(Pryde/Wisdom) the Greatest Miracle of All 12/?
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!
After Uncanny X-Men #379 and before X-Men #99.
Inspired by my beta reader, Luba. Because even though it was planned she wrote me a response opinion to an earlier piece and inspired me to write huge pieces of this one before it was time for this one to be worked on even.
--------------
Part XII: "Once More with Feeling"
--------------
Sitting there in the empty and yet not silent Med-Lab she tried to calm herself enough to be 'okay' by the time she walked out of the room. Her legs were now swung over the side of the bed and her hands rested on her stomach. She'd always found it a peculiar position, sitting there holding a part of you, even seeing it on movies and watching people, but now she found it strangely comforting.
Kitty looked down at her stomach, aware of the fact she wasn't showing much at all yet, but there was this life growing inside her. Something warm permeated her thoughts and the area of her heart thinking about this and she stroked her stomach, as she said into the bleak, bright room.
"I promise I won't let anything happen to you. I'll protect you, keep you safe."
But suddenly she thought about that and about what to protect it from. What now? Were the only dangers she would need to protect her child from be scraps and bruises, cars going too fast when she crossed the streets, drugs and alcohol when it was older? Her baby was going to be human by all factors now even if the genetic code had been set to release gifts later in life.
Rubbing her stomach for a second as it gurgled, and she thought about food, she slipped off the bed heading for her clothes. She was brought short before she got to them though. Across the end of that same bed with her clothes was draped her uniform and she couldn't fight the temptation to walk to it. She raised a hand to touch it and stopped before her fingers did.
Hadn't she said just this morning she had a life and dreams she needed to see where they would lead? She had and she still felt that way, so -- why now? -- did she feel overwhelming waves of guilt now came from that fact. She had been mad and felt abandoned once again by someone who wore the X or another symbol like it and she'd lashed out for that reason.
But she hadn't meant this. This sudden and total removal of all that they were. That was like a normal kid asking for a car for Christmas every year after they got a licensee. They never got it and never truly expected to, but they asked none the less. Of course the X-Men wished for peace, for time to live their own lives and see where they went -- that didn't mean it happened.
They were heroes. They fought the bad for the good of the world -- even if it meant fighting themselves -- but they never just quit.
Running her fingers along this cold, molecularly unstable material slowly, Kitty felt a part of her being had suddenly been just changed, like someone ran a white out marker over it, or deleted a few lines of who she was. Now a choice she taken long ago no longer seemed to matter. Now her life as ShadowCat was taken from her and that warred with frustration and anger seeping into and warred with the guilt.
The High Evolutionary in one quick movement had stolen from her -- and everyone else -- their lives, their livelihood, and the things god, himself, had graced their lives with. There was this open hole in side her, like someone had drilled down, scooped out her innards, covered the hole and yet, miraculously, she was still alive.
Just less than what she had been.
Pulling her hand away from it she just stared at the uniform. She'd had a dozen different ones. Everyone progressed through different ones when they felt it was time to. She remembered the day Emma Frost and Charles Xavier had come to her house, both wanting to talk about their schools and how they were both 'perfect' for her. She'd had one of her headaches and, falling asleep upstairs on her bed, woken up on the floor downstairs about twenty feet below it.
That was only the beginning. She'd done so much, with so many, for so long.....and now? Now she was normal, human, Homo sapiens. Humans spent years yelling, telling, lecturing about how mutants were dangerous to society, lesser beings with fearsome powers who should be wiped out --
-- so why was it now she felt even less being one of them?
~*~*~
This place was still unsettling as all hell. Even just sitting there in a room that was frequented by people every few minutes -- probably sent to check up on him -- who had short and mostly meaningless conversations with him -- was. It was like being drilled by someone's family to everything they wanted to know about you and only certain ones understood there was a limit to what you'd say.
They all brought their shadow with them. That newness of being different and not used to it. To his surprise, he found himself half-smiling when he talked to Rogue and Sarah, because they out of everyone seemed suddenly to have found a new freedom in what had happened. They were the only two who succeeded in some moments in actually taking his mind from worrying about Kitty lying in that bed, something wrong with her or their child, or both.
