Literally Pirateninja (shadowcat) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2014-04-27 21:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, kitty pryde (shadowcat), rachel grey |
I'm sorry I'm such a little shit sometimes.
Who: Kitty and Rachel
What: Post-rescuing Neena debriefin, talking, ranting, yelling, making fun of Rachel's dream!mullet, ice cream and cuddles. Mostly cuddles
When: Last Monday
Where: Kitty's place
Status: complete
Rating: Pg-13
Warnings: Mentions previous bad stuff, including death and torture
Neena was okay now. Kitty was grateful for that. She examined herself in the mirror. She had a bruised cheek and assorted cuts and bruises and the stinging made her feel a bit alive again.
And she also felt like she could focus on fun things again, since she’d felt guilty doing that while she knew someone was being roughed up. Even if that had been the plan. It was a stupid plan, but it had worked.
Cover up and a couple bandaids ought to take care of the worse of it, and she didn’t have anything nearly bad enough to seek attention about. Maybe Rachel would like to hang out. They could hit a club! Or something. She grimaced at herself - It was complicated as hell and she didn’t want to push something. She always did the pushing. It would be nice to be the pushee for once…
Maybe Kitty wanted to be the pushee, but if she did, she was going to have to be patient. Because Rachel wasn't that kind of pushy. Rachel didn't want to rush things. She knew if Kitty set the pace they'd be running at full speed, too. There was such a thing as waiting too long, sure, but there was also something to be said for taking your time.
The telepathic link that they'd shared in their dreams had already carried over to the waking world, and it was times like this that Rachel was glad for it. When Kitty needed her, she always knew it ahead of time. That's why she was sitting at Kitty's door with two pints of rocky road ice cream.
You look worse than you think you do and I'm at your door with melting ice cream, came her rather dry-sounding telepathic voice into Kitty's mind.
It was less that Kitty wanted to be the pushee, so much as she wanted Rachel to indicate that she felt comfortable. Because Kitty had gone back and forth in her head about all of this and no longer gave any fucks. She just wanted to be happy, as long as being happy didn't screw up her friendship.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when Rachel spoke in her mind.
Door is unlocked, come in. She walked out of the bathroom, belatedly realizing she was just in her underwear. Uh, give me a sec, I was doing bruise checks. Hang out in the living room. Not that she'd mind the look on Rachel's face, she didn't want to be motherhenned.
It was really too late to avoid the mother henning. Rachel let herself into the house and headed to the kitchen, which was far enough away from the bathroom to avoid coming into contact with Kitty's mostly naked body.
Those bruises look bad. Why do you always run off and get injured while I end up babysitting or some shit? her mental tone was scolding in nature. She put the ice cream in the freezer for the moment, and helped herself to some coffee while she waited.
"Blame Neena, it was her plan." Kitty came into the kitchen, having changed into jeans and a Firefly t-shirt. "And my plan was to have your dad bring in the rest of you if that went tits up. But it didn't, so it's all good." She walked up to Rachel and hugged her.
Rachel very carefully hugged Kitty, uncertain how deeply the damage went. Her friend had a tendency to forgo medical attention, even when she badly needed it. Rachel had given up trying to yell at her about it for too long. Most of the X-men liked to wear their injuries like badges of honor anyway.
She wrinkled her nose a bit, "That woman's plans sound notoriously bad. I feel like I'm supposed to know her better than this, but the memories aren't there yet."
"You'll get there. Anything new?" She chewed her lip, reluctantly pulling away and sitting at the table. She didn't move like she was that sore, but she was pretty sure she would be tomorrow. "And I'm okay really. Today was like a workout at the gym. Hot bath should help. Or a massage." She winked.
"Mostly I just need to do something fun."
"Is everyone else okay? I'm assuming there's an everyone else, here." Rachel hopped up onto Kitty's counter and sipped at her coffee. She'd recently picked up smoking - she had Booker to thank for that - and her fingers twitched a bit. Right now would have been a perfect time to light one up.
