For the Continiuty Police: This story takes place directly the recent
Pryde and Wisdom LS and Kitty's visit to Doug's grave and acceptance
of Douglock as not being Doug. It's part of an ongoing series in which
Kitty comes to terms with a lot of unresolved emotional issues from
her past. This is the second of that series; the first is "Infinite
Loop, which has been posted here a few weeks back. Please send any
comments/suggestions/etc. to albie@nternet.net.

Most sincere thanks go out to Luba Kmetyk and Carolyn Coulter for
their invaluable suggestions and comments regarding this story. Also,
thanks go out to Suzie Campos for inspiration; I have been admiring
her "alternate" Excalibur issues as a lurker for some time now.

Brand New Copyright Disclaimer:
All of these characters used to belong to Marvel Comics, but I picked
them up dirt cheap at their Chapter 11 auction, so they now belong to
me. If you, yourself, want to use them, you need to speak to my
attorney to get permission. I also own Dazzler, but only because
nobody bid on her and I was able to get rights to her for five bucks.

************************************************************
                  The Ghost of a Chance
                        by Allegra
The first thing Kitty noticed as she stepped out onto the darkened
front grounds of Muir Island was a very odd orange glow coming from
one of the many cement benches scattered about the complex. These
benches had always seemed so out of place to her, like a piece of
Rodgers and Hammerstein dropped down in the middle of a Clive Barker
film. The bench in question was at the edge of a small clump of trees;
from there you could see the rocky coast beyond, and past that, the
Atlantic Ocean. She had come outside to sit on this very bench, and it
was more annoyance than curiosity that compelled her to walk over and
check it out. After all, it had taken her fifteen minutes to layer on
enough clothes to stand the cold on this God- forsaken island and she
had had her heart set on that very bench, and now there was some
weird-ass crap to check out. No rest for the weary, and no crap-free
nights for the X-Men, active status or otherwise. Kitty had been in
Excalibur longer than she had been with Xavier's team, but she still
caught herself thinking in terms of being an X-Man. Once an X-Man,
always one, or something like that.

As she got closer, she relaxed, recognizing Kurt's unmistakable shape
hunched on the bench, staring off into the distance. The glow was a
candle sitting beside him; it looked like one of those bug-light
things, which was ludicrous considering that not many gnats and
mosquitoes pose a threat in 20 degree weather. She saw he was by
himself, and purposefully made enough noise approaching so as not to
startle him.

She was about 20 feet from him when she heard him say, without turning
around, "Ach, it is either Katzchen or some unnamed menace which has
suddenly appeared in our midst, and which I am too tired to deal with.
So either is welcome to join me."

"It's the former," she said. "That's pretty good."

Still not looking at her, he shook his head. "Rahne has long since
gone to bed, Douglock is glued to the television watching the Star
Wars movies Rahne bought him and may never be pried away, Moira is in
her lab and will be until morning, Amanda has made it clear she will
not be joining me tonight, Brian and Meggan have turned out their
light already, and I did not detect the customary nicotine stench
which accompanies Herr Wisdom. If I am to lead, I have to have all my
members accounted for, ja?"

"Customary stench?!" Kitty said in mock indignation, as she sat down
beside him on the bench. "I've got a one word answer for that."

Kurt sighed. "Ja. I'll spare you the trouble. Bamf."

Kitty laughed, and Kurt turned to look at her for the first time. He
didn't look troubled so much as distant. "You know, Kurt, years of
your teleporting smell conditioned me for Pete's customary stench. You
may be the responsible party."

"And where is Herr Wisdom, tonight?"

"Kurt, I'll make a deal with you, OK? You started something awhile
back that has become an annoying habit, so here's my offer: either you
start calling Pete by his first name, or I will refuse to answer to
anything other than 'Fraulein Pryde.'"

He nodded. "Ja, fair enough. You are right. I distance myself from
everything new to me these days, it seems."

