The Xavier School- Westchester, NY- Friday morning

[throughaphase]

It'd been a weird week. After Jean's funeral the focus turned to rebuilding, with everyone pitching in to get the mansion fixed up again so that the school could reopen. There'd been rumblings that Scott- who by the way was already with Emma and don't think Kitty hadn't questioned the hell out of that- had wanted to move on from that and not have anything to do with it, but he seemed better with the idea now. There was a lot of anti-mutant sentiment going around, basically everything was terrible, and showed no signs of getting better.

Home sweet home.

Kitty had started her day working on getting the Danger Room operational again, and then Scott had asked to talk to her. It'd been a pretty long talk, and now Kitty had a lot to think about, and so she'd found an open area away from the mansion rubble to sit in the grass and mull things over, even if she was pretty sure she knew what her decision actually was.

[For Clint and NFB for distance!]

Comments

[so_hawkward]

Clint thought about it for a few more moments, and then nodded. "Yeah I--I mean, I'm gonna miss you, and I'm gonna worry about you while you're gone, but this is a really good opportunity and I'd be a jerk to try to stop you."

[throughaphase]

"I'm gonna miss you, too. But it's like a day and a half each week. That's like what happens when one of us isn't spending the night at the other's place. We can totally do this," Kitty said confidently.

[so_hawkward]

"I know we can do this. Just promise me you'll be careful?" Not that being surrounded by destruction was making him think about how dangerous mutant stuff was or anything.

[throughaphase]

"I promise I will do my absolute best to avoid getting hurt," Kitty told him. "My plan is always to come back to you in one piece. Sans bandages, even."

[so_hawkward]

"Good, because I don't think I have enough bandages for the both of us," Clint said, at least slightly teasing.

[throughaphase]

"That's why I have spare bandages at my place." Also slightly teasing. But she really did have spare bandages. "I can't believe I'm sort of excited to do this. I'm obviously a crazy person."

[so_hawkward]

"You're not crazy. You like to help people and this is the best way to do it," Clint said. "There's not really much reason not to be excited."

[throughaphase]

"Well, I've still lost a lot of friends, and anti-mutant sentiment is at probably an all-time high," Kitty pointed out.

Don't worry, Kitty, it's the year of Everyone Comes Back From the Dead!

[so_hawkward]

And that anti-mutant sentiment was one reason Clint worried, but he didn't want to make things worse. "Hopefully, you won't lose any more friends," he said. "I'd like to say people will come around on the mutant thing, but I can't pretend to be that optimistic."

[throughaphase]

"That's kind of what really makes me want to do this," Kitty admitted. "I can actually work towards trying to make things better this way. Even if I can't change the public's minds- at least not en masse- then I can at least help the kids here deal with it."

And if they could talk about kids like that was a thing that could happen someday, she kind of wanted to start taking steps to making the world not suck a little more.

[so_hawkward]

It helped that the island sent them a really awesome kid every once in a while. "See? That's plenty to be excited about," he said, slipping an arm around her. "This is going to be a good thing, I'm sure."