As usual, I'm sorry about the delay - I just got done with exams, so those kind of consumed my life.

Disclaimer: Not mine.

-

My First Kill

While still in high school, Kitty had discovered a love for physics, which Professor Xavier had regarded perfectly fitting considering the unique nature of her abilities. Indeed, while she had encountered antipathy among many of the student body of Chicago, her physics class was an exception: her professor in his opening lecture had singled her out in particular, referring to her enthusiastically as a "Copenhagen wet dream." She had been embarrassed, of course, especially when he'd enthused about the class studying her talents throughout the year and how they related to quantum mechanics. While initially she had been uncomfortable being the object of study of an entire physics department, she grew to enjoy her rare moment in the sun. Everyone still looked at her like she was different, but they didn't look down on her for once. Kitty might have gone as far to say they looked up to her.

Despite her appreciation for her physics class, she was finding it extremely hard to try to study on a Sunday morning. Allison had gone out, but even the silence of the dorm room couldn't persuade Kitty to actually pay attention to her textbook. She'd read a few lines and then lose her focus. Logan would've been disappointed in her.

Her argument with Lance was stuck on a permanent loop in her head, and no matter what she did the loop wouldn't stop. They were so screwed up. Why couldn't they just be friends again? It wasn't that she didn't care about him. She did. Probably too much for her own good. Leaving behind her friends and her relationship with Lance had been the hardest thing about going to college, but things had just gotten to the point where she had to leave. She was so tired of being an X-Man. She'd just wanted to be Kitty again, and it was hard to just be Kitty when you lived in a house full of mutants.

And she couldn't ask Lance to move with her, although she would've if she could have. He would have in an instant, and that was the problem. Just because she needed space for herself shouldn't have meant that he'd leave all his friends and his job behind for her. S.H.I.E.L.D. frustrated her constantly, but on the whole she thought it had a great effect on Lance's life, and for the few months he'd been employed during their relationship he'd been happier than she'd ever seen him. She couldn't ask him to leave that.

Besides, she'd come back for good eventually. It was a long time to wait, but if they were really going to end up together in the long run, then what difference would four years make? She was eighteen years old. She had her whole life ahead of her. No need to make any huge choices yet.

An outsider might have found it amusing that Kitty had an underlying fear of commitment while Lance, the proverbial bad boy who lived on the edge, had no qualms whatsoever. Lance could unequivocally put his entire heart into something (or someone) and not question it once. Kitty had problems with that. Every day during their relationship she'd found herself growing more and more attached to Lance as he let slip small little details about himself that he'd hidden from her to start, the little pieces of information that defined really knowing someone. Her feelings for Lance had gotten to the point where she'd started to get scared. She hadn't even been out of high school, yet already she could see herself together with one guy for the foreseeable future. It was alternately the most thrilling and most terrifying thought in the world, although in this case, the terror had won.

It had been nearly two months since their argument and split-up, and the time away from Lance had done nothing to ease her feelings for him. If anything, it had backfired. She was getting sick of missing him every day, and more and more she had to stop herself from thinking about him during class. She felt like a complete sap, that this one guy could do this to her, and that in her time away from him she'd only fallen for him even more, but that was the nature of the beast.

Her experience at the university hadn't exactly made her forget about all the people she missed, either. She'd quickly found that it was equally as hard to be just Kitty in the middle of a bunch of humans as it had been in the middle of a bunch of mutants. The prejudice of those around her had been striking. She'd encountered it in Bayville, but at least there she hadn't been the only mutant around. She knew there were other mutants in Chicago, but she didn't personally know any of them, and while there were several people who had been quite kind to her – or those that had been in awe of her, like her physics professor – for the most part she felt isolated and alone. She had always been a fairly happy girl, and as such she was not used to prolonged periods of depression as she had experienced in Chicago.

It didn't help that Rogue told her all about the exploits at the Institute whenever they talked on the phone. Things had been "quiet" for the X-Men recently, but that was something like saying that a nuclear bomb wasn't "that explosive." While she loved talking to her friends back in Bayville – back home, she found herself thinking increasingly with each day – she felt a pang of envy every time they told her about something great they'd done. Kitty, on the other hand, felt that she had done nothing great at all during her time at the university, and every day she missed her old life as Shadowcat, when she actually felt like she could make a difference. That was then, though. She'd made a commitment, and she fully intended on honoring that commitment.

