The Jean Grey School- Tuesday

[throughaphase]

Normalcy these days at the school was chaos. It was too many kids for too few teachers who were under a lot of stress, and there wasn't any real consistency to who was around and who was off fighting. Also, in Kitty's opinion, it was all pretty stupid. And now with the whole Phoenix Five mess, where five of her old friends and teammates had had the Phoenix Force they'd all been so worried about split among them and were now being publicly revered for it, she trusted nothing.

And sure enough, when she heard the words "you should see this," the only surprise was that she wasn't in the middle of class when whoever showed up.

When she walked outside with Warbird, they found Peter, armored up and on fire, floating in the sky above the school. "Get back to your classes," Kitty said, not looking away from him. "If I don't come back, call the Avengers."

Comments

[so_hawkward]

Clint probably shouldn't have been trying to get up, but Kitty didn't usually get hurt, so that noise shook him enough to get him onto his knees, at least. "Get. Away. From her."

[throughaphase]

Kitty stepped in Colossus’ way, making a gesture she hoped told Clint to stay down. She only had one trick left, to appeal on a personal level, and she’d ptobably ruined that by trying to kill him already.

“You’ll have to kill me,” she warned.

God damn, her arm hurt.

[bigsteelydramaqueen]

With that, Colossus exploded, literally knocking Kitty over with the force of his anger.

“I could kill you and bring you back in the blink of an eye! I could make you do whatever I want! Don’t you see? I am fire and life incarnate! Now and forever, I am Phoenix! I am-“

And then he caught sight of the scene before him. Kitty, on the ground and hurt. Clint, who he actually liked. Supposed friends, all thrown around like they were nothing. One of them had hit the statue of Jean in front of the school and broke it, and the statue’s head was lying near his feet.

It was an image he wasn’t going to forget, ever.

A long moment later, without another word, he shot into the air and flew away.

[throughaphase]

Once he was gone, Kitty ran over to Clint, kneeling beside him. “Are you okay?”

[so_hawkward]

"I'm fine," Clint said automatically. Then, because it was Kitty, he said, "Whacked my head pretty good but... I'm okay. What about you?"

[throughaphase]

"It's a good thing the kid who patched me up after getting impaled that time is still here," Kitty said, and she was very definitely not touching or doing anything with that one arm right now. "Can you walk?"

[so_hawkward]

Clint nodded, then groaned because nodding was a terrible idea, and slowly got up. He'd get away from the wall eventually, maybe. "I totally could have taken him, for the record."

[throughaphase]

She got up, offering her good arm to help him. The other teachers were picking themselves up, too, and some were going to get the students away from the entrance where they were watching.

"Yes, you could have," she totally lied.

[so_hawkward]

"See, that was the right answer, you're so smart," Clint teased, before his face fell a little and he held onto Kitty tighter. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I should have handled that better, and he shouldn't have... I'm sorry this is such a mess."

[throughaphase]

“It was going to be a mess from the second he decided to come here,” Kitty said. “You know him and me... it hasn’t been like that for a really long time, right? On both sides.”

That felt important.

[so_hawkward]

"I know," Clint said, managing a small smile. "I'm the one who put a ring on you, and I know you wouldn't have said yes to that if you still had feelings elsewhere.'

[throughaphase]

"That's right. And it goes for him, too. We're friends. Or, we were."

This one was going to hurt for a while. Losing Illyana had been bad, but Peter, too...

[so_hawkward]

Clint tightened the hold he had around Kitty's waist. "I'm sorry," he said again. "I'm so sorry. Maybe... maybe we can still help them see reason, someday."

[throughaphase]

Kitty nodded. It wasn't like the X-Men hadn't been at each other's throats ever before. She was relatively sure at the end of this at least a lot of things could be fixed. But this one was going to hurt, for a long time.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get us both fixed up."