Diana of Themyscira (cannotstandby) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-04-29 19:33:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, diana prince (wonder woman), kitty pryde (shadowcat) |
Who: Kitty and Diana
What: Having some relationship discussions.
When: Recently
Where: Diana's townhouse
Warnings: Some mentions of past lovers' deaths, otherwise family friendly
Kitty had been somewhat thoughtful lately. Between preliminary political plans and conversations with some people she’d found herself more and more reflective.
The twins would graduate high school at the end of May. They still hadn’t decided what they were going to do but Kitty had encouraged them to take a year or two off before going to college and settling on a major. She’d really like them to travel and she could afford to let them.
At the least, a summer vacation to their homeland was definitely in the cards.
But she wasn’t even 30 and her kids were almost adults. Kitty was too young for empty nest syndrome and she had no idea how to deal with any of that.
She pulled up to Diana’s and cut the engine of her bike, pulling her helmet off and staring at the front door contemplatively.
Lately, Diana had been contemplating her job. Normally it would be fulfilling to her, as it had been when she’d initially moved here and started working at the museum. But dreaming about working in the Louvre had ruined that view. Working in a museum that famous and with that level of funding to get amazing pieces of art and so forth to display was like a dream come true to her.
But her choices of working in large museums like that were limited given where she lived. She could probably find a better job at a larger museum in Los Angeles, but commuting every day would be hell. Unless she flew there, of course. But that was about the least of her worries. She had pushed those thoughts aside to focus on things she could actually do something about without feeling frustrated, such as doing what she could to help Kitty with her political aspirations.
She was currently in her kitchen carving up the rest of a rotisserie chicken she’d gotten the other day. She planned to use at least some of the remaining chicken for sandwiches. Maybe even some chicken soup. However, her cats seemed to have a different idea, as both Apollo and Artemis were right around her feet, meowing for some chicken.
“You want some chicken, do you?” She asked with a smile, glancing down at them. “Well, I suppose you both have been good today.” She set the carving knife aside and tore off two smaller pieces of chicken before bending down and handing them to the cats, who of course took the treats without hesitation. She chuckled, giving both cats some scritches before she stood up and went to wash her hands and grab a container to put the chicken into.
She paused momentarily, thinking she’d heard an engine outside, but she didn’t go to the door. She did have neighbors, after all. The engine could’ve been one of them coming home or something.
Swinging off the bike, Kitty walked up to the door. She had a key so she just phased through inside rather than knock and called out, “Baby, you home?”
Artemis came running, and Kitty leaned over to stroke her head. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
Hearing Kitty, she smiled, drying her hands on a hand towel before she headed out of the kitchen to see Kitty petting Artemis. “She does like attention,” she said with a smile. Diana quickly glanced back at Apollo to make certain he wasn’t jumping up on the counter and going after the chicken, which he wasn’t. “It’s good to see you, darling,” Diana stated as she went to greet Kitty.
Straightening, Kitty leaned up on her tiptoes to kiss Diana, rubbing her hands up and down her arms as she did so. “...do I taste chicken?”
She returned the kiss, smiling warmly. “Yes, you do. I had just finished carving up the rest of a rotisserie chicken. Which I need to put away before two certain cats get into it.” Though she eyed Kitty playfully. “Or is it three cats I should worry about getting into it?”
Kitty’s eyes twinkled, and she slipped past Diana as if she was going to make a break for the chicken. But she spun around instead, taking Diana’s hands to pull her towards the kitchen so they could talk while saving the meal. “See, I heard a can opener and came running.”
Diana chuckled, giving Kitty’s hands a little squeeze. “Then perhaps I should’ve pulled the can opener out sooner to bring you here sooner.” She was teasing, and went to grab a tupperware container that she put the chicken into, then sealed it up. She then grabbed a bag to toss the chicken carcass into, then put it in the fridge with the container. She’d throw it out later, but at least the cats wouldn’t be able to get at it while her attention was on her girlfriend.
Watching Diana go through the mundane and somewhat familiar motions, Kitty folded her arms and leaned back against the table. Life wasn’t all excitement and fastlanes, even if it felt that way in her dreams, so it was nice to remember that even superheroes had to do normal things.
Still, she wondered how Diana made that look kind of hot.
Tapping her fingers against her own bicep, Kitty chewed on her lip as a dozen different things occurred to her. As she realized what she wanted out of her life, as she realized that maybe things would actually be okay.
“... the kids graduate soon. Do you want to be there for the ceremony?”
Okay not what she’d thought she’d start with, but there it was.
Kitty was right even superheroes needed to do normal things. To Diana, normal things weren’t foreign to her in this life given that she’d grown up human and everything. It was only after coming here and Dreaming that she’d changed into a superhero.