Her phone rang, interrupting her period of reflection. The annoying pop song that she'd chosen as her ring tone played as she tried to find the phone, finally locating it under a binder. She picked it up and answered it, "Hello?"

"Kitty! It's Pietro."

"Pietro?" she asked. "What're you calling for?"

"Hang on one second." She could hear him say something in the background, and what he said caught her interest. "Okay, back."

"Did you just say Hellfire Club? Are you in a cab or something?"

"Uh, yeah, I'm in a cab. I didn't say anything, though."

"You are the worst liar in the history of mankind."

"Okay, I did," he admitted, "but don't tell Fury. He'd have my ass if he knew. Anyway, I can't talk long, your dear Lancelot will be back in a second, he just forgot his I.D. upstairs and had to go get it. I just wanted to tell you that I think you should come over again, later tonight."

Kitty snorted. "Yeah, last time was great."

"I'm serious. If you guys end this weekend on a bad note, I'm going to go insane, because Lance is going to be even moodier than he has been the last few months. I can't deal with that, Pryde."

"Okay, Maximoff."

"Kitty." For the first time since she'd known him, Pietro was actually pleading. "Come see him. I know he's an idiot, but he wants you to, even if he won't say it. I mean, I don't want to see Lance like he's been recently, both because it's annoying and because he's practically part of my family."

"Maybe I'll come visit you at the Hellfire Club," she said, full well knowing his reaction.

"No!" Pietro exclaimed. "No, that's a terrible idea. We're working. Whatever you do, don't come there. I'll call you or something after we're done."

"Fine," she said. "But what are you guys doing there, anyways? Isn't that for corporate executives and stuff?"

"We're working," he said again. "Don't worry about it. Okay, gotta go, see Lance. Bye."

He hung up. Kitty tossed the phone on the lower bunk bed and leaned back in her chair. She wasn't sure what to think of Pietro's request. Part of her just wanted to tell him to go to hell, and to take Lance with him, but that hardly seemed fair to Pietro. He was irritating and self-serving, but in this situation, at least, she thought that he truly did mean well and was looking out for his friend.

Kitty emitted a groan. They were so screwed up.

-

How many mutants does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Forty-seven, Kurt had said with that stupid grin on his face; one to screw in the light bulb and the rest to play Mutant Ball out back while Logan wasn't looking.

Kitty thought it was probably the worst joke she'd ever heard, and she told Kurt just that, but he laughed in her face. As she stood at the top of the steps overlooking the pool, though, surveying the entire area of the grounds behind the mansion, she was reminded of that stupid joke. The whole student body had set to making this the grandest graduation party in the history of any high school, one that put Rogue and Scott and Jean's to shame. In between mutant games of tag and hide and seek, everyone had dressed up the yard as if the president was the guest of honor, not a couple of nerdy self-professed X-Geeks.

"Ah, if it isn't the graduates themselves!" Professor Xavier beamed at the outgoing seniors as they walked out to the pool, freshly anointed with party hats on their heads and cheap togas over their clothes that looked more like ponchos than ancient Roman sashes. "How does it feel to be part of the real world?"

"Man, Professor, I think I've already had enough of the real world," Bobby remarked. His eyes lit up as they grazed over one of the many tables of food. "Hey, is that a chocolate fountain? Count me in!"

Bobby rushed to the fountain, followed by Amara, and Xavier chuckled. "I can vaguely recall what it was like to be young and have a metabolism that could actually keep pace with my own foolish actions."

"I only wish my metabolism was as fast as Bobby's or Kurt's," Kitty said, both jokingly and wistfully.

She got a cup of punch and stood around talking with some of the other students for a long while. After a brief conversation with Jamie she felt a rough pat on her shoulder, and she smiled before turning around.

"Good job, kid."

"Trust me, Logan, it's really not that hard to graduate from Bayville High School," she replied, only half-kidding.

"Yeah, well it's better than Rockhead and his friends have done, ain't it?" grunted Logan.

"He's not a rockhead, Logan."

"Huh. Coulda fooled me."

"I think you'd really like him if you got to know him. You're both big tough guys. You could do all sorts of manly stuff. I steal some of your car magazines and take them over to him, he loves them. You guys should set up a play date where you just mess around with one of the cars."

Logan pried off the top of a bottle of water. "You're the one that's been taking my magazines?"

"Not just me. Sam, too."