"Well, Pete's not new anymore. And he's not going to be going
anywhere."

"Ja, you have made your point. I agree." Kurt sounded a little
impatient. Kitty thought it may have been a bad idea to interrupt his
solitude.

"What's with the candle?" she asked, trying to break the tension a
little.

Kurt looked at her, puzzled, and then absently glanced down at the
flickering flame. "What is the saying, Katzchen? 'It is better to
light a candle than to sit and curse the darkness?'"

Where had Kitty heard that? It buzzed around in her head, so familiar,
but she couldn't place it. No, wait, major blast from the past. Hebrew
school. A whole lifetime ago.

"I picked it up from Amanda," Kurt said. "Some book of magic, ancient
truth, ach...once you go back far enough, truth melts into truth,
magic, or sorcery, or whatever." He waved his hand as if to dismiss
the matter, but then continued. "It's a true statement whatever the
source. I always liked candle flames. They remind me of church, which
means peace to me, no matter how long it's been since I've been inside
a church. Amanda made this one, she has made many for me. They burn
even in weather like this without going out. Sorcery, I suppose."

Kitty smiled to herself in the dark. "Nah, it's chemistry. Awhile
back, Amanda told me she needed candles that wouldn't go out very
easily, and I really didn't want to know why - believe me -- I just
came up with a formula for her. Very, very far from arcane."

"Well, then, I should thank you, in that case." He reached down into a
backpack at his feet and pulled out a bottle of Beck's. Kitty heard
the clank of several more as the pack shifted. "Might you allow me to
buy the pretty fraulein a drink? It's the English version, watered
down, but better than nothing."

"Danke," Kitty replied, taking the bottle from him. She couldn't seem
to acquire a taste for Pete's Scotch, no matter how she tried, but
she'd always liked the taste of beer. In all the time she'd known
Kurt, and all the times she'd seen him drinking beer, he had never
offered her one until now. He got another for himself and wedged the
bottle at the cap end against the lip of the bench, bringing his hand
up to tap the beer open. Kitty reached across him and took the bottle.
"Allow me," she said, phasing the caps off of both bottles and handing
one of them back to Kurt. "New use for old powers." She said. "No
twist-offs once you leave the states; you think I enjoyed watching
Pete open beer bottles with his teeth?"

"And what is Herr...nein, sorry, sorry, what is Pete up to?"

"He's talking to his sister on the phone. I kind of wanted to get out
of the way, you know?"

Kurt shook his head. "I cannot imagine what his sister would be like.
You only told me you met her. Did you like her?"

"Very much. She's like Pete, but with really good manners."

"You do realize, Katzchen, that that is like describing someone as
being like Moira, but with a laid back personality?"

"Well, OK, you'd have to know Pete better, and you'd have to meet her.
She actually has a lot in common with....um, well, with me. We went
shopping while I was there." Kitty had started to say she had a lot in
common with Amanda, but decided that was probably not the most tactful
path to take.

"You were saying she has a lot in common with who?"

Busted. "Well, with Amanda, but you said something earlier that made
me think that might be a sore subject tonight."

"It's fine. Don't worry. Amanda and I are. . . ja, you are right in
that I am not altogether happy with Amanda right now, but it will all
pass. Just an argument. Certainly nothing so serious that I can't
stand to hear her name. Like Amanda, how so?"

"Well, she's into that sorcery stuff." Kitty tried to keep the edge
out of her voice; after all she'd been through with Illyana and then
Madeline, this was not one of her favorite topics. She was very
tempted ask Kurt what he and Amanda had been fighting about, but
decided it was really none of her business.

"A strike against her then, for you? But yet you still liked her?"

"Yeah. I mean, it's not like that stuff is going to go away, and maybe
it's not inherently evil, I mean, of course it's not, Amanda isn't, I
didn't mean that, she's um, well...this is not sounding right. Sorry.
Came out wrong. Foot in mouth disease. I just like to avoid that whole
eye of newt wing of bat world if I can help it."

