A/N: Sorry (again) for the taking so long to update. I'm going to be away for a couple weeks, so the next update may take a while too, sorry in advance!
Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men.
There are so many changes to process.
For one, John is missing. Kitty has to ask several people before someone tells her where he is.
She's ashamed to admit that she didn't notice anything about John that suggested he was going to change sides. Yes, he was the restless type, yes, he was rebellious, a little bitter, never really fit in at the school, but she realizes now that she'd never looked past that. Honestly, Kitty never paid too much attention to him, and now she regrets it.
Then, of course, there's Jean. Kitty is afraid to ask about what happened to her, but she knows for certain that Jean is gone, in a different sense than John. Her absence is startling. Everything is thrown off balance in her wake: classes, training, the very environment of the mansion. Every member of the team is quieter, disoriented, and it sends ripples through the school. They hold a simple memorial service for her. Kitty stands next to Piotr, clenching her fists so hard that it brings tears to her eyes. It doesn't seem quite real.
They lose Jean that spring, and in a way, they lose Scott too. Everyone is shell-shocked by the loss of Jean, but Scott, understandably, takes it harder than anyone. He goes through the motions at first, but gradually he starts withdrawing. Everyone, both students and teachers, gives him space without having to be told. Privately, they wonder when they'll have him back.
Bobby isn't the same either. He comes back from Alkali Lake much more serious. Kitty's usually perceptive, but it takes her a few days to notice the extent to which he's changed. He was never the type to wear his emotions on his sleeve, at least not all his emotions; it used to be that he'd disguise his feelings under lighthearted jokes, but now they're veiled under a thick layer of seriousness. Kitty still sees his old playfulness underneath, but it's far harder to draw out than it used to be. It only comes out sometimes, now, surprising her like sunshine through clouds.
The change in Bobby weighs Kitty down. She never realized how much she needed his cheery brand of humor. He may not be the only joker in the mansion, the only one whose personality fills rooms, but at this rate, he might be the only one left.
After the invasion, a good amount of the parents pull their kids out of the school and take them back home. Kitty's not surprised—having your children's boarding school invaded by a SWAT team intent on detaining kids for experimentation is enough to freak any good parent out—but she hates seeing the mansion so empty. Her roommate is among those who leave. They were never particularly close, but the sight of the vacant bed alongside hers makes her feel oddly homesick. Storm agrees to assign her a new single room. Kitty sleeps better, but the space seems oddly small without another person occupying it.
All of these changes throw the mansion off balance for a while. Schedules have to be adjusted, classes moved, training sessions and self-defense seminars reorganized. All of this keeps everyone moving too fast to dwell on anything for too long. Kitty is caught up in the blur just like everyone else, but it doesn't fool her. She suspects it doesn't really fool anyone.
For the first few days after his return from Alkali Lake, the Professor refuses to talk to Kitty.
He never declines outright, but every time she knocks on the door of his office he tells her to come back later, and if she stays after class, he claims to be busy. His constant rebuffs start to make Kitty feel bad for even trying.
She's floundering a bit just like everyone else, and the Professor has grown to be something of a mentor for her. She trusts and respects him and looks to him for guidance, and even though she knows he's dealing with worse than she is, it doesn't hurt any less that he won't see her.
Even Logan notices. "Charles is just going through a hard time," he says by way of explanation. "If you need to talk…" she sees him hesitate once he realizes where his own sentence is going. "…uh, you can come to me," he offers reluctantly, looking so uncomfortable that Kitty knows she won't. She almost laughs at the thought.
She contents herself by reading for long hours in the library, late at night when the mansion grows peaceful, and waits until the Professor is ready.
Kitty officially meets Kurt on the third day. She's piling clothing indiscriminately into a washing machine, humming distractedly to herself, when he materializes unexpectedly in the room. One moment she's loading in the last few shirts, and the next a dark, smoky blur appears in the corner of her eye. Kitty knocks against the washing machine in her surprise, and Kurt spins around at the sound to find her there. "Ah, sorry, Fräulein," he apologizes. "I seem to have miscalculated."
