Kitty Pryde

★   .     sentence  starter  meme.     a  collection  of  starters  taken  from  marvel  comics’s  uncanny  x - men  v3,    issue  #1.     feel  free  to  change  pronouns  and  tenses  as  necessary.

“  he just showed up out of nowhere?  ”

“  is he in there?  ”

“  have you taken the necessary precautions?  ”

“  i don’t like this…  ”

“  this guy ever do anything like this before?  ”

“  you have no dog in this fight, as the saying goes.  ”

“  i don’t think anybody wants that.  ”

“  what do you want from me exactly?  ”

“  i want you to listen to what i have to say and decide for yourself if it’s true.  ”

“  i come bearing gifts.  ”

“  you said you checked him!  ”

“  i’m not here to hurt you.  ”

“  i think you know that my intel on this is solid.  ”

“  people on the street love him.  ”

“  you’re not telling us anything we don’t know.  ”

“  that seems to have gotten your attention.  ”

“  one minute he’s human, the next, mutant.  ”

“  i didn’t do anything!  ”

“  just keep walking.  ”

“  and you have the right to get your damn hands off him.  ”

“  that means back away from the mutant, guys.  ”

“  we need backup, now!  ”

“  how  —  how did you find me?  ”

“  i’m here to help you.  ”

“  we should leave.  ”

“  you don’t feel that?  ”

“  wh–what is happening to me?  ”

“  we’re being hunted.  ”

“  you’re the one talking trash on the tv.  ”

“  you dared them to come after us.  ”

“  this is too much for them.  ”

“  i’ve kinda got my hands full.  ”

“  you need me here.  ”

“  do we go? do we stay? what’s the plan?!  ”

“  those days are behind me.  ”

“  i’ll just have to be more precise.  ”

“  what i’m describing to you is what you call a lucky shot.  ”

“  he has no control over them.  ”

“  that felt good.  ”

“  wait, you’re  —  you’re taking me somewhere?  ”

“  that didn’t scare the holy bejeebus out of you?  ”

“  there’s no place for you here anymore.  ”

“  it’s cool, kid. we’re going somewhere safe.  ”

“  that’s your plan?  ”

“  no one’s trying to kill anybody.  ”

“  sentinels don’t grow on trees.  ”

“  he’s a broken man.  ”

“  i’m forced to live the rest of my life a pale reflection of my former self.  ”

“  it won’t take much and it won’t take long.  ”

“  i’m here to help you make this happen.  ”

“  the quiet is going to drive me insane.  ”

“  now it’s all gone.  ”

“  don’t dance with fire and you won’t get burned.  ”

“  i want to blame her for everything.  ”

“  i have no one to blame but myself.  ”

“  i betrayed him.  ”

“  i deserve this.  ”

“  how much did you hear?  ”

“  maybe it’s good news.  ”

“  we have to start from scratch.  ”

“  no one will help us.  ”

“  ee’ll help each other.  ”

“  what do you want to know?  ”

“  that actually seems like an honest answer.  ”

“  i think you hate yourself so much that you can’t imagine anyone not hating you.  ”

“  we tried everything else.  ”

“  are you going to stay?  ”

“  everybody’s waiting inside.  ”

“  are you guys back together?  ”

“  thank the dark lords.  ”

“  she scares the hell out of me.  ”

“  she’s been through a lot.  ”

“  we’ve all been through a lot.  ”

“  i liked being there because it was safe.  ”

“  you know it’s for the best.  ”

“  where did those things come from?  ”

“  they track us and they attack us.  ”

“  i’m kind of freaking out.  ”

“  it’s okay to be a little freaked out.  ”

“  how come none of the others are freaking out?  ”

“  show them. show them everything.  ”

“  this is the best news our people have had in years.  ”

“  you’re part of something bigger than yourself.  ”

“  feels pretty good, right?  ”

“  the future is in your hands.  ”

“  will i ever see them again?  ”

“  you’re not being held hostage.  ”

“  hell yes! this is awesome.  ”

“  just close your eyes and concentrate.  ”

“  words mean something.  ”