"Hey!" cried Sam, who stood only a few feet away. "Don't bring me down with you!"

"Aw, shut it, Rockhead, I don't give a damn." Logan took a deep gulp of his water. "You can get that stuff for free online anyways."

The corner of Kitty's mouth twitched. "I thought Lance was Rockhead?"

"Everyone's Rockhead to me."

"Coming from the guy with a metal skull?"

"Yeah, but I never said I wasn't Rockhead, did I, half pint?"

"Whatever you say, Logan," said Kitty, affecting a wave of the hand for further emphasis. "All I know is you should really give Lance a chance. He's been working really hard for S.H.I.E.L.D. It's changed him."

She noticed Logan flinch, and it was soon obvious that the elder mutant was distracted by the passing form of one Erik Lensherr. While the former terrorist had been teaching at the school even before his old Brotherhood had been commissioned by S.H.I.E.L.D. to form the Freedom Force, his presence still disturbed several members of the staff and faculty. Logan seemed to be particularly perturbed by the presence of his old nemesis, but that was to be expected of someone with an adamantium skeleton.

Lensherr nodded at the two of them cordially before striking up conversation with Professor Xavier, who was completely at ease with his old friend. Logan relaxed, but just barely.

"I think he's changed, too, Logan," Kitty said quietly.

"I hate to say it, but I think you're right." Logan crushed his water bottle and threw it into a recycling bin. "Still, he makes me uneasy. But I guess if Magneto can change for the better, then some punks from your high school can, too. I'm still not giving either of them the benefit of the doubt."

"I didn't think you would, really."

"You know me too well. Usually I've sliced up people once they get to know my tendencies as well as you do." It was a good thing Kitty was used to Logan's odd sense of humor. Although he might not have been joking, on second thought, which was why his sense of humor was so odd – it was impossible to tell if he was being serious or not. "How's Rocky taking the whole Chicago thing?"

Kitty frowned. "Ignoring it, for the most part. He's been worse over the past two weeks, even moodier than usual, but he's also had a lot of tough work. Fury's increasing the pressure on them. I just hope he can relax enough so that we can spend some time together tomorrow and then he can see me off the day after."

"Where is he now?"

"No clue. He was supposed to be back from his mission, but sometimes they run behind. It depends if they… get caught up."

"Don't think about that, Kitty," Logan warned. "Your boy and his gang may be a bunch of rockheads, but they know how to take care of themselves."

"Yeah, I know."

She took time to fill up her cup with more punch.

"Are you excited about Chicago, at least?" asked Logan.

"Oh my God, I'm so excited." She was glad for the change of subject. "I mean, it's kind of scary and stuff, but I mean, what's life without a little adventure and risk? If I've learned anything during my time with the X-Men it's that, I think. I know it's not going to be easy, and I know there are going to be some real idiots and everything, but I think it'll be fun, too."

"Good. You're gonna do great, kid. There's no doubt in my mind."

"Thanks, Logan." She paused and stared at the glass in her hand. "I'm really going to miss everyone, though."

Logan grinned, or he grinned as much as he could. "As long as you miss me most. I'm the best instructor you ever had, isn't that right?"

"Oh, definitely. I especially liked when I learned what to do when I'm in a knife fight with a violent mob."

"What can I say, it's an essential life skill."

"Kitty?"

She turned and immediately let out an involuntary yelp of joy. "Mom! Dad! Oh my God!"

She ran over and hugged her mother first, and then her beaming father.

"Nice party," commented her father. At fifty-four, Alexander Pryde was even shorter than Logan while not quite as muscular, but he was still an imposing figure in his own unique fashion. "I don't suppose there's any beer, is there?"

"I might be able to hook you up, if you want," Logan said, roguish smirk intact.

"Dad, this is Mr. Logan," Kitty explained. Her father viewed Logan with a look of caution. "I think you've met him before."

"Once or twice, I think."

"Yeah, he's… uh, the phys ed. teacher here. Kind of."

"I'm making sure your daughter can get in a fight with ten 250-pound professional assassins and kick each every one of their asses, if that makes my role clearer." Her father's face didn't twitch. "I'm a self-defense expert, basically. I do other stuff too, but that's my specialty. Lemme tell ya, Kitty here's one of our star pupils. If she comes back next summer for more work, I think she'd be on a black-belt level in three different forms of martial arts."

"Oh."

"That's nice," said Kitty's mother.

