You've Got To Go There To Come Back

by lovethiscity

Set after X3. Pyro's first person account of being found and brought back to Xavier's mansion. For his criminal actions he has been given house arrest at Xavier's School and he must learn to adjust and struggles with the challenges of living there.

13. Chapter 13

You've Got To Go There To Come Back - Chapter 13
Title: You've Got To Go There To Come Back
Author: Iris, 'sleepallday' at Livejournal
Rating: PG-13.
Timeline: Directly after Alcatraz events of X3.
Summary: After the fight at Alcatraz, Pyro is found and brought back to Xavier's mansion. For his criminal actions he has been given house arrest at Xavier's School and he must learn to adjust.
Author's Note: This is my all-time first fic, and lovethiscity at Livejournal was only recently created purely to post it. As I'm a new writer, I'd appreciate any comments, feedback, suggestions, or Aaron Stanfords that you would care to throw at me.

Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men or any Marvel characters. This is just for fun. Any resemblances you find to actual people, living or dead, shows that you have strange friends.

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Chapter 13: "I couldn't. I could never."

I'd fallen asleep watching TV on the common room couch that night, which was easy enough to do because the mansion was so empty. Almost everyone was attending the book talk by Adam Weaver, a.k.a. Morph-in-disguise, at a private bookstore owned by one of Professor Xavier's friends. The common room phone ringing woke me up, and I sat up on the couch. It was already dark. The sun had only just started setting when everyone left.

I laid back down, trying to ignore the phone since I never answer it. After all, it's never for me. But it wouldn't stop ringing, so I grudgingly walked over to get it.

"Hey!" said a bright voice on the other end.

"Kitty?" I answered.

"Yeah, just stepped outside for a minute. Morph's really good. The crowd doesn't look like it's going to tire anytime soon. Just wanted to let you know how things are going," she said.

"Oh…" I said, unsure of how to answer. "Thanks… I guess? Well, I'll see you guys when you get back."

"All right. And Storm said she recognized at least two guys as Friends of Humanity members," Kitty said, lowering her voice even though she said she was outside.

"Damn it, I told you those bastards were like that!" I muttered. "Well – that's good, that's good. Maybe this'll work."

Kitty laughed, and said, "Don't worry. They've really got themselves organized here. But I'll let you know how things go, okay?"

"Uh, sure," I said. I did appreciate hearing from her. It was good to know I wasn't forgotten.

After we hung up, I wandered back into my room and turned on the old computer the staff was letting me use. My electronic communication was so well monitored that if I tried to place an online order for paper clips, about nine different people would be on me in a second accusing me of trying to help Magneto by supplying him with metallic office supplies, but hey, it was a computer. It was better than the first few weeks I was confined at the school, pretty much cut off from the world except for the newspaper, but it was really goddamn slow.

When Storm and a few other people were setting it up for me and I finally turned it on for the first time, the computer groaned and protested. I crossed my arms at Storm and said, "Listen, well, I think I'll go grow a beard, and then have some kids and watch them graduate, and then I'll come back to check on the computer."

That's how bad my computer is. But at least it's functional. And with the tightly secured watch on my internet use, the emails coming in to me mostly consist of Storm's weekly notices to all students. She even sends them to me, for some reason. Maybe she doesn't want me to feel left out or something, which makes me laugh, because all I ever do is just glance at them. They're just usually about upcoming events involving the school, announcements, new mutant tolerance issues or other newsworthy things like that. I was bored, so I opened the newest one.

Adam Weaver Book Talk was at the top. The description was pretty harmless and wasn't incriminating. The real purpose of it had all been word of mouth. Apply for Social Committees Positions. Yeah, right. Mandatory Meeting for All Research Volunteers. Not me. Hank McCoy to Speak at Public Forum, Sign Up Early To Attend. I rolled my eyes. It was at a city meeting hall; couldn't go even if I wanted to. Whatever. None of those ever really concerned me.

Kitty didn't call again, or I didn't hear it because the next thing I knew, I was waking up again to the sound of the front door. I bolted up, and ran into the hallway. Everyone who had been at the book talk was streaming in through the front door, headed by Colossus, who was carrying an unconscious guy over his shoulder. God, they'd actually done it! They were bringing someone in.

"Hey, what happened?" I demanded.