Kitty hesitates a moment. She's seen Kurt before—across the hall, outside with Storm a few times, in the kitchen—but she's never seen his mutation in action, and for that matter, she's never seen the tattooed blue skin or the tail up close. She can't imagine having a mutation that affects physical appearance so drastically. Kitty is so used to fitting in, being invisible. Ashamed, she remembers how she took a step back the first time she saw him, when he stepped out of the jet instead of the mutant she was expecting. She wonders how often he gets a reaction like that.
Kurt is studying her curiously. "Fräulein?"
Flustered, Kitty wipes her hands on her jeans. "Sorry about that. I'm, uh…I'm Kitty."
"Kitty?" Kurt repeats. He tilts his head thoughtfully. "That is a strange name."
"It's short for Katherine," she explains, considering for the thousandth time just going by that name instead. It would save a lot of questions and teasing and bad nicknames.
"Ah." Kurt smiles, revealing small white fangs. "I am Kurt Wagner, otherwise known as Nightcrawler." Kitty likes the strange lilt of his voice, the traces of his native language.
"Nice to meet you."
"Likewise."
She turns, slightly awkwardly, back to the washing machine and carefully tips in a capful of detergent. One of her shirts is caught in the door so she phases a hand in to loosen it. Kurt watches with interest.
"You are the little girl who walks through walls."
Kitty twists the dial and punches the start button, filling the room with background noise that she has always found oddly calming. "I'm not really a 'little girl'" she corrects.
"Ah," Kurt says. "You may not be young, but you are most certainly little."
"Yeah," she mumbles, suddenly shy. "I've been told. So you, um…you teleport?"
"Yes," he answers with a toothy, vaguely mischievous smile. "I have already given a demonstration."
After a beat, Kitty returns the smile. "How far can you travel?" she asks curiously. "You said you'd miscalculated. Does that happen a lot? How do you know where you're going? How precisely can you control where you end up?"
"You ask many questions."
"Scientific curiosity," Kitty mutters sheepishly. She feels an uncontrollable blush spreading across her cheeks. Kurt notices.
"Do not be embarrassed. I am glad that you are interested." The washing machine emits a low growling noise and they both jump; Kurt checks the watch on his wrist. "I will answer your questions, but first, could you direct me towards the office of Professor Xavier? I am a little lost, and I do not want to be late."
Kitty's face falls at the mention of the Professor before she catches it. "Uh, sure. You can follow me; I'm headed in that direction."
On the way, Kurt explains the limitations and nuances of his mutation. He tells her there's a kind of map inside of him, one he feels intuitively instead of visualizes, though he has to know an area before incorporating it into this map. Kitty listens, fascinated, interjecting numerous questions that he answers graciously. When they reach the Professor's office, Kurt offers in his cadenced English to continue the conversation.
She walks away with a lighter mood. Of all the negative changes in the mansion since Alkali Lake, she's glad there's at least one positive one.
On her way back down to the laundry room, Kitty runs into Storm, who looks incredibly frazzled and barely notices her. The past few days have been trying for everyone, but Storm seems to be taking the brunt of it. With Jean gone and Scott essentially out of commission, a large portion of their responsibilities has fallen to Storm. She's a very capable woman, as anybody who's lived at the school for a few days can attest to, but the workload is enough to derail anyone.
"Ms. Munroe?" Kitty calls after her.
Storm spins around abruptly. "Oh. Kitty."
"Is there anything I can do to help?" she asks, timid in the face of the older woman's obvious haste.
Storm hesitates. "Normally I wouldn't ask a student to assist with this. But in these circumstances…"
When Kitty offered, she thought she'd be filing paperwork or something similar. Instead, she ends up in charge of Jean's lower level Chemistry class, helping them review for upcoming exams. It seems ridiculous to stick to the schedule after everything that's happened, but the school has to follow guidelines from the state, so Kitty pushes past her public speaking anxiety and takes over.
