This story is mine. Really, all mine. Well, all the characters belong to Marvel, "Shrek" belongs to DreamWorks, and the songs cited (and sung) are the properties of their creators, whoever they are, but please don't sue me, it wouldn't be worth it. Thanks to Luba, too for the beta read and encouragement!
Just a Couple of Kids, after all… Chapter 6Kitty walked with Bobby, his arm still around her shoulders, down the hallway to the stairs that led down to the room that housed the mansion's computer systems. She was still angry – angry with herself for allowing the systems to be hacked, angry with the others for not being able to understand the problem without having it explained twenty plus times, angry about Piotr's snide comments. "As if," she thought to herself with a sniff, "he's trying to get revenge on me for not taking him back by undermining everything I say. What a guy!" Reflecting that even in the days she idolized him, he'd been petty and insecure, she went back to mentally listing the things she was angry about.
"Warren," she thought. What an ass. "'I knew we should have brought in some professionals' – as if he'd been here when the mansion got burned. As if he even gave a second thought to the computer system. I'm not sure he even knew we have a computer system. Shit, it's bad enough he bashed me, he barely knows me, but I always heard he and Bobby were friends."
That was the heart of it, she decided, glancing at the tall man beside her, who looked as if he were making a list of his own. For all she'd just met him yesterday – yesterday! - she had very warm feelings for Bobby Drake. There was something about him that just made her want to protect him. While she put up with a lot from the older residents of the mansion herself, frequently biting her lip and thinking longingly of the days back in England with Excalibur, no one treated one of her friends like that and got away with it.
She didn't understand Warren's attitude, or that of the others who'd been on the same track. Sure, Bobby was a self-admitted practical joker. He told a great joke, too. But Hank was nearly as bad, and everyone took Hank seriously when he wanted them to.
Oh well. They'd show Warren, and Peter, and everyone else. She slid her arm around Bobby's waist, and was rewarded by a quick squeeze of her shoulder.
"We'll show them all," she thought again, and paused to open the door to the computer room.
Four hours later, she was no longer quite so sure.
"I don't get it," she complained to Bobby, who had his feet kicked up on the desk and a stack of printouts on top of his legs while he ran his finger down a column of text on the top form. "The routines I set in place can't trace the route. Or at least, they trace it part way, but it's clear they don't originate from there."
"How do you know?" Bobby asked, raising his eyes from the printout, where he was trying to determine which systems had been accessed and which hadn't.
"Because, I – oh, damn, I don't know," Kitty replied, rubbing her hand through her bangs. "I am soooo tired, this isn't making a whole lot of sense any more."
"So let's take a break."
"What?" Kitty, replied, her eyes staring at the last printout in front of her as if the characters were going to rearrange themselves into the answer.
"A break? You know, where you get up, walk around, get a soda…you've heard of the concept, right?" Bobby replied. He'd apparently worked himself through the internal debate he'd been having earlier, because he sounded much more like himself, Kitty decided. And a break did sound good…
"No, go ahead," she decided. "I want to run through this one more time. Maybe if I change the parameters here?" she continued, pointing at the screen. Bobby put the printouts on the desk, and stood over her shoulder to look where she was pointing. He shook his head.
"If you change those, you'll run the same trace we ran four back, remember? Come on; let's get out of here for a bit. If it'll make you feel better, we can take the printouts with us. Maybe something will jump out of the stack." He leaned over to pick up the stack in front of her, and unearthed the textbooks she'd brought along earlier to study.
"Russian lit?"
"Yeah, had to fulfill my humanities requirements." Kitty replied, still engrossed in the data on the screen.
"It makes more sense in the original than the translation," he said absently, now thumbing through her Visual Basic book. "Hey, can I borrow this when your class is done?" he asked.
"What? Yeah, sure – what do you mean, it makes more sense in the original than the translation?"
"They always leave something out when they translate, and it changes the meaning. What version of the software do you need to run the tutorials?"
"6.0. I can get you a copy, if you need one. But…" she spun around, and looked at him for the first time in hours. "You can read Russian?"
"Yeah, the Prof taught me so I could read stories to the munchkin. I've got the software already, but the "Learn Visual Basic in 7 Days" book I bought online isn't all that great. Is this one any good?" he asked.
"Illyana?"
