Subject: [OTL]: (X-Men) Computer Supplies Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 16:05:58 +0000 From: "Magik !" Disclaimer: All characters belong to Marvel Comics and are being used solely for non-profit entertainment. The story is mine. Please ask before posting anywhere. Feedback is always welcome Computer Supplies by Magik Kitty still had the letters. They were arranged chronologically in a cardboard box marked "computer supplies" because she could never bring herself to label it properly. Too many eyebrows would have been raised in the process, too many people would have been interested in getting a look at the pieces of paper with their creases soft and faded in their plain white envelopes. It would have been too much to try and share with anyone. After spending most of her life selflessly defending others, Kitty felt that she should be allowed to keep this one box to herself, considered it perfectly fine to be selfish. Most days she simply kept them on the top shelf in her closet and no matter where she had lived whether it was in Excalibur's lighthouse, the dorm room she had briefly inhabited in her one attempt to lead a normal life outside of the super powered world or the space she had reclaimed in the X-Mansion. It was always there, waiting for her in case she needed it. Some days, the pile seemed to go on forever and on other occasions there were so few of them that it broke her heart even more. People shouldn't leave so little behind. People shouldn't be able to be contained within a handful of letters in a cardboard box. They should be ever expansive and lost within the particles of everything you touched. Despite everything she had seen, Kitty has always believed in God. She just wished that he didn't feel so far away. They began during her stay at Muir Island following her grave injurt during the Morlock Massacre and, despite the changes that had occurred, ran all the way through the tumultuous death of their sender. It was true that after Inferno, they were mostly childish scrawls and a few scribbled phrases of Russian but they still warmed her heart and kept her going when the world had done its best to beat her into the ground. Because even as a child, Illyana possessed such a spark that her words glowed and brought inspiration. Not because of what she said as much as the hope that burned beneath it. On the first night of her return to the X-Mansion, Kitty sat by the window, lights dimmed so that no one would disturb her with their congratulations and warm wishes about having her back again, and pulled the letters out one by one starting at the beginning. And as she read through them, she realized that she had never figured out how Illyana did it. Even when she and the New Mutants had been in the midst of a fight, even when they were in outer space on a mission, Illyana had written to her. The letters usually arrived on a bi-weekly basis, thick things full of Illyana's tightly spaced, neatly printed words. The one that always startled her the most was the letter that Illyana had sent to her during Inferno. Excalibur had been busy trying to free themselves from its influence in Manhattan, and Kitty had not been able to read the letter until days after it's arrival. But it was always the one that she came back to when she needed the darkest days calmed. "Dearest Kitty, Things are going to be over now. You mark my words. The sun is setting as we speak, and I am finally going to be faced with the decision that has haunted me over the past few years. There is no more running away from anything for there is nowhere left to go. I never learn, you see. No matter what I do, I never learn anything. It's a trap, this whole thing I'm involved in, it's all a trap. There is no easy way out, Kitty. Our lives are not about easy ways out. They can't be. We have too many decisions and no decisions at all. The good fight will go on I am sure, but I can no longer be a part of it. One way or another, something must give and something else must end. As a child, I had very little choice. What if I could give those choices back? What if the clock could move in the other way? I'm tired, Kitty. I'm too young to be so worn. I have to go soon. I feel it in the air and in my bones. I feel it in my sword, a singing of things being finished and over. It's the last act. And Kitty, it's not about what you remember; it's about what you forget. Love always, Illyana" Kitty slipped the letter back into its envelope, careful not to spill a single tear on the paper. And, yes, the good fight had to continue despite the fact that Kitty ached to be normal again. It had to continue. She couldn't let Illyana think that she had forgotten.