One was now supposedly taken from all the pain she could ever have due to bones growing out of her skin, though she did mention, with a small wistful voice, that it had been getting easier and she had had more control over it now. The other, well known for her early career in crime, nervous and overjoyed at the fact she could touch people -- though she still had her gloves on.
These two flitted back and forth, coming back into the room every half-hour or so, Sarah more than Rogue, which gave him a short handle on the time. He'd been sitting there about three and half hours when Sarah left the room for this latest time, carrying the art pad in her hand that she brought down to show him since they'd found themselves discussing --of all things -- art.
Most of the jitters settled down in the first hour when nothing happened, after he'd been brought out of the Med Lab for a mistaken comment about having not eaten anything so far that day. He made a note to never say it again. He'd been dragged out of the room where Kitty had lain sleeping and given piles of food. It seemed they'd been having a free day before all the hustle and bustle, and that meant a picnic; including a famous Rogue made boysenberry pie even.
But though the meal was good, he longed simply to know Kitty was fine and everything else would be, too. He was kept updated very often and the things left unsaid filled open space for all of them. She was still unconscious when they'd expected her to wake up an hour ago now. That concept of that delay, and the fears that came with it, weighed heavily on all of them.
But what weighed on him most was what he saw while watching her lay there, pale and chilled, in that bed. Her hair, not haloed around her face, like he remembered from so many nights and mornings when she'd fall asleep fast or he'd woken up early, hanging limp around her face, her skin clammy, and yet her expression peaceful. That was a touch unnerving.
Her peaceful expression, while everyone else was dour, confused and at odds with the world. He longed just to reach out and touch her for whole minutes and then he had. The world hadn't exploded, the seas hadn't stopped hitting the shore and his heart hadn't stopped beating. He'd slowly tucked her hair behind her ear -- just waiting to be told by some person, suddenly, to step away -- and then trailed a finger, very slowly and tentatively, down her cheek, like it was the first time he'd ever touched her as he whispered softly.
"You hafta wake up, Pryde. All your X's don't know what to do with you stuck down here." He raised his hand thinking about touching her again, and still stuck in the fact her skin was incredibly soft, but he placed it on the rail and spoke with an even softer volume. "I don't either."
But she hadn't moved or opened her eyes. It was about a moment later Ororo and Elizabeth had walked back in to check on her, and found during a conversation that he hadn't eaten. He was starting to realize X-Men in droves, no matter if they had powers or not, could make you move whether you wanted to or not. Not that he regretted it too much. He'd eaten something and it had been a free meal, too.
Everyone talked and yet didn't talk about the day and what had happened. Pete was one of those who seemed to fall into the category of those who didn't talk much about it. He hadn't used his powers that often in the last few months, aside from lighting cigarettes and perhaps a few other reasons with preservation, so perhaps, that was why he didn't feel like someone had blind-sided him with a truck by taking them.
"Pete?"
He'd spent months and years in his past wishing he could be anything but what he was, because what he was had made it easier to do the jobs he'd done. Times when he wanted to put all of it behind him, even if it meant giving up his powers along with giving up the ghost. Perhaps it was also that he had a person to actually worry about where as many said there wasn't a thing to be done about their powers.
"Pete?"
Looking up suddenly toward the voice he found himself staring at the tall Asian woman, with the tattoo down half of her face, again. She was looking at him with a passive expression, perhaps touched with curiosity and concern after calling him twice and not being heard once though she'd stood in the same spot both times.
"She's awake and has been upstairs now a minute," Betsy said, glancing down the hallway before looking back to him. "I thought you should be told she's on the front porch, fresh air and all that nonsense."
~*~*~
Opening the door wide he found her standing at the top of the stairs, looking outward most probably, but he couldn't tell from behind her. She was dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt now, instead of the medical dress that had been put on during her tests. She didn't turn, so he guessed she hadn't heard him walk outside at all, so he walked to behind her.
"How are you fe-"
"Fine."
"And the baby?" Pete watched her as she didn't move, but only spoke. She hadn't moved at all. The breeze ruffled her shirt and her hair, but nothing else moved. In profile she was still looking very far out and still seemed pale to him.
"It's fine." Her words were hard and hollow, even though she still hadn't moved. Her eyes had been focused on a far distant speck and she had only to move now, to look down at her feet with an urge to shuffle them.
