It's midafternoon when the phone Mystique gave Kurt rings - when the person calling isn't sure of the person being called's schedule, that's generally the safest time. It's a Christmas Wonderland in Kurt's uptown apartment, totally gone to waste with no one to appreciate it. Decorations cover ever window and wall in the place, and a Christmas tree looks ready to topple with the weight of decorations. Kurt stares at himself in the mirror, looking uncertainly at the Santa hat rested on his head. He tries flipping the floppy tip in front of his head, then the side, then behind. He's still considering the behind look, when his phone rings, playing a Mission Impossible theme. Must be mom, the only person ever to call the phone to date. "Hey," he calls in an almost cheerful voice, picking up the phone off the couch. "So when am I supposed to head over?" "Actually," a voice that isn't any of his mom's usual ones replies, "I was going to ask if /you/ were up for visitors. Or meetings. Or anything. And," Kitty adds, "um - Merry Christmas, Kurt." "Kitty?" Oh crap. One could presume the loud thudding sound came from Kurt dropping the phone. He fumbles it back into place on his ear. "M...merry Christmas. How did you--?" Oh. Of course. "That'd be my mother." Giving out his number! "She didn't tell you?" There's a touch of amused indignation in Kitty's voice. "You're right, anyway. I think she got tired of my pestering her to find out how you were doing." Pause. "How /are/ you doing?" Incredibly embarassed for starters, the long silence before he answers might say. "I'm uh...I'm okay," Kurt says, tension in his voice. "Could be a lot worse, you know?" "Yeah." Another pause, and Kitty's voice goes quieter. "I'm sorry about not telling you when we moved. We didn't have any ways to contact you fast, in private, though - and we couldn't afford either to take time or to let anything out in public. If it was clear enough a message that you could've understood it, the people we were running from could've, too." Another hesitation. "Can I give you our cellphone number?" "Oh, hey, it's no big deal," Kurt says, a faint waver to his voice. He went looking, and they were gone. "Well, you know. I wasn't sure. I guess. Last time we talked..." He tried to kiss her. It didn't really go so well. "I thought maybe you guys were upset." A moment's pause - okay, there's some embarrassment on both sides. "We weren't trying to get away from you," Kitty says then, more quietly. "A bunch of stuff went really badly wrong at once; some people who'd just almost killed Pete knew where we lived, we had to get out of the city for a while at just about no notice, and we've been trying to keep our heads down since we got back." She hesitates. "Speaking of Pete - he wants it known that as far as he's concerned, we owe you beer, okay?" At least it's an attempt at humor. There is a silence again, Kurt's hand wrapped around the mouthpiece of the phone. When the fur on his cheeks starts to get wet, he feels all the more stupid for being such a child about it. "But I lied to you." "Yeah," Kitty agrees. "So? It's not like either of us has any grounds to complain about other people having secrets. Your mom probably knows what Pete used to do for a living. Ask me what I used to, sometime." "Sometime," Kurt repeats dully, switching the phone to his other ear. "I don't know, Kitty. I don't know if it would be a good idea or not." "Let me at least give you our number, huh?" It's a gentle request, as these things go. "So you can get hold of us if you want to." "I think I've, got it on call display, or something," Kurt says, without actually checking to see if he does. Then it breaks, the polite facade. "Why are you doing this? You don't know me that well, and this seems like a hell of a lot of trouble." "We /like/ you, to start off with," Kitty points out. "And we worry about you. And Lockheed is practically prying the cellphone out of my hand trying to listen in, I'll have you know." They worry, Mystique worries, everyone's worried. "So what, I should come to some Christmas party or something, and we can all just pretend like nothing happened?" "When did 'pretend like nothing happened' come into it?" Kitty asks quietly. "That's what we're doing, isn't it?" Kurt asks, muffling a sniff, trying to sound simply angry and failing. "No one says anything, everyone acts so nice. Better not say anything that might upset Kurt." "I don't know what anybody /else/ is doing," Kitty replies. "What /I'm/ doing is trying to get to a point where we can, you know, actually talk to each other again." A cold, stony silence passes for a few seconds, before Kurt challenges, "And how are we supposed to do that?" "Good question." There's a