Kitty was being weird again, too. Where they always going to be this weird? Rachel sighed a bit, "I guess eating rocky road isn't going to be fun enough after a day like that."
“Neena took the brunt of it before we even got there,” Kitty said, resting her chin on her fingers as she watched Rachel sip the tea. “Rocky road actually sounds really good if you’ve got some ideas on what we can do while eating it. We could throw in a movie. Something low key. I was thinking of clubbing or something but maybe I need less people and more us time. Friend time, I mean.”
She guessed flirting was going no where so she should probably stop that.
"Well, we could eat ice cream and you could snuggle me while I finish kicking Bhunivelze's ass. Or we could put in Imagine Me and You, I know that one's a nice, low-key favorite. I'm not much in the mood for clubbing, myself, but if you wanted to go out for a drive or something, we could do that..." Rachel hopped down from the counter and grabbed her coffee mug with her TK. She was still practicing using her powers, but the mug was empty and it was perfect fodder. It started floating towards the sink while Rachel headed for the freezer.
"Lesbians, I need lesbians." Kitty's voice wavered just a tad, before she controlled it. Rachel was right. Low-key was good. The day had gone well but she'd seen and done things that part of her would have questioned not too long ago. The whole 'x-men don't kill' thing was one of the most hypocritical things, ever. For all of them. It really should be 'X-men try not to kill when they can help it' but even that was pushing it.
The whole 'x-men don't kill' thing never made any sense to Rachel, but she was from a much harsher future. She'd had to be convinced by other X-men not to kill when she'd ended up in Kitty's timeline. She'd definitely understand why Kitty was so torn, if the brunette brought it up.
As it was, Rachel could tell that there was something wrong. She handed Kitty a pint and a spoon, then started heading towards the living room, "Do you want to talk about it, or should we just do the movie?"
"How much do you know about Cerberus?" Kitty asked, taking the ice cream and planting her butt firmly on the couch. She scooted in against Rachel, taking in the warmth of her body. "Long story short, we took out a cell of them that was hunting down Neena's kid and buried it so deep the other cells won't know what happened. It was pretty bloody."
Rachel snuggled against Kitty and opened her pint of ice cream, nodding a bit. She didn't actually know much about Cerberus. Her father didn't like to talk about any of that, though she knew they existed. And she knew that they'd been involved in Xi'an's death.
"I know enough, I think, to know that you were probably more than a little glad to see some of them die. But maybe that's what's disturbing you so much?"
Kitty rested her cheek on Rachel's shoulder, then stuck her spoon into the ice cream and took a big bite. It was instantly calming. "Yeah, a little bit. I wasn't holding back either. None of us were. Especially Laura, and I feel really guilty about that. She needs...more reinforcement to be human, not the other way around." Kitty sighed. “But I couldn’t bother Logan.”
"From what I understand about her posts..." Rachel wondered how best to say this, and then shrugged her shoulders and went straight for the truth, "It has to be her decision. She decided to help you, and even though she wants to be more human, she decided to kill a bunch of people. And also, you pretty much knew that's how she was going to approach this."
She put an arm around Kitty's shoulders and squeezed a bit, "You wanted her to do what she did, or you at least needed her to do it. But she's not a victim. She could have said no. So only be guilty about your part in it. Let her carry her own guilt. Or... well, maybe you should talk to her. And to Logan. If you think it'll help."
"Yeah, I straight out told her they weren't good people. But I still don't want her thinking that's all she is or all she can be..." She understood more why Scott had made some of the choices he had. At least with letting Laura do what she does so well. She'd liked planning things, and working with Clarice on that, but she wasn't sure she liked trying to lead. She'd let Clarice take over during the mission and felt guilty about that.
"You know, I talked to your dad. Because I needed him to be the cavalry just in case. But I wanted to keep him and others out of it if we could help it."
Kitty snuggled into Rachel. Whatever scent she was wearing was comforting, but she was glad that she had put the water in her shower earlier on cold. Part of her wanted Rachel to comfort her and remind her she was still alive, and part of her wanted to wind down her adrenaline, and part of her just wanted to be held. And maybe kissed. That latter part was winning, so she settled for holding.