Kurt took a long swallow of his beer. "Ja, you are so much like Logan.
Put either of you in front of an army of thousands and you'd stand and
fight and keep your head. But the unseen, the forces you can't touch
ach, you'd both rather roll in barbed wire. Strange. You are both very
spiritual, also. More so than most of us, actually."

"How so?"

"Logan and I are close friends, but you know him better than I,
Katzchen. He's a secret Zen-master, ja?"

"He's. . . .grounded."

"And is that not the essence of true spirituality?" Kitty noticed
Kurt's gaze return to the shore. She hadn't noticed before, but the
full moon lit up a bit of overhang on the rocky cliffs. It wasn't
visible from the house. If she strained her eyes she could make out a
large figure sitting on the edge, motionless.

Kurt caught the direction of Kitty's gaze. "Look at him out there," he
said. "He is not grounded. He is as far from it as you can get. He
was, is, like a brother to me. I feel I must somehow bring him back,
and I can only do that by showing him some light, some faith. And it
seems I have lost that which I had myself."

Kitty was momentarily torn between dealing with the obvious pain in
Kurt's voice and repressing the urge to go and kick Piotr's bully ass
into the Atlantic Ocean. The others might see Pete slinking around the
house grumbling and cracking wry black-humored jokes as usual and
think all was well with him, but she saw every limp and grimace when
he got up in the morning, had felt him flinch so many times when she'd
unwittingly touched him somewhere Piotr's fists had landed. They
didn't see that part of Pete. Complete recovery didn't always mean
your once-broken bones wouldn't always ache when it got damp outside.
After all, she had "completely recovered" from almost phasing into
utter oblivion, but every few months or so she'd be thinking too hard
about too many things at once and reach for a coffee cup or something
and her hand would pass right through it. Complete recovery, but not
the same as before. So whenever she started to feel sorry for Piotr,
she would think of Pete, who had to come first, now; and he was far
from well.

Wait. Not good. Focus. Think. Kurt was more important than Piotr right
now. Selfish, she was being selfish. What was it that Kurt was saying?
She focused her gaze on the candle and came back to the moment at
hand.

"Kurt, you're one of the most religious people I know. I mean, how
many times have you had to tell me that faith means believing even
when. . ."

Kurt interrupted her with a sharper tone than she'd heard from him in
a long time. "Believing in what?!? I am trying very hard to do the
right thing. But here is my brother, all except for birth," he said,
waving his hand in Piotr's direction, "who for whatever reason has
become either a monster or a brain-addled child, I have not decided
which, and he has ended up here, where I am to stand by him. And yet
he has done serious wrong -- evil. We go through this with Magneto,
but the evil he did was to nameless, faceless many. This, I find, I
can forgive. This, my faith carried me through. But Piotr, who is like
my own brother, has done evil to someone I love every bit as much. You
deserve none of this, liebchen, and all the years I've known you it
seems that happiness gets dangled in front of you and then snatched
away. Forget that I am 'team leader,' ach, what a farce. This is
family. I must stand by Piotr, even though I fear he is beyond help.
My faith does not carry me this far. My faith is meant to help me
fight evil. I find I am required to call on it, because some sort of
evil has eaten through someone I love. And I do love Piotr, and I
cannot turn my back on him. Yet I love you, also. I cannot turn my
back on you."

Kitty set her beer bottle down on the bench beside her and took up one
of Kurt's hands in both of hers. "Look. We have been over this a
million times, and the official issue is settled. The business
transaction part of it. That's not what this is about. This is about
right this second. Forget everything else but right this second,
because I may not be able to tell you this again. Whether I want him
on the team or not is a separate issue right this second, and you are
not 'team leader' right this second, and tomorrow I may go back to
arguing with you about this. I may argue about this for a very, very
long time. But put that aside, right this second. We are talking about
family, now. You can't worry about me, too, Kurt. Not with this. I
don't blame you, and you have to do what you think is right by Piotr.
I can't. Or won't. That's between me and my own conscience, though.
You have to kind of forget that you care about me on this one, you
know?"