"He keeps us safe," Kitty said.

"I've got nothing wrong with that, I guess." There was an uneasy pause until her father spoke again. "Didn't you say something about beer?"

"Yeah, we've got a cooler for all the parents. Lemme show you where it is."

"I'll be back in a minute, Kitty," her dad assured her.

"Okay, okay." Kitty turned to her mother as her father followed Logan off to the beer cooler. "You know, you could've called me and let me know you were here! I would've gone and gotten you from the airport."

"We called you no less than eight times, sweetie. Your phone must be on silent." Kitty realized with a hint of embarrassment that this was true. "And I know you have the ability to drive through walls, but even so, we've heard too much about your adventures with driving to really be comfortable having you drive us around!"

Kitty flicked her hair back and protested, "I'm not that bad! Really! Everyone just embellishes that story until it seems like I'm the worst driver in the history of the world or something."

"I'm sure they do, Kitty. But we feel fine calling a cab."

"Whatever." A thought twisted through Kitty's mind. "You haven't heard anything about my cooking, have you?"

"No." For the briefest moment Kitty felt a glimmer of triumph rise up in her chest, but her mother continued talking and all hopes were extinguished. "But you tried to get me to teach you how to cook when you were thirteen, remember? Your dad had to take sick leave from work for three days after he ate your cookies."

"Total faker. If you ask me, he was just looking for an excuse to take a few days off."

Soon Hank and Scott gathered everyone for a good old-fashioned game of no-powers volleyball. Kitty didn't play – she didn't feel like changing into a bathing suit – but the game soon devolved from a regular game of volleyball into an intense battle of mutant volleyball. Jamie would spawn a duplicate whenever the ball was out of reach; Kurt teleported to spike balls before they'd even crossed the net; and Bobby actually iced other players in place in the pool, while Amara was busy undoing her male counterpart's handiwork. Kitty's parents were equal parts apprehensive and fascinated, although she thought they respected that while the mutants knew how to have fun, they also knew where to draw the line and how to use their powers responsibly.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the party was a raging success, but as much as she was enjoying the entertainment, Kitty couldn't help but feel as if the whole ordeal was dragging on for far too long. Perhaps it was because she glanced every few minutes at the back door, expecting someone to be standing there, or at the fence, expecting a S.H.I.E.L.D.-issued vehicle to be barreling through the wood with her favorite S.H.I.E.L.D. agent at the wheel. But whenever the door opened it was just another one of the Xavier Institute students coming back out after going inside for some reason or another, and the fence looked as strong and whole as ever with no out-of-control jeeps visible on the horizon.

"I thought your boyfriend was supposed to be here," her father commented as the party began to wind down. "I was looking forward to meeting him again."

"He was supposed to be here."

"Hm. Well, I bet he's probably on time for your dates. Just not the other important stuff, huh?"

Her temple drummed an angry beat. "Dad, just be quiet. You have no idea what you're talking about. Lance is a great guy. I don't know where he is, but he had work today, and he's probably caught up."

"He has a job?"

"Oh, shut up!"

"Let's both just settle down, all right?" her mother interjected. "I'm sure he has… excellent reasons for not being here."

"He does. He works for S.H.I.E.L.D."

Her father wore a blank stare. "I've heard that name before, but I have no idea what it stands for."

"It stands for the Strategic Hazard Intervention, Espionage Logistics Directorate," she explained. "They're the people that helped us out with Apocalypse. Lance and all his friends pretty much saved Wanda and me after we went after Magneto, and Director Fury offered Lance and Wanda and the rest of the Brotherhood jobs as a task force for S.H.I.E.L.D. when they integrated mutants into the Directorate earlier this year. So basically I guess his job is to save the world."

She knew that while Freedom Force did deal with many matters intrinsic to national security, especially now that they had earned Fury's trust after several effective months on the job, saying that they saved the world was probably taking it a bit too far. There hadn't been any serious global threats since Apocalypse, but still, "saving the world" just had a better ring to it.

"Hm." Her father was noncommittal, as always. "I'll reserve judgment for when I finally talk to this Lance again. If I ever talk to him again. It sure doesn't look like he's going to show up for your graduation party at any rate."

Kitty was beyond caring about her dad's not-so-subtle malice towards her boyfriend. She was just glad that he hadn't brought up the subject of Lance's lack of a high school degree.