"Do you want something to eat?"
"I'd be in the kitchen if I wanted food," she answered him as she finally moved toward a large, white marble column, placing a hand against it. "Look, Pete, I appreciate what you're doing, but you don't-"
"Have to worry about you because you passed out in overwhelming amounts of pain in a hanger, when everyone else at most felt a sharp pain?" He asked, starting to sound a little sharper. He had sat in the mansion for three hours, just to be brushed off??
"No. I'm fine. Everything's fine," Kitty turned to look at him finally, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans. Focusing on his face seemed hard for her and she still felt a touch fuzzy. He on the other hand was trying not to remember that he'd opened himself up so much earlier, just to be treated like this once she woke up.
"I understand that Piotr called you once I was in the Med Lab and they were doing tests, but everything's fine now. You don't have to wait around on me like I almost died. I'm fine." She shivered a touch due to the fact it was mid winter and Ororo no longer controlled the skies over their lot making it warmer for then. "I'm in terrific health and I've been assured it won't happen again."
"Fine. I give up, Pryde," Pete said, a resigned and incredibly annoyed tone starting to seep out.
"What?" She asked, staring at him. Her eyes were alight with bewilderment and confusion. After all he'd taken her from thoughts of her own health, and that of her child, to his resignation for something.
"I give up tryin' to please whatever god forsaken part of you wants to treat me like the pebble in your shoe."
"What are you talking about?" Kitty had raised an eyebrow at his speech, being totally unprepared for something of this superficial voice.
"About this stupid game we're playing," he shot back with a wave of his hand, as if to symbolize everything. "I'm tired of playing it, Pryde."
"Between the baby and everyone loosing their powers today, this is not-"
"Oh, go dry up. My father is dying," he was surprised he had said it, but he was on too much of a roll to stop now. "And -will you look that? Surprise! Surprise!-, now, my ex-girl friend is pregnant with my child. Except, instead of acting like a would be worried soon-to-be mother, she wants to act like the queen of the ruddy world. Everything on her time, when she wants it and only then."
"Stop this, Pete," Kitty said tensely, starting to wonder if he'd gone insane. She hadn't done a thing to deserve this treatment. "I'm not in the mood after today and we don't have time for a-"
"We don't have the time, Pryde? We don't have the TIME?" He said, his voice rising more and more as they spoke. "I have all the bloody time in the world. I came running when you said it was important, showed up on your doorstep every single morning that I could -- to the mother of my child who has only acknowledged that it is MY child, too, the day she told me."
"It's not enough that I just had what could have been the worst complication with my pregnancy so far, is it?" Kitty spit back, not being able to stand this tirade on her pride and her after being so long silent against it. "I lost my powers, today, everyone did, doesn't that matter to you either? Something you've had all your life and it's suddenly gone and-"
"And a bloody mad man is going to take over this universe tomorrow morning!" He yelled at her, walking down the front steps. "At this rate, our child will be grown up and gone by the time you're ready to talk!"
"Where are you going?" she called out, following him down the stairs of the Institute. "I thought we we're supposed to go into town later this evening?"
He kept walking, and it wasn't past fifteen seconds when he turned and looked at her. His eyes hard, his mouth tight, and she shuddered at the cold expression he gave her. She hadn't seen it since the day he'd walked out. Not since he'd looked at her and said the words that had hurt when she'd mentioned he'd said he loved her.
"You live in a mansion run by an eccentric old man who has more money than most third world countries -- with people who've given you everything you've ever asked for, while others of us don't have that -- I'm sure there's a car you can borrow somewhere in this mess." He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and raised it to his lips, pulling out a lighter. Yes, focus on anything except the pain in your heart or her eyes.
"You can find me in the same motel I've been in for the past week when you're ready to be bloody human and discuss what's really goin' on, Pryde." Lighting his cigarette, as the flame vanished into the lighter, his eyes left her face and he turned to walk away.
If there were other noises in the world around them, neither of them heard it. Perhaps each thought the other would act. One to call out, the other to turn around. But nothing happened. Kitty Pryde stood stranded on the middle of the front porch steps as Pete Wisdom continued to walk and then drive away. There was no world for the two as this happened.
If there had been a gulf once, it seemed like a gaping chasm now and each wondered if this was that final straw.
