Kitty and Cecilia | Flowers

[x-barrier.livejournal.com]

Kitty and Cecilia meet and talk about the weirdness of a second stay at Xavier's.

The flowers had been a mistake. Cecilia saw that now.

It had been an impulse buy after her morning latte (a frivolous expense itself). She'd spotted the lilies in the florist's window, and because it was spring after what had been a gloomy, dreary winter, she'd bought them on the spot.

It had been at home where the trouble began. Dogs were curious, and hers were no exception, and it had taken quite a bit of stern shouting to keep PD at a safe length. And now, with the bouquet placed safely on a table in the kitchen, she was squatting on a counter and making quite the ruckus as she rifled through cabinets looking for a vase. For all of Charles' finery, she was having a surprisingly tough time.

At first, when Kitty heard the noise, she thought of home. Not home as in the mansion or home as the squat studio apartment, but home as the cozy little brick house that she'd lived in with her parents in Deerfield. The clinking and clunking would have fit into that place, the comfortable sounds of rearranging, and Kitty was just sleepy enough after a long night awake to let her memory drift.

She yawned and stretched as she walked into the room, half-expecting Terri Pryde. Her heart lifted when she remembered that she was nowhere near her mother and instead, someone else stood before her.

"Hello?" Kitty ventured hesitantly. There were people here who seemed to know her that she'd never met. Or perhaps it was just her drifting sense of grief, looking for familiarity where there was none. Still, she didn't want to intrude in a place that wasn't quite yet home.

"Oh, hey, sorry, I know it's loud, just–" Cecilia moved a glass vase from the back of the cabinet, trying to figure out the source of the voice she didn't recognize "Actually, any chance you can hold this while I climb down from here? It's a little heavy." Before waiting for an answer, she pulled the vase from its home, and with one hand gripped firmly around the lip, passed it down to Kitty without so much of a glance.

"Um...okay." Kitty took the vase, cradling it in her hands. "What are you going to put in this?" She blinked, her lids still heavy. What she'd meant to ask was why flowers? Why now? But those questions seemed too awkward, even for her. And perhaps things had changed more than she realized. Xavier's was not a mausoleum.

"Uh. Flowers." Cecilia couldn't help the tone of her voice, which suggested that she thought the question was every bit as dumb as it was. Glancing toward the floor, she tried to climb off the counter, with one hand pushing against the cabinet for support.

"It's dumb, I know." She put her other foot on the ground and turned to face the other woman. "I just - it's too dark and Victorian in here. In decor and disposition. Place needs some color." Cecilia shrugged, then smiled. "God, I sound like an idiot. Here, let me take that from you. I'm Cecilia."

"Kate," Kitty held out her hand. "Or Kitty, if you prefer. That's what everyone else here seems to know me as." She smiled back, glancing around the room. "It's funny, to think that this place of all places needs color but you're right. It does."

"Great to meet you." Cecilia shifted the vase and shook Kate's hand. That would make it easier to differentiate. Kitty had been - Kate was. "The nickname makes me think you've been here before?" She turned toward the counter and grabbed the bouquet of lilies.

"Not since I was 18. Thus the Kitty/Kate thing. I stopped being Kitty a long time ago." She grimaced. "Not exactly the kind of name that gets you far in the professional world."

Kitty leaned against the table. She wasn't sure of what to ask the older woman though she had a million questions. Her eyes drifted to the lilies. The flowers made her think of death, appropriate perhaps with the funeral air the mansion sometimes had.

"Have you been here long?" Kitty asked Cecilia. It was awkward but less so than her other options.

"Not really." Cecilia opened a drawer and rifled through it for a few seconds before grabbing a pair of kitchen scissors. "First time I was here, I was only here for a few months, and that was like... 10 years ago. Eleven, I guess." She unwrapped the bouquet and started cutting off the ends of stems. "This time, it's been about a year and some change."

Kitty laughed. "I make it sound like some sort of rehab, don't I?"

She shook her head. "I just feel so out of place here still sometimes. But I'd feel that way anywhere."

Cecilia pushed the stem-ends in a pile on the counter before looking up at Kitty. "Really? Why?" She put the vase in the sink and turned the faucet on. "Not that this place doesn't bring together dozens of people who feel out-of-place or anything. Just being nosy."

"Nosy's not a bad thing. It's pushy that is, which you're not," Kitty observed. "Mmm... I used to travel a lot for work. Maybe that's it. Or..."

Her voice drifted off, thinking of the years spent-no, wasted - that she’d been hiding in her own skin. "You know, ever since I left here, I've tried to somehow... stop being..." The words failed her and she dropped the thought. "Life just slaps you in the face, is all. I keep waiting for the next hit to fall."

"God, you just—" Cecilia turned the handle of the faucet off once the vase was filled and simply turned to face Kitty full-on. The expression on her face was a little cryptic, but after a few seconds, it faded into a smile.

"I know exactly what you mean." She was looking at the other woman with a surprising intensity, her eyes meeting Kitty's as if she was seeing her for the first time. "Seriously, every word. Even the not-words. Trust me."

Kitty tilted her head, not quite smiling and said, "I hope that's not true."

She swallowed, then glanced at the lilies. Her fingers brushed a petal, her eyes finding comfort in focusing on something that wasn't a person. The problem was, she believed Cecilia. But she had no idea of how to reach out.

"It's just... I wish the world had gotten different, is what I mean. It's better here than in some parts of the world and my mother tells me not to be ungrateful, that I should be thankful but... I'm not. Not when I know it could be so much better."

Kitty gave a little shrug. "But I never figured out exactly what I could do to make it that way. Not once I left here and went out into the world."

A little embarrassed by her unfettered honesty, Cecilia turned away and started moving flowers around in the vase. "That I wish I knew," she admitted. "I mean, I don't... the world's not different - or maybe it is," she shrugged, "but if it is, it's a little worse. But, like, we're different. I mean, I'm different - you grow up, and you change. Experiences change you. That's a place to start."

"What did you do before you got here?" Kitty asked. "Some people, they never leave. But not you--am I right?"

"You are," Cecilia nodded and smiled, choosing not to mention the fact that she'd said as much moments earlier. "Before I got here the first time, I was in med school. And after, I went to do my residency about as far away as possible, and then some more doctoring, obviously. And then, to get really far away, I went to Honduras. But I came back." She shrugged. "What about you?"

"Indiana Jones without the hat," Kitty replied, then shrugged. "Well, not really but it sounds good. I helped manage and...acquire parts of a private antiquities collection."

She blushed a little. In the outside world, she hadn't given the legalities of her work much thought but here, in the school, the memory of her actions bothered her.

"Sounds kinda fun," Cecilia grinned. "And a little dangerous. In a good way."

"Sometimes," Kitty admitted sheepishly. "But if I didn't like danger a little, would I be here?"

"Ah," Cecilia's smile grew wider. "Excellent point."