(Pryde/Wisdom) the Greatest Miracle of All 8/?
Disclaimer: Main ones are Marvel characters, some will be mine, too, so don't sue because *looking around her room* I am just a happy, but poor college student. I don't have the money for those prosecuting and if i do *smirk* you can't have it because i need it for more comics.
Feedback: Very much welcome. I'll welcome any kind of feedback good or bad, but flamers don't make me tie anyone down. I've over and done with that but I'm sure i can find something to stake you down with and some creatures to leave to play with you.
Adoration's, Praise and Acknowledgments: To Tangles, Luba, and Winter, who all were ecstatic that there was finally more to this story.
To Luba, my present beta, cause her praise is enough to keep me writing more. To Winter, cause he loves her and sometime makes me think of things Pete would do. And Tangle Toy who is my push behind me getting to finish this story, because she loved it so much way back when I started it. Love to you all, you're the BEST!
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Part VII: "In Another's Eyes"
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In a mansion the size of Xavier's Institute of High Learning it was easy to not be seen while watching someone. At the same time to feel that eyes were upon you and to look up and see no one since there was so much house to be looked at when you looked up for the eyes watching you. He hadn't persay meant to be watching them as they left.
He'd been emerced in his work since very early morning, after eating a breakfast laid out by one of the wonderful women of the senior staff and hadn't looked up untill now. He'd had music on to keep the sounds of the outside world at bay. Three CD's sat in a spinner, all classical music meant to keep him calm and occupy his thoughts while he worked, without taking his mind from his work.
But the music had stopped temporarily, while second CD was switching to the third, when he was interrupted by sounds front outside, from the window a crack open to give him fresh morning air. Voices pulling him from bright colors and easy movements, until he was leaving his and walking over to the window, staring down at them. A golden colored car glinted in the sunlight below and two figures were getting into a car; Kitty and Pete.
Watching silently as the woman with brunette hair laughed and smiled while the other door -- the drive's side -- closed, he frowned slowly. She said something opening her door, then got in, and half a minute later the car was leaving the half moon driveway. His frown didn't fade very fast from his face as he wandered back over to his easel.
The picture was coming along nicely, but he knew his concentration was shot for this morning. Now thoughts started to crowd his already tremulous mind. The face was the way he remembered it in his mind, as were the eyes. The eyes that had changed so much with time. They had looked so different the first time he'd seen them. He hoped that they came across that way when other people would look at them, too.
While he used a wet rag to wipe his hands off -- the fingertips, in particular, covered in paint -- he looked toward the window he'd been looking out just a moment ago. She was laughing and smiling with that rat who'd left her. Of course he knew why; the entire mansion knew why Pete Wisdom had stepped back into their lives. Before the end of Excalibur, before he'd left her all alone, he'd gotten her pregnant and it had taken all parties involved this long to figure it out and be dragged back into the same area again.
Piotr still wasn't sure what he thought about all that. He was surprised that she hadn't told him but he understood -- or at least thought he did -- and made an effort to be there if she needed anyone. His second reaction was that he though to beat Pete Wisdom to a bloody pulp -- on purpose this time -- if he didn't do right and stand beside whatever decision she made.
Kitty Pryde had gone through enough in the last three months. One had only to think about it to remember walking down that hallway and being able to hear her in room, or in a computer room, crying, all alone, not allowing anyone to help her. And then, slowly, she did. First Logan, and then slowly the rest of the X-men, and they all watched her come alive again little by little, like someone in a coma waking up.
Now the very reason for all of that was staying in a room in a hotel twenty miles from here, because no one had offered him a room in the mansion. Not even Katya. There were still grudges being held by many of the residents in the mansion for his immediately running off for two weeks after being told Kitty's situation, not even calling during that time and just showing up on the door step again. He had to admit he was one of them.
Excalibur had dealt with similar things like that happening, but this was different: he had a responsibility. A responsibility to both the child and Kitty now. Kitty'd been put through enough, she didn't need another heart break on top of a one just finished. She'd been left enough and had lost enough people already in her life. He had been one of them, so had Wisdom. Both of those had been things of the past until now. Until this pregnancy dredged up Pete Wisdom from England and brought him back into all their lives.
Yes, all their lives, as it seemed Katya wouldn't be giving up her child, a thought that both worried and relieved at the same time all those who cared about her. If Pete knew what was good for him this was now going to involve months of him here, since she'd made no mention of wanting to leave the mansion. She'd actually told Ororo she wanted to be here during it because this was home and she wanted to be surrounded by those who were family.