moment's pause before Kitty says, quieter, "I don't ... have a whole lot of experience with people either, Kurt. Don't have any of the answers. I'm just - trying the best I know how." "Hey," Kurt says, almost a concillatory statement. "You're talking to the home schooling posterboy. I could drive off just about anyone." "No wonder you're thinking it's weird people /aren't/ getting driven off, huh." There's a touch of amusement in that, before Kitty presses. "Look. I really would like to talk to you, not over the phone. Because there's a lot of stuff we can't /say/ over the phone. You know?" She came pretty close with that one, actually, and as much as anything else, urges Kurt to be just a bit reasonable about this. "...yeah, okay. Sure. So, what do we do?" "Good question. Drinks? Chinese food?" A pause, and Kitty actually laughs. "Pizza?" "I, don't know about those," Kurt says, suddenly wary and convinced once more that it's a bad idea. "A public place is just...I've tried, it doesn't go well." "Someplace private, then. I can't offer our place right now - no, it's not because of you, there's a jerk wandering around possessing people. This city /never/ stops with the weird. But there's more options than that." "Well wait," Kurt says, suddenly anxious for this to work. What's he got to lose? "Wait. I'll..." Break a promise he made to himself. "I'll get the holo projector back. Where do you want to meet?" "You don't have to." Kitty's voice is firmer. Want to talk with the /real/ you. "Maybe - I don't know - if we met at Solace House or something?" "No," Kurt says immediately, a bit more forcefully than he intended. "I mean...it wouldn't be a good idea. Let's...you know what, screw it. If they can't handle it, not my problem, right?" "As long as I get at least forty percent of ranting privileges at anyone who has a problem with it." Presumably Kurt gets to keep the majority rights. Kitty just wants /some/. "There's a couple bars I know that probably wouldn't give us any problems. Or this one Chinese place down by the university - except that some of the body-mod types that hang out there might ask you for tips." Teasing. Just a little. "Your call," Kurt offers, not sounding very cheerful about the upcoming visit. Going out in public. Gah. "Bars aren't really my thing, but uh...I'll try anything once." "Can still go for someplace private. I just don't have anyplace I can offer." Kitty sounds rather rueful about that last. "Uh..." Kurt is sure that the sound of him swallowing nervously is audible even over the phone line. "Well. We could, just hang out here, if you wanted. Or gonig out is fine," he adds quickly. "That'd work fine." Kitty pauses. "Except that I have no idea where 'here' is. Pretty much up to you whether you want to tell me or not." Which is part of the rue. Can't offer back, not just yet. "Riverdale Heights," Kurt says, a midtown condominium. "Number 1313. I'm not sure if it was a joke on my mom's part or not." Stifled giggle. "Well," Kitty says, "at least there's no problem remembering it. When should I come over?" "Now. Or...whenever's good," Kurt says, squeezing his eyes shut. Stop acting like a kid. "I mean, you and Pete, of course." "I've gotta meet somebody at the airport tonight, but - free for a little while, at least. That okay by you?" Kitty doesn't actually mention Pete, one way or the other. "Sure, sure," Kurt says, anxious to agree, pacing with the phone. "Just uh...give me a call when you find out. Or just call before you come over. Or just show up. I'm not gonig anywhere." "Why don't I come over now?" Kitty suggests. "And if your mom calls - well, hey. I can come over again, later. Visits work nicely that way; you don't have to make them just once." "Uh, sure, okay," Kurt says, feeling suddenly unprepared. He looks around his gaudily, untastefully, wonderfully decorated in Christmas style apartment. "...that'd be great." "'Kay. It'll take me a little while to negotiate bus routes, but shouldn't be /too/ long. Unless one of the drivers has lost it again." Kitty lives in blissful ignorance of the decorations. So far. "Be there soon." "Okay. Bye." Kurt turns off the phone, looking around his apartment again. She is going to think he is the biggest loser she knows. That honor is reserved for those individuals found comatose on their own living room floors in the middle of chalk pentagrams. 