A/N: Happy New Year, everybody! I'm going to try to update a little more frequently. Thanks for sticking with me!

Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men.


Kitty washes her hands and grabs a pair of safety goggles, feeling more at home already. She loves the disinfectant-and-latex smell of the science classroom, the stark, clean countertops, the neat rows of test tubes arranged high out of reach. This is familiar territory.

At the front of the classroom, Scott is mumbling to himself as he disconnects and reattaches cables, trying to revive the ancient classroom computer. Briefly, Kitty debates offering her help. Everyone at the mansion is giving Scott his space, but sometimes she wonders if it's actually too much space. If maybe the more isolated he gets, the more mired he is in his own isolation. The thought worries her.

Only two other kids are here. Sydney, a blond girl who's a year or two older than Kitty, alternates between typing lightning-fast texts on a decrepit phone and reading passages in a genetics textbook. She'll be applying to colleges soon and though Kitty doesn't know her well, she seems nervous. Kitty wouldn't blame her if she was. The world is harsher out there.

To Sydney's left, Jason is amusing himself by making various objects blend in with the walls. He only recently learned how to extend his mutation through contact, and it seems he'll never get tired of it. Just about everyone else is sick of their personal possessions spontaneously camouflaging.

Scott's mumbling gets louder. Sydney smacks Jason in the face with her phone just as he's about to turn her textbook the exact color of the table. She nonchalantly dusts the phone off and glances over at Kitty. "It's pretty indestructible," she explains.

Kitty cracks a smile, unsure whether or not to continue the conversation. Even here, she's still shy and awkward with some people; Sydney's one of them. The other girl's air of indifference always renders Kitty uncertain.

Jason hurries over to the other side of the room and Sydney buries her face back into her textbook. After a moment of hesitation, Kitty makes her way over to Scott. "Can I help?" she asks tentatively.

"Oh, Kitty," Scott says, peering up from the jumble of wires threading their way through his fist. He looks flustered. "Maybe you could take a look. I'm not exactly well versed in this area." The frustration in his voice seems a little lackluster. When he unfolds his hand, the cables lie limp as dead fish. "Do you know anything about computers?"

"Well, I think my dad had this model when I was, like, five," she quips. She does vaguely remember playing math games on a computer like this one, her dad hovering over her shoulder and helping her when she got stuck. It's easy to joke about, but as soon as the actual memory surfaces, her stomach twists. She refocuses on the task at hand. "Could I see that cable you have there? The thin black one?"

After some fumbling, Scott hands it over. Kitty takes it and hums to herself as she rustles up her knowledge of electronics, unused for the past year. She does have some experience fixing computers. The year her mutation manifested, her last year of middle school—when stares followed her everywhere, when even the library wasn't safe from whispers—she took to spending her free time in the office at the back of computer lab. Mr. Spencer, the teacher there who taught the younger kids to type and the older kids to use Excel, let her sit in there with a book, no questions asked. For a while Kitty would read there with her legs drawn up, making herself as small as possible. Mr. Spencer mostly ignored her. After a couple of weeks, though, he'd suggested (well, more like ordered) that she 'earn her keep', so she began helping him run maintenance on the lab's computers and fix the various devices that teachers brought in. Kitty developed a knack for this line of work pretty quickly under his tutelage.

In a few minutes she has the various cables reconnected. The computer reboots, and Kitty steps back hopefully. But the screen is dark and flickering. Instructions materialize in dull white type, only to waver and disappear a moment later.

"Oh," Kitty says stupidly. "I haven't seen that before."

Scott's brow is furrowed. Slowly, he theorizes, "If you phased your hand in, do you think you could…find the problem?"

"Um…" Kitty bites her lip. It's a stretch, in more ways than one. She's also never used her mutation for something like this before. Searching blindly…she doesn't know if she'd be able to feel anything at all, phased that way. She has no idea how far her senses extend. "I guess…I could try."

She's vaguely aware of Scott watching her curiously. Concentrating hard, she reaches into the computer's inner workings.

The computer sparks and bursts. A small plume of smoke billows out and drifts overhead, and Kitty wrenches her hand back, startled. "I think I broke it," she frets.

"Interesting," Scott mutters, leaning around to check the screen. It's black and lifeless.

Across the room, Jason yells, "What'd you do this time, Kitty?"

