Yvette and Catseye - The Sneaky Cat's Return!

[x-catseye.livejournal.com]

Catseye and Yvette get reacquainted.


Her Danger Room session had gone well, Catseye supposed, though it also served to remind her that she'd been letting herself get fat and lazy on too much Israeli food and sun. She was exhausted and sore, although it was the good kind of exhausted and sore that came with a feeling of accomplishment. But now she was more than ready to relax.

The still-brown-haired girl knocked on the door to Yvette's suite, but it quickly became apparent that her friend wasn't in. Catseye pondered going to look for her around the mansion, but dismissed the idea out of fear that she'd run into Nick-slash-John, and her imagination concocted grand scenarios where seeing her made him clutch his head, screaming in agony, writhing on the floor, then slipping into some sort of catatonic state and being lost forever. Though she knew it was unlikely, she had been told that her presence might aggravate his amnesia and damage his recovery (it didn't seem to her as if he was making any recovery at all, but she reminded herself that she was not a doctor) so she had decided that avoiding him was best.

She turned to leave, to head back to her apartment, but an idea caught her fancy. She'd joked on the journals about people locking their doors in case they found her on their beds, and it was the kind of joke she hoped Yvette would appreciate. With a grin, she shifted to catform, trotted outside and around the mansion's exterior to Yvette's window, and climbed in. Then she curled up on the end of the bed. Exhausted and sore seemed like a great excuse for a catnap until Yvette returned.

Except that Yvette was already home and in bed, curled up peacefully asleep. She'd had a long day of classes, plus a lot of homework and her own training session, and she'd decided on an early night. The sensation of Something jumping up onto her bed was enough to wake her - her instincts were honed to anyone coming within 'danger' closeness - but it wasn't big enough to be another person. Sitting up sleepily, she blinked, glowing eyes casting a dim light in the room, and then smiled to see the cat curled up so comfortably.

"Shamu," she said softly. "Did you escape from Kyle again?"

Startled by the fact that she'd completely missed the signs of Yvette being *in* the room, Catseye shifted into human form and promptly fell off the end of the bed, hitting the floor with a thump. "Yvette! Jeez, you scared me! I didn't think you were in here! I was just gonna wait to surprise you, and lookit that, you surprised me!"

Sometimes being small meant you didn't make much of a lump in the bed when you were in it. "Catsye?" Yvette asked, blinking anew at the girl sitting on the floor. "I did not know you were back. When did this happen?"

"A few hours ago," Catseye responded, staying on the floor as she didn't think it was appropriate to sit on Yvette's bed without being invited. "Sorry. I thought you might have seen the journals."

"I was at school," Yvette replied, yawning. She pulled her legs up and wrapped her arms around them, looking at her friend. "The floor cannot be comfortable, come and sit on the bed. You sound different."

"Different?" Catseye inquired curiously, repositioning herself on the end of Yvette's bed. "Different how?"

"You sound..." 'Normal' was insulting, so Yvette searched her English vocabulary for the right descriptor. "Grown up, perhaps? You sound like the other American students now."

Catseye's eyes widened. "I do?" She laughed at this. "I guess that's because I feel pretty grown up. It's funny you say that. Because sometimes you go along and live your life somewhere else with different people and you do not realize that you've changed, you think you're still the same person, just in a different place with different people, and you do not realize how much you've changed until you come back to the old places and people, yes?"

"Perhaps." Yvette leaned a little forward. "So, where have you been? I know you left to look for Nick, but then he came back..." She left the rest of the sentence hanging. "What have you been doing?"

"I couldn't find Nick," she answered wryly. "I lost the trail very quickly. And then I... I couldn't come back." For many reasons she didn't really want to share right here and now, not only because she'd lost Nick. "So I worked at finishing school. I got my diploma in January and I've been in Tel Aviv ever since, working for Elpis. What have you been doing?" she inquired curiously.

"You have been busy." Yvette noticed the evasion about coming back and respected her friend's privacy enough to let it go, despite her own concern. She shrugged at the question. "The usual. I finished the school and am studying at the Empire State University. Politics and social studies and such. I am still the RA and the X-Man, but I am finding I do not have a lot of time for much else. Oh, and I can sing all of Lady Gaga's songs now, after the magic spell that was put on us at Halloween." She tossed the last in there for comedic relief.

"Lady Gaga?" Catseye answered, laughing some more. "That's veryvery funny. I like Lady Gaga. You sound very busy. I understand why you quit Elpis. I quit too. So that I can go to college and train to be an X-Man too. I think if I was studying and training I would be too busy to work at Elpis." She felt better about the decision knowing that Yvette had made the same one in favour of the same priorities.

"There are photos, I believe," Yvette replied with a slight grin of her own - the incident had amused her more than anything, although to hear it said, she'd been lucky she hadn't run across 'Monty', for both their sakes. "And yes, I quit Elpis when I decided to become an X-Man. Between that and the Red X, I think I am saving the world enough, yes?"

"And you actually get to do things to save the world," Catseye agreed with a vigourous nod. "Not like at Elpis where there's just paper to push all the time when you can't be a boss before you graduate from university." She poked Yvette's knee through the blanket. "Photos are not the same when you're trying to show a person that you learned Lady Gaga songs," she pointed out to her friend. "Only hearing will do."

"There is a place for the paper pushing, but not all of us are good at that," Yvette acknowledged, then giggled. "Who would have thought I would be the woman of action when I started here? And I am not singing for you now - it'll wake everyone up. Maybe next time there is a Rock Band contest in the rec room?"

"You've come a long way," Catseye agreed, patting Yvette's knee affectionately, and then squealed at Yvette's offer of singing for her. "That would be great! I missed Rock Band!" And then she remembered that she technically didn't live here anymore and her face fell. "We should bring it over to my apartment and have people over for a contest though. It's better if I don't hang around the mansion in public places... because of Nick. Or John, I guess I should call him now."

"I am sorry, I forgot. But of course we can have a Rock Band party at your house." Yvette winked. "We would not embarrass the students with our old person shenanigans that way."

Catseye laughed at this. "This is true, yesyes. We are so old now!" she joked. "Old and graduated," she beamed. "Of course, it took me a lot longer than it took you! But I am happy to be moving forward with college instead of being in high school forever."

"What are you studying?" Yvette asked, realising she hadn't before. The changes in her friend were proving to be more and more interesting.

"I am going to learn how to be a chef," the catgirl answered with a grin. "Food Service Administration. See... I already know that I like political science and international aid and the sorts of things I need to work at Elpis," she explained, "but I also like cooking. So I think I might want to be a chef. I already tried the Elpis stuff so now I am going to try the cooking stuff and see which one I like more! That way, if I don't like cooking as much as political science and international aid, I can change and study those things instead and I will know that working at Elpis is my favourite. And if I like cooking more, then I know it was a good idea to leave Elpis! I want to do the thing I love most of all with no regrets. So now I just have to decide what I love most of all!"

Yvette clapped her hands together, laughing - Catseye's enthusiasm for things was still intact, and just as infectious. "You sound like you know what you need to do to be happy already," she said with a smile. "I am glad for you. No chocolate covered bugs for dinner, however!" she warned, teasingly. "Angel warned me about those!"

"But that's my signature dish!" Catseye retorted with mock indignation.