Colossus replied grimly, "They fired into the crowd. Morph can shrink so he is okay, and -"

Before he could continue, he was cut off by all the chatter that was going on through the crowd. Most of the people were talking at the same time, and Wolverine's authoritative voice finally broke out, "All right, all right, no one gets near him but Peter! Back off, everyone!"
And with that, the two of them along with Cyclops and Storm went upstairs with the Friends of Humanity guy they brought in. The crowd was starting to dissipate, and I bumped into Kitty. "Hey," she said. Her cheeks were flushed and she looked excited. I guessed nothing had gone too wrong.

"Everything go okay?" I asked her.

"Yeah, we're all fine," she said, talking as we walked. "Morph was fired at but he wasn't hit. Yeah, there were just two of them, and they had guns," she added, shaking her head. "We thought they were going to try something else, because that was pretty drastic, but Wolverine had us all really prepared. Everyone was pretty quick and we got them disarmed and then one got away, and Peter knocked out the other guy."

I nodded. "Sounds like a party."

Kitty laughed, and said, "Yeah, I'm sorry you had to miss out. It was actually kind of fun – I mean, if you forget about them being bigoted, crazy extremists, it was pretty fun."

"That's only because there were a whole gaggle of you folks and only two of them!" I reminded her.

"Don't remind me," she said.

"Of?"

"Just… I mean, we did get beat up on pretty badly on some other occasions. Not really a laughing matter," Kitty said, brushing it off.

"Okay," I said, not saying anything else about it. "So how was it otherwise?"

"Great," Kitty said. "Morph's a real crowd-pleaser," she said, shaking her head jokingly. "I think he just gets all kinds of practice pretending to be someone else that he's just become a total performer, you know? I mean, thank God he didn't try to do a stand-up comedy type thing, but he made a lot of jokes and it was a good talk he gave, before that idiot interrupted."

"Well, that idiot interrupting was the whole point of this set-up," I said.

"I know, John!" she said, playfully hitting me. "You're just always so difficult."

"You think I don't know that?" I countered.

Kitty just shook her head in exasperation, and said, "I guess now we just have to wait for them to get an answer out of that guy."

So we waited. And waited. A few days passed and I'm pretty sure that the staff wanted to keep things as quiet as possible, but no way that's going to happen in a school like this. Word gets around no matter what. Even Wolverine himself told me a few details. So far, all we'd learned was that, yes, the Friends of Humanity were planning a larger and attack, and yes, it still hadn't happened and it was still a green light for them. The staff thought that this guy, whose name we learned was Payton, was just trying to hold out until the attack happened, and then there wasn't much else we could do, so they were going to try to press him harder. That was about all I heard, though.

It surprised me a little how much waiting Kitty and I did together. We played cards, talked in her room or my room, and we even took a walk outside the mansion once. It was kind of funny how I couldn't go very far, so it wasn't very scenic, but it was… nice to be outside with her. She said, "I wish we could go there," pointing to the tree line beyond the back gardens of the mansion.

"So go," I told her tepidly.

"Didn't you hear me?" she said, sounding half-annoyed, half-teasing. "I said I wish we could go there."

"Then, I guess that's just too bad for you! Go by yourself!" I said, but I was smiling at her.

"Oh, John," she said, holding her head in her hands. "So difficult." Then she paused and said, "I know what you'd like, though. Let's go make dinner."

So, we went back inside and into the kitchen. It was more like me making dinner and Kitty helping occasionally, but it was fun having some company in there. I'd really gotten used to cooking alone, and I liked it too, but having Kitty there was a welcome change.

Bobby ambled into the kitchen, without Rogue for once, and gave us both a glance. "Hey, Pyromaniac," he said, which I hadn't heard from him in years. When we first met, he started calling me that because he said that in my case, Pyro really was short for a word that ended in "maniac." When he used to call me that, he'd been joking around, but obviously that wasn't the case anymore.

"What?" I growled, extremely annoyed. I didn't like him calling me that anymore. I never minded it when we were still… well, when we were still thick as thieves, as Cyclops once called us.

I was so busy being mad at him that I'd turned my back on the stove and didn't notice that the flame on it was growing larger by the second until Kitty was shouting, "John! JOHN! Stop it, or put it out, or something!"

I spun around and groaned in frustration, and then I managed to momentarily focus away from being angry. I did manage to reduce the flames, but it was too late – Bobby was already laughing. He pointed at the stove and said, "You have to use low heat with that kind of pan."

"Hey, I'm the cook here," I snapped, irritated.

"Nah," Bobby said. "You're just a pyromaniac."

I couldn't argue with that. Our food was completely burned. "Look, would you just cut it out with the comments, wise guy?" I said to him. I started scraping the contents of the pan into the trash, already intending to start over, and said to Bobby while glaring out of the corner of my eye, "God! You're being a complete ass, you know that? You do realize I'm here to stay? It's going to be a lot easier on both of us if you just put a fucking lid on it once in awhile."