"Yeah," Bobby replied, looking sheepish. "I felt sorry for her – she seemed so lonely, and I used to go sit with her, but she didn't understand what I was saying. I suggested the Prof teach her English instead of teaching me Russian – I mean, instant brain dump – but he said he'd never been able to enter her mind, even when she was here before. What was up with that, anyway? I mean, there were all kinds of stories floating around about her, but I never got it straight. You were here then, right? Clue me in."
When Kitty shook her head, he pulled a chair in front of her and sat down on it backwards, resting his elbows on its back.
"Kit? Are you okay?" he asked, and she looked up from the floor that she'd been staring at without seeing.
"Did I say something wrong?"
"No, that's not it," Kitty replied. "I was just thinking, I guess."
"About the system? You'll figure it out, you just need a break," Bobby said, rubbing her shoulder. She tipped her head onto his hand, and felt him stroke her hair.
"Yeah, I know, it's just a pain. And I hate taking breaks, I feel like I'm giving up. No, I was thinking about Illyana. It was nice of you to read to her; she loved being told stories. I used to make up fairy tales for her, with all the X-Men as characters. Tell me, did you like her?" Kitty asked.
"Sure, she was a cute kid. Had a goofy sense of humor, too," he reflected. "She had this blue doll that looked like Nightcrawler, and she kept hopping it around going 'bamf, bamf, bamf'. It took me two days of wading through a Russian dictionary before I figured out she was trying to make the sound affect Nightcrawler did when he teleported. You did know her, then?
"You could say that," Kitty replied, smiling despite herself, remembering the original 'Bamfs'. "It's a long story…"
"Then let's take a long break. Come on," he added, as she started to object once again. "Go change, and we'll run over to Harry's. We'll both think clearer if we get out of here for a bit."
Kitty looked down at her toner-streaked top, took one more look around the computer room at the stacks of printouts they'd generated and her abandoned homework, and stood up. "You win," she said. "Last one to the door buys the first round."
Hank saw Bobby and Kitty exit the computer room arm in arm, and smiled. He'd been bringing in some coffee, knowing Kitty was as bad as he himself when it came to breaks, but he was glad Bobby had managed to pull her away. He seemed to have the knack of that, Hank mused. Bobby was usually the only one who could dislodge him from the lab once he was immured in it. He thought briefly about joining them and getting an update on the situation, then shook his head. There were times, he decided, that three was definitely a crowd.
When Bobby got to the door, he found Kitty already there.
"Wow," he said, as his eyes ran up and down her slender frame, and she blushed.
She'd changed out of her toner-splashed sweater and sweats into a pair of form-fitting stone washed jeans and black leotard. She'd pulled her hair back into a pony-tail, too, he noticed, and decided he liked the way it accented her cheekbones. Her eyes didn't look quite as shadowed as they had in the computer room, either. He'd decided not to bring the subject of Illyana up again – apparently there was something there she didn't want to discuss, and he wanted her to relax, not get more stressed out.
He'd calmed down himself while they'd worked, giving himself a good lecture about inferiority complexes. So Warren thought he was incompetent. So what? Warren didn't have such a great record himself, what with becoming Apocalypse's angel of death and all.
"Your car or mine?" he found himself asking, and was rewarded by a surprised smile from Kitty. Women never expected that question, he'd found, but he really had no problem with her driving if she wanted to. Besides, her car was probably cleaner than his was.
"Umm, yours," she said, grinning. "Mine kinda got totaled after the fire – part of the roof fell on it."
Bobby let out a burst of laughter, and seeing the puzzled look on Kitty's face, explained, "When I pulled in, I thought about parking right by the mansion to see if that could happen to mine. But so far, no luck. Sorry about the mess," he added, as he opened her car door. She seemed unfazed as she got in, just pushed the junk on the floor over with one foot.
"So, how have you been getting to classes?" he asked, as he got in on the driver's side.
"Well, believe it or not, Logan let me borrow his motorcycle," she said proudly, and he whistled. Logan was well known for not letting anybody borrow his bike.
"Maybe you should have driven after all," he joked.
"Can't. He made me promise not to take any passengers until he had time to check me out on it," she answered apologetically.
"Oh well, that's cool – the car has an advantage over a motorcycle anyway."
"What's that?" she asked, puzzled.