At one point Professor Xavier called everyone together, and the students and few parents formed a semi-circle facing the staff, who stood in front of the pool. Xavier sat with Magneto on one side and Scott and Jean on the other. Hank and Storm stood behind Professor Xavier and Logan stood somewhere off to the side, although still with the staff. Rogue and Kurt stood together, a step away from Logan.

"Well, I know everyone's tired, but I thought I'd just say a few words." Professor Xavier folded his hands in his laps and smiled. "When I started this school, I only dreamed that it would grow to this size, and I never could have dreamt that I'd be blessed with such students. But here we are, for the fourth straight year, celebrating the graduation of yet another class of X-Men. It makes me feel rather old, to tell the truth."

A scattering of laughs. Xavier pressed on.

"We've gone through a lot over the past few years – more than I could ever have, or should ever have, asked of any of you. But whatever I asked of you, you did it, and you did it well. I did not intend for you to have to face such danger, but I realize that we live in a dangerous world, and you performed more than admirably. Some of you will join the staff here and teach those who are going through the same difficult transition you have gone through. Some of you will choose to join the full-time X-Men and risk your lives so that others may live in peace. Some of you –" Kitty was almost positive his gaze turned to her "– will go to college and join the world at large. Whatever you do, I'm sure you will be more than successful, and more than anything, I am proud to have called you X-Men."

He stopped, but no one clapped or whistled or said anything. Sensing an awkward situation, Professor X chuckled. "Honestly, I hope that wasn't too much like last year's speech. Everyone seems to have gone to sleep!"

He received a good degree of laughter at this, and so the party concluded. While most of the younger students filed inside, Kitty felt obligated to offer to help clean up, and the staff gratefully accepted her help.

"Where's Lance?" Rogue asked in her Southern drawl as the pair disassembled a table and lifted it up to carry it inside.

"He had a mission, but he was supposed to be here."

"Oh." Rogue didn't flinch as Kitty turned them intangible and guided the table through the wall of the storage shed. "I'm sure he's fine, Kitty."

"That's what Logan said."

"Well, if Logan said it, it must be true. Logan has no sympathy whatsoever."

Kitty's eyes lit up and she smirked. "So you were just saying that out of sympathy?"

They set down the table inside and had just started to phase outside, Rogue's gloved hand in Kitty's, when Kitty felt her pocket vibrating. She stuck her hand in and retrieved her phone, frowning when she saw who was calling. She put the phone to her ear and tried not to sound too irritated. "Yes, Lance?"

"Kitty?" Rogue backed off to give Kitty some space, but neither moved for the next table. "I'm not too late, right?"

"The party's over, Lance. It would've been nice if you could've been here, oh, five or six hours ago."

She was expecting for him to swear or curse or scream or do something, but she noticed that his voice was lacking any sort of energy to it at all. "Oh. I'm… God, I'm out behind the back gate, near the pool. Where are you?"

"We're out here. Hang on, I'll go through the fence and walk you in."

She ended the call and gave Rogue a meaningful look.

"Don't be too harsh on him," Rogue warned her. "You don't know what he may have been through today."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll be right back."

She ran past the trees and to the fence, phasing straight through. Lance's jeep was parked by the curb outside the outer fence of the institute, and he was leaning up against the passenger side door.

"Sorry I'm late."

"Yeah, I figured. Come on, it's a long walk back. I ran and it took me a while."

She grabbed him by the hand and led him through the fence. There was still a considerable distance through the trees to the pool, and they walked in silence for a short while.

"How was your mission?" she asked, out of civility rather than genuine interest.

Lance grunted in response.

"Okay. You don't want to talk. I get it."

"Kitty."

"No, it's fine, Lance. Let's just mope while we walk, I love it when we do that."

"Kitty, stop."

She could see the vague outlines of Rogue, Scott, and then, further off, Logan and her parents, but they were far out of earshot and consumed by darkness. "What is it, Lance?"

"I don't want you to go to college," he said.

"Excuse me, I thought you said that you didn't want me to pursue my own ambitions and dreams." She tried to control herself, but for all of Logan's meditation techniques she'd been taught she couldn't do it. "Oh, that's fine, Lance. That's just great. Why didn't I think of it earlier?"

"I can't do this right now, Kitty. I don't want to fight again. I just can't deal with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the idiots I live with and you leaving all at the same time."

"Like I don't have a ton on my plate? Yeah, Lance, you've got a job. Welcome to the real world!"