This wiped the grin off of Bobby's face, and he barked out a short laugh. "What, so, you want us to just pretend nothing ever happened, so we can be buddies again? Yeah?"

"I never said I wanted that," I replied through clenched teeth, "just some peace and quiet."

Bobby was silent, and looked at me questioningly.

I slammed the pan back on the stove, and faced him. "Bobby, if we're going to put this behind us, it's going to start with you shutting up once in awhile instead of throwing some taunting remark at me every single fucking time you see me. So I'd like to see you try it."

Kitty was glancing at both of us nervously, almost like she wanted to pretend she wasn't hearing any of this. Finally, Bobby shrugged. He said, "Whatever you say," half-heartedly and left the kitchen.

Kitty gave me a concerned look, and we worked in a stormy silence for a few minutes before she finally said, "You didn't mean that, did you?"

"Mean what?" I asked.

"You said something about you guys putting that behind you…" Kitty started to say, before I cut her off.

"Oh, come on!" I yelled. "Please. I didn't say I wanted us to be… well, whatever. Anyone can see it'd make everything hell of a lot easier if we did somehow make up, or something, but it's not going to happen anytime soon. All I was saying was that things would be easier that way, that's all." I finished my sentence a lot more calmly than I'd started it.

Kitty nodded. "Yeah, I get it." Slowly, she ventured, "But you're saying that eventually you might like to make things up with him?"

"I hate him." I laughed. "Bobby's really self-righteous sometimes. I mean, we did get along really well before – things change, that's just the way it is. It's… it's weird though, being back here. Like I belong, even though I don't, really. In some ways it's like we should still be friends but things won't ever be the same. So yeah, I guess I'd rather that we were on speaking terms – you know, civilly – but he's such an ass sometimes that I wouldn't care anyone one way or another." I noticed I'd started to cut my vegetables in increasingly smaller pieces as I was rambling, and slowed down. I let out a long breath, and added, "We used to…" before trailing off.

"Yeah? Used to what?" Kitty asked.

"We both used to have shorter hair back then," I told her.

Kitty snorted and said, "Yeah, okay," accepting my answer.

We changed the subject and talked about the classes she was going to be taking next session, but by the time we were eating, Kitty brought up Bobby one more time. "He believes you then, huh?"

"Who, Bobby? Believes me about what?"

"Well, he just left," Kitty answered. "What I mean is, he didn't really say anything after you said that he needed to stop taunting you if you guys are going to ever stop picking on each other."

"So? What are you trying to say?"

"I'm just saying that he didn't say anything like… 'Yeah, right, you'd never apologize,' or something –"

"Well, that's exactly damn right, I wouldn't!" I assured her.

"I mean, he just seemed to believe you when you said you wanted him to start trying to make things better."

"Believe me? Kitty-cat, I don't lie, and that's my trump card." I paused to take a bite, and then added, "He's still an ass."

Meanwhile, Cyclops, who couldn't be as forceful as Wolverine, had resorted to scouring the papers and other sources for attack rumors. Payton still hadn't given up any more information except that he hinted that there was still some time before the terrorist attack, so the X-Men had relaxed a little bit but were still pressing him every day for more.

I myself didn't have anything to do, and Kitty, nearing the end of her summer break, was trying to prepare for her new classes. She did something that I felt was really uncharacteristic of her one day. It started as a simple conversation in her room one late night and ended up somewhere entirely different.

Kitty and I had been talking about all kinds of random things that night, so it was a little uncalled for when all of a sudden, she said out of the blue, "I'm glad I got to know you better, John."

I wasn't sure if I was supposed to reply sarcastically or not, so I went with the safe answer, "Yeah."

"Look, I know you're here because you've done some things that weren't always on the right side, but in my opinion it's actually working. You're here and you're seeing things differently, and you're trusted."

"I'm not trusted, Kitty, not by anyone!" I said, convinced she was being stupid.

"Wrong. I trust you. I let you in here because I believe we could get along," Kitty said flat out.

I took a figurative step back. She what? I was someone who had killed people before. She didn't know what she was talking about, I thought. "Well, according to the people who put me here, that's a bad idea, Kitty. And according to me, too."

"I'm not a kid anymore, John. I'm not the girl you left behind when you joined Magneto. I make up my own mind," Kitty insisted.