'Not too long' is probably between thirty and forty minutes, before Kitty's able to show up and deal with any security the place has and eventually be knocking on Kurt's door. She's even polite: 'deal with' does not, in this case, mean 'bypass.' The Santa hat sits on Kurt's head, flopped over to one side and totally forgotten. He answers the door in his best dress shirt and pants, tail sticking out a custom hole in the back. Moms think of everything. "Uh, hi." The awkwardly delivered greeting is given upon Kurt opening the door. "Come on in." Into an electrical playground of Christmas. Lights trim every window in the place, and the tree branches are bent under teh weight of ornaments. Ribbons decorate the walls, a wreath hangs on the door. Someone with a lot of love, and better yet a lot of money to express that love, had a hand in this. Window stickers with Santa and his reindeer decorate the big bay that looks out over the city. Kitty didn't take the usual amount of time to bundle up - gloves, yes, but no hat (she's grown her hair out, and the curls have done their usual job of knotting into tangles in the wind), and a leather jacket is /not/ warm enough for this weather by itself; she's still shivering a little outside the door. Still, she breaks into a grin herself at the greeting. "Hi back atcha. Thanks ..." Her eyes catch the Santa hat, and the grin widens - so do her eyes when she looks past him. "Oh, wow." For once, when she steps inside, the first thing she does is /not/ check the room automatically for ambush; it's staring at the lights and the tree. "Yeah, Christmas came with a vengeance around here," Kurt says in his best cynical voice, looking around the room as if he didn't love every single inch of it. Gaudy is always good, as long as it has a bit of flair. He reaches up suddenly to take off the hat, clutching it in his hands. "Uh. Can I get you anything?" Kitty turns to grin at him. "I think you already did." Meet one of the few people in Beacon Harbor who hasn't suffered the overload of decorations at malls and people's houses. She hesitates an instant, then holds one of her own hands out to him. Then pauses, looks down at it, takes it back, takes off the glove and stuffs it in a pocket, and holds it out again. "The hat suits you." "Oh." Kurt tugs the hat on crookedly with one hand, and wraps the other around hers, holding onto it a few seconds longer than is strictly necessary. His eyes narrow, almost wistful. "Merry Christmas, Kitty. Sorry that I almost blew up...everyone." "Merry Christmas, Kurt." Kitty's eyebrows twitch up, just a little. "Glad you changed your mind." And that Pete and his mom both know their way around explosives. Well, maybe not so glad about his mom. "D'you want to talk about it at all? And I'm perfectly willing to include what the heck we were doing there - I don't know if your mom explained anything." Kurt releases her hand, and turns away to pace nervously. His tail twitches back and forth, and he swallows when he glances over his shoulder. "Kitty. You, and Pete, you guys have been nothing but nice. Let's not, start talking about feelings and end up fighting, okay?" Kitty holds her hands palm-up, offering a little shrug. "'No' would've worked fine, just so you know." Quick flicker of a smile. "Hoping not to fight, either, anyway. What do you - is there anything you do want to talk about?" "I'm trying to explain," Kurt says between gritted teeth, then closes his eyes. His jaw clenches up for a moment. "I'm sorry. It isn't you, really. I just...I get upset, sometimes for no good reason, and I just don't want to go there." Kitty tenses for an moment - then lets it go as he apologizes. "Understood." The tone's a little sheepish. Her, too, apparently, though not necessarily in the same way. Then she hesitates, awkward - glances down, takes off the other glove, unzips her jacket. Just a T-shirt, no sweater or anything. A golden apple on blue. "Here, let met take that," Kurt offers, taking off his hat and reaching for her coat. Suit him or no, he doesn't feel like a festive jolly fat man at the moment. "Coffee, beer, egg nog? Anything?" Kitty's perplexed for just a moment - then it clicks. Manners! She'd forgotten what those were like. "Oh! Oh. Thanks." She shrugs out of the jacket, offering it over. No hidden guns holstered underneath. No knives. Not even pepper spray. "Um. Coffee, maybe? I know it's not exactly seasonal, but - it's /warm/." And she's not worried about him poisoning it or anything. Well, not more than the usual automatic ticking off of possibilities in the back of her head. Kurt takes the coat to a closet near the door, finding a hanger to push into the sleeves. Hmm. Smells like her. Not that he notices. "Coffee's fine," Kurt says with a faint smile, and heads towards the kitchen. The living room is still visible from there, the whole apartment designed to be very open. "I'm sorry for the way I've been." Kitty's maybe quieter than that, on the surface, would seem to deserve for a moment. Trying to figure out which way he means that, and not bothering to be /too/ subtle about the fact that she's not sure. She tags along after him at least part of the way to the kitchen, though she's not looking over his shoulder - she turns, actually, to survey the living room as a whole from that vantage. Wow. Lights. "I'm sorry for not being more careful about keeping in touch. Letting you know what was going on." She steals a glance sidelong at him. "And, um. Apology accepted." In case there was any doubt. "Takes two, right?" Kurt says regarding the topic of keeping in touch. He pours out coffee into a filter, while his tail holds the pot under the tap, filling it with water. "I don't know what it is. I try to tell my mother, she doesn't listen. Sometimes, I just feel like...I want to hurt things. Or be hurt." Kurt glances back and silencse. It's easier to talk when he isn't looking. Tails are useful. And - well, when he glances back, Kitty's not looking into the living room anymore. She's studying the floor a couple feet away from her. "The cliche'd answer to that is, everybody feels like that sometimes. But it sounds like you mean something else." "I dunno," Kurt says, shaking his head and all ready to deny the thing which he brought up. "I'm just being a baby about it." He closes the coffee machine up, tail pouring the water in, then starts it. "How're...things?" Well, three of my friends are possibly dying, somebody tortured another one to try to get information on where I was, I saw an angel ripped to pieces in front of me a couple of days ago, and oh yeah, the world's about to end. "Busy," Kitty says, only slightly lamely. "Pretty crazy, but that seems to be the usual state of things around here. They've been okay, though. Mostly. Weird, though." Which might be more detail than he wanted. Or less. Fair enough. He just asked how things were, he didn't ask what the things themselves actually are. Kurt nods slowly, crossing his arms. "Sounds...confusing." That's about all he could make out of that. An awkward silence falls on Kurt, and doesn't pass any faster while he waits for the coffee machine. "About right." Kitty shifts her weight from one foot to the other. "I told you about the guy doing the random possessions. Stuff like that. Just - a lot of little problems." Comparatively. Her turn for the awkward silence. "Are we on different sides?" Kurt asks suddenly, looking at the floor. "I don't know what happened with you, and Pete, and my mom. But, I get the feeling you aren't exactly friends." "We're not," Kitty replies. "But - well, there's at least a truce going on. Detente, even." She starts to run fingers through her hair; a set of tangles stops the motion and complicates getting her hand free again. "It's more a disagreement on methods rather than motives. And none of us wants to get into a fight over it if we can help it." "I'm not proud of some of the things I've done for her," Kurt says, trying to steer this towards a confusion. "I've done some terrible things. And so has she. It's not that she doesn't care, you know. She just...doesn't remember how to show it." "Yeah. It's the usual question. Ends and means, and where to draw the line. And - yeah. We ... knew about some of the things you two were doing." Kitty's not going to hold /that/ particular piece of information back. "You're right, though. She does care." "You knew?" Kurt asks, suddenly worried and shocked. Does she mean about Humanity's Fist? "What do you mean?" The question sounds more angry and demanding than he intended, but Kurt is too stubborn to go back and change it now. Kitty hooks fingers into pockets, not quite looking at him. "Well - we figured about seventy percent chance that group was a pseudoevent in the first place, orchestrated for media purposes. Then - well, when we got back into the city, mid-October or so, and caught up on the news we'd missed - connecting you and your mom to it wasn't exactly difficult." Kurt leans a hand on the counter, heavily, feeling like he could use the support. They know what he did. He turns away then, putting both hands on the counter, staring forward with yellow eyes wide. "...I was going to make it better, you know. I was going to take them all out." "Still glad you changed your mind," Kitty says quietly. "Killing people generally doesn't solve things. This way - well, they're making idiots of themselves for the press and the legal system, and generally discrediting their whole cause, /and/ you're still around. I figure we're winning both ways." "What, and you're okay with it?" Kurt asks, suddenly wheeling around to turn on Kitty. "That I killed some of our people, just for some stupid PR plan my mom cooked up? Then I tried to kill the people we used for our own ends!" "No." Kitty /is/ watching him now, steadier, hands