One day she's explaining ionic bonds to Lauren when she has a sudden flash of the future: her, teaching a class of her own to a new generation of mutants. She never thought she'd want that kind of future. She'd never even thought about the future before.
The vision fades, but Kitty doesn't forget the feeling it gave her.
Slowly—over a period of weeks—Bobby tells her everything. About his parents, his brother, John, the base, Jean, Rogue, everything.
His story comes out in snippets, in moments stolen between classes and his X-Men training. He's become considerably harder to read. When he tells her, in more detail than anyone else had, about his last day with John, he's more guarded than ever. His feigned indifference bothers Kitty, and even though she knows she shouldn't, she tries to get a stronger reaction out of him. She usually never pushes anyone—she's always just let people be themselves, open up if they want to—but this unresponsive Bobby contrasts so sharply with the Bobby she knows that it's making her heart hurt.
Still, he resists. "He's allowed to make his own choices," he says stiffly. "I just wish he hadn't put himself into a position where…where I might have to fight him one day."
"But it's more than that, isn't it?"
For a second Kitty thinks she's done it, that he's going to open up to her completely, tell her everything else on his mind. But then his eyes harden. "You all feel bad for me because my best friend abandoned me for the enemy. But none of you know anything about it," he hisses, jaw clenched.
Kitty flinches back. She shouldn't have pushed him. What's gotten into her? She forces herself to calm down. Quietly, she says, "He was my friend too."
Bobby just shakes his head. "No, he wasn't. Not really."
There's a pause. Kitty tries to meet his eyes, but he won't comply. It's true, what he said. John tolerated her more than actually liked her. They weren't really friends, more like acquaintances who shared a friend in common. She never tried very hard to get to know him, and he never tried too hard to get to know her.
"You're right," Kitty admits finally. "It's not the same."
He still won't look at her.
"I'm sorry," she continues. "You're right. I don't understand at all. But I'm trying to. I don't pity you or look down on you or anything. You're one of my best friends here." You're my best friend. "I just want to understand."
Bobby's fiddling with his hands. "Okay," he mutters, and then he looks up at her. "We were friends," he says in a tight voice. "He should have at least told me. I respect his choices even if I don't agree with them. But he didn't say anything to me at all."
He takes a deep breath. Kitty watches him intently.
"I lost my family, my teacher, and my best friend in one day, and I didn't even see it coming. I don't want to lose anything else."
For the second time, he averts his gaze, as if ashamed to have revealed this to her. Kitty hesitates before reaching out to place her hand over his. "I'm here, Bobby," she reminds him gently. "I'm here and Rogue's here and the team is here, and we're not going to leave you."
He nods halfheartedly. "It's just—I just realized how easily you can lose everything."
"You didn't lose everything," she tells him firmly. "We're still here. I'm still here. And I'm not going to leave you."
Bobby doesn't say anything, and for a moment she's worried that it was a bit too much, that maybe she overstepped her boundaries, and since when did she have boundaries she needed to tiptoe past anyway? But he doesn't pull his hand away. After a moment, he offers her a weak smile, and Kitty breathes.
Finals, in a spectacular case of bad timing, are scheduled for the week after. Kitty finds herself spending the next few days at a table in the library, amidst students who migrate restlessly from table to table. A few kids from the Chemistry class seek her out for help before moving on to find their classmates. Bobby and Rogue take seats across from her, two constants in the bustling library.
Kitty furrows her brow at a highlighted passage in the library's copy of Hamlet. She loves reading and can remember even the most insignificant details, but when it comes to analysis she's a little lost. When she looks up, Rogue is sitting next to her.
"Do you need any help?" she offers in her soft accent.
"Actually, yeah," Kitty admits, a little surprised. "That would be great."
"I had to read Hamlet at my old school…" Rogue's explanation trails off. Kitty slides the book over, understanding, and Rogue refocuses. "Okay, I know sometimes Shakespeare sounds like a foreign language, but you see here where Hamlet says 'Oh that this too too solid flesh would melt'?" She taps a line with the end of her pencil. Kitty flips her notebook to a fresh page and starts furiously scribbling notes.