He pushed it out of his mind as he picked up all the paint brushes that landed in odd places while he'd been working, and added them to the ones that had landed neatly in the water cup. The water inside the cup was a shade of grayish black, like tar might be if you mixed a acrylic white and peach in it or like oil without the shiny tiny and slimy feel to it. The brushes ranged in sizes, special made for different uses, and though most of them were the same light brown wood color, there were a few that varied.
Washing them off, he laid them on a paper towel next to the sink and continued on to wash his hands and his face, where paint always got to somehow, untill everything was clean of any trace of painting again. Turning off the faucet and the light, he backed out of the small room. But before he had the time to wonder what he should be doing her stomach grumbled angrily. He took a look at the clock, brushing his pony tail over his shoulder absently from where it had fallen in front.
Nearly lunchtime now and food did sound appealing.
~*~*~
{Penny for your thoughts?}
{I am worried.} The woman replied as she moved slowly through the kitchen, without bumping into her friend. There had been a long silence before she had answered the question and it was a wonder she did. She had been keeping mostly silent on this debacle so far, which was why she added the second half of the thought. {As if everyone and it doesn't help her at all.}
{You don't think your love and affection are helping her right now?} Her friend replied with a quirk of a smile touching her face, from where she sat in a chair at the table in the center of the room. She wore a simple outfit of a pair of jeans and a button up white shirt, that had been partially left unbuttoned. On the edge of a pocket could be seen her combadge, though she didn't need it with her powers. She could have alerted her team by a more subtle way -- telepathy, just the same way this conversation was taking place.
{I know they do, Jean, but she's not looking for them. In family faces she only seeks to find that which says we don't want the father of her child here, or, worse, that we harbor disappointment in her past actions and present choices.}
{Then wait for her to turn to you in need, Ororo. She'll come around. She always does.}
Ororo thought this was true. Kitty was one of the many people who lived in the Mansion who walled up her true feelings and showed people what she thought they should see. Not what they wanted to see, or what they truly needed to see. Just what she thought they should see.
She'd been living behind a wall like that all those months while the X-Men waited for her to come out. And of course, eventually, she had --with the same fire and flare as normal, the youthful exuberance and teasing wit.
Then in one morning, it was gone, again, replaced by an irritability and listlessness. Many people had tried to guess what was to blame, with guesses ranging from Pete -- again -- to missing having her own team in her own world as it had been her home for many years. It got worse from there, and no one had known why or how, until that Mansion had been shaken to the ground by a large thunderstorm.
Her pregnancy was more of a bewildering shock than anything else. No one -no one- had expected it.
{I will.} She said softly into her best friend's mind and, as if to make sure she would, she said it softly to herself, a very faint whisper before she placed a dish in the dishwasher. "I will. I will -- for her."
Then as if changing the subject slowly, she looked at Jean and asked. "How are you feeling today?"
{Penny for my thoughts?} The voice wasn't as sweet as it had been. It was held back now and Ororo wondered if that was the exact reason it hadn't been said outloud, but the thought was broken when a response was finally voiced.
"You mean now that the Professor is gone and Scott is dead?"
Jean's voice was hollow on one end and malice filled at the other, and her expression ranged from disgust to sadness. She had set her chin on her hand and was staring at the frigerator to her side, very hard. It was one of those looks where you'd use the 'if looks could kill' expression, and the existence of it made Ororo wince.
All of the X-Men had their own daemons right now.
"He's alive, Ororo," she said softly, and her friend looked back to see her staring at the table in front of her for the moment. "He is. If he was dead I'd know it. In my heart, in my soul....I'd know he was gone." Jean raised her eyes to meet Ororo's, her hands tightening on the table slightly.
"But he's not-" she moved her chair out, getting up from it. "He's alive and the Professor is wrong. He's alive."
Listening to the sound of Jean's voice made a chill run down the weather witches spine. It was like listening to someone slowly lose it. Her voice was filled with this insane sound that said she had to be right and no one else could be, because they were wrong. She'd been like this since their return from the battle when they'd figured out the meaning of The Twelve. The battle where Scott had sacrificed himself.
He was an emblem for the X-Men. He was someone those to come would look up to, would base their lives as X-Men on. He would be a role model and to some an idol of what being an X-Men truly meant.
To them he would be Scott Summers. But to those here now he would be father, husband, team mate and most of all, friend, and beyond that even, family.
The door to the kitchen swung open and Piotr walked in, looking at the silent scene -- Ororo near the sink and Jean standing with her back to him staring at Ororo -- and he wondering if he'd come in at the wrong time. There were other places in the mansion where he could get food if he wanted or needed it.