"No problem, Katzchen. You just forget you care about me, and this
will all work out nicely, don't you think?"

Kitty looked back at him blankly. She got his point.

"Not so easy, is it?" he asked. "Feelings are not like that." Kurt
pulled his hand back and started to let it drop back on his knee, but
he impulsively reached over and squeezed Kitty's shoulder instead.
"These Rasputins, ach, they make difficult friends."

There was a dead silence, and then they both started laughing. "Well,
they are prone to the dark side of the force, Obi-Wan," Kitty said.

"It is not funny, so we laugh. Moira would think us mad."

"You know," Kitty said, "I had to stick by Illyana, and that was hard.
It's this faith thing, Kurt, I guess. I mean, it has to do with this
good and evil thing. It's not like I disregard faith, it's just not
the same for me. I mean, I have faith in a lot of things, but it's not
the same for me. I'm what Pete calls a 'faux agnostic.'"

"I cannot imagine him using such a high-flung term as that."

"I'm pretty sure it's one of his sister's terms he picked up. But he's
right about it. I asked him what it meant, and he said it was somebody
who called themselves an agnostic because it sounded more socially
acceptable than atheist."

Kurt looked at her, clearly confused. "Atheist? I have known you since
you were a child, and I have never seen you take off your Star of
David."

"And you never will. That's for my grandparents. That's to remember.
It's heritage for me, not faith." Kitty remembered back to her early
days in the X-Men, and how, even after Kitty got over Kurt's odd
appearance, everyone was afraid there was a bit of tension about the
Jew/German thing between them, not realizing that as a Gypsy, Kurt's
people got shoved in the same boxcars as hers did. They had discussed
it many times, privately, over the years, Kurt with his faith that God
would not let such a thing happen twice, Kitty with her faith that
she'd die to prevent it from happening. Whenever somebody mentioned a
Mutant Holocaust and Kitty and Kurt automatically glanced at each
other, it was because they were, perhaps, more acutely sensitive to
the word "holocaust" than the others were.

"Ja, never again," Kurt said softly.

"Never again," Kitty repeated back, looking straight at Kurt.

They reflexively clanked the necks of their beer bottles together,
took a drink and both looked back out at Piotr.

"Do you think you lost your faith in God when. . . with Illyana?"

"I don't know. I'm not sure you can choose what you believe or don't
believe. I do know that I didn't seem to get much help from above with
any of this demonic limbo stuff I had to deal with."

"It bothered me, Illyana in the house. Did you know that? I thought
that she was evil, a demon, even though it was not her fault. I
thought that I could not pray hard enough to keep things right with
her in the house where I slept. Did you know that I felt that way?"
"Yes."

"Is that terrible?"

"You understood I had to stand by her, because she was my best
friend."

"Ja, yes. But I feared she would turn on us. On you."

"Kurt, she did. Look, I've been hit before, and you know, bumped into
things, even got a black eye once that I didn't see coming. But I have
never, ever seen a weapon coming straight for me, phased in plenty of
time, and then have it do its damage as if I'd stayed solid. Not
except for one time, and it came from Illyana, and she was looking me
right in the eye when she did it. So if you want to know how I feel
about this metaphysical God and Devil stuff, whenever the subject
comes up, I think of how that felt, and you can figure the rest out.
It wasn't Illyana's fault, because she wasn't in control of herself.
But it was her. And I'm not too jazzed about a god who would let evil
get the upper hand like that through nobody's fault of their own. So
I'd rather believe that we look out for each other, here, and that's
it."

"It was nobody's fault, but she was a demon. At least half evil, yes?
I felt that I betrayed my God by not doing something about the whole
thing, by not..."