“  change is terrifying. i should know.  ”

“  what i wouldn’t give to live a normal life.  ”

“  none of us will ever have normal.  ”

“  she’s the smart one.  ”

“  please don’t call me that, it will stick.  ”

“  when are things going to calm down?  ”

“  the authorities will be looking for you.  ”

“  if we can help, we will.  ”

“  whoa! how do you do that?  ”

“  is she joking?  ”

“  i’ve never heard her joke.  ”

“  you won’t have much time.  ”

“  no, boy…i would BREAK you.  ”

“  keep an eye out.  ”

“  i thought you were dead!  ”

“  we were able to help her.  ”

“  we’re not ready.  ”

★   .     sentence  starter  meme.     a  collection  of  starters  taken  from  marvel  comics’s  uncanny  x - men  v3,    issue  #1.     feel  free  to  change  pronouns  and  tenses  as  necessary.

“  he just showed up out of nowhere?  ”

“  is he in there?  ”

“  have you taken the necessary precautions?  ”

“  i don’t like this…  ”

“  this guy ever do anything like this before?  ”

“  you have no dog in this fight, as the saying goes.  ”

“  i don’t think anybody wants that.  ”

“  what do you want from me exactly?  ”

“  i want you to listen to what i have to say and decide for yourself if it’s true.  ”

“  i come bearing gifts.  ”

“  you said you checked him!  ”

“  i’m not here to hurt you.  ”

“  i think you know that my intel on this is solid.  ”

“  people on the street love him.  ”

“  you’re not telling us anything we don’t know.  ”

“  that seems to have gotten your attention.  ”

“  one minute he’s human, the next, mutant.  ”

“  i didn’t do anything!  ”

“  just keep walking.  ”

“  and you have the right to get your damn hands off him.  ”

“  that means back away from the mutant, guys.  ”

“  we need backup, now!  ”

“  how  —  how did you find me?  ”

“  i’m here to help you.  ”

“  we should leave.  ”

“  you don’t feel that?  ”

“  wh–what is happening to me?  ”

“  we’re being hunted.  ”

“  you’re the one talking trash on the tv.  ”

“  you dared them to come after us.  ”

“  this is too much for them.  ”

“  i’ve kinda got my hands full.  ”

“  you need me here.  ”

“  do we go? do we stay? what’s the plan?!  ”

“  those days are behind me.  ”

“  i’ll just have to be more precise.  ”

“  what i’m describing to you is what you call a lucky shot.  ”

“  he has no control over them.  ”

“  that felt good.  ”

“  wait, you’re  —  you’re taking me somewhere?  ”

“  that didn’t scare the holy bejeebus out of you?  ”

“  there’s no place for you here anymore.  ”

“  it’s cool, kid. we’re going somewhere safe.  ”

“  that’s your plan?  ”

“  no one’s trying to kill anybody.  ”

“  sentinels don’t grow on trees.  ”

“  he’s a broken man.  ”

“  i’m forced to live the rest of my life a pale reflection of my former self.  ”

“  it won’t take much and it won’t take long.  ”

“  i’m here to help you make this happen.  ”

“  the quiet is going to drive me insane.  ”

“  now it’s all gone.  ”

“  don’t dance with fire and you won’t get burned.  ”

“  i want to blame her for everything.  ”

“  i have no one to blame but myself.  ”

“  i betrayed him.  ”

“  i deserve this.  ”

“  how much did you hear?  ”

“  maybe it’s good news.  ”

“  we have to start from scratch.  ”

“  no one will help us.  ”

“  ee’ll help each other.  ”

“  what do you want to know?  ”

“  that actually seems like an honest answer.  ”

“  i think you hate yourself so much that you can’t imagine anyone not hating you.  ”

“  we tried everything else.  ”

“  are you going to stay?  ”

“  everybody’s waiting inside.  ”

“  are you guys back together?  ”

“  thank the dark lords.  ”

“  she scares the hell out of me.  ”

“  she’s been through a lot.  ”

“  we’ve all been through a lot.  ”

“  i liked being there because it was safe.  ”