Kitty's fine with ignoring the kid, but Scott waves a hand at him absently. "Give us a minute," he requests, distracted, his calmness giving him the air of a mad scientist. "Kitty, it looks like you shorted it out."

"But…" Her mind races. The air smells slightly like burning. Scott is studying her openly, fingers at his chin where a beard would be if he had one. He looks even more like a mad scientist now. "Of course," he says. "I don't know why I didn't realize sooner."

"What?"

"When you phased through, your atoms disrupted the—" his forehead creases, "the electric current. The introduction of your atoms interrupted the flow of electrons, shorting out the computer." He looks at it one more time. "Remind me not to ask you to fix anything else."

"I'll just do it the normal way," Kitty says sheepishly. "I mean, I know how—I used to—" She used to be so comfortable around Scott. Why does she have to feel so awkward now? "At least it wasn't, you know. Anything important…or expensive…or…" Usually her nervousness makes her even quieter, but Scott's words are careful and slow to come and quiet enough on their own. She feels an unfamiliar need to fill the silence.

"I'm surprised you hadn't already discovered it, given the way you're always taking shortcuts," Scott points out, unfazed by her rambling.

Kitty blushes: in some ways, her mutation does allow for laziness. Scott must notice the embarrassed tint to her cheeks because he reassures her, hurriedly, "It's not a big deal, Kitty. Don't worry about it." When she looks back at him, his face has tightened, his mouth set in a thin line. "Some things about our mutations we have to discover the hard way."

His voice is so faraway.

Kitty watches mutely as he rises and claps his hands, once, to get Jason and Sydney's attention. "I had something else planned," he announces. "But there have been some…technical difficulties, so how about making colored fire instead?"
Jason, color-obsessed chameleon that he is, looks enthusiastic. Kitty thinks briefly of John, then of boric acid, potassium chloride.

Under Scott's instruction, they gather materials, set up, and begin. Kitty's turned her own flames red when, at her elbow, Scott says, "you know, it could be a huge tactical advantage."

She looks up at him, puzzled.

"Phasing is the easiest, fastest way to destroy something."

"Like robots," Jason cuts in. Kitty thinks he's joking, but his face is serious.

"Exactly." Scott moves over to Sydney, who already has a rainbow of Bunsen burners blazing in front of her. Kitty tips some potassium salt into a test tube and considers Scott's input.

There's more to her mutation than she'd thought. Below the surface are whole universes of possibilities, rippling in and out of view.


Kurt only hangs around a little longer before deciding to leave. "It is not personal," he explains to Kitty, a little wearily—he's probably given the same speech to everyone else in the mansion. "I am simply…accustomed to moving around."

She and Kurt had just been discussing his mutation again, so this logic makes a kind of vague sense to Kitty. But even though she understands, she can't say she doesn't feel a bit…let down. She had this image in her head of Kurt teaching a German class, helping the X-Men incorporate acrobatics into their fighting techniques, filling an empty spot. His absence will make Jean's even more noticeable.

But she'll miss Kurt, too: his willingness to discuss his mutation with her at length, to answer all of her persistent questions with openness and unexpected wit and never a hint of irritation; the religion he doesn't hide but is careful not to impose on anyone; the slant of his English and the German words that weave themselves through it; the way he…paints himself into the air, almost, wisps of color hanging suspended around him; the playfulness that always flits just beyond his grin.

Kitty thinks about John for a second and feels a flash of guilt at how much she's noticed about Kurt, when it turns out she hardly knew anything about John at all. But maybe she hardly knows Kurt at all either.

"Will you come back and visit?" she asks him hopefully.

Storm walks by then and meets Kurt's eyes for just a second. Kurt smiles warmly at her, and she hesitates, finally giving him a nod and an awkward half smile. Kitty catches the disappointment in her face, but also the barest hint of relief—a combination she's not sure what to make of.

"Perhaps," Kurt answers after a pause, his gaze trailing down the hall. The forced nonchalance in his voice leads Kitty to wonder if what he's told her is really the only reason why he's leaving.


After Kurt's departure, the days start to fall into a comfortable monotony, interrupted only by spikes of frustration originating from Pete's art class. What Kitty thought was going to be relaxing has turned out to be the exact opposite. She used to think she was terrible at art because she couldn't draw or paint anything that remotely resembled a real-life object. But her conversations with Piotr, which are becoming increasingly more tinged with philosophy, are starting to show her otherwise.