"Then I would have seen that as a betrayal of me."

"What if she had hurt Amanda, Katzchen?"

"As much as I love you Kurt, I couldn't have turned my back on her
even then. Not even for that. And I see what point you're making. I
really do. And you see how I feel about this whole thing with Piotr. I
may have been what you considered a child at the time, but Piotr has
broken my heart more than once. I had real feelings for him, and
looking back I think those feelings just might have kept me from
growing up for a long time. And I don't suppose you can love somebody,
or even think that you love somebody, for years and years without some
of it hanging around."

"I did not consider you a child at the time. A broken heart has
nothing to do with age. And Piotr, certainly, was old enough to know
better. But that is ancient history, compared to this, ja?"

"I'm not so sure. He broke my heart a long, long time ago, but it was
not very long ago at all that the Professor convinced me to betray him
for 'his own good.' And I did that. But the more I think about it, I
wonder how much of that was for Piotr's 'own good' and how much of it
was payback. Maybe just a little? Subconsciously? I'm certainly not
blameless. If Piotr felt betrayed by me then, he'd be completely
right. I betrayed him. In cold blood. So maybe this is my fault, maybe
I did set the stage for this whole thing."

"Nein," Kurt said emphatically. "No. I will not allow you to think
that. You had to try to help him, it was not betrayal. And I can tell
you in all honesty that it was bitterly argued among many of us for
years that Piotr seemed to have a habit of making you very unhappy for
one reason or another, consistently, time and time again. But what
could we do? We had to allow you both to grow up and he seemed such an
innocent, and you were so young. . ."

"So you did consider me a child."

"Ach, Katzchen, it was more Piotr who was considered the child. I was
going to say that you were so young but that seemed a technicality
with you. The battles on your behalf, you have no idea. And not just
about Piotr. Ororo once told Logan, in front of the rest of us, that
she feared he was hardening you with all of his training and lectures,
and making you into a killer, cheating you out of a chance to be
normal."

"What did he say?"

"He simply said that you were born with a temper, and a fire, and that
if she wanted to see 'hardened,' he should just let you go out into
the world without having learned to take charge of yourself first and
you'd come back in a year or two acting like - let's see, how did he
put it - 'Emma Frost without the bleach job.' There was then a long
and tedious argument between them about the state of the world, and
Ororo became quite emphatic about how a child should be spared the
world's harshness as long as possible so as to retain the ability to
love - ach, I paraphrase, it was one of Ororo's more impassioned and
lengthy oratories."

Kitty laughed, but without much humor. "I can imagine."

"Anyway, this went on for quite some time, with Ororo saying that you
were a little girl, and Logan finally answering that yes, you were,
and this was a world in which little girls got nailed up to telephone
poles with 'mutie' spray-painted across their bodies, especially when
they had no qualms whatsoever about standing up for their own kind.
This was right after. . ."

"Stryker," Kitty said

"Ja." Kurt answered. "The first time, I think, you didn't see me as a
demon. Remember, I was pointed out as the monster, Katzchen, the
example of the unnatural evil Mutant hordes. You were the first one to
align yourself with me. This, I think, is when we knew you were not a
child. This, for me, I think, was when I knew I had, perhaps truly
overcome my appearance. Your fear of me made me doubt myself for
awhile."

Kitty sighed. "I feel so bad about that now, how I'd treated you at
first. That was just dumb. But Kurt, you have to remember I was the
definitive upper-middle class JAP from the suburbs, and you were about
the weirdest looking thing I had ever seen up until that point. This
is not news to you, surely."

Kurt laughed. "No, it has been pointed out to me before. I tried very
hard to make you see past that. I could not win you over, not at all.
You would literally jump whenever I entered a room you were in."
"I didn't try hard enough. It took Stryker to make me see that.
Ironically, I suppose that's when I also sort of drifted away from
God. I don't know. But we came through all of that, and that seems so
clear-cut compared to this mess with Piotr. I should have been there
for him more when he lost it at Illyana's funeral. But I hadn't gotten
over him, Kurt, and he just pushed me away, and there I was burying my
best friend. I still could have tried harder."