"A killer sound system." He fiddled around under his seat and pulled out a CD, which he put in the stereo. Soon Smash Mouth's version of 'I'm a Believer' was blasting from the speakers, threatening to rattle the car apart. "Oops, sorry – I tend to blast it a bit," he said as he turned down the volume. The car obligingly backfired, and they both laughed. "Ok, ok, more than a bit; keep your opinions to yourself," he added, patting the dash.
"The Shrek soundtrack?" she asked, as she grabbed the case of his lap. As he opened his mouth to offer to put in something else, she said excitedly, "I love this movie! Have you seen it?"
"Oh yeah, Hank and I rented it as soon as it came out," he replied, grinning. "I had a blast imitating the guy who was buying the fairy tale creatures, pretending I'd offered a reward for Hank."
"Kurt bought it, but we've watched it so many times it was worth it. Jubilee and I even got Logan to sit through it once, though he decided we were both nuts. Hey, can we skip to 'Best Years of our Lives'?"
"Be my guest." As Kitty fiddled with the keys, Bobby reflected that, even if it turned out they had nothing else in common, at least Kit had great taste in movies and music. He wondered if she liked Red Dwarf, too. Suddenly, he couldn't resist, and started singing along with the stereo.
"I get such a thrill when you look in my eyes
My heart skips a beat, girl, I feel so alive,
Please tell me baby, if all this is true,
Cause deep down inside, all I wanted was you.
Kitty was laughing, but as Bobby began tapping the beat on the steering wheel, she joined in for the refrain.
Oh oh oh oh, makes me want to dance
Oh oh oh oh, it's a new romance
Oh oh oh oh, I look into your eyes
Oh oh oh oh, best years of our lives."
They were both laughing as the next verse started, and Bobby stopped singing. "I don't know the rest of the words," he said, shrugging. He glanced over at Kitty, who was swaying in her seat in time to the music, a smile on her face, and grinned.
"Hey, you like to dance?" he asked suddenly.
"Sure, why?" she asked, still nodding her head with the beat.
"Just thinking – once the current crisis is averted, you want to go out clubbing some time? We could hit some places I know in New York…" he cut off as he realized Kitty was staring at him. "It was just an idea…"
"You like to dance?" she asked.
"Yeah…is that a problem?" he replied, confused by her reaction. Maybe it was a bit early in the game to be asking her out to New York, but he'd gotten the impression that she wouldn't be opposed…
She laughed. "Not a problem, no. I just can't think of the last time someone asked me out dancing. Out drinking, sure, Pete and I –"
"Pete? You mean Peter?" Bobby wondered if he had misread the relationship between Peter and Kitty; he'd heard it was long over, and they certainly didn't seem on good terms at the meeting, but you never knew.
"Oh god, no," she answered, putting her hand over her eyes and shaking her head as if trying to block out the image of going anywhere with Peter. Bobby silently let out a sigh of relief. "No, Pete Wisdom. We dated for a while when we were both with Excalibur. We used to go out to this pub on the mainland once in a while, and once or twice to London, but I couldn't have dragged him on a dance floor if his life depended on it." She winced at her own choice of words, and Bobby tried to place where he'd heard the name before. Hank had mentioned something about him and X-Force over the phone last month; well, he didn't want to get into discussions about ex-boyfriends anyway.
"Well, you're being asked now, so how about it?" Bobby asked, returning to the original subject. He'd remember later, he thought, or he'd ask Hank. The important thing was, not only was she not with Peter, but it sounded as if she wasn't dating anyone else right now either. When Hank didn't mention it, he'd assumed she wasn't, but Hank could be pretty dense sometimes. "You can check with Rogue, if you want, but I don't think I'm too awful a dancer…"
"Rogue?" Kitty questioned, glancing at him with a mischievous look on her face. "Then the rumors are –"
"Totally false," he assured her. "Rogue and I are friends. She likes to go clubbing, but she doesn't like to go by herself – or she didn't, maybe that's changed now that she doesn't have to worry about anyone touching her. She and Gambit weren't on speaking terms, so she used to recruit me to go with her once in a while. But you're stalling," he joked.
"No, I'm not, I mean, I'd love to," she answered, flustered. He wished he could see her face; it was too dark to tell for sure, but he thought she was blushing.