"You know nothing about the real world!" he growled, and if Kitty hadn't known Lance so intimately she would've been frightened. "You come from your middle-class happy household with parents that loved you and actually gave a damn, and you tell me welcome to the real world? I've lived in the real world, Kitty, and the real world is full of a bunch of junkie parents who beat their kids when they've had a bad panic attack. The real world is full of suicide and poor people and shit that we read about in school but you never though would actually happen. The real world is a bunch of crappy foster homes all in a row where the foster parents are only in it for the money! People die in the real world, Kitty. It's not like your holy X-Men where the good guys always win and the bad guys never really meant it."

"I'm so sick of you bringing up my parents every time something doesn't go your way!" she spat back, taking a step forward. "Yeah, you had a crappy childhood, I get that. But how about you tell me about it when I ask you? How come you only ever bring it up when we get into a fight, as if that guilt trip just proves that you're right? I'm not going to be guilt tripped into anything, Lance. And I know about the real world. I know what it's like to have people hate you, where everyone you know is afraid of you! Even before I was an X-Man, I was a loser back in high school, I had no friends. So don't talk to me like I'm some naïve kid, okay?"

Lance laughed and shook his head. "You don't get it, do you? I cannot deal with this right now, I really can't."

"Tell me, Lance! Tell me what it is I don't get."

He said nothing.

"Tell me!" she repeated.

He looked at her long and hard. She began to think that she wasn't looking at big bad Lance Alvers any more, but instead a lost ten-year-old who couldn't understand why he wasn't living with his mom and dad like he used to. But then again, maybe those two had always been one and the same.

"You asked about my mission," he said. "You really want to know how it went?"

"Yes," Kitty replied, in spite of the rising feeling of foreboding in her chest. "Yes."

"All right. Let me tell you how it went, even though Fury would have my ass if he found out about this. We were supposed to do a raid on a mutant terrorist base in Argentina and abduct their leader, but the tech guys didn't do their job, and so the base still had all its security up and running, so naturally Fred tripped the alarm. But our intel was also crap, and they had much larger forces than we'd ever thought they did, and from there just about everything went to hell. There was gunfire everywhere, and we figured out it wasn't just a mutant base; they had tons of human lackies."

He took a breath.

"All right. So we're trying to deal with all the mutants, first off, and Wanda's just going insane. So is Pyro, but it's still not enough. Fred's fine, he's a freaking tank, but Pietro isn't able to disarm the machine guns quick enough and Todd gets hit. We thought he was dead at first, but it turns out he just got shot in the arm. Todd was supposed to infiltrate with Pietro as the rest of us took on the base, but that's also gone to hell, so Pietro takes me, but inside the base they're waiting for us. One of their mutants is a telikinetic and she floats Pietro so he's useless, and just when I think we're royally screwed Pyro torches the whole place and takes…" Lance stopped. "He takes care of most of them. But one of them's still there, this small skinny kid. He's got a shotgun, and he's staring at my face like the idiot that he is, and he just looks at me as he points the barrel at my face."

Kitty knew what was coming before he said it, but it didn't make things any easier.

"I know he's an idiot kid, and I know he's probably got a mom and dad that'll miss him, but I grab my pistol and he hesitates so I shoot him in the face. Blood goes everywhere." Lance's voice cracked. "He's dead. Wanda comes in and we call for back-up but it takes a while so we hide out in this sewer for a while before the 'copter comes in. Todd wakes up, starts screaming, but he's all right. Everything was just terrible. I don't even know."

"Lance…"

"I killed someone," he said. He didn't even know she was there any more. "I killed him. I've never done that before. Fury told us we'd end up killing someone at some point, but I never believed him. And when we left, I should've just put my foot down and sent the whole damn building to the ground, but I didn't. I freaked out. I just freaked out. If I do that again, I could end up getting us killed. All of us. Not just my sorry ass."

"Lance, you didn't freak out. You were shocked. It's understandable. Fury expects too much out of you."

"No, he really doesn't, and that's what really gets me. He expects us to be perfect, but it's not like he's crazy or anything. If we're not perfect, people get killed. Even if we are perfect, people get killed, but hopefully we're not the ones sent to an early grave." Kitty sensed a darkness in Lance's voice, a darkness she'd only barely detected at other points. "I shot him in the nose. His nose just went to pieces. I sat there like an idiot. And then since I'm such an idiot I nearly get all my friends killed, too. I pretty nearly became a serial killer. I'm kinda hoping I don't make this whole kill-then-freak-out routine a habit."