Of the three it was Ororo who reacted fastest though. Her gaze shifted to Jean and then back to Piotr as she asked simply, "How's your painting coming?"
"It's good so far -- I've almost captured exactly what I wanted," he replied. His voice was fatigued, one of the two women in the room noticed. "And after getting interrupted once or twice, I thought it might be good to take a break."
"Interrupted?" Jean asked, raising an eyebrow. That was curious, since the entire mansion was mostly empty at the moment -- either out or busy.
"Da." Piotr looked momentarily unsure, and his mouth closed so that it look like he might not say another word. "Once by Katya and Pete leaving, and a second time when Sara asked to borrow a book."
"Which book?"
"She's already left?"
Both questions came at once and Piotr felt obliged to answer since he'd started it, even though he felt he'd rather tackle the debate about the book Marrow had borrowed, rather than spawn another discussion about the fact Pete Wisdom had taken Kitty out of the house. There were many conversations about that going on that stopped and started spontaneously from the smallest things.
"An art book covering startling art in the eighteenth and ninetieth century," he answered Jean's curious expression before looking at Ororo as she pulled a glass down from a shelf -- for tea, he guessed, as it was what she drank most. "And Katya left about twenty minutes ago, though I don't know to where."
"It's na our business wher' she's goin'." A gruff voice came from behind Piotr who'd literally jumped with surprise, an interesting sight for a man so large; it was Logan. Clad in his normal attire of blue jeans and a shirt with buttons and short sleeves, if they hadn't known him better one would have thought he was in the mood for a brawl the way he looked.
The comment stifled any response from Piotr, and Jean just sat down in her chair again, pulling it in with her, since she didn't have a comment. Ororo, who was about the fact that they'd just left without telling anyone anything, did say something even as he stalked the kitchen and open the fridge.
"You're not worried about her?"
Shutting the frigerator, a cold beer in his hand now, he looked at the weather witch, their eyes at two very different heights -- two people who could look very terrifying at other times, while the other two looked on. He popped the tab of the can and everyone could hear the fizz in the silence before he answered.
"She's a' big girl an' can handle her own problems, But if he h'rts her 'gain," he said taking a sip and heading for the door, but it wasn't in anyone's imagination that he opened the door, heading out and followed it up with, "I'll kill 'im.
to be continued
Disclaimer: Main ones are Marvel characters, some will be mine, too, so don't sue because *looking around her room* I am just a happy, but poor college student. I don't have the money for those prosecuting and if i do *smirk* you can't have it because i need it for more comics.
Feedback: Very much welcome. I'll welcome any kind of feedback good or bad, but flamers don't make me tie anyone down. I've over and done with that but I'm sure i can find something to stake you down with and some creatures to leave to play with you.
Adoration's, Praise and Acknowledgments: To Tangles, Luba, and Winter, who all were ecstatic that there was finally more to this story.
To Luba, my present beta, cause her praise is enough to keep me writing more. To Winter, cause he loves her and sometime makes me think of things Pete would do. And Tangle Toy who is my push behind me getting to finish this story, because she loved it so much way back when I started it. Love to you all, you're the BEST!
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Part VII: "In Another's Eyes"
--------------
In a mansion the size of Xavier's Institute of High Learning it was easy to not be seen while watching someone. At the same time to feel that eyes were upon you and to look up and see no one since there was so much house to be looked at when you looked up for the eyes watching you. He hadn't persay meant to be watching them as they left.
He'd been emerced in his work since very early morning, after eating a breakfast laid out by one of the wonderful women of the senior staff and hadn't looked up untill now. He'd had music on to keep the sounds of the outside world at bay. Three CD's sat in a spinner, all classical music meant to keep him calm and occupy his thoughts while he worked, without taking his mind from his work.
But the music had stopped temporarily, while second CD was switching to the third, when he was interrupted by sounds front outside, from the window a crack open to give him fresh morning air. Voices pulling him from bright colors and easy movements, until he was leaving his and walking over to the window, staring down at them. A golden colored car glinted in the sunlight below and two figures were getting into a car; Kitty and Pete.
Watching silently as the woman with brunette hair laughed and smiled while the other door -- the drive's side -- closed, he frowned slowly. She said something opening her door, then got in, and half a minute later the car was leaving the half moon driveway. His frown didn't fade very fast from his face as he wandered back over to his easel.
The picture was coming along nicely, but he knew his concentration was shot for this morning. Now thoughts started to crowd his already tremulous mind. The face was the way he remembered it in his mind, as were the eyes. The eyes that had changed so much with time. They had looked so different the first time he'd seen them. He hoped that they came across that way when other people would look at them, too.