I looked at her straight in the eye, and she never wavered. I finally sighed, and said, "If you're waiting for me to reciprocate…"

"No, no," she said. "I told you, I make up my own mind. It doesn't mean I'm necessarily going to basing my judgments on what you say. Maybe so, but not necessarily."

I thought she spoke rather hastily. I repeated, "Well, if you're waiting for me to reciprocate – I trust you, too, Kitty, but I suspect it may just be due to the fact that you're an unusually trustworthy person."

She smiled at that, and then we returned to what we were talking about before her little outburst. Kitty had been talking about her trip to New York City the weekend before, and said, "Oh, gosh, I wish you could go."

I shrugged to show I didn't care. "I've been there."

"How many times?" Kitty said.

"I don't know. Not too much. I haven't been there too much, but yeah, I've seen it."

"You really need to take a look around when you're there, though, because there's just so much you can miss."

"Tell me about it in three years," I said, reclining back on her bed.

Kitty, who was sitting at the foot of the bed, said, "Are you a city person?"

"Are you?"

She giggled and said, "No, no, don't change the subject. But I kind of am."

"Well. I kind of am too. I told you before, I lived in a suburb. But it wasn't too far from the city."

"You lived right outside of Sydney, right?"

"Technically Fairfield was part of Sydney, but, yeah, you could say that," I told her.

"Really?" Kitty said. "I… I guess I don't really know too much about Australia. You should tell me about it sometime."

"Sometime," I said, looking at the ceiling.

"Well," she said, smiling, "it's not like you're doing much these days."

"Thanks for reminding me," I replied sarcastically. "That just killed any points you had with me." I glared and turned away from her.

But Kitty wasn't one to be deterred. She said, "I had points? Aw, come on, John – you have to tell me about where you lived, because you won't be doing anything else otherwise."

"I don't have to do anything, Kitty, except for sit here in the school and rot," I said, matching her teasing tone.

She just smiled and gave me a smack. I don't know what it is that makes me give in to her, but I just groaned and said, "Well, there's not much to say, really. Nothing too interesting."

"Now, I know you have something interesting to say!" Kitty insisted.

"What do you want to know?"

"Hmm," she said. "Just… tell me what it is you liked about living there."

"What I liked?" All of a sudden I was reminded of the way my parents had been strained because of me, and how they wanted me to leave that place, and I was completely ready to just tell her that I hated it, hated everything about it. But then I stopped myself. And I realized that it wasn't true. The John who had lived there with his parents had really loved Sydney, loved that city. So instead of complaining, I told her, "There were a lot of things I liked."

She let me pause, and I continued, "I guess I really liked the central city district. And the Art Gallery of NSW – a really nice sandstone building pretty close to the harbor."

"You liked an art gallery?" Kitty asked incredulously.

"I don't know if I really appreciated too much of the stuff in there, but it really was a good, quiet place. I'd go to some of the coffee shops in front of it and write. Let's see… Hyde Park in the city center is pretty cool too because of the Archibald Fountain. It has St. Mary's Cathedral as a backdrop. I used to just sit there sometimes. Heh – in the morning they'll ring the church bells and you can hear them while you're sitting on the park bench suspiciously eyeing the ibis who you know is after your cheese sandwich. We had an ibis problem." I shook a fist in mock anger.

Kitty's eyes were growing wider and wider. "An ibis problem! Oh my God, John, I'm pretty sure I've never even seen one before in my life. Maybe in a zoo. Definitely never up close!"

"Oh yeah," I nodded. "All over the place."

"Wow. See, I told you – there's stuff you wouldn't think is that interesting that I totally never would have guessed at."

"I suppose," I conceded. I don't think I'd ever really told anyone at Xavier's School these kind of details, but now that I started, I found more and more things to say. I could keep going. So I told her, "Oh, then there's also Domain Park, only a few minutes away from Hyde Park, but it has broader grassy areas so they usually have huge concerts there. But when they're not throwing concerts I liked to go wander there, too. You'd be surrounded by massive trees that are hundreds of years old."

Kitty seemed to be enjoying my descriptions. She paused for a second, maybe expecting me to go on, and then said, "What about Central Park? That sounds like you'd like it there, too."

"Oh, I haven't been there much," I admitted. "I think I passed by it once or twice."

"Oh, no!" Kitty exclaimed. Then she sighed and said, "I wish so badly I could show you all the things in the city. You told me about your home, and I could tell you all about Chicago, but it would be so much easier if I could just show you the home I have here. You have to go."

"Oh, yeah. So not happening, Kitty-cat," I said with a roll of my eyes.

Instead of teasing back, she looked at me seriously, and said, "What did you mean when you said you trusted me, earlier?"