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!
After Uncanny X-Men #379 and before X-Men #99.
Inspired by my beta reader, Luba. Because even though it was planned she wrote me a response opinion to an earlier piece and inspired me to write huge pieces of this one before it was time for this one to be worked on even.
--------------
Part XII: "Once More with Feeling"
--------------
Sitting there in the empty and yet not silent Med-Lab she tried to calm herself enough to be 'okay' by the time she walked out of the room. Her legs were now swung over the side of the bed and her hands rested on her stomach. She'd always found it a peculiar position, sitting there holding a part of you, even seeing it on movies and watching people, but now she found it strangely comforting.
Kitty looked down at her stomach, aware of the fact she wasn't showing much at all yet, but there was this life growing inside her. Something warm permeated her thoughts and the area of her heart thinking about this and she stroked her stomach, as she said into the bleak, bright room.
"I promise I won't let anything happen to you. I'll protect you, keep you safe."
But suddenly she thought about that and about what to protect it from. What now? Were the only dangers she would need to protect her child from be scraps and bruises, cars going too fast when she crossed the streets, drugs and alcohol when it was older? Her baby was going to be human by all factors now even if the genetic code had been set to release gifts later in life.
Rubbing her stomach for a second as it gurgled, and she thought about food, she slipped off the bed heading for her clothes. She was brought short before she got to them though. Across the end of that same bed with her clothes was draped her uniform and she couldn't fight the temptation to walk to it. She raised a hand to touch it and stopped before her fingers did.
Hadn't she said just this morning she had a life and dreams she needed to see where they would lead? She had and she still felt that way, so -- why now? -- did she feel overwhelming waves of guilt now came from that fact. She had been mad and felt abandoned once again by someone who wore the X or another symbol like it and she'd lashed out for that reason.
But she hadn't meant this. This sudden and total removal of all that they were. That was like a normal kid asking for a car for Christmas every year after they got a licensee. They never got it and never truly expected to, but they asked none the less. Of course the X-Men wished for peace, for time to live their own lives and see where they went -- that didn't mean it happened.
They were heroes. They fought the bad for the good of the world -- even if it meant fighting themselves -- but they never just quit.
Running her fingers along this cold, molecularly unstable material slowly, Kitty felt a part of her being had suddenly been just changed, like someone ran a white out marker over it, or deleted a few lines of who she was. Now a choice she taken long ago no longer seemed to matter. Now her life as ShadowCat was taken from her and that warred with frustration and anger seeping into and warred with the guilt.
The High Evolutionary in one quick movement had stolen from her -- and everyone else -- their lives, their livelihood, and the things god, himself, had graced their lives with. There was this open hole in side her, like someone had drilled down, scooped out her innards, covered the hole and yet, miraculously, she was still alive.
Just less than what she had been.
Pulling her hand away from it she just stared at the uniform. She'd had a dozen different ones. Everyone progressed through different ones when they felt it was time to. She remembered the day Emma Frost and Charles Xavier had come to her house, both wanting to talk about their schools and how they were both 'perfect' for her. She'd had one of her headaches and, falling asleep upstairs on her bed, woken up on the floor downstairs about twenty feet below it.
That was only the beginning. She'd done so much, with so many, for so long.....and now? Now she was normal, human, Homo sapiens. Humans spent years yelling, telling, lecturing about how mutants were dangerous to society, lesser beings with fearsome powers who should be wiped out --
-- so why was it now she felt even less being one of them?
~*~*~
This place was still unsettling as all hell. Even just sitting there in a room that was frequented by people every few minutes -- probably sent to check up on him -- who had short and mostly meaningless conversations with him -- was. It was like being drilled by someone's family to everything they wanted to know about you and only certain ones understood there was a limit to what you'd say.
They all brought their shadow with them. That newness of being different and not used to it. To his surprise, he found himself half-smiling when he talked to Rogue and Sarah, because they out of everyone seemed suddenly to have found a new freedom in what had happened. They were the only two who succeeded in some moments in actually taking his mind from worrying about Kitty lying in that bed, something wrong with her or their child, or both.
One was now supposedly taken from all the pain she could ever have due to bones growing out of her skin, though she did mention, with a small wistful voice, that it had been getting easier and she had had more control over it now. The other, well known for her early career in crime, nervous and overjoyed at the fact she could touch people -- though she still had her gloves on.