still shoved into the pockets of her jeans. "I think it was a singularly horrific mistake. But it wasn't a disaster - and I was afraid for a long time that it was going to be. And I think you /know/ it was a mistake, and how much of one it was. And for God's sake, I of /all/ people know it's possible to deal with having done something like that - that it doesn't automatically make you a monster." "Do you know how many people died?" Kurt challenges, standing up tall to look at her. "Cause I do. I kept a little running tally. Know all their names, at least the ones they could identify. Right at the very end of the list, Rebecca Andersen and her little daughter. But no, everyone's so kind and understanding. At least about blowing up a bunch of innocent people. So how come it's so hard to get why I might want to take myself out too?" "Of course I know." Kitty half-grimaces, and adds a touch more bitterly, "At least all the ones the papers admitted to. Had to know; if I'm not /stopping/ something like that, I /have/ to know what the consequences are. But Kurt, for God's sake, killing yourself isn't any more right than killing anybody else. It's about the only thing that's /less/ right!" "Do you know what I do, in a day?" Kurt asks, voice dry and bitter. He crosses his arms over his chest, clinging to himself. "Nothing. I get up, I eat, I watch TV. I stare out the window. I read. I don't talk to anyone, I don't go out, I don't see anyone. I don't have goals, or dreams, and the only girl who was ever interested had this tendency to drain powers and memories and leave you unconscious if she so much as touched you." His arms drop and his shoulders slump. "The only thing I've ever accomplished is being destructive. How is it less right?" "As long as you're alive," Kitty says, her voice dropping again, more intent now, "you have the /option/ to change that. The choice. The possibility. Saying that choice doesn't matter, that possibility doesn't mean anything - /that's/ about as wrong as it's possible to get. An eye for an eye is /bullshit/, Kurt. The trick is figuring out a way to do /better/." "How?" Kurt would like to know, advancing on Kitty with a sneer. "What the hell am I supposed to do? There's two things I'm good at, Kitty, and one of them involves a circus, and I think I'm getting a little too fucking old to run off with them." Kitty doesn't give ground, glaring back at him. "You think /I/ know? You think I'd be dealing with things by flinging myself into harm's way every couple of months if I had any /good/ answers? You've got resources here. You've got charm and presence; maybe you could manage to set yourself up as a spokesman, manage some PR that /doesn't/ involve people getting hurt. Or join an emergency response team; with your power, you'd be able to do a /hell/ of a lot of good there, /show/ people they don't have to be scared of us. You've /got/ options, Kurt." Her voice goes quiet for a moment, not angry, and she adds, "You really do." "Who the hell do you think is going to hire me?" Kurt asks faintly, raising his eyebrows. "I never even went to school. I have no skills, no degree or diploma, I can't even say I passed grade one. Nevermind most people would call security the second they saw me." He is determined, and nothing is going to convince him that things are okay. He shakes his head, backing up. "Coffee's ready," he says in a surly voice. That gets a quick laugh, actually. "Like /any/ of us make it here with a college degree we can prove?" Kitty asks back - managing to put a faint touch of humor into it. "And as for them calling security ... it's up to us to fix that, isn't it? Maybe it's only a little bit at a time. But it's something." Easy for her to say, undoubtedly; she at least /looks/ human. Though more than a few people would have almost as much trouble with her just from seeing the necklace she wears. "And coffee is also very much something. Thanks." Kurt noisily opens a cupboard, mug rattling as he drops it on the counter. He makes sure to sorta slam the door when he closes it. "I bet you've pissed off a lot of people with that persistent calm thing," he says evenly. Kitty makes a wry face. "Actually, usually I get to the 'losing temper and hitting them a lot' bit before getting a chance to piss them off. Except, well. Don't /want/ to hit you." Envying the slamming of doors, though. "Why not?" Kurt asks, forgetting about coffee for the moment. "God, I /wish/ someone just would! I don't want goddamn reasonable solutions, and I don't want to be bought off every time something bad happens." That's presumably not Kitty, he's referring to. "I want someone to kick my ass and tell it to me straight, flat out. Some blunt fucking honesty."