"The only way to get her to see some other side of herself is to show her that other side of herself. And to call on her during those times when you want that side to come out." Rachel replied, while stroked her hand through Kitty's hair. She knew that had a calming effect on Kitty, and she enjoyed it, too. Win-win.
"Dad can't always be the cavalry, either. I think you guys did the right thing, trying to handle it on your own. I'm pretty sure that Dad struggles with ...honestly?"
Rachel blinked her eyes a bit as a realisation hit her, "Laura isn't the only one, Dad isn't the only one. We all struggle with it. That idea that we might only be one thing or the other. That mutants with powers and potential superheroes or leaders of super heroes or trained assassins are all we get to be."
It was really the best thing ever and anyone that did that to Kitty was automatically on her best friend list. Kitty's eyes drifted shut, and she nuzzled Rachel's shoulder. She sensed something, and opened an eye to see Lockheed perched at the window. He stuck his tongue out at her and flitted off. Little shit, where the hell had he been?
"I was just a hacker. White Hat, securing places. Now I have an alien super computer and super powers and ninja skills and... I mean what the hell else are we supposed to do?" Kitty shifted her focus back to Rachel. "If something bad happens, Red, but we have the power to do something about it, how can we, morally and ethically, do nothing? And I'm not even talking about when dream sentinels and crap show up."
There was a note on her voice and the edges of her thoughts that made it clear that she wished there was something else she could do. That she didn't have to feel responsible.
The note was extremely evident, but Rachel was the product of Jean Grey and Scott Summers. She let out a bit of a sigh as she continued to ruffle her fingers through Kitty's hair, "We're always going to feel like we have to do something. We're always going to feel like that's our job, or our responsibility. But we can't always do everything all the time, either.”
“Look at today,” Rachel added, after taking a second to think, “Today, Neena trusted you to extract her out of there. Maybe too, they needed your computer ability. But Dad didn't need to be there, even though he probably felt like he should have been. I didn't need to. Dani, and Remy, and Logan, and... I don't know, Captain America. They didn't need to show up. And you won't always have to be the person that shows up, either."
"Nnmmn..." Kitty started to purr a little from the fingers in her hair. She stuck her spoon in her carton of ice cream and kneaded her fingers into Rachel's thigh. She sighed, softly at first. "Pretty sure Cap woulda shown up if they'd been gone much longer, at least for Natasha." Still, she was happy about that. It meant that Nat was on their side again and that was always a huge relief. She hoped.
"You're right. But don't let that get to your head."
"Oh trust me, I know there are still plenty of times where I'll be dead wrong. In the dreams, you're usually the one that's always right." Rachel joked. She chuckled a bit and floated their ice cream away back towards the freezer, while pulling Kitty's head down into her lap. Her fingers continued their ministrations, since Kitty's enjoyment was so obvious. Anything she could do to put her friend at ease was worth doing.
Well, except for that thing. She knew they could be doing something else completely on this couch, but Rachel wanted to wait for a time that was a little more mutual and a lot more... special.
Wow, it was like she was some anxious schoolgirl waiting for the prom or something.
"Well, that's also true." The brunette blinked, tensing in surprise, before melting into Rachel's fingers. It was the third best thing they could be doing right now, right behind heated snogging and bungie jumping.
The bungie jumping was a joke, Rachel. Probably.
"Oh god...don't ever stop." She forgot about morality and ethics and her own questionable actions when it came to Cerberus. She forgot about most of the bad things that kept her up at night and that she hid so well from the kids.
"You know," Kitty purred, squirming a little. "We've got something our dreamselves didn't."
"Yes ma'am," Rachel purred. She reached down with her other (now free, thanks to the ice cream's return to the freezer) hand. Two times the hair-scritches! Then she raised her eyebrows and added, "A second chance? An awareness of our obvious homosexuality? A better fashion sense? Lack of mullets?"
