At Vanessa's reaction, Pete mentally cursed himself. Wow, way to think things through, springing that on the poor girl without warning. She already had enough residual baggage to sort through without him adding to it.
"One and . . . well, I can't say only, but yeah," Pete answered nonchalantly, finally gesturing toward the hall and, by implication, the nearest exit to the side patio. "Maybe we should have this conversation outside, yeah? Before someone decides to go mad and take us both out. 'Sides, I need a smoke and I've already been yelled at twice for lighting up inside." Which he still thought was completely ridiculous; these people would probably get taken out by the government or crushed by the anti-mutant insurrection long before they had time to die of secondhand smoke exposure, but whatever, their home, their rules.
Once outside, Pete dropped down into a patio chair and lit a cigarette from the tip of his index finger, offering the pack to Vanessa if she was interested before tossing it onto small table between them. He took a couple deep drags as he tried to gather his thoughts, not at all certain that he should even be talking about this. Xavier hadn't explicitly told him to keep his past vague, but he also had made it clear that Pete's recent stint with Weapon X wouldn't exactly be conducive to good relations with the students. So Pete had simply stayed quiet about everything in his past, which suited him just fine. And now he was on the verge of blabbing everything to the first crying girl who reminded him too much of his worst regrets, and God, when had he turned into such a big girl's blouse, anyway?
"Xavier knows. I suppose the rest of the staff does also, but I'm not sure." Pete shrugged and watched a firefly land on the arm of his chair, wander around, and then take off again, its periodic blinks betraying its path through the growing darkness. "To the best of my knowledge the students don't. Not going out of my way to tell them, but not especially trying to hide it, either. Just figure it'll come out when it happens and I'll deal with it then." Another of Pete's theories he tended to live by. "But I'm not working for them now, before you think they sent me to keep tabs on you or summat."