These two flitted back and forth, coming back into the room every half-hour or so, Sarah more than Rogue, which gave him a short handle on the time. He'd been sitting there about three and half hours when Sarah left the room for this latest time, carrying the art pad in her hand that she brought down to show him since they'd found themselves discussing --of all things -- art.
Most of the jitters settled down in the first hour when nothing happened, after he'd been brought out of the Med Lab for a mistaken comment about having not eaten anything so far that day. He made a note to never say it again. He'd been dragged out of the room where Kitty had lain sleeping and given piles of food. It seemed they'd been having a free day before all the hustle and bustle, and that meant a picnic; including a famous Rogue made boysenberry pie even.
But though the meal was good, he longed simply to know Kitty was fine and everything else would be, too. He was kept updated very often and the things left unsaid filled open space for all of them. She was still unconscious when they'd expected her to wake up an hour ago now. That concept of that delay, and the fears that came with it, weighed heavily on all of them.
But what weighed on him most was what he saw while watching her lay there, pale and chilled, in that bed. Her hair, not haloed around her face, like he remembered from so many nights and mornings when she'd fall asleep fast or he'd woken up early, hanging limp around her face, her skin clammy, and yet her expression peaceful. That was a touch unnerving.
Her peaceful expression, while everyone else was dour, confused and at odds with the world. He longed just to reach out and touch her for whole minutes and then he had. The world hadn't exploded, the seas hadn't stopped hitting the shore and his heart hadn't stopped beating. He'd slowly tucked her hair behind her ear -- just waiting to be told by some person, suddenly, to step away -- and then trailed a finger, very slowly and tentatively, down her cheek, like it was the first time he'd ever touched her as he whispered softly.
"You hafta wake up, Pryde. All your X's don't know what to do with you stuck down here." He raised his hand thinking about touching her again, and still stuck in the fact her skin was incredibly soft, but he placed it on the rail and spoke with an even softer volume. "I don't either."
But she hadn't moved or opened her eyes. It was about a moment later Ororo and Elizabeth had walked back in to check on her, and found during a conversation that he hadn't eaten. He was starting to realize X-Men in droves, no matter if they had powers or not, could make you move whether you wanted to or not. Not that he regretted it too much. He'd eaten something and it had been a free meal, too.
Everyone talked and yet didn't talk about the day and what had happened. Pete was one of those who seemed to fall into the category of those who didn't talk much about it. He hadn't used his powers that often in the last few months, aside from lighting cigarettes and perhaps a few other reasons with preservation, so perhaps, that was why he didn't feel like someone had blind-sided him with a truck by taking them.
"Pete?"
He'd spent months and years in his past wishing he could be anything but what he was, because what he was had made it easier to do the jobs he'd done. Times when he wanted to put all of it behind him, even if it meant giving up his powers along with giving up the ghost. Perhaps it was also that he had a person to actually worry about where as many said there wasn't a thing to be done about their powers.
"Pete?"
Looking up suddenly toward the voice he found himself staring at the tall Asian woman, with the tattoo down half of her face, again. She was looking at him with a passive expression, perhaps touched with curiosity and concern after calling him twice and not being heard once though she'd stood in the same spot both times.
"She's awake and has been upstairs now a minute," Betsy said, glancing down the hallway before looking back to him. "I thought you should be told she's on the front porch, fresh air and all that nonsense."
~*~*~
Opening the door wide he found her standing at the top of the stairs, looking outward most probably, but he couldn't tell from behind her. She was dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt now, instead of the medical dress that had been put on during her tests. She didn't turn, so he guessed she hadn't heard him walk outside at all, so he walked to behind her.
"How are you fe-"
"Fine."
"And the baby?" Pete watched her as she didn't move, but only spoke. She hadn't moved at all. The breeze ruffled her shirt and her hair, but nothing else moved. In profile she was still looking very far out and still seemed pale to him.
"It's fine." Her words were hard and hollow, even though she still hadn't moved. Her eyes had been focused on a far distant speck and she had only to move now, to look down at her feet with an urge to shuffle them.
"Do you want something to eat?"
