had to talk to her. He had to, but he hadn't had a chance to talk to her the night before as she had gone to bed early, claiming to feel sick to her stomach.
"Hey," Kurt said to Rogue as she left the room. "Where's Kiara?"
"Oh," Rogue said, her smile fading. "She left early so she could walk to school by herself."
"But she's never even been to the school on her own before," Kurt said. "She could get lost. What's wrong with her?"
"Nothing's wrong with her," Rogue said, scowling at him. "What a lot of people want to know is what's wrong with you."
"Me?" Kurt said. "What did I do?"
"You asked her to the dance," Rogue reminded him. "Then you agreed to go with Kitty instead."
"Leave him alone, Rogue," Kitty said, approaching them. "He's doing it as a favor to me, and Kiara said that she's, like, fine with it."
"And y'all believed her?" Rogue said in disbelief.
She stalked off silently down the hall before Kitty or Kurt had a chance to respond.
Kurt and Kitty silently for a moment, uncomfortably.
"Kiara said she's okay with it," Kitty said at last. "So that means that she's okay with it. Right?" She looked at Kurt, uncertainly.
"Look," Kurt said, "you go to school with Scott and Jean. I'm going to go see if I find Kiara so I can talk to her before school starts." He turned and started walking down the hall. "She couldn't have gotten far."
Kiara walked down the sidewalk and looked up and down the street silently. She had decided to walk to school this morning and she wasn't entirely sure if she knew where she was. Bayville wasn't exactly huge, though, so she knew she would find her way.
Eventually.
Kiara sighed and sat down on the curb in front of a run-down house. Who was she kidding?
Kiara had no idea where she was. She should have just gotten a ride to school with one of the others.
"Well, well if isn't it little Miss Blaze who's come to play."
Kiara stood up and turned to see Pietro standing behind her. "What do you want?" she asked, scowling at him.
"I think the real question is, what do you want?" Pietro said, smiling. "This is my turf." He gestured to a sign in front of the run-down house, which read "Bayville Brotherhood Boardinghouse."
"Well, I can assure you that I'm not here on purpose," Kiara told him. She sighed and sat back down on the curb. "I got lost."
"Oh, is that so?" Pietro asked her. "Are you sure haven't come to switch sides?"
"Excuse me," Kiara said, looking at him, "but why the hell would I want to do that?"
"Oh, I don't know," Pietro said, shrugging. "Because Kitty Pryde stole your furry, blue boyfriend."
"Kitty didn't steal anything from me," Kiara said, getting to her feet and scowling at him. "And Kurt isn't my boyfriend. He and I are friends just like me and Kitty. So if she wants him, she can have him. I don't care."
"You know I don't get you," Pietro said, his smile fading. "You're a smart girl, but you're hiding something. And it's something big, and it's something bad. Yet you're still there, at that mansion, pretending to be one of them."
Kiara stared at him in furious disbelief as the fire flared up inside of her. "What are you talking about?" she said. "I don't have any secrets and I'm not pretending to be anything. So if you think that I'm…" She searched for the right words. "That I'm one of your little Brotherhood members, then you better think again because I'm not."
"Do you really think that's true?" Pietro asked her. "Do you really think you're so different from me and my boys?"
"I know I am," Kiara said, struggling against the fire that raged within her. "I know about the things you've done -- the things you do. You're bad people. You lie, steal, and hurt people. You kill people."
"The same way you killed your father," Pietro said, scowling at her.
"That was an accident," Kiara said quickly. "I never meant for that happen."
"Was it, Kiara?" Pietro said, approaching her. "Was it really -- because I think I know what happened. I think your daddy pushed you too far and you lost it. Then you ran away and decided to hang out with the X-Men because you've got a thing for that furry, blue freak."
"My father loved me," Kiara told him as the fire flared up within her, stronger than ever before, "and I love him. You want to know what happened, I'll tell you what happened: My powers manifested and he got hurt. That's what happened, and I'm training to be an X-Man because I want to make sure -- I have to make sure that that never happens again. Ever. I'm not like you."
The two of them looked up silently as a blue Mercedes screeched to a halt in front of them.
"Hey, what's going on?" Nick Crenshaw demanded as he climbed out of the driver's seat.
"What?" Kiara said, looking at him.
It was then that she realized that both she and Pietro looked as though they were getting ready to kill each other. They were both standing up with their feet set apart, leaning towards each other with their fists clenched.
At some point, Kiara had thrown her bag to the ground and her books had spilled onto the pavement. A death glare played about her face and her fist was raised as though she were about to pound Pietro's face in.
Kiara lowered her fist and looked from Pietro to Nick and back again, panting heavily. She swallowed the flames that were tearing at her throat. "Nothing," she said, still panting. "Nothing's going on. I got lost. Pietro was just giving me directions."
"Yeah, right," Nick said. "Get in." He gestured to his car.
Kiara piled her books in her bag quickly and did as she was told.
"From now on," Nick said, walking over to Pietro, "you leave her the hell alone."
"Or what?" Pietro asked, smirking.
"You don't want to find out," Nick told him.
Nick turned away from Pietro and got in his car silently.
"Thanks," Kiara said once he was in the car.
"Are you okay?" Nick asked her, starting the car.
Kiara sighed and leaned her head against the closed window. "He was talking crap about me and my dad," she admitted.
"Yeah, well," Nick said, "don't go starting fights with guys like him. Him and his friends don't believe in fighting fair."
Kiara laughed as she considered the huge advantage the Brotherhood would have over Nick himself.
"What's funny?" Nick asked her.
"Nothing," Kiara said. "Nothing's funny."
"Right," Nick said. Then he decided to change the subject. "So I heard Wagner decided not to go with you to the dance, after all."
"Yeah," Kiara said, silently wondering how everybody knew about that already. "Yeah, he's going with my friend Kitty."
"Your friend?" Nick said, laughing humorlessly. "She mustn't be a very good friend if she stole your date from you."
"She didn't steal my date from me," Kiara said, sighing frustrated. "Kurt was never my date. He and I are just friends, and it makes more sense for the two of them to go together anyway."
"What makes you say that?" Nick asked her.
"Well," Kiara said, "they've known each other longer. Plus, they look better together. Who knows -- maybe they'll win homecoming."
"Yeah, right," Nick said, laughing for real this time. "Jean and Scott will win that for sure. Not those two."
Kiara thought for a moment. "Yeah," she said. "You're probably right about that one."
Nick laughed again. "I know I am," he said as he parked the car in the school parking lot. "Look, though, why don't you go with me to the dance since Wagner bailed on you?"
"You know," Kiara said as she unbuckled her seatbelt, "I don't really feel like going to dance anymore. I mean, I never really wanted to go to begin with, but Kurt thought it would be fun so I said yes. That's all."
"Oh, well, that's cool," Nick said. "Maybe we could do something else then."
"I don't think so," Kiara said, looking at him. "I'm really not ready for a boyfriend or something like that."
Nick nodded and thought for a moment. "Let me know when you are ready then," he told her. "Because I don't give up. You better learn that one fast, new girl."
"Scott said you were hard to get rid of," Kiara said, laughing.
"He was right," Nick said, nodding.
"Thanks for the ride," Kiara said, climbing out of the car.
"Wait up," Nick said, following after her. "We can walk to class together."
