**Hi, Harry! Just wanted to let you know that Lockheed says, "Gleep," and here's an update! Hope all of my readers are happy with it!**
The past few days, Kitty had been very odd. He had restored the house now that the X-men seemed to have given up their search. Maybe that explained why the woman refused to leave him alone.
She would take a book or another project wherever he went, but she didn't spend much time reading or working. She stared at him, instead. Due to his peculiar eyes, he had enhanced peripheral vision, and he saw that much of the time they were together, she watched him closely.
It was disturbing him greatly.
He couldn't understand why she was staring so much at him. Certainly he was a sight to behold, but after a month, hadn't she seen everything he had? Yet her hazel eyes inevitably turned to his face as he worked.
He was glad that she had volunteered to make tea, for it gave him time alone to think, without that overarching feeling of being under the microscope. He stretched, yawning, moving his neck from side to side to work the kinks out.
What was it about his face?
Cold shivered down his spine. Could it be that she was thinking about leaving him?
He had been amazed when she kept making excuses to stay. He thought, at first, it was merely that she wanted to give herself more time to heal. Then he believed it might instead mean that she was unhappy with the X-men and wished to punish them by staying away. He didn't care. He went with her flimsiest excuses, her forced coughs, as long as it gave him one more day with her.
That was probably it. She was gathering up her courage to leave him, to face his horrid visage and tell him goodbye.
She walked in, beaming, holding a tray with the tea things on it and a plate of cakes. Cranberry. His favorites. Of course. To soften the blow. Her favorite sweater, and his, the soft peach signaling his doom.
She smiled. Naturally. Give the Phantom a smile before you leave him.
But all she said was, "Hope you like it. I brought milk and sugar. I've never made tea before. I found your recipe for the mu … cakes in the pantry."
He grunted and took a cup. He slowly added sugar to it, trying to delay the inevitable.
"Don't you want to try one?" She held up a cranberry cake.
He sighed. "Sure." He tried to sound cheery, but knew it fell flat.
Her hand brushed up against his as she gave him the cake. He closed his eyes and put the cake down on the table, taking a healthy gulp of tea. He coughed as the hot fluid scalded his tongue, and he realized he had both added far too much sugar and no milk. He quickly took a bite of the cake.
She half-rose when he hurriedly dropped his cup on the table, but relaxed as he bit into the cake. "Well, I wanted to talk to you about something … what is your real name, anyway?"
He swallowed. "Mortimer Toynbee."
"Oh." She looked down at her cup. "Anyway, I wanted to tell you something."
The alarm light started blinking over the television set. He leaped up, delighted, saying, "Later. Someone's coming."
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The X-men had not been idle. Since Kitty Pryde had gone missing, everyone had been thoroughly searching for her worldwide. The suspicions Remy had about the location he and Rogue had found in Scotland were not top priority, but they had finally come down to searching there. Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Gambit, and Rogue were driving up the private lane to search it again.
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Kitty, Toad, and Lockheed watched them approach with varying expressions of disbelief, horror, and disappointment. Kitty shook her head once, then smiled. "Stay here. Both of you. Right here. I'll be back."
Toad frowned and watched as she ran out to the road to meet her friends. Lockheed looked at him and blinked innocently. He asked, "Why's she coming back?"
The dragon dropped to the ground and pattered away. Toad sighed, but stayed where she'd asked him to, watching the monitor as she approached her friends. They stopped their car and got out. She hugged them. Lucky bastards, even the blue fuzzy demon. They all started talking at once, but she held up a hand and talked to them. They listened for a minute, then began frowning. The short, stocky Wolverine blurted out something, followed by the lanky, deceptively cool Gambit. Rogue looked worried. Nightcrawler's menacing visage and flaming eyes darted from Rogue to Kitty as she tried to answer Wolverine and Gambit.
Music blared from the speakers and he leaped to the ceiling as the sound screeched through his ears. "Stop playing with the bloody sound system, or I'll have Kitty neuter you!"
He heard no response, but the sound came down to a reasonable level. It was one of his self-mixed instrumental CDs, the one he'd been listening to the first night she came. He closed his eyes for a minute, remembering her harsh breathing in the dim light, the green coverlet rising and falling with each sigh.
Kitty! What was she up to now? He landed on the floor before the monitor, which showed the car pulling off down the lane.
Gone.
She was gone. He hadn't had a chance to say goodbye. She had left him without a word.
Who needed her, anyway?!
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Kitty Pryde sneaked back into the cottage through the back door, dodging and twisting to stay out of range of the cameras. Her friends hadn't wanted to let her go. They had to admit, once she forced them to, that she was an adult who had the right to make her own decisions, however.
That didn't keep them from following her at times, so she made sure to keep out of their sight as she made her way back to the house.
Lockheed met her as she quietly closed the back door. "Not gone Kitty?"
She walked through the kitchen, smiling. "Nope. I just had to persuade the X-men that I meant it when I said I wanted to stay here with Toad."
"He thinks Kitty is gone."
Her shoulders slumped. "Where is he?"
Lockheed flapped and walked her down to the basement room she had been staying in, then turned back to the music controls and skipped over several tracks.
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"Mortimer?"
The room was dark. The electric clock had been turned off. There were no windows.
A tight, choked British voice said, "I told you I hate that ruddy name."
She took a step into the darkness. "What should I call you?"
Pause.
"Why did you bother coming back?"
"Bother?" She sighed. "There is the matter of Lockheed, you know."
"Forgot about him, didn't I?" He swallowed. "Taking the plane, are you?"
"Backwards talking you are." She phased and began walking cautiously through the dark room.
A laugh. "Suppose I am at that."
"It wasn't the only reason I came back."
The volume started increasing on the music. The first song she'd ever heard him sing. The first song he ever sang to anyone. "All I Ask of You."
He let the music play, letting the memory play in his mind. "Why, then?"
Her warm hand rested on his shoulder. He nearly jumped through the ceiling. "Sorry." Her voice was breathy, nervous, in the concealing dark.
"Why, Kitty? Why come back here at all? Your friends were here to take you back." Hope swelled with the music.
She gulped. "Well, Drew, I couldn't leave because …" She waited a moment, then sat in front of him, taking his left hand in her right. "What this song says is what I want. I'd rather be in the dark here with you than in the mansion again with the X-men. I've found that I'm … I love you. That's all there is to it."
His hand tightened on hers. "This isn't just some trick, now, is it, Xavier?" His voice rose angrily.
"Hey!" Kitty pulled her hand away. "Whatever problems the professor has, and believe me he has them, he'd never try to trick you like this."
He spoke quietly. "I find it hard to believe anyone could care for me, much less love me."
A laugh. "I'll have to teach you, then."
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Lockheed grinned from the monitoring station, then turned off the speakers to the room where Kitty and Toad were. There was loving. There was mating. True, it was more awkward than he expected. But it was a good thing.
He curled up and waited to be told. Eggs would come. Especially since he had finally figured out that the reason Kitty hadn't been having eggs were those pretty white pills she'd been taking.