A little caught off guard, I said, "I… just think you've been some pretty good company lately." I shrugged and said, "Can't imagine you doing anything horrible to me, that's all, unless I went back to where I was before."

"And would you do that?" she asked.

"If I were out of here, you mean?" I choked out a laugh. "I couldn't. I could never. I already made that decision, Kitty-cat. When I gave up a couple of Magneto's hiding locations in exchange for house arrest instead of prison," I said a little sadly.

"You could be with us eventually and…" Kitty started to say. But I was already on a roll and it must be the writer in me, but when I get started, I just keep going.

"God knows I'd never join the X-Men. You know, you X-Men and the Brotherhood – you all believe in some of the same things, you know that? You could work together, you just can't work together," I said, with a gesture of meshing my hands together for some emphasis. "I mean, granted, not all of the beliefs are the same. And that's why I could never be an X-Man either, but, like it or not, I'm here and I'll have to listen to their blah, blah, blah day in and day out, and I'll take it. I really will. You know I hated it here at first. But I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and I'm starting to learn that some things you can't always take for granted, including a roof over your head, having your own clothes –" I smiled at Kitty for that. "Oh, and starting over. Hell if I know what I'm doing when I get out of here. But it's going to be something that keeps me out of jail."

"Now would be a good time for me to start believing you when you say you don't lie, right, John?" Kitty asked apprehensively.

"I don't lie," I affirmed.

"John… I need you to know something."

I didn't like the sound of that, but I said, "Okay."

"I need you to know that I want you to have a good, clean second chance once your arrest is over." Oh. That wasn't so bad.

"You're not the only one," I replied.

"You too, then, huh?" she asked.

I sighed and then resigned, "Yes, Kitty, me too. Don't get smart with me and tell me I'm a good person for feeling that way. No one wants to screw up their life, it's just that sometimes they've already screwed it up before they realize what they've done. I'm one of the few that gets to give it another try."

"Wrong again," Kitty said smugly. "It does too make you a good person."

"Kitty…" I said warningly. "That's not something I really want to think about right now."

"Well, I just want to ask you not to do anything jeopardize your chances at another life once you get out of here."

I gave her a look. "All right, Miss Counselor."

Kitty had been building up to something, but at that, she gave up altogether and told me straight out, "What if I told you I could take you to see the city for tonight?"

"But you can't," I said flatly.

"Three strikes, John," she said softly, shaking her head. "Wrong again." She spoke slowly.

I frowned and stared at her more closely. "What are you talking about?"

"John… if I said I could take you to the city tonight, would you come back with me? Would you run away and leave?" Kitty said even more slowly. "That's why I said I wanted you not to ruin your chances at starting again."

"I… Kitty, you can't tempt me like that. You know I want to be out of here."

"And that's part of the reason why I want to do this for you! You… you don't deserve this, to me. In all this time the only thing you've shown me is that you're an amazingly nice and funny person, and I wish you could see something outside of this campus, something that means a lot to me."

I laughed at her and said, "Oh, good God. Don't worry about me, Kitty-cat, I didn't take you to Sydney, I told you about it. And yes, I do deserve this. I should be serving prison time instead. But I'm here and I'm not supposed to, as you said, ruin that. Isn't that right?"

Kitty shrank back, and then all of a sudden she straightened and gave me a confident look. "Just for tonight."

A smile was starting to play on my lips. "Just for tonight, then? A taste of the outside world, and then I'm back in here?"

"Exactly right," she grinned. "I trust you, John. If you run…"

"I won't," I told her. I was entirely too curious about what she had planned.

"Your trump card, huh?" she said.

"Yeah. Kitty, I won't run." I broke into a smile. "I'm just too damn curious about what you're going to do!"

Kitty gave me a puppy pout, and said, "And you don't want to get me in trouble, do you? Especially since I have this?" Kitty held up my shark Zippo lighter.

"Oh, all right!" I said, pushing her away. "And I won't get you in trouble. How the hell did you get that anyway? Goddammit, don't answer that," I said, reminding myself that it was a stupid question to ask a girl who could walk through walls.

Kitty smiled and we shared a knowing look. I would run away with or without that lighter if I really wanted to, but the two of us were playing under the pretense that she had my lighter hostage, I said, "I promise."

Kitty touched my foot lightly, and I brought it towards her. She held the thin metal band between her fingers, and said, "All I need to do is make sure that I keep the electronic part solid so that it doesn't go haywire."

Then she gently pulled the non-electronic part right through my ankle, leaving behind a pleasant tingling feeling.