"He would not listen to any of us."

"But I should have been able to make him listen to me. But forget
that. It's harder for me because Piotr and I were once involved in a
way that's different than just being X-Men together. But now that I'm
with Pete, I see that that was not . . . it would have never worked
out anyway."

"And you love Pete. That much is clear to us all."

Kitty smiled and nodded. "Yeah, but even more important, that much is
clear to me. No ambiguity. This is important to remember in light of
what I'm going to say, in light of what I've decided. I have feelings
for Piotr left, but they are not the same sort that have anything to
do with me and Pete. More than anything, I think I have an obligation
to Illyana. She would want me to try to help him. The fact that he
almost killed Pete is what makes it almost impossible to deal with. If
she were here, I know she'd try to help him, and she can't be here, so
here I am. And here you are, too. So, we're all he's got right now,
really, from the old days, and I'm not in the world's best position to
help him."

She paused, trying to find the words to explain a very harsh,
pragmatic decision she'd had to make. She finally decided the
unadorned simple truth was best. "When I take up for Piotr, overtly,
it causes too much conflict with Pete. I'm sorry Kurt, but I have to
put him first because I'm responsible for my future, and he'll be a
big part of it if I have anything to say about it. He's already
distrustful of the world, he thinks I'm going to just leave him at any
minute, and that's the last thing I want. He has to feel like he can
trust me, above anybody else. If I want us to have a life together -
and I do - I have to close ranks with him now on the subject of Piotr.
Otherwise, I would ruin whatever chance we may have had otherwise.
Blunt truth? If sides have to be chosen, I have to chose Pete's."

"Ach, so says a wide-eyed school girl with her crushes and naive view
of life?" Kurt said with very gentle, affectionate sarcasm. "I wish I
could be so wise. No, Katzchen, I don't think you were ever a child
when you were with Piotr. You didn't learn this from having him break
your heart. What you just said, you are absolutely right. But I'm not
sure Piotr would ever understand it."

"He might not, but his head - his heart - doesn't work like mine. I
know that now. But for whatever reason, he just made me into this
Goddess-like figure, like the great redeemer or something. I mean,
what did he actually expect me do once he got here? Say, 'Oh, let's
just pick up where we left off when I was 14. Good to have you back.'
It's so sad, Kurt. He cannot be in his right mind. And what's even
sadder is how we act so civil with each other, and he seems to think
we've made our peace, but it's not entirely sincere on my part. I'm
trying very hard, Kurt. I really am. I'm trying for Illyana, and I'm
trying for the sake of, I don't know, that 14 year old girl who for a
very short time had any 14 year old girl's dream guy for a real live
boyfriend. But I'm not 14, and I have to choose. I have to say,
though, that making Pete feel secure is more important to me than
being there for Piotr. Call me a traitor if you want to."

She paused to take a breath and then spoke very slowly and
deliberately. "I didn't plan to say this to you tonight, but I've put
it off too long, and it's important. I actually can separate the team
from the family. I may fight you on this as Excalibur member to
Excalibur leader, but then at the same time - and maybe this is an
unfair burden to dump on you -- I feel no end of relief knowing that
you're going to be there for Piotr in the ways that count, ways that I
can't be there for him."

Kurt nodded. "There is no unfair burden here, and this is, as you say,
family. It's not the responsibility I'm shirking from, it's that I
don't know how to handle it. And on top of that, I struggle with my
whole faith, my whole belief in God, and you tell me you have no faith
to lose? I can't see which is worse."