While he used a wet rag to wipe his hands off -- the fingertips, in particular, covered in paint -- he looked toward the window he'd been looking out just a moment ago. She was laughing and smiling with that rat who'd left her. Of course he knew why; the entire mansion knew why Pete Wisdom had stepped back into their lives. Before the end of Excalibur, before he'd left her all alone, he'd gotten her pregnant and it had taken all parties involved this long to figure it out and be dragged back into the same area again.
Piotr still wasn't sure what he thought about all that. He was surprised that she hadn't told him but he understood -- or at least thought he did -- and made an effort to be there if she needed anyone. His second reaction was that he though to beat Pete Wisdom to a bloody pulp -- on purpose this time -- if he didn't do right and stand beside whatever decision she made.
Kitty Pryde had gone through enough in the last three months. One had only to think about it to remember walking down that hallway and being able to hear her in room, or in a computer room, crying, all alone, not allowing anyone to help her. And then, slowly, she did. First Logan, and then slowly the rest of the X-men, and they all watched her come alive again little by little, like someone in a coma waking up.
Now the very reason for all of that was staying in a room in a hotel twenty miles from here, because no one had offered him a room in the mansion. Not even Katya. There were still grudges being held by many of the residents in the mansion for his immediately running off for two weeks after being told Kitty's situation, not even calling during that time and just showing up on the door step again. He had to admit he was one of them.
Excalibur had dealt with similar things like that happening, but this was different: he had a responsibility. A responsibility to both the child and Kitty now. Kitty'd been put through enough, she didn't need another heart break on top of a one just finished. She'd been left enough and had lost enough people already in her life. He had been one of them, so had Wisdom. Both of those had been things of the past until now. Until this pregnancy dredged up Pete Wisdom from England and brought him back into all their lives.
Yes, all their lives, as it seemed Katya wouldn't be giving up her child, a thought that both worried and relieved at the same time all those who cared about her. If Pete knew what was good for him this was now going to involve months of him here, since she'd made no mention of wanting to leave the mansion. She'd actually told Ororo she wanted to be here during it because this was home and she wanted to be surrounded by those who were family.
He pushed it out of his mind as he picked up all the paint brushes that landed in odd places while he'd been working, and added them to the ones that had landed neatly in the water cup. The water inside the cup was a shade of grayish black, like tar might be if you mixed a acrylic white and peach in it or like oil without the shiny tiny and slimy feel to it. The brushes ranged in sizes, special made for different uses, and though most of them were the same light brown wood color, there were a few that varied.
Washing them off, he laid them on a paper towel next to the sink and continued on to wash his hands and his face, where paint always got to somehow, untill everything was clean of any trace of painting again. Turning off the faucet and the light, he backed out of the small room. But before he had the time to wonder what he should be doing her stomach grumbled angrily. He took a look at the clock, brushing his pony tail over his shoulder absently from where it had fallen in front.
Nearly lunchtime now and food did sound appealing.
~*~*~
{Penny for your thoughts?}
{I am worried.} The woman replied as she moved slowly through the kitchen, without bumping into her friend. There had been a long silence before she had answered the question and it was a wonder she did. She had been keeping mostly silent on this debacle so far, which was why she added the second half of the thought. {As if everyone and it doesn't help her at all.}
{You don't think your love and affection are helping her right now?} Her friend replied with a quirk of a smile touching her face, from where she sat in a chair at the table in the center of the room. She wore a simple outfit of a pair of jeans and a button up white shirt, that had been partially left unbuttoned. On the edge of a pocket could be seen her combadge, though she didn't need it with her powers. She could have alerted her team by a more subtle way -- telepathy, just the same way this conversation was taking place.
{I know they do, Jean, but she's not looking for them. In family faces she only seeks to find that which says we don't want the father of her child here, or, worse, that we harbor disappointment in her past actions and present choices.}
{Then wait for her to turn to you in need, Ororo. She'll come around. She always does.}
Ororo thought this was true. Kitty was one of the many people who lived in the Mansion who walled up her true feelings and showed people what she thought they should see. Not what they wanted to see, or what they truly needed to see. Just what she thought they should see.
She'd been living behind a wall like that all those months while the X-Men waited for her to come out. And of course, eventually, she had --with the same fire and flare as normal, the youthful exuberance and teasing wit.
Then in one morning, it was gone, again, replaced by an irritability and listlessness. Many people had tried to guess what was to blame, with guesses ranging from Pete -- again -- to missing having her own team in her own world as it had been her home for many years. It got worse from there, and no one had known why or how, until that Mansion had been shaken to the ground by a large thunderstorm.