"With a hairstyle like that you should have been a lot more aware of it than you were," Kitty teased. "I mean, my god. Okay hold on." She reluctantly left Rachel's lap and ran into her room. She came back a moment later and squirmed her head back into Rachel's lap and made cute sounds until the other woman put her fingers back in her hair. Then she held up the picture of the founding members of Excalibur. She was aware that it might be emotional, but it was only fair to show her. They were the only two from that family around right now.
"It was really, really bad hair, I'll admit. Actually? I'm really not sure what the hell dream me was thinking a lot of the time when it comes to hair and fashion, and I'm pretty sure there's way more dreaming to come, even."
Rachel looked down at the photo, but didn't recognize anyone that was in it except for Kitty, "I'm not sure who they are, do I dream about them later?"
"'I, Rachel Summers, wear a mullet to broadcast to the world I really like 80s music and other girls.'" Kitty grinned up at her friend, but it faded a little as she realized Rachel hadn't dreamed up to that point. "Uh. Yeah. We all end up in England, and we have our own team for a long time. There were a lot of ups and downs, but my time with Excalibur was probably where I was at my happiest." And then Rachel had been lost to the time stream and things had generally gone down hill from there, with only Pete Wisdom was the real bright spot.
Which was ironic.
"Okay, but what does this have to do with what we have here that they didn't?" Because it seemed to Rachel like the Excalibur team was something that the dream people had that they didn't have here in the dream world, which was kind of opposite of the point that Kitty had been trying to make.
"I was mostly pointing out your horrible lesbian butch haircut and remembered that I had visual proof." Kitty said, smirking up at her. "Then I got whapped in the face with feels."
“I guess I’ll understand the feels better when I get there,” Rache replied, with a shrug. Then she grinned, “But I’m very glad that the haircut didn’t chase me here. God, I have no idea what she was even thinking.”
“Me neither. It’s not even all that efficient.” Kitty took the picture (very carefully) and reached over to set it on the coffee table. She didn’t want to risk the glass breaking or something. The picture was too important for that. Brian and Meggan and Kurt weren’t here, and it was just her and Rachel. For the time being she’d have to carry the memories of their time on her own. She caught one of Rachel’s hands and kissed the tips of her fingers.
"Since when does a haircut have to be efficient, anyway?" Rachel asked, while watching Kitty carefully put the photo off to the side. Obviously, the team was very important to her friend. She tried not to spoil herself on her dreams by digging around in Kitty's head, though the surface thoughts were almost too tempting to avoid.
Names and faces, and not just those in the picture. Wisdom and Moira and Rahne featured prominently. Doug and Douglock, Daytripper...the list of people that had touched her in the UK was endless. But Kitty was careful to reel her thoughts in. "Don't know. But it wasn't. At least it was better than my hair back then. God it was horrible."
“Your hair here is actually a lot better, which is pretty amazing. I guess someone pulled you aside and taught you secret hair care guidelines.”
Rachel smirked a bit at Kitty, teasingly. She knew the brunette’s hair was one of her weak spots, though, and she continued to ruffle her fingers through it as she spoke, “But I love it. I have a soft spot for ringlets and froufy fuzzy hair, and it’s your fault.”
The brunette blushed. “Well I’m trying to come to terms that my hair doesn’t actually suck. Took me awhile to accept my body, too. I think my self-esteem is a big reason I keep having a string of lousy boyfriends in the dreams.”
“I am so not touching you and your dream boyfriends. But you seriously are hot, and I think you need to realise that because… seriously, you have self-worth problems. And that’s just ridiculous. You are so much more worth it than that.” Rachel was extremely serious about that, and her tone was the kind of tone that brooked no argument.
"Yeah." Kitty nipped Rachel's fingertip with her lips. "Yeah I've figured that out, mostly. I took a few hits after the whole Alicia mess, but I know I have worth..." She was still angry. Angry at herself for giving into lust, angry at Alicia for bailing on her when she was the person she needed to talk to most after being tortured. All that had just gotten buried in the place where Kitty put all the shit she wasn't able to or allowed to deal with.