“  you know it’s for the best.  ”

“  where did those things come from?  ”

“  they track us and they attack us.  ”

“  i’m kind of freaking out.  ”

“  it’s okay to be a little freaked out.  ”

“  how come none of the others are freaking out?  ”

“  show them. show them everything.  ”

“  this is the best news our people have had in years.  ”

“  you’re part of something bigger than yourself.  ”

“  feels pretty good, right?  ”

“  the future is in your hands.  ”

“  will i ever see them again?  ”

“  you’re not being held hostage.  ”

“  hell yes! this is awesome.  ”

“  just close your eyes and concentrate.  ”

“  words mean something.  ”

“  change is terrifying. i should know.  ”

“  what i wouldn’t give to live a normal life.  ”

“  none of us will ever have normal.  ”

“  she’s the smart one.  ”

“  please don’t call me that, it will stick.  ”

“  when are things going to calm down?  ”

“  the authorities will be looking for you.  ”

“  if we can help, we will.  ”

“  whoa! how do you do that?  ”

“  is she joking?  ”

“  i’ve never heard her joke.  ”

“  you won’t have much time.  ”

“  no, boy…i would BREAK you.  ”

“  keep an eye out.  ”

“  i thought you were dead!  ”

“  we were able to help her.  ”

“  we’re not ready.  ”

“I think that sounds totally fine,” Illyana said, and she meant it wholeheartedly. She gave Kitty’s shoulder a squeeze that she hoped was reassuring. Once upon a time she’d been good at this whole comforting-through-touch thing, at least with Kitty – or at least she’d thought she’d been good at it. But that had been one lost-and-regained soul ago. Casual touch didn’t seem to work as effortlessly as it once had, and she’d never been as touchy-feely as the rest of the New Mutants to begin with. But a hug was a hug, and if she could still hug anyone properly it was Kitty – she hoped.

“What do you say we blow this depressing popsicle stand?” she suggested. “Anywhere you want to go, all of time and space available – you name it.”

That was another question that required a long moment of silence. She definitely wanted to go. To get out of there. To be anywhere else. But, in that desire, she had to think about where it was that she actually wanted to go.

“Well,” she finally offered with a faint smile and a shrug, “I do have a honeymoon in New Zealand and Australia all ready and paid for. We could go, if you wanted?” she shrugged. “Like, just to be... So it doesn’t go to waste?”

She liked this idea. It sounded fun.

Illyana was struggling to keep up, and struggling to hide that she was struggling. She knew she was a hard person to be friends with sometimes (maybe more often than just some of the time) and now wasn’t a good time to pester Kitty to fill her in on the details of “ordinary life” that flew over her head. But she didn’t know what her friend was talking about – was sure that there had to be more to it than just that, details that fell through the cracks of Kitty’s terse explanation because they weren’t things that most people would need spelled-out – and that made it hard to know what to say.

Who are you kidding? Illyana chided herself. You wouldn’t know what to say anyway. But her friend needed her, so she would try.

“Maybe you aren’t that upset because you know you made the right choice?” Illyana ventured hopefully. “Regardless I don’t see why you aren’t allowed to feel bad just because you were the one who kicked it off.” It wasn’t that Illyana wasn’t worried about her brother; it was just that he had plenty of other people fawning over him already, usually when he was upset Piotr liked to be alone anyway, and Illyana didn’t think she was particularly good at making her brother feel better when things got ugly. Better to leave him be and try to do some good where she might be able to – or at least was less likely to do harm.

“How many times have the two of you gone back and forth on breaking each other’s hearts?” Illyana shook her head and muttered, “You’d think you would both be used to it by now.”

Kitty was silent for a long, long while. She stared out over the edge of the cliff, wondering how exactly to respond to Illyana. The truth was the she was certain that a lot of what she was feeling or thinking didn’t make any real sense. She was still struggling with everything. Poor Illyana was just trying to keep up.

Illyana was right about one thing, though. She and Piotr really did take their turns destroying each other. And, come to think of it, it really was her turn this time. Although, she probably didn’t have to do it quite so spectacularly. Like... forgetting his birthday once probably would have been sufficient.