"Then it's a date," he stated, and turned the car into the parking lot at Harry's.
"You asked about Illyana," Kitty said, as she set her empty glass down on the table. True to his word, Bobby'd bought the first round of drinks, expressing surprise when Harry didn't ask to see her I.D.
She'd explained that one; when she'd inquired about getting her British driver's license, she was told she'd need to bring in her passport as a form of ID. Since she didn't really have one, having been brought to Muir rather unofficially, she'd forged herself one for the occasion, upping her age two years in the process just to thumb her nose at everyone who kept insisting she was a kid. She knew Harry had his suspicions, but he was willing to take it at face value as long as she didn't abuse the privilege. She made sure she didn't; she'd gotten too used to being treated as a legal adult in Britain to be exposed as underage here.
The beer had relaxed her, and she decided Bobby had had the right idea about taking a break. The urgency of the computer security breach had quieted to a dull annoyance in the back of her mind, where her subconscious, she knew, was still working on the problem. Sometimes that worked, though, so she refused to feel guilty, although there had been a moment when Betsy and Warren had entered the bar when she'd been prepared for a confrontation. She'd seen them by the door, Warren talking angrily and gesturing in their direction, but Betsy had pulled him off to the pool tables in back, and she'd breathed a sigh of relief.
She looked at Bobby now, who was waiting for her to continue, and decided that she wanted to explain about Illyana. Since she'd died, everyone had tried to avoid talking about her with Kitty; to spare her feelings, no doubt. But first and foremost, Illyana had been her best friend, an important part of her life, one Kitty didn't want to forget. She took a deep breath and began.
"I was thirteen when I first met Illyana. She was seven then, and she'd been kidnapped by Arcade. We rescued her, and brought her back with us."
"She was seven then?" Bobby asked, confused. "She didn't seem any older than that when I met her."
"Well, here's where the story gets interesting," Kitty explained. "Shortly after we rescued her, she was kidnapped by Belasco, a servant of the old gods, and transported to Limbo. We tried to save her, but I lost my grip on her hand for a second. When I regained it and pulled her through the portal, Illyana was about fourteen years old instead of seven."
"What? How'd that happen?" Bobby asked.
"I'm not entirely sure. Illyana never wanted to talk about the details; they gave her nightmares, but apparently she lived those seven years as Belasco's apprentice before escaping. Time works different in Limbo, and Illyana's mutant power was to control the 'stepping disks' that she could use to teleport through space and time. I'm guessing that when she escaped, she used one of them to teleport to the exact moment I lost my grip on her hand, grabbed hold, and let me pull her through.
"Illyana was my roommate, and my best friend for nearly two years, until I was injured during the Morlock Massacre and sent to Muir to recuperate. She'd joined the New Mutants, but she was never close with any of them. No, that's not true, she and Dani were kind of friends, I guess, but most of them were afraid of her. I guess I never really forgave them for that."
"Afraid of her? Why?" Kitty could tell Bobby was really interested in what she was saying, and she appreciated it. This was a bit harder to explain than she'd thought; emotion aside, temporal anomalies gave her a headache.
"Well, it was those seven years she'd spent as Belasco's apprentice, you see. He'd tried to corrupt her soul, and he'd partially succeeded. She told me once she'd had to kill several alternate-reality version of the X-Men to survive. I'm not sure, but I think one of them was me. It was something that she tried to keep quiet, but rumor got around. In any case, whenever she used any of the magic she'd learned from Belasco, a sword she'd formed from part of her own soul would appear, and she was gradually being covered by more and more armor. Eventually, when she grew angry her body would begin to transform into that of a demon.
"She was trying to fight Belasco's influence. All she ever wanted was to fit in, to be a part of the team, to be a normal kid, but she didn't know how. I guess we'll never know if she could have made it; after the X-Men faked their deaths in Dallas and she thought her brother'd been killed she pretty much stopped trying. And then came Inferno."
"Hey, I was there. That's when Madelyne tried to kill baby Christopher."
