A Place Called Home
Part One
"Are you ready?" Peter asked.
Kitty took a deep breath. "As I'll ever be."
"Good." He nodded. "You can let go of the controls then."
She looked down at her hands. They were still tightly gripping the controls of the Blackbird that she had piloted. She laughed weakly. "Yeah," she said, mocking herself. "I'm really ready."
He gave her an understanding smile. "You can still go home," he told her. "I can do the tour alone. It's only for the next three months anyway. I'll call and write every day so you won't miss me too much." He said it lightly, but she knew that he was perfectly serious. All she had to do was say the word.
"I think," she said, "that's a bad idea. No. I'm doing this. It's about time."
"All right. If you're sure."
"Yes. I can do this," she assured him.
He gave her another smile, and then he suddenly leaned over and kissed her. She was breathless when he finally pulled away. "What was that for?" she teased, amused by his impulsiveness.
"Because I love you," he said.
"I love you, too," she responded.
She suddenly realized that he felt as nervous as she did. He just concealed the emotion better. But Peter Rasputin, the Colossus of the X-Men, was afraid. She knew he was afraid for her.
"It's gonna be okay." She spoke with a certainty that she didn't feel. "I can face him."
She didn't say his name, though. She wondered if Peter had ever noticed that. Never, not once in six years, had she said his name to anyone. She was afraid that if she did, just the sound of it could wound her again.
"Come on." She took Peter's hand and led the way out of the Blackbird. Her head was held high and her step was confident.
Inside, she felt like she was crumbling. She had been dreading this duty for weeks, ever since Storm had informed them that it was Peter's turn to do the tour in New Hope Island. To everyone's surprise, she had volunteered to go with him. In the two years that the X-Men had been monitoring the progress of the mutant community on behalf of the government, no one had ever thought to assign Kitty on a tour. They had all assumed, and with good reason, that she never wanted to see Pyro again.
Six years ago, when Magneto had been depowered, Pyro had come back to the Xavier Institute to be rehabilitated. He and Kitty had become close; so close that when Magneto regained his mutant abilities and effectively declared war by assassinating the President, the two of them had run off together, though no one knew or understood why. She had never confided in anyone about what had happened between the two of them during that time, but all the X-Men knew what had happened afterwards. She had turned him in to the police and he had gone to jail. Then he had escaped and went back to Magneto's Brotherhood, and Kitty had never been the same again.
Four years of bloody war had followed. But then Magneto had died, killed by Wolverine, and Pyro had become the leader of the Brotherhood. Mystique had also rejoined the group by this time and, in a completely unexpected move, they had sought peace with the government and the X-Men. Somehow, the two of them had gotten their hands on a mutant called Gaea who, like her namesake, had power over the earth. The Brotherhood had then struck a deal. The government would purge the criminal records of all Brotherhood members and they would get Gaea to create a place where any and all mutants could be relocated to if they so wish and live there free from persecution and fear. It meant an end to the violent conflict, so the government had agreed and New Hope Island had come into being in the middle of the Pacific with the recognition of the United Nations. Of course, there were some strings attached to the deal; the most important of which was that the X-Men were tasked to make sure that New Hope Island and its super-powered citizens would not present a threat to the human race.
Things had gone very well so far. Though there were still some groups, notably the Friends of Humanity headed by Graydon Creed, who continually protested and demonstrated against the creation of the Island, the X-Men did their duty and the Brotherhood kept their part of the peace. Pyro, especially, was lauded for his leadership. He was the man who had made the dream of a mutant homeland possible. Storm had been impressed by the change in him in spite of herself, and even Bobby Drake, the Iceman, had grudgingly admitted that his former friend had defied expectations and actually accomplished something good.
It was after Bobby gave a positive report of his tour that Kitty decided that maybe it was time for her to confront old demons and see Pyro again. After all, what had happened between them was six years dead and rotting in the past, and it was time to finally bury it. Deep, where it could never hurt her again. Where he could never hurt her again. She wanted to prove to herself that she was over him and that she had forgiven him. She also wanted the chance to show him that he hadn't broken her.
She just didn't want to think that maybe she had missed him, too.
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Mystique slipped into his room in that gracefully reptilian way she had of moving. She went to join him in front of the full-length mirror where he was staring dully at his reflection.
"They've arrived," she announced.
Pyro nodded. "Have their quarters been prepared for them?" he inquired.
"Yes. They will be staying together." She studied his expression carefully when she gave him that particular piece of news. She seemed pleased when she saw that he had evinced no reaction to it, at all.
"Good. I'll meet them for dinner later." He moved away from the mirror and sat himself down on a chair in one corner of the room. He made a little sound of weariness. "Some days," he said, "I wonder how the old man ever kept it all together."
"Erik may have been the visionary," Mystique told him, "the general. But you and I were the ones who got things done. All his rhetoric is useless in this new world we've created, so don't waste any more grief on him. He's been dead too long."
He gave her a keen look. "You've never really forgiven him, haven't you?"
She shrugged. "I understood his actions. I would have done the same thing if our positions had been reversed. But, no," she admitted. "I've never really forgiven him."
"What's it worth anyway?" he mused. "Forgiveness?"
"Nothing," she said. "It means nothing."
"She means nothing." He sounded like he was trying to convince himself as well as Mystique. "She can't touch me anymore.'
"That better be true. A leader can't afford to have any weaknesses." And with those cold words, she left him alone to his thoughts.
Those thoughts were painful. Pyro remembered how Kitty Pryde had broken him. Not that she had been the first to do that. Quite a good number of people had preceded her and done their part in the destruction of the boy once known as John Allerdyce. His parents had been the first, teaching him indifference and cruelty, and how to wield the two like weapons. Then Bobby and Rogue, his friends, falling in love with each other and casting him out with every longing look they exchanged in his presence. The Professor, for all his power to divine the thoughts of men, failing to realize that the lost boy he took in needed more than the absentminded kindness of a benefactor. Magneto and Mystique, nurturing the fire within him, giving him a taste of home and belonging, but only so they could use him for their own ends. Then, it was her turn. And, somehow, what she did to him was worse than all the other betrayals. Because he had really thought, he had really hoped, that she would be different.
And now, he was going to see her again. He supposed that he should be feeling devastated, or at least angry. But she had ripped out his heart a long time ago, so it wasn't really there to make him feel much of anything anymore.
He just felt hollow. But that was certainly better than pain.