At the question, she smiled. “I would love to be, yes. I’m assuming that they would be okay with that?” Despite the fact she’d known them for nearly two years now, Diana still liked to ensure that the twins wanted her at such milestones. She didn’t want to just assume things and show up and then find out they weren’t okay with it.
After Nga had ‘accidentally’ left out a wedding dress magazine, Kitty was pretty sure they would definitely be okay. She smiled, “Yes, they’d love to have you there. They both look up to you so much I keep joking they should call you mom too.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “We could make it like… a family event.”
“Then I will certainly be there,” Diana replied warmly. She adored the twins, and had enjoyed getting to know them since she’d first met them. Of course, Diana would never ask them to call her mom, even if she married Kitty one day. She hadn’t raised them, she didn’t need to be referred to as mom. As far as she was concerned, that was Kitty’s title, not hers.
“A family event? How do you mean?” She asked as she tilted her head in that way she did when she was wanting to understand something.
“Good, great,” Kitty said, laughing a little as her nerves got the better of her. She chewed her lip, and found the kitchen floor suddenly very interesting to look at.
“But I guess you could say you’re part of the family now. If you want to be. And after the ceremony we could take the kids out to a nice dinner to celebrate.”
As if to add more incentive, Kitty added. “There could be cake.”
Diana noted the nerves and how Kitty looked at the floor. It was endearing, but also suggested that there was more behind Kitty’s words than she was actually saying. Or at least not outright saying, at any rate. She reached out and gently lifted Kitty’s chin so she could look her in the eye.
“I would love that. A nice family dinner would be an excellent way to round out that day.” She wasn’t quite going to pry about the meaning behind Kitty’s words, but if she didn’t spit it out soon, she might just have to prod.
Kitty swallowed, gazing into Diana’s eyes and finding it too intense a look to bear, and yet she was unable to look away. She just didn’t know exactly how to say what she wanted to say. “That’s...great.”
Prodding would be required.
Alright, so prodding it would be. Diana gently brushed her fingers along Kitty’s cheek for a moment before letting her hand fall back to her side. “Though it seems that there is something more to this, or at least more meaning behind making it a family event.” For the moment, she didn’t put it in question form. She left it a little open to give Kitty some leeway and to not feel like she was under a microscope that a direct question would have.
“Yeah. I guess.” It was like pulling teeth, but Kitty managed to admit that. God, but she was so bad at interpersonal relationships. Just the thought of somehow… chasing Diana off made her want to freeze. It was worse than her old feelings about the people she loved dying.
At least she didn’t have to worry about that with Diana, and it was a selfish thought and she knew it -- but she couldn’t get Diana killed. Hurt, at worse. But not killed.
“I guess maybe I’d… like …” She twirled her hands. “To see you. Every morning. And night. And day.”
It was like pulling teeth, but Diana both had the patience and the strength to handle it. But before she needed to apply some good old fashioned elbow grease to the situation, she was patient to see if the direct comment got Kitty to say what she felt was the hidden meaning under her words.
And then she did say it. Not in so many words, but Diana quickly caught what she meant.
“As in living together?” She asked, though she didn’t wait for a response to give her own. “I would like that as well.”
“Yeah.” Kitty nodded. “Yeah. Living together. With the kids going on an extended holiday it’s going to get… lonely. I keep waking up and expecting you there anyway.”
It kind of hit her like a wall of bricks; this was the longest she’d gone dating someone without living with them. And even though not by much, she had tried to take it slow at first. But looking at Diana, it was a miracle she’d lasted as long as she did. “I love you and…”
She was tired of waiting for a shoe that wasn’t going to drop.
“It would be nice to have you be both the first and last thing I see every day,” Diana said with a smile. And it would be. Ever since Pyrrha had moved out, it had been lonely here when Kitty wasn’t here. It was those times that she wondered how her Dream self had managed to survive during that century of keeping herself isolated from people, from more than just work relationships. That’s not how Diana wanted to spend her life, though she well knew she could, one day, be that way. Kitty wasn’t immortal, she would die one day. But Diana hoped that day was still decades away.
“I love you, too.” She said reaching out to take Kitty’s hand in hers. “And…?” She prodded, wondering what Kitty had left hanging there.
“And it’s time I stopped holding my breath,” Kitty finished. “So much bad happens in my life that I sometimes miss the good because I’m too busy waiting for it to get ruined. And I don’t want that with you. I don’t want to accidentally push you away because I’m so terrified of commitment.”
“Lucky for you, I’m not going anywhere, even if you tried to push me away. It’s okay to be afraid of commitment, it can be a frightening concept at the best of times. But I’m here and not going anywhere. Except for moving in with you, of course,” she said with a smile.
“Oh, it was tempting,” Kitty admitted. “And not just from a ‘I don’t want to see you get hurt’ kind of thing, either. I don’t..didn’t..want to get hurt either. It just felt like every time I started to settle into my life and … be with someone, something happened.”