"But it's really nice to hear that from you."
“And you don’t need a romantic interest in your life to be loved, or have a family, or have worth, either. You don’t need a girlfriend or boyfriend for life to have meaning you don’t…” Rachel sighed, and shook her head, “And you… you aren’t always doomed to make the same mistakes dream-you made, you aren’t always cursed to not have normal. I mean, we live in Orange County and maybe we only get ‘normal’ in week long doses, but we can still have it here.”
Kitty closed her eyes, and nuzzled Rachel's hand gently. The redhead was right. She didn't need any of that to have meaning. All I really want is someone I can share everything with. All the good and bad, and most of my secrets.
And Kitty didn't even need the full number of fingers on her right hand to count the people who she'd trust that much. Rachel, Ilyana, Xi'an and Kurt. Rikku to an extent but there were secrets she could never tell the hyper-friendly girl. But she knew what to say and when to make her smile, and people who make you smile were always needed.
Ilyana... Ilyana would understand the dark side and know it's simply a part of her. Xi'an was level headed when she needed to be. Kurt never judged. And Rachel was all of that.
(there was Lockheed, too, but he never talked back)
"I gave up on normal, Red. It's okay. But I think I can make do with what we have, you know? It's a lot more normal than the Jean Grey school, that's for damn sure."
"... They name a school after her?" Rachel blinked her eyes a bit, then shook her head, "No. Don't tell me. I need to discover it all on my own. But you don't have to keep saying you gave up on normal like you're some longsuffering old hag who's resolved to her horrible fate. You don't have to give up on normal at all. You fight to have the normal you can have for as long as you get it until Darkspawn invade or we all turn five again or some stupid crazy shit, that's all."
"Uhm yeah. Eventually. After Xavier's closes down and explodes for the fifteenth time. Then shit gets weird but you'll remember that eventually." Kitty winced a little. "Sometimes I forget you haven't been dreaming as long as I have."
She sighed. "I guess. That's easier said than done, because half the time I'm trying to prepare for the crazy and keep the kids safe before it actually happens."
"I think that's something we brought here from there, but I think it's also something that you need to done down on. The kids are fine. You can't prepare for crazy situations when you don't even know what's coming, or when. We're all really good at reacting to the situation on the ground... I mean, dad trained you, right? And I'm pretty well trained, too." Rachel wrinkled her nose a bit, and shook her head, "But there's such a thing as being too vigilant, Kate. You're never going to prevent something like what happened to Xi’an from happening again. Because it was a random act of violence, you get that, right? At any damn moment, someone you love could be taken away--"
Rachel broke herself off before Kitty slapped her. That wasn't right, what she was saying. It was the truth, but it wasn't right to say those things, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That was over the line. I don't even know where that came from."
Kitty started to speak quietly, but her emotions began to boil with every word. "I beat myself up about it all the time. A hundred ways it could have gone, two hundred things I could have done different to change it."
She sat up and paced away from Rachel before she really did hit her. Her voice raised as quickly as her temper. "It wasn't random, Rachel! I was targeted! She was targeted! They followed us once! We spent a night in a hotel room once because we didn't want them to follow us home to the twins!"
Kitty balled her hands into fists. "And it's my fucking fault because I got myself involved in something I shouldn't have! It all started with a warehouse Obi and I found, with weapons, and then I dug and I dug and Shepard had me dig and..." She beat her fist into the wall. "And she promised to keep her safe, she promised she would be SAFE! And that's not even getting into my next girlfriend getting mindcontrolled and torturing me!"
She pressed a palm against her face, half out of a desire to hide and half an attempt to hold herself together. Her voice shook as she gasped. "Oh my god I thought I was over all that!" She couldn't even blame Shepard, that was just irrational but it made her feel better.
But she wasn't. She wasn't over it because in her mind everyone had been so hell bent on platitudes and telling her to get over it that she had only buried it. Buried it and kept marching until even she believed it was okay.