Illyana rolled her eyes. “I don’t know,” she repeated, impatiently this time. “I don’t know what ‘most’ people’s frame of reference is – and I don’t really care either.” She shrugged. “That’s why I asked what yours was. That I can care about.”

What ordinary, ignorant, sad little mortals thought about their sheltered, sad, ignorant little lives interested Illyana not one bit. She could remember a time when it had, back in her previous life (technically two lives ago, wasn’t it? Although the latter life didn’t seem to count as hers since it had belonged to some other girl who simply shared her soul, body, and childhood, but wasn’t her) when she had still been getting used to being who she was, who Limbo had made of her, and struggling to find a place in the world alongside the New Mutants; struggling to find a way to be normal. She wasn’t sure if it was a result of coming back without a soul to start with, or simply a matter of growing up – but she no longer cared about that.

She was surprised to find that Kitty did.

“Well, now you know,” Kitty said, shrugging again. She was tired. This whole experience had been extremely draining.

“And the worst part is, I don’t get to-- Like... I’m not the victim here, you know? Like, what I did was done to someone else. Piotr is the one everyone needs to be worried about, because he’s the one whose day just went to hell in a matter of seconds. I’m the one who sent it there.”

Illyana blinked. “No,” she said instinctively, before she could think better of saying it, “I don’t know. I’m not even sure what a ‘normal’ life is supposed to look like.”

Well. That didn’t sound too self-pitying, did it? Not that Illyana felt any pity toward herself over the lack of “normal” in her life, but she knew how statements like that sounded to other people – and in this case, it seemed that even Kitty counted as Other People. She probably should have just made comforting, noncommittal noises and left it alone, but this was her best friend and she was in pain. Kitty needed more than sympathetic grunts, even though Illyana wasn’t sure exactly what she did need. Honesty wasn’t usually the best policy, not in Illyana’s estimation, but it wasn’t like she could take the words back now.

Well, in for a scale…

“I mean that seriously, Kitty. What does 'normal life’ even mean to you?” Illyana shrugged. “I don’t have a frame of reference for it. What is yours?”

Kitty shook her head. Sometimes, it was easy to forget how out of touch with reality ‘Yana really was. She was out of the loop in a big, big way. It was hard, sometimes, to be in the midst of a conversation only to find yourself forced to explain a basic concept or a pop culture reference. Honestly, it could be exceptionally jarring.

“I have the same frame of reference as most. I mean, just because it’s a rarity around here doesn’t mean I don’t know what normal is,” she snorted. “Like, you know. Typical. Grow up, fall in love with someone, get married and-- if you’re lucky-- stay that way for a long, long time. It’s just the standard bit, you know?”

Illyana flapped a dismissive hand, as though she could dismiss the entire sordid and tragic interwoven history of the X-Men and the Morlocks with a mere gesture. “Who care about ‘meant’ and ‘not’?” she said, her nose curling up into an expression more akin to a sneer than anything else. “If we let our lives be dictated by what we were meant to do, I’d be the soulless husk used as the vessel to let evils from beyond imagining through to feast on this world and you’d…well, you’d probably still be stuck inside a giant bullet hurtling through space. ‘Meant to’ is stupid. Don’t waste time on it.”

Her words were blithe, perhaps, but she spoke them with conviction; Illyana had no time for the way things were meant to be. Meant to be would have had her dead a half-dozen times over, sacrificed or martyred or eaten-up by disease. Maybe even crushed under that tractor all those years ago. Meant to be had no room in its world for her – so she had no room in hers for it.

She took a deep breath and, in lieu of better words, wrapped an arm around Kitty’s shoulders. “I would never,” she promised. “Not without your permission, for sure. There’s a lot of things I’ll do to people,” she admitted, “but stealing their past from them is beyond the pale even for me.” She paused, smiled. “Well, not unless they really deserve it, anyway.” Never say never, after all…

“But seriously, roomie. You’re way more than ‘somebody’s wife’ and you know it. What’s with all this doom-and-glooming?”