It was really the first time she’d said it out loud. But there’d been Xi’an’s death. And then Alicia had abandoned Kitty when she’d needed her the most. Rikku, at least, had been Kitty’s choice to end, but Gaz had just disappeared one day. And Rachel had been lost to time, literally.
“I’m scared, Diana. Scared of being alone.”
Oh, Diana could understand that, something happening right when they were settling into life. It wasn’t to the extent that Kitty had experienced. Had Diana not been dating Kitty before dreaming about Steve’s death, she’d undoubtedly have had a very different approach to relationships. As it was, she didn’t want to be alone either. She knew the sharp, piercing coldness of being alone from her Dreams.
And for someone who was immortal? There was no worse pain than being alone.
“So long as I have any say in it, you won’t be alone, Kitty. I know what it feels like to be alone, and I do not wish such a thing on anyone.” Not even her enemies. No one should be alone.
Kitty felt simultaneously nauseous and like a weight had been lifted from her. Exhaling slowly, she squeezed Diana’s hand as she realized hers were shaking. “Okay… Okay okay okay. … Hope you don’t mind having a few more cats around.”
She stared at their hands, then threaded their fingers together. “What about you? I might have a bit of a healing factor slowing my aging thanks to some of my dreams, but it’s not as strong as Logan’s…”
Eventually, she’d age, and Diana wouldn’t, and Kitty couldn’t even tell Diana how much time they’d have left. And she couldn’t survive some of the things Logan could, either, unless she dreamed of some other reality or her dreams did something else to her. Which was always a possibility.
Though an extra fifty or sixty years was better than nothing, she supposed, then felt her heart skip a beat as she realized she was even thinking that far ahead.
Feeling how Kitty’s hands were shaking, Diana held them, doing her best to hold hers steady and give her girlfriend that sense of grounding. And perhaps to help calm her down. It was a big step in their relationship, but compared to some of the things Diana had Dreamt about and dealt with in this world, moving in with her girlfriend that she’d been dating for close to two years was not that nerve-wracking to her. It felt natural.
Though as Kitty asked about her and pointed out the aging thing, Diana’s expression changed. She looked down at their hands, trying to keep her thoughts from turning to the inevitable future.
“I would rather not think about that. I would rather live in the current moment and enjoy what we have rather than think of what could happen in the future.” The hopefully somewhat distant future. But Diana knew that whenever Kitty did die, it would break her in ways she couldn’t even completely anticipate. Would she become reclusive like she had after Steve’s death? Possibly, but she couldn’t tell just yet.
But she had a feeling that Kitty would spend time trying to ensure that Diana wouldn’t shut herself off from the world. But it seemed a kinder fate to one day die. Being immortal was not easy, and it was not all it was cracked up to be.
“Okay.” Kitty could understand that, though she already resolved to make sure Diana would be okay when that eventuality happened. And on another level, as much as dying scared her, she had no real desire to live longer than she was going to. Maybe she’d prefer to go out for a good reason, but also quietly, after a fulfilling life didn’t seem so bad either.
A fulfilling life with Diana, the twins...and maybe another kid some day. Though that was a topic that Kitty had no idea how to bring up.
“I love you, you know?” As if she didn’t say it thirty times a day.
Being immortal was something that Diana was still trying to come to terms with. It wasn’t something that would completely dawn on her until Kitty started visibly aging while she herself didn’t. Sure, being immortal was a good way for her to stick around and do good in the world. But on a personal level? It meant having to watch most everyone she loved grow old and die around her, leaving her behind. There were other Dreamers who were immortal, or near enough that some of them would be around for a long time, but it wasn’t quite the same because she wasn’t in love with any of them. She was in love with a mortal woman.
Suddenly she realized it was love stories like this that made up a good chunk of Greek mythology.
“No, I don’t know that,” Diana replied teasingly before pulling Kitty close and hugging her. “I love you, too.”
Kitty wrapped her arms around Diana’s shoulders, slipping into her lap with familiar ease. She buried her face in her neck and squeezed tightly. “I’m so sorry it took me this long.”
Diana held her tightly, rubbing her back gently and soothingly. “You don’t need to apologize. Everyone takes things at a different pace. This was your pace, and you needed to get here when you were ready to, and not before.”
“Yeah.” Kitty cracked a smile, lifting her head and then pressing her forehead against Diana’s. Yeah, maybe she was ready for more. She lifted her hand to Diana’s cheek and stroked it. “You’re amazing.”
She smiled, closing her eyes for a moment as Kitty pressed her forehead against hers. Diana opened them after a moment, gazing into Kitty’s eyes. “Thank you. You’re amazing as well. I’m grateful to have you and the twins in my life.”
And maybe, just maybe, Kitty’s commitment issues were feeling a lot better.