"I'd be in the kitchen if I wanted food," she answered him as she finally moved toward a large, white marble column, placing a hand against it. "Look, Pete, I appreciate what you're doing, but you don't-"
"Have to worry about you because you passed out in overwhelming amounts of pain in a hanger, when everyone else at most felt a sharp pain?" He asked, starting to sound a little sharper. He had sat in the mansion for three hours, just to be brushed off??
"No. I'm fine. Everything's fine," Kitty turned to look at him finally, shoving her hands in the pockets of her jeans. Focusing on his face seemed hard for her and she still felt a touch fuzzy. He on the other hand was trying not to remember that he'd opened himself up so much earlier, just to be treated like this once she woke up.
"I understand that Piotr called you once I was in the Med Lab and they were doing tests, but everything's fine now. You don't have to wait around on me like I almost died. I'm fine." She shivered a touch due to the fact it was mid winter and Ororo no longer controlled the skies over their lot making it warmer for then. "I'm in terrific health and I've been assured it won't happen again."
"Fine. I give up, Pryde," Pete said, a resigned and incredibly annoyed tone starting to seep out.
"What?" She asked, staring at him. Her eyes were alight with bewilderment and confusion. After all he'd taken her from thoughts of her own health, and that of her child, to his resignation for something.
"I give up tryin' to please whatever god forsaken part of you wants to treat me like the pebble in your shoe."
"What are you talking about?" Kitty had raised an eyebrow at his speech, being totally unprepared for something of this superficial voice.
"About this stupid game we're playing," he shot back with a wave of his hand, as if to symbolize everything. "I'm tired of playing it, Pryde."
"Between the baby and everyone loosing their powers today, this is not-"
"Oh, go dry up. My father is dying," he was surprised he had said it, but he was on too much of a roll to stop now. "And -will you look that? Surprise! Surprise!-, now, my ex-girl friend is pregnant with my child. Except, instead of acting like a would be worried soon-to-be mother, she wants to act like the queen of the ruddy world. Everything on her time, when she wants it and only then."
"Stop this, Pete," Kitty said tensely, starting to wonder if he'd gone insane. She hadn't done a thing to deserve this treatment. "I'm not in the mood after today and we don't have time for a-"
"We don't have the time, Pryde? We don't have the TIME?" He said, his voice rising more and more as they spoke. "I have all the bloody time in the world. I came running when you said it was important, showed up on your doorstep every single morning that I could -- to the mother of my child who has only acknowledged that it is MY child, too, the day she told me."
"It's not enough that I just had what could have been the worst complication with my pregnancy so far, is it?" Kitty spit back, not being able to stand this tirade on her pride and her after being so long silent against it. "I lost my powers, today, everyone did, doesn't that matter to you either? Something you've had all your life and it's suddenly gone and-"
"And a bloody mad man is going to take over this universe tomorrow morning!" He yelled at her, walking down the front steps. "At this rate, our child will be grown up and gone by the time you're ready to talk!"
"Where are you going?" she called out, following him down the stairs of the Institute. "I thought we we're supposed to go into town later this evening?"
He kept walking, and it wasn't past fifteen seconds when he turned and looked at her. His eyes hard, his mouth tight, and she shuddered at the cold expression he gave her. She hadn't seen it since the day he'd walked out. Not since he'd looked at her and said the words that had hurt when she'd mentioned he'd said he loved her.
"You live in a mansion run by an eccentric old man who has more money than most third world countries -- with people who've given you everything you've ever asked for, while others of us don't have that -- I'm sure there's a car you can borrow somewhere in this mess." He pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and raised it to his lips, pulling out a lighter. Yes, focus on anything except the pain in your heart or her eyes.
"You can find me in the same motel I've been in for the past week when you're ready to be bloody human and discuss what's really goin' on, Pryde." Lighting his cigarette, as the flame vanished into the lighter, his eyes left her face and he turned to walk away.
If there were other noises in the world around them, neither of them heard it. Perhaps each thought the other would act. One to call out, the other to turn around. But nothing happened. Kitty Pryde stood stranded on the middle of the front porch steps as Pete Wisdom continued to walk and then drive away. There was no world for the two as this happened.
If there had been a gulf once, it seemed like a gaping chasm now and each wondered if this was that final straw.
to be continued