"Just draw something, anything," Pete encourages. "Do not think about it. Just let your hand do whatever is natural."

Kitty hesitates. Her hand remains hovering beside the paper.

"Close your eyes," he instructs. She does, and feels his hand closing over hers, moving her fingers so that the tip of her pencil is touching the paper. "Now. Move the pencil"

She tries not to think about it, tries to just feel—and she can't, and she moves her hand—and her fingers spread and her fist opens and the pencil clatters to the floor.

Piotr's eyes move from the blank page down to the pencil on the floor and back up again, as if he's considering if it's art. "You know, Kitty…" his eyes stop roving, find hers. "For me, art is a form of expression. I can let out whatever I am feeling into art. But art is not for everyone. Maybe it is not for you."

"Yeah," she chuckles halfheartedly. "You think?"

"How do you express yourself?"

Kitty has to think about that one. She doesn't, at least not in the same way that Piotr does. The things she loves—reading, physics, intellectual discussions—are more like…outlets. She's never felt the need for anything more. But when she tries to explain this to Piotr, even though they usually see eye to eye, he frowns like he doesn't quite believe her.

He picks her pencil up off the floor and draws two long, sweeping lines across her paper. Kitty stares at him. Handing the pencil back to her, he simply smiles like someone who's just proven a point. "At least," he says, "now you don't have to worry about messing up the paper."

Kitty looks back at her paper. She doesn't feel much better, but at least Pete's just given her an excuse to scribble as much as she wants.


Not long after, she goes to talk with the Professor. His office door is half open as usual, a freestanding invitation to anyone, student or teacher alike. Force of habit makes Kitty knock even though she knows he can sense her.

His voice drifts through the open door: "Come in, Kitty."

She steps in and hesitates in front of her favorite chair, not sure if he's busy. But as he has always done, he sweeps the papers he was reading to the side and looks her straight in the eye.

"What brings you here today?" he asks, good-naturedly, and Kitty is set at ease, as always, by the genuine interest in his voice. He wants to hear what she has to say.

"Professor, what do you know about art?"

Xavier smiles, and before long they're embroiled in another entrancing discussion, the Professor sharing all kinds of fascinating bits of information with her, posing questions, agreeing and disagreeing. After a while the discussion abates, as theirs always do, slowing into a quiet shared contemplation. They sit for a minute in satisfied, pensive silence. Then, as if it has just occurred to him, the Professor asks, "What prompted this, Kitty?"

She laughs a little, embarrassed. "Well…I'm taking the art class. With Piotr. And he's talked to me about it a lot, but I keep feeling like I'm just not getting it, like there's something small that I keep missing, and if I found it, I'd finally understand." Suddenly sheepish, she looks down at her hands. "You know so much about everything…I guess I thought maybe you'd be able to tell me what it is that I'm missing."

He chuckles, but not in a way that makes her feel embarrassed. "This is something that many people have struggled with over the years. I'm afraid it's something I cannot help you with, Kitty." Leaning forward, he smiles fondly at her and adds, "But I commend you for learning something new, especially something so far outside of your area of familiarity."

"Yeah, I guess," Kitty concedes with a sigh. "It's just that…I mean, everyone else seems to get it. I just…didn't want to be the outsider, for once."

Xavier's eyes change. She knows he understands this; everyone here has been an outsider at some point. Without a word, he wheels himself over to the bookshelf nearest to his desk and pulls a heavy, worn book from where it rests. Moving back to his desk, he shows her the book's cover: a flash of blue and white, The Once and Future King. "I believe I have mentioned this book before," the Professor says. "Have you read it?"

Kitty shakes her head.

He lays the book flat on his desk and slides it over to her. "Read it," he suggests. "When you finish it, come and see me so that we can discuss it." Kitty reaches over and takes the book carefully, ready to make some sort of joke about nerds and summer school, but when her fingers touch the book's spine it feels tinged with seriousness. She looks back at the Professor. He's smiling at her like he's made some kind of private joke when he says, "The next book is your choice."

Kitty grins back once she realizes what he's doing.

How does he always know exactly what she needs?


Jubilee strolls down past the line of her students, gazing observantly at each one, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her chin. Kitty almost laughs at the role she's playing. Yesterday, unsatisfied with Piotr's lesson plans, Jubilee defected—complete with a dramatic exit and everything. She led a division of students away into what she called a 'rebel art class', where, true to her word, she's been organizing mostly paint-balloon related activities.