Her pregnancy was more of a bewildering shock than anything else. No one -no one- had expected it.
{I will.} She said softly into her best friend's mind and, as if to make sure she would, she said it softly to herself, a very faint whisper before she placed a dish in the dishwasher. "I will. I will -- for her."
Then as if changing the subject slowly, she looked at Jean and asked. "How are you feeling today?"
{Penny for my thoughts?} The voice wasn't as sweet as it had been. It was held back now and Ororo wondered if that was the exact reason it hadn't been said outloud, but the thought was broken when a response was finally voiced.
"You mean now that the Professor is gone and Scott is dead?"
Jean's voice was hollow on one end and malice filled at the other, and her expression ranged from disgust to sadness. She had set her chin on her hand and was staring at the frigerator to her side, very hard. It was one of those looks where you'd use the 'if looks could kill' expression, and the existence of it made Ororo wince.
All of the X-Men had their own daemons right now.
"He's alive, Ororo," she said softly, and her friend looked back to see her staring at the table in front of her for the moment. "He is. If he was dead I'd know it. In my heart, in my soul....I'd know he was gone." Jean raised her eyes to meet Ororo's, her hands tightening on the table slightly.
"But he's not-" she moved her chair out, getting up from it. "He's alive and the Professor is wrong. He's alive."
Listening to the sound of Jean's voice made a chill run down the weather witches spine. It was like listening to someone slowly lose it. Her voice was filled with this insane sound that said she had to be right and no one else could be, because they were wrong. She'd been like this since their return from the battle when they'd figured out the meaning of The Twelve. The battle where Scott had sacrificed himself.
He was an emblem for the X-Men. He was someone those to come would look up to, would base their lives as X-Men on. He would be a role model and to some an idol of what being an X-Men truly meant.
To them he would be Scott Summers. But to those here now he would be father, husband, team mate and most of all, friend, and beyond that even, family.
The door to the kitchen swung open and Piotr walked in, looking at the silent scene -- Ororo near the sink and Jean standing with her back to him staring at Ororo -- and he wondering if he'd come in at the wrong time. There were other places in the mansion where he could get food if he wanted or needed it.
Of the three it was Ororo who reacted fastest though. Her gaze shifted to Jean and then back to Piotr as she asked simply, "How's your painting coming?"
"It's good so far -- I've almost captured exactly what I wanted," he replied. His voice was fatigued, one of the two women in the room noticed. "And after getting interrupted once or twice, I thought it might be good to take a break."
"Interrupted?" Jean asked, raising an eyebrow. That was curious, since the entire mansion was mostly empty at the moment -- either out or busy.
"Da." Piotr looked momentarily unsure, and his mouth closed so that it look like he might not say another word. "Once by Katya and Pete leaving, and a second time when Sara asked to borrow a book."
"Which book?"
"She's already left?"
Both questions came at once and Piotr felt obliged to answer since he'd started it, even though he felt he'd rather tackle the debate about the book Marrow had borrowed, rather than spawn another discussion about the fact Pete Wisdom had taken Kitty out of the house. There were many conversations about that going on that stopped and started spontaneously from the smallest things.
"An art book covering startling art in the eighteenth and ninetieth century," he answered Jean's curious expression before looking at Ororo as she pulled a glass down from a shelf -- for tea, he guessed, as it was what she drank most. "And Katya left about twenty minutes ago, though I don't know to where."
"It's na our business wher' she's goin'." A gruff voice came from behind Piotr who'd literally jumped with surprise, an interesting sight for a man so large; it was Logan. Clad in his normal attire of blue jeans and a shirt with buttons and short sleeves, if they hadn't known him better one would have thought he was in the mood for a brawl the way he looked.
The comment stifled any response from Piotr, and Jean just sat down in her chair again, pulling it in with her, since she didn't have a comment. Ororo, who was about the fact that they'd just left without telling anyone anything, did say something even as he stalked the kitchen and open the fridge.
"You're not worried about her?"
Shutting the frigerator, a cold beer in his hand now, he looked at the weather witch, their eyes at two very different heights -- two people who could look very terrifying at other times, while the other two looked on. He popped the tab of the can and everyone could hear the fizz in the silence before he answered.
"She's a' big girl an' can handle her own problems, But if he h'rts her 'gain," he said taking a sip and heading for the door, but it wasn't in anyone's imagination that he opened the door, heading out and followed it up with, "I'll kill 'im.
to be continued