It turns out that Rogue is really good at literature. An hour later, Kitty has three pages full of notes and a far better understanding of Shakespeare. "Thank you so much, Rogue," she says, then looks up at the library's clock. "Oh god. Sorry I took so much of your time."
Rogue shakes her head politely. "It's okay. I was done studying anyways." She shares a private smile and a few words with Bobby; her gloved hand brushes against his shoulder and he leans into the touch. Kitty notices Rogue's smile turn sad as she gathers her books and hurries out. Bobby looks pointedly down at his notebook, and she doesn't say anything.
One of Kitty's students—it feels so strange to think of them that way—comes up to her with a few questions not long after. While Kitty is explaining a chemical reaction to her, she notices that Bobby has been staring at the same page for nearly twenty minutes. As soon as the student leaves, Bobby closes his notebook abruptly and says, "Can I ask you something?"
"Um. Sure."
"How do you…" his face is twisting uncomfortably, so Kitty attempts an encouraging smile. "…how do you deal with, you know, your family…?"
The sentence never finishes, but it doesn't need to. Bobby's tapping his fingers against the table, seemingly an odd nervous habit of his. Small honeycombs of ice form every time his fingertips make contact. "It's just, you make it look so easy. Giving up your family, your home. Your entire life before this."
"It wasn't. It's not." Kitty pauses, lowers her voice. "But it was easier for me. I didn't lose as much as you did. My dad and I had been growing apart for years. He was my only family, and I didn't really have any friends. There wasn't really anything left for me there." She bites her lip, worries the edge of a page between her thumb and forefinger. "But it was never easy. I just…dealt with it by pretending it didn't matter."
"Oh," Bobby says hoarsely.
"Maybe they just need some time," she offers with a weak smile.
"Ronnie called the police on me," he states flatly.
"He's just a kid. He'll grow up."
Bobby's frowning skeptically at her. He reaches for his notebook again and Kitty feels him slipping away.
"Just…give them some time," she repeats, almost pleading. "They'll remember that they love you. And that your mutation has nothing to do with it."
Frustrated, Bobby scowls. "And how's that working out for you?"
She's taken aback momentarily.
"Sorry," he mutters. "I didn't mean that."
"It's…it's okay," says Kitty hesitantly. Bobby's comment sends her mind spinning to places it hasn't been in a while, and it takes all the force she can muster to drag it back.
"You're right. I just need some time," Bobby mumbles, pushing away from the table.
Kitty watches him leave sadly. He'll recover, she knows, but there's no way he won't change when he does.
Bobby's comment—even though she knew he said it in the heat of the moment, even though she knows (hopes) he didn't really mean it—keeps stirring thoughts up in Kitty's head, no matter how she tries to stop it. The parents who come by to take their children home don't help. Bobby avoids her for the next couple of days; avoids everyone, really. In his absence, she finds it harder to still her mind. She hasn't thought about her dad in so long.
She hasn't thought about her mother for even longer.
Kitty may act nonchalant about it, so much that she's fooled herself into being nonchalant, but there's a part of her that will never stop wondering why her mom stopped talking to her. She used to analyze it, because there must have been some reason; there must have been something about Kitty that made her mother stop writing.
She saw it coming, of course. But that doesn't keep her from wondering, now more than ever. When she thinks about her mom now, it's not colored with resentment, or anger, or longing, or anything. It's purely analytical. This bothers Kitty more than anything.
The box of letters sits at the foot of her new bed and occasionally she'll reach into it and fish out the last letter, sent a little over four years ago. She'll hold it in her hands for a minute without actually reading it, even though she doesn't remember anything beyond the Dear Katherine that graces the top of every single one. Kitty read each letter only once, they day she received it, and never again. She's not completely sure why.