Jubes all but dragged Kitty to this new class today—that's mostly why she's here. Well, that, and she'd thought this would probably be less stressful than Piotr's class. So far, the projects themselves are less stressful, but Kitty can't say the same for the teacher. She knows she shouldn't complain, but she finds that Jubilee's teaching methods often leave something to be desired. It's mostly the attitude: great in a friend, not so great in the instructor of an art class, even if it is a rebel one.

Like now, for instance. Jubilee, apparently observing something amiss, stops at Kitty's station. "You're supposed to throw it," she says slowly. "You know how to throw things, right?"

"Remind me again why I'm doing this," Kitty mutters under her breath. Jubilee, impatiently, has taken hold of her elbow and is moving her arm in a throwing motion.

"Like….this," she instructs. "Listen, Kit Kat, I know you suck at sports, but this is just…sad."

Kitty winces a bit; her left arm is still a little sore from the moves Logan ran with her yesterday. "Okay, that's enough, Professor," she retorts. "Don't you have some other students to check up on?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Jubilee says primly, spinning on her heel and continuing on her way.

Kitty rolls her eyes. Experimentally, she tests the weight of the paint balloon in her hand. Around her, five other students are letting loose, going crazy with their newfound artistic 'inspiration'. Artie—of course he's here—is throwing balloons so fast that his arm is a blur, a whirlwind of motion. His parents are coming for a visit next week—he insisted on staying here, leading Kitty to believe that, just maybe, he's not on as good terms with them as she previously thought. On her other side, Sam seems to actually be mapping out his canvas. He keeps stepping back and observing his work, a pile of unused paint balloons lying dangerously close to his feet. Kitty smiles to herself at the contrast between him and Artie.

She turns back to her own canvas. She still hasn't been able to get the thought out of her head that she's missing something. She'll probably just never really be artistically inclined, but here, the pressure to create art has (mostly) been taken off. So Kitty shrugs, lets loose, and begins dousing her canvas in multicolored paints.


Bobby wanders in later, sweaty from having to hang out with Logan all day—or from playing soccer, whichever. "Wow", he comments. "These are all so…um…interesting."

"Thanks," Jubilee steps in, answering for the entire class. "I think it's an interesting commentary on the relative elasticity of balloons and their intrinsic value when utilized as projectiles." She smiles wryly. Bobby looks puzzled, trying to make sense of the pseudo-intellectual wording; when the class laughs, his face shifts to show mild annoyance.

He walks over to Kitty. "So…can I join?"

She shrugs and hands him a paint balloon. He cups it in his palms, studying it almost scientifically, bounces it experimentally in one hand. Then, without a word, he nails her right in the chest.

Kitty's mouth drops open. She's wearing an apron, of course, but it's the thought that counts. "Bobby Drake…"

He holds his hands up. "Just a little harmless fun, Kit." Her face must really look murderous, because he swallows and adds, hoarsely, "Please don't kill me."

She reaches for another balloon. "I hope you're not wearing anything irreplaceable."

Bobby bolts instantly. Naturally, Kitty chases him, trying to get a lucky shot—and naturally, she misses. She slows to a halt at the sight of Artie giving her the evil eye and looking considerably more purple than usual. Just like that, it begins.

Half an hour later Kitty is sitting cross-legged in the middle of the paint drenched room. Thanks to her mutation, she'd been able to avoid the worst of the fight that she'd indirectly caused, but no person or object in the surrounding area had been as lucky.

"Well, nothing like a rebellion to liven up a rebel art class, right?" Kitty suggests hopefully.

From the doorway, Jubilee snorts. "I hope you're not saying that my class needed 'livening up'." She walks over to Kitty's spot on the floor and sits across from her, trying to stare her down. Kitty shrugs innocently and lets her eyes wander away from Jubilee's menacing stare towards to colorful mess on the walls. "I want to blame Bobby," she sighs, "but it's really my fault."

"Yeah, you and your bad aim get into so much trouble," Jubilee snickers, tracing one finger languidly through a splatter of orange.

"He'd probably be better at explaining the mess in this place, though," Kitty muses, ignoring the comment. "But I don't want him to get punished for ruining this room. I mean, look at it. That's a month of doing dishes, at least."

Now Jubes is smiling, oddly smug. Kitty turns to her warily. "What?"