Kitty sighed for what felt like the eight hundredth time in a few hours. Illyana didn’t understand, she supposed, but that was to be expected.

A child grown in a demon-infested cesspit and then cut down and regrown however many times was not likely to understand the need for specific human connections. In fact, to say that Illyana probably had some trust issues was a serious understatement.

And it wasn’t as if Kitty had made this whole ‘romantic relationship’ situation look like a ball of laughs, either.

Illyana shrugged back, utterly at a loss for an answer. Marriage was one of those things that existed completely outside her mental purview – like smartphones and being picky about one’s food. She knew those things existed but she’d never been able to wrap her head around the how or the why. “Don’t people marry people they’re unhappy with all the time?” she pointed out. “You almost married Caliban once, and I don’t think you thought you’d have been happy with that life – did you?”

That wasn’t so much a question as a statement of course, and Illyana didn’t bother to leave Kitty much space in which to answer it, instead immediately going on to say, “So your question doesn’t actually answer my question. Do you think you’d be happy married to Piotr? For real and true? Because I can always go through a Stepping Disc and stop myself from saying anything in the first place, if you want…”

That would be a bad idea. It could go wrong too easily, could do horrible things to the time stream, and would be a violation of all the standards that Illyana tried to hold herself to as a time-walker – but for Kitty, she’d risk it.

“That was different! Caliban, I mean,” she specified. “That wasn’t really an informed decision made by an adult, was it? Not like this time.”

She thought for a few more minutes. After all, if she made her declaration without a few moments to think about it, Illyana almost certainly wouldn’t believe it. Plus, she needed to consider the situation for herself.

“...Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t know that I’m meant to get married at all, really. I don’t think that I’m supposed to be a wife. Not just for Piotr, but for anyone. But, if anyone was going to make me happy, I would have thought it was him.”

Illyana shifted from one foot to the other a few times, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “No,” she agreed slowly, wondering if she should argue – but that would be stupid, because things clearly weren’t going well. Lying to Kitty about that would neither fool her nor make her feel better.

Of course, Illyana didn’t know what would make her feel better…

“I don’t know,” she said limply in response to Kitty’s question. “Is that really what it is, do you think?” She shrugged; it could be. Certainly people did that sometimes. People had accused her of doing it sometimes, although Illyana didn’t think she agreed with them. “Maybe it’s your common sense reasserting itself over your emotions.”

She paused, swallowed. “Do you…do you think you would have been happy married to Piotr?” Did Illyana have even more to feel guilty for than she thought?

“I don’t think--” Kitty started, but then shook her head, unsure of how exactly to finish it. She sighed, and dropped herself to sit on a nearby rock, absently tracing her fingers along the surface of the  stone.

“I don’t think that my decision to get married demonstrated a lack of common sense, though. I think that I--” Again, she was lost for words. After all, maybe Illyana was completely right. Maybe it had just been a flare-up of common sense, rather than some sort of primal self-preservation technique.

@dontpullmytab

Illyana was not often prone to hesitation, but dealing with other people’s messy emotions – particularly those few people she cared about, and hence those whose feelings she considered worth caring about – did not come as easily as slaughtering rebellious demons or skinning anti-mutant bigots. Still, this was her best friend and furthermore at least partially her fault; she owed Kitty.

“Hey, roomie,” she called softly, although they hadn’t been roommates in years and lifetimes (literally) as she walked up the hill where her friend stood sentinel. “How’s it going?” A stupid question – but she didn’t know what else to say. This was outside her skill zone.

“I mean, within the circumstances and…and…you’re not crying, are you?” Illyana hoped she wasn’t crying. She couldn’t deal with crying.

Kitty nearly laughed. Illyana’s first question was just so... absurd.

“How is it going?” she repeated, slowly turning to face her friend. “It’s... Well, it’s not exactly going super well at the moment, is it?”

She wasn’t crying, no, but she suspected that it was only because she was still more than slightly numb. The events of the past twelve hours or so had left her feeling hollow and lost. In reality, it was probably good that ‘Yana was here.