"I was there, too, at least briefly. Rachel – you know about Rachel, right?" As Bobby nodded, Kitty continued. "Rachel 'heard' Christopher's cries, and took off to save him. We came over and ended up saving Rachel, but then Meggan responded to the atmosphere and turned into the Goblin Princess – well, that's a story for another time. Anyway, Illyana sacrificed herself to seal the gateway between Limbo and Earth. After it closed, they found her armor, but inside it was a seven-year-old version of Illyana, who had no memory of the past two years. Whether it was an alternate-reality version of Illyana, or she'd somehow managed to rescue herself before Belasco corrupted her, we never figured out. Her soul sword came to me like it did whenever Illyana died, and that made everything even more mysterious."
"Hold on, whenever she died? Did she do it often?" Bobby tried to joke, but it came out flat.
"Often enough; there was a lot going on at that time with the Beyonder, and strange things would happen, then un-happen. But in any case, her sword came to me, and I left it in a stone in front of Excalibur's lighthouse for a long time. It seemed like the safest place for it."
"But for Illyana, it was like nothing had ever happened. She barely remembered me; she'd known me for only a couple of weeks after all, not counting the two years she'd spent as a teenager. Peter took her back to Russia, and I kept in touch, but there was no frame of reference. I mean, I could remember all the things we did together; the gossiping, the pillow fights, sneaking down to the kitchen and raiding the fridge. For her, they never happened."
"Professor Xavier contacted me when they realized she was dying, and I got here as fast as I could. Because, even though she didn't know it, she was the best friend I ever had…" Kitty was crying by this point, looking down at the table, and she felt Bobby reach across the table and lay a hand on her shoulder. "I think the hardest thing was that here she'd had a second chance at the normal life she always wanted, and then she lost it to a stupid disease."
"God, Kitty, I'm sorry. I mean, I didn't know or I wouldn't have brought it up…" Bobby trailed off, and Kitty raised her head and rubbed her hand across her eyes.
"No, really, I'm glad you did," she said, forcing a smile. "You see, no one wants to talk about Illyana. Her life, and her death, were both such tragedies. But that's not how I want to remember her. I want to remember how she faced down Magneto when he did things she didn't think were fair. I want to remember how she used her magic to make Rahne a dress for the Hellfire Club dance, even though Rahne was terrified of her. How she covered her half of the room with posters of Metal bands, except for one right over her bed which had a unicorn. How she took my side when Peter broke up with me, even though she really loved her brother.
"I want to remember the fun we had; how we made a simulation of the Well of Souls in the Danger Room, and Kurt got sucked into a bunch of alternate realities, and how when we tried to get him back, he reappeared without his costume. We never let him live that down! I want to remember the snow ball fights, and how I tried to teach her baseball, and how mad she got when she couldn't hit the ball.
"I want to remember how she spent all day trying to get me to stop crying after Larry Bodine committed suicide. How she convinced the New Mutants to rescue me when the Ice Queen was holding me prisoner, even though most of them hated my guts.
"I even want to remember how jealous I was of her, because that was a normal thing, too. She was so beautiful, and wherever we went, all eyes would glaze right over me and turn to her. But it wasn't like she was trying to show me up; it just happened. I was jealous anyway, though," she laughed.
"I want to remember, and I wish everyone else did too. I don't think the other New Mutants ever realized just how important being one of them was to Illyana. Most of them couldn't see past her differences to realize that underneath, she was just like everyone else. She was, though, and she was my best friend."
They sat silent at the table for a while, just holding hands, and then Bobby said,
"You were special to her, too, you know."
"What do you mean?" Kitty asked, surprised.
"I didn't put two and two together until now, but she talked about you. I told you I tried to keep her company when I could, and after the Professor gave me the Russian crash course, we'd talk now and then. Mostly I read her stories; I wasn't really sure what to talk to her about, but I remember the last time I came in she was all excited. The Professor, she told me, had told her Katya was coming. I didn't know who that was, but she told me all about her friend who sent her postcards from England, and who gave sent her her bamf doll for her birthday. It was the happiest I'd seen her, and I remember thinking that, whoever Katya was, I hoped she'd get there in time."
"I did," Kitty said smiling, though tears ran down her cheeks.
"Maybe it's small consolation; I know I can't imagine how I'd feel if something happened to Hank and he didn't remember me. I know she couldn't remember the things you can, all the things that made your friendship special. But she remembered you were her friend."
Kitty leaned across the table, and kissed Bobby on the cheek. As she sat back down, she said, "I guess that's enough."
The waitress came back around and asked if they wanted a refill, but they didn't hear her.