Jubilee's smile only gets wider. "I got washable paint. You don't have to be psychic to predict this would happen."

Kitty breathes a sigh of relief. "Jubilee, you are a genius."

She shrugs. "I know. It wouldn't hurt if people told me that more often."

"So modest, too," Kitty adds, then acts offended when Jubilee leans over to punch her in the shoulder.

The room quiets abruptly. As talkative as Jubilee can be, when she falls silent it's deep and pervasive. Finally, Kitty sighs. "Well, I should probably clean this up."


The mess is not at all her fault, but Jubilee helps clean it up anyway. Between the two of them, they make quick work of cleaning the space. Of course, when Kitty reaches her own room, there's a pile of extremely colorful clothes sitting outside her door. She scoops them into her arms, sighing. She really just wants to take a long shower and read the book she's picked out for this month, but at least laundry's an easy chore.

Piotr runs into her on her way to the laundry room. He chuckles at the sight of her, messy clothing piled high in her arms. "This is what I get for having fun," Kitty comments mournfully.

"No. This is what you get for ditching my class and joining the defectors."

She considers. "Yeah, that's fair. Sorry. Jubes made me."

"Excuses, excuses," Pete reprimands.

She grimaces as she apologizes another time; she can't quite tell if he's actually mad at her. Piotr is almost always even-tempered, but he does get angry in his own quiet, brooding way. There's a smirk on his face, though, that doesn't fade, not even as he gives her a nod and continues on his way. She takes this as a good sign.

Kitty's surprised to find Bobby down in the laundry room, his own paint-splattered clothes in hand. "Hey, Kit," he grins. "I thought someone would be down here eventually."

"Just your luck, it's me," she jokes.

"Just my luck," he agrees, but his tone is more serious than hers. Kitty smiles at him in genuine, warm surprise, then busies herself with a washing machine to hide her reaction. "So," Bobby says from her periphery. "I thought we could combine forces."

With a huff, Kitty spins back around. "You just want me to do your laundry for you," she accuses.

"Maybe." He laughs. "No, come on. I'll help. You take care of the washing, I'll handle the drying."

"Really?" Kitty asks, arms folded suspiciously.

"Really. It's the least I could do; it's mostly my fault anyway." Bobby smiles diplomatically, then adds, with mock-remorse, "Damn impulsiveness."

She laughs this time, and reaches to take the clothes from him. "All right, all right. I believe you."


Thanks to the washable paint, Jubilee's class isn't disbanded. However, she and Piotr decide to merge their classes back into one, and reach a compromise on appropriate activities. The still life disappears and is replaced by a variety of unconventional materials. Kitty finds that she's enjoying the class more than she did previously. No one's really expecting art to be created anymore, but it's not total chaos. It's more like a very well-organized finger-painting party.

One day Kitty brings down the sun print paper that Jean used to use for the younger kids' outdoor biology projects; rebels and art students alike gather around, and this time, she gets to be the teacher, to demonstrate its use. It makes her happy to think that she can bring a little bit of what she loves into this class, and even happier when she sees everyone racing outside, clutching the most weirdly shaped objects they can find, to give it a try.


Over the summer, Pete has started attending Kitty's sessions with Logan. He's a formidable opponent, but Kitty likes having a friend with her anyway. Then, just before classes start, he's suddenly an X-Man.

Then there's Rogue. Just after Piotr joins the X-Men, she comes into Logan's training session too, in preparation for her own upcoming promotion. Surprised, Kitty thinks back to the conversation she had once with Bobby, months and months ago, about Rogue. "He convinced me," she says with a shrug when Kitty casually asks her about it. It's obvious that there's more to her decision, but Rogue's never really confided in Kitty before, and she doesn't expect the other girl to start now.

Rogue seems hesitant and cautious on the outside, but she trains hard and fights hard and Kitty can already see that she'll be a good addition to the team. She still won't use her mutation. But Kitty can't blame her, even though she can think of so many ways Rogue's abilities could be used in a fight. Still, even without her mutation, Rogue is a good fighter.

And then, she's an X-Man too. And suddenly Kitty is alarmed by how everyone in this session is an aspiring X-Man, training with that goal in mind, and then ascending into the ranks of the team. The reality of it, now that she's seen it happen twice in a row, starts to scare Kitty. Maybe someday she'll be ready, but right now she can't picture it at all.

The fear she feels makes her think that maybe she hasn't learned what she needed to after all.