Most of her friends had either been pushed away or had left for greener pastures on their own before she could. One by one the people who could be in danger because of her had gone out of her life (or abandoned her, depending on who she was thinking of). Leave it to Rachel to dismantle years of wall-building in a single afternoon. And it didn't take a telepath to read her expression. Anger and sadness quickly walling up behind a shield. A hasty decision, stay or go, push Rachel away to protect her or let her back in (because if she let her in she'd never be able to push her back out again). She wasn't sure which would be more selfish.
"I keep thinking I should send the kids to live with my dad, to protect them. They can't fight. And I don't talk to as many people as I used to. Most of them have left, or ... Actually I think there's some time travel fuckery that doesn't help with that." She rubbed the back of her neck, then wiped at her eyes. "I should go."
Walk out that door, take the kids to Chicago, maybe disappear in London.
"No, you won't. You'll stay and you'll fucking deal with this!"
Rachel got up off the couch and pointed at Kitty, "You were targeted, fine, but that's nothing new. We're all targeted in every world we go to, because we're different, or we're exceptional people, or we're people who do the right thing, and that makes us enemies. But you still can't go around living your life every day as if it's all your fault! You're not a god, Kate, and there's only so much you can do. You didn't make Cerberus hunt you, they chose to do that on their own. You didn't make the people you love stick around you - they did that on their own, that was their choice, because they loved you! And you can't keep living like tomorrow is going to turn into glass and shatter all around you, because it's not always going to be like that!"
She flailed her arms in the air a bit, "All that mindset is doing is letting them win! Don't let them win, you're smarter than that! Don't keep acting like a wounded animal! Actually DEAL with this and LICK those wounds because you're not whole until you do, and I want you to be whole. I want you to be a whole person! I want to know that the Kate I end up with is the Kate I ended up with... not because she was so scared I'd be taken away from her tomorrow or because she's trying to fix herself or because she's trying to drown out three years of horrible circumstances by one ridiculously happy one... I want the Kate I love to be the Kate that I love, entirely, because she loves me, with her entire self!"
Kitty looked at Rachel through blurry eyes. She didn't know how to say how close they'd been. The effect Rachel had had on her. How much she'd loved her, even when it wasn't a kind of love she'd understood. Because Rachel had always been there, even when she wasn't. The kind of friendship that could be picked up after a long absence.
And wasn't that what had happened? Even without the dreams she would have been drawn to her. And now she was older and wiser (in some ways, if not others), and Rachel's words felt like stabbing in her chest. How many times had she said she'd take the happy while she could, because it would be taken away? How healthy was that? But she wouldn't change that, because it had all been good while it lasted. It just never lasted.
She was so tired of being miserable. This constant state of weariness in her heart and at the back of her mind. She just didn't know how to fix it. She only knew she couldn't rely on any single person to be the glue, not even Rachel.
"That's...that's always been. I always have. I love you. I just want to be worthy of ... worthy of everything you just said, and I don't know how."
She just wanted a purpose. The twins though, she realized. The twins were a very good start.
"You just live, Kitty. Live like you're a person. Not Shadowcat, not an X-man... not any of that crap. You're Kate Pryde. You're a hacker and a mother of two and a widow. You're jewish, you're bisexual, you're a danger junkie, you're a genius, and sometimes you're an annoying prat... the last thing you are is a mutant. The last thing, and the other ones are more important. I'm not saying... don't phase through things, I'm not saying that. I just think we're all approaching this like we have to be the x-men again, or we have to be..."
Rachel ran a hand up into her hair, "You're never going to get normal if you keep living on the edge. You have to let yourself be normal, first. You have to let yourself. And part of that is taking the fucking time to deal with things. There are, like, 50 million people in Orange County that can stop a Darkspawn invasion or save the world from the reapers. Take a break and deal, the world is going to go on without you while you do it. And I'll still be here."
Kitty shook her head. "Rachel, I'm a mutant as much as I'm a woman and Jewish, it's not the last thing, or the first thing, it just is. Just another part of who I am."