"I never said I didn't have faith in anything. I just said I didn't
believe in God. Somebody without faith in anything? That's somebody
like Magneto. He didn't even have what I'd define as faith in himself.
But who are we to judge? He actually went through the camps, it's not
'heritage' to him. It's experience. Logan always said being on the
receiving end of one sincere punch in the gut was worth ten years of
Kata- training. So who are we to know? Maybe I was lucky. Logan taught
me to have faith in myself at a very early age. I look at everything
now, and I don't think Piotr ever had faith in himself. He always
looked for someone above him to tell him what he needed to do. Not
even a God, but just some...I don't know... authority figure. He was
raised in Communist Russia, not much authority there, right?" Kurt
grinned in response and let her continue. "He came to Westchester and
lived under that authority. When he felt betrayed by the Professor,
when Illyana died, he just fell in with the next authority figure who
came along. Whoever promised him everything would be all right."

"And when that fell through," Kurt said, "You were the only living
thing left in his memory, I suppose, who had ever blindly told him
that everything would be all right."

"He had a black and white view of it, and he forgot a lot of history
and blame," Kitty replied. "But you're right, and that's the main
thing that's killing me about him. I'm afraid for him, that he'll
never have a chance to have what Pete and I do, not with anyone,
because he doesn't have anything of himself to hold onto. He's looking
for someone to give him a reason to live, and then instructions as to
how to do it. That's not love. He needs someone who is more like him.
I hate authority. He thrives on being at its mercy. Even if we had
gotten back together at some point back then, it would have never
worked. It would have turned into a power struggle. He's got very old
world ideas, Kurt. He would think a man was in charge, you know,
regardless of however much he admired my brains. So since he thinks of
things in terms of authority, he would have tried to be that. And once
I'd gotten just a little more age on me it would have been a constant
fight. And when I fight, I win. Who wants to live like that?"

Kurt was silent for awhile and then reached down and got two more
beers out of his bag and handed both of them to Kitty. "If you
please?"

She phased the caps off and handed his beer back to him, taking a long
swallow of her own.

"This is such a tangle," Kurt said. "These things you tell me are
true, and I had not thought of it from that perspective, and now I'm
more confused than before. You at least have someone to turn to who is
solid and knows exactly what they believe."

"Yeah, I'm luckier than I deserve to have Pete," Kitty said.

Kurt smiled tiredly. "Nein, Katzchen. I was speaking of you, yourself.
But what I am used to turning to, ach, this is nothing new to me. The
very church I relied on so long wanted a stake through my heart simply
because I look the part of the demon. And Amanda, who is nothing but
good in her heart, she moves in a world I would prefer to ignore
completely. These things I have worked out in my head. But this," he
indicated the still-oblivious Piotr with a slight tip of his beer
bottle, "this one is - what does Logan say - oh, yes, this one is
twisting me out of my frame."

"I don't think you're torn as much as you're just bothered by what you
know you have to do. And right now, for your sake I've got to sit here
and take Bully-Boy's case, which is, by the way, not too bloody easy."
Kitty intentionally brought the spite back up in her voice. She would
be going in to Pete soon, and she refused to let him see any of her
softness towards Piotr. It was not something that he should ever be
required to sympathize with, under the circumstances. Oh yes, Pryde,
she thought, learn which sins of omission you should commit for the
greater good; you've learned your lesson. After all, maybe if Piotr
had had enough sense to lie about Miss Gentle-As-The-Dawn, he probably
would have never lost her. But then, that was a child's thought that
didn't belong to her anymore; it had just popped up out of reflex. It
used to make her wistful, but now it just made her relieved that Piotr
had dumped her, for whatever reason. Because, otherwise, she'd have
never met Pete. Chilling thought, that. This whole "what if" game was
too confusing by half. Besides, the point was to get things right with
Kurt. She pulled herself out of her musings and went on with what she
was trying to say.

"You already know what you have to do. I knew with Illyana. Wrong or
right. Or maybe, wrong and right. I feel really horrible because I
just can't help you with it, Kurt, not except to say that I respect
what you need to do."