Kurt catches her brooding one day (when he teleports into her room accidentally, making her jump out of her skin, yet again) and asks her for a tour of the grounds. Kitty accepts, mostly for the distraction. As she leads him through the gardens, Kurt tells her a bit about his life in Germany, even teaches her a few German words. Kitty listens with her full attention and finds afterwards that her mind feels considerably less crowded. Calmer.
She goes up to her room after and pushes the box of letters under the bed. She doesn't feel like dwelling on them any longer.
Bobby finds her later that week, sitting just outside the mansion's back entrance, a book lying forgotten on her lap. "Hey," he ventures quietly.
"Hey."
He sits down beside her. After a beat, they both blurt out "I'm sorry" at the same time.
Bobby frowns. "For what?"
"Pushing you."
"It's not your fault."
Kitty's silent for a moment. "It's not your fault, either," she says finally.
He shrugs. "I still shouldn't have said it." Looking over at her, he touches her shoulder lightly. "I wish I hadn't, Kit. You didn't deserve it."
"You didn't deserve it, either. What happened with your family and John—any of it."
She watches him closely as he sighs and rests his chin on his fists. "You're a really good friend. I'm glad I have you."
"You're my best friend," she whispers, then blushes fiercely. Bobby doesn't comment, but she thinks she sees a hint of a smile before his hand reaches over to squeeze hers. She squeezes back.
It's dark out, but the moon glows over the garden and a faint sprinkle of stars is visible. Both of their gazes turn upwards unconsciously and linger for a few minutes.
"I wish I knew the names of all these stars," Bobby murmurs.
"Well," Kitty speaks up, "that one over there, the bright one, that's Spica. It's in the constellation Virgo—you can't really see it from here, but it goes up like this…" she traces a line with her finger. Beside her, Bobby laughs.
"Of course you know them all. I don't know why I'm surprised." He nudges her with an elbow. "Such a nerd."
She nudges him back, pretend-indignant. "You want to learn them or not?"
"I'm just teasing," he grins. "Keep going. What's that one called? The blinking one over there?"
Kitty squints. "That's a plane, Bobby," she points out, before realizing that he's only joking. "You're insufferable."
"You've been hanging around too many old people lately. Insufferable, really?"
She elbows him in the ribs, harder this time. When he tries to return the gesture, she lets him phase right through her. "You cheater," he admonishes.
She just shrugs. "Surrender."
"Fine." Bobby lays back, a little weary; she does the same. Their eyes drift upwards again. "Seriously, though," —his voice is a little faraway now—"teach me."
Kitty turns her head to look at him. His gaze is fixed firmly overhead, and she is taken aback momentarily by his focus.
Her fingers curl against stone as she looks back up into the sky. "Okay."
They stay outside together for another half hour. Bobby leaves her then, claiming he's cold, making her roll her eyes. But she stays, just…thinking. Calmer than she's been in so long.
The next day, they study together for their Calculus II exam, working problems and comparing answers and joking aimlessly. Rogue, studying history beside them, shakes her head every so often at their antics, but Kitty catches the smile she's trying to hide. Bobby's still not quite the same as he used to be, and he probably never will be, but they're all adjusting. She'll get used to this new Bobby in time.
Instead of giving an exam for his Mutant Ethics class, Professor Xavier holds a final discussion, a kind of debate that he stays out of and takes careful notes on instead. Each student is required to participate at least once, using points from previous classes. Kitty's not generally an argumentative person, but class discussions are different. She likes making points or disagreeing to expand the conversation, especially when the subject is something that matters to her, as is often the case in Mutant Ethics. The final debate is no exception.
When it's over, Kitty packs up her things with the rest of the students. She's given up lingering after class, although she can't help making sure she's the last to leave, just in case. She's almost out the door when the Professor calls her name.
Trying not to appear too eager, Kitty turns around slowly. He's smiling at her—he sees right through her, even without his telepathy—and the smile has a hint of guilt, but it's also warm, encouraging, beckoning. "Stay for a minute," he suggests calmly. "We have much to discuss."