Which was probably more wisdom than she'd been thinking lately. "I think the problem is that...I can't stand by when I have the power or the brains to do something. It's like I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't."
But Rachel had a point, it wasn't like they didn't let the Avengers take care of world shattering things so they didn't have to. But she liked helping people. But she wanted to be normal. And she hated that contradiction in herself.
She walked up to Rachel and took her hands. "You know. there's a universe where I become president. The x-men are disbanded because they weren't needed as a symbol anymore. You were my campaign manager. But I think I get your point. The X-men aren't needed here. There's no need for mutants and humans to coexist because there's too few of us to matter. And maybe that's part of it. We had this little community that we remember and it never existed and it never will. This family that...well it breaks there and it never had a chance here. And I don't know. I don't know what to do. But I'd be betraying myself if I sat on the sidelines. I'm so...torn."
Looking up at Rachel, Kitty searched the redhead's eyes. She changed the subject. "What do you want, Rach? Because anything that happens between us we have to do together. Because anything that happens we have to do for both of us and not just the other person."
Rachel squeezed Kitty's hands, "I'm not asking you to sit on the sidelines. I'm asking you to choose your battles, because at least here in this world, you can. I'm asking you not to lift the weight of the entire world on your shoulders. There's other people to do that."
"I can't say that when I hit my full power levels, I won’t want to help, too. It drives me crazy when you go off to help and I can't. But you're reckless. You get hurt, you don't get seen about it. You don't take the time to process. You don't take the time to grieve. And that's not healthy, and it doesn't have to be that way, here."
She nodded, then, like she was making up her mind about something, "That's what I want. I want you to be healthy. I don't care if you go off to save the world every now and again, and I'm not saying the world won't need us sometimes. But I just want us all to take the time to actually be healthy, too. We're not soldiers, here. We're just... we're actually a family. A family of like... okay, a family of superheroes. But even superheroes take a vacation."
"I can do that," Kitty said, sliding an arm up Rachel's. "And god I want you there with me. Fighting with me. The only reason I'm so reckless is because...well because I guess I've been trying to atone. And because I didn't care. And because the pain felt good and it was better than hurting myself."
She pushed some hair behind Rachel's left ear. "But I do care I just...I'm sorry. I can't even blame the me that grew up under Apocalypse's rule. I've just been… fuck. Going all dark side."
“You’re reckless because you want to hurt, because the other pain is pain you can’t deal with, and physical pain eventually heals up,” Rachel replied, her tone much more soft than it’d been before. She pulled Kitty against her, and hugged her arms around her, “And I don’t think it matters, the ‘dark side’ stuff. You’re making the choices you think are right, and I can’t say what you did in that base was a mistake. I’d have done similar. Sometimes, the best thing to do is the thing that gets your hands dirty. You can fix the Laura stuff.”
In fact, Rachel added, “We can fix it together, I’ll help.”
Kitty nodded, her throat bobbing as she fought the urge to get choked up again. With Rachel's arms around her she felt a little more safe. Usually it was the other way around (Rachel needing to be held), so this was really nice. "I'm gonna need the help."
She stroked Rachel's cheek. "I'm sorry I'm such a little shit sometimes."
"Well, you're talking to a big shit, so I think you're forgiven," Rachel replied, with a smirk. She kissed Kitty on the forehead, "It'll be alright. Not today, but it will be."
Kitty pulled Rachel's head down, slowly, as if giving her a chance to stop her. They were close, so close, and she didn't care any more. She wanted this.
Nothing and no one stopped the kiss from happening. Kitty's lips were like magnets, and Rachel could only fight the pull so long, herself. Truthfully, she didn't even want to anymore.
And it was amazing. Fire and ice and lightning and a joining of minds and... well, it was the most epic kiss Rachel could remember. She pulled Kitty towards the couch as she continued to kiss her, and decided she was going to kiss her there all night.
Just kissing.
Rachel thought that was a pretty damn good place to start.