"I understand that. And I understand I can't come to you for pep talks
on this, either."

Kitty hesitated. "No. But you can come to me if you just need to be
around somebody who may not have faith in your God, but who has no end
of faith in you."

Kurt drained the rest of his beer and toyed with the empty bottle,
clearly at a loss.

"Kurt, listen. I won't change how I feel about this whole mess. But I
also know that none of us can know for sure who might be the next one
sitting out on that rock," Kitty said, jerking her head in Piotr's
direction, but not taking her eyes off Kurt. "And come on, Fuzzy Elf,
nobody but us knows what die- hards we really are- you and I are
hardcore. The others can punch and zap and shoot fire, but things get
too rough for us, I can just phase out like a wind - and almost did,
once, if you remember -- and you can teleport to the moon. But we
always stay."

When Kurt looked up at her he was smiling wryly, but she could see
that his eyes had a strange look to them - he'd been fighting back
tears, but you'd have had to have long gotten used to those strange
eyes of his to ever detect it." Yes, like phantoms and ghosts? We are,
aren't we? We could be. Out of here without a trace."

"Well, I'm not sure about the 'without a trace' part. There is that
customary stench thing you have."

"And speaking of customary stenches," Kurt said under his breath just
as Kitty heard a crashing through the underbrush behind her.

"Bloody HELL! What is this, a soddin' seance? Between you lot an me
sister I might as well go stay with John and his demon-of-the-week and
pub crawl. Saw that bleedin candle glow and thought Comrade Psycho was
out here forging some kind of medieval Russian weapon to hit me with.
. . ."

"Good evening, Pete."

"Pete, eh? Well, good evenin ta you, Herr Wagner." Pete put his hands
on Kitty's shoulders and gave a quick squeeze. "You out here with my
girl, are ya? Oh, drinkin, too, I see. Gonna get her drunk and take
advantage of her, and not even leave me one soddin beer, eh?"

"You have found us out, I'm afraid. Well, Katzchen, he had to find out
sometime."

Kitty sighed. "Kurt and me are old news, Pete. It's been going on for
years."

"Ja, since the beginning. If you think it's bad now, you should have
seen what a scandal it was when she was 13. I was nearly arrested on
several occasions."

Kitty was still worried about Kurt, and Piotr's stoic rock-sitting act
was still present in her mind, though she refused to look back out
there and call Pete's attention to it. But she did have enough
presence of mind to notice that Kurt and Pete were joking, almost as
if they were becoming friends.

"Did you have a nice talk with Romany?" Kitty asked.

"As nice a talk as you can have with her. She said to tell you hello.
Has a high opinion of you, which has redeemed her a bit in me eyes,
but she got in her usual naggin and bitchin at me, so she was pretty
much her usual aggravatin ol' self. Look, you're gonna catch your
death out here, love. You ain't got blue fur like Herr Wagner over
here."

"Ja, Kitty, listen to the voice of reason."

Kitty raised her eyebrows at Kurt; her back was still to Pete, so it
was a private question: Are you OK? Are we settled?

Kurt, not missing her message, reached over and took her half-finished
beer from her. "I think you should stop, as Jubilee would say,
'scamming brewskis' off of me and go inside before you freeze to
death." He held her gaze a second longer: I'm fine, and I understand.

Kitty got up and started to walk back to the house with Pete. She had
only gotten a few steps, though, before she turned around and said
something in a language that had not passed her lips since she was 12
years old. Pete gave her an odd look and Kurt turned around on the
bench to meet her eyes.

"What did you say, Katzchen?"

"It's Hebrew. From the Torah."

"What does it mean?"

As she started walking again, she said over her shoulder, "The direct
translation is, 'It is better to light a candle than to sit and curse
the darkness.'"

end

albie@nternet.net
(Villa Diodati Music) http://www.nternet.net/~albie
"How hard can music be? I mean, there's only 12 notes!" --Tori Amos