"Listen, they can't expect you to just kill people." She took a step toward him and reached for his face with her hand, but he flinched and she withdrew. "If you think you can't handle… killing people, then maybe you should quit."

"I thought you got mad at me when I told you to give up your hopes and dreams."

"I didn't know S.H.I.E.L.D. was the job of your dreams. I didn't think you would enjoy being a fed."

"I don't think it is, but it's close enough," he said, and it was almost a confession. "I know what we're doing, it's not always easy, but most of the time it's right, and most of the time we're saving people in some way. I never thought I'd be the hero type, but S.H.I.E.L.D… we're not really heroes, you know? We do the shady stuff, but I know it's right in the end. We're the muscle, but we also have to think on our feet. It's a challenge."

"Lance."

"You know what the worst part is?" he asked. "The worst part is that I know deep inside of me that killing that guy was the right thing to do. Maybe because I killed him he can't kill someone else or do any other bad shit. I know that he would've killed me, and I'm damn glad that I did it for that reason. But it gets at me, that I just know that killing him was the right thing to do and that the world's better off without a scumbag like him. It just is disgusting to think that I'm a killer now and the world is better for it. It kinda goes against everything that we've ever been taught, but it's right, I think, although it doesn't make me feel any better about shooting half the bastard's face off."

Kitty wanted to say something, anything to comfort him, but she was clueless as to what. She hated this feeling of frustration, this inability to even talk to her boyfriend of two years.

His shaded eyes found her own. "Don't go."

"I can't," she said. "This is what I want. I need to get out of here and stop being Shadowcat for a while. I need to be Kitty Pryde again."

"You can't run from what you are, Kit," he said. The statement was both honest and foreboding. "The moment you fell through that ceiling you became Shadowcat. You can't have Kitty without Shadowcat or Shadowcat without Kitty or any of that. Your powers are part of who you are. You think I wouldn't like to run away sometimes? But it's just useless. At the end of the day I can still make earthquakes and you can still walk through walls."

"I need to get away. I need to be more than my powers for once. I know that they're part of me, but they shouldn't, like, define me."

"And you say I'm immature," Lance scoffed. "The outside world won't let you be more than your powers. I've been trying to run away from my powers forever, but now I realize that that's just who I am, and I'm embracing it."

"Huh. You know what, this really sounds like another speech you've given me, although I think that ended with you trying to use me to steal test scores for you and your dropout buddies."

"This isn't the same. I was a dumb kid then. But now I realize that a lot of that was true. I tried to stay away but Mystique and Magneto and Apocalypse just kept dragging me back in, and I've gotten to the point where I know that my powers are who I am. It's not all of who I am, but that's all anyone else is gonna think. I'm done fighting it."

Kitty crossed her arms as she regarded him. "Good for you, Lance, but if you don't mind, I'm going to try to see if maybe I can be just Kitty Pryde again."

"All right, fine," he growled. "Maybe there still is a little Kitty Pryde in you. Maybe you're still a naïve freshman inside. But if you want to try finding yourself or whatever, you can do it without me."

Somehow this didn't feel like any other fight. Somehow it felt more final, and maybe, Kitty thought, that's because it was. They didn't have their future ahead of them. They had a couple days, at most, and this fight really could be the end.

"I don't want to, but if you want to end this I'll go on without you."

"If I remember right, you were the one who decided to end this. Just be friends. If we're that any more."

"Oh, I'm just going to go inside," Kitty said, her voice surprisingly emotionless. "Goodbye, Lance. Maybe we can talk when you're done growing up."

"Hm, maybe." She felt his eyes on her as she started to walk away. "So long, Pretty Kitty. Have a nice life!"

The emotionless façade promptly ended. She couldn't help but cry, and she hated it. She hated that she felt so weak, that this idiot boy had reduced her to a sobbing wreck, so she held her head high and tried to walk with some poise.

"You all right, half pint?"

Logan was standing near the hammock. Kitty nodded and walked past him, although she thought she noticed his eyes move to where Lance had been standing. Rogue noticed her and began to follow after her as Kitty stormed into the house and up the stairs. She walked straight through the door and crashed facedown on the bed. Moments later she felt a gloved hand on her own, but Rogue said nothing.