Rogue's house- New Orleans- Saturday

[throughaphase]

Kitty's weekend had started out just fine. She and Clint got to New Orleans, and while it was a shock to see Ororo in a wheelchair after a visit to Madripoor, she'd managed to shake that off in order to have some fun with her friends. It was scarily easy to settle back in with everybody and catch up and joke around, and while Kitty tried to keep an eye out to make sure no one was giving Clint an overly hard time, she wasn't really worried about anything. And that was a really good feeling.

Then Jean came out with the cake, the one that read "Welcome Home X-Men," and Kitty started getting a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, like this was all going exactly the way she'd feared it would. And sure enough, it was a sales pitch to get the X-Treme team back with the main team, though no one seemed very ready to go along with this plan. Meanwhile Kitty just freaked out. She probably could have gone without trying to pick a fight with Jean, but at least it was a short fight. Because as soon as Jean started talking about wanting to prevent another Genosha, that was one issue too far.

So she excused herself with Kurt calling after her, phased up to the room she and Clint had been given, automatically picking up her bag to start throwing her things back into it… and realized she couldn't just do that. She couldn't just take off and flee without taking someone else into consideration anymore. With that, she sat on the bed and wondered if she could just hide in here the rest of the time.


[Massively shaved down from X-Treme X-Men #19. For the guy who gets to deal with all this!]

Comments

[throughaphase]

"No. They'd be used to it, though." It really was kind of embarrassing when she admitted how much she ran off. Especially to her boyfriend.

[so_hawkward]

Yeah, because Clint could totally talk to people about running away from things they didn't want to deal with. "Then you get the pleasure of catching them by surprise. That's good, right?"

[throughaphase]

"I guess," she said, looking up at him. "Did they seem mad?"

[so_hawkward]

"Not at all. They really do seem to care about you a lot," Clint said. "They all seemed worried."

[throughaphase]

"This is the first time I've seen some of them in two years," she said. "Guess I gave them reason to worry."

[so_hawkward]

"You're easy to worry about," Clint said, looking a little embarrassed. "I didn't mean that in a bad way."

[throughaphase]

That managed to get a little smile out of her. "Careful," she teased. "I might start to think you love me or something."

[so_hawkward]

"I do love you," Clint said. That was getting so much easier. "Whatever you want to do here, I've got your back."

[throughaphase]

Kitty sighed a little, but the initial urge to flee felt kind of dumb now. "We could stay for now, and see how it goes tomorrow?" she said, knowing tomorrow would be fine. "I haven't gotten to have any girl talk about you yet."

[so_hawkward]

"Hey now, I don't like the sound of that," Clint warned. "I bet Kurt'll give me a lot of good stories now, if I make it sound like I want them to cheer you up."

[throughaphase]

Kurt would give him those stories anyway. That was the fun of brother figures.

"Ugh, he's probably got them prepared," Kitty frowned. "I'm going to have to get payback for this in New York."

[so_hawkward]

"We'll see," Clint said, giving Kitty another hug. "My neighbors probably have stories I don't even realize they have."

[throughaphase]

"Ooh, those are the best ones." And see, you even got a smile out of her. "Thanks for being here."

[so_hawkward]

Yeah, Clint was pretty happy with that smile. "I'm glad to be here," he said, getting up off the bed. "Come on, we should check in with everyone before they all give in and storm upstairs."