xp_logs | Sooraya and Kitty

Sooraya and Kitty meet and chat.

"I'm going to quit you someday," Kitty said, her voice filled with deep emotion. She was standing in the kitchen, her back to the door as she stared down at her coffee cup. "This just isn't a good relationship. You keep me up all night, I can't go even a few hours without you nearby...being without you is nothing but headaches and pain." She sighed deeply, taking a step back from the cup.

In another moment, she was back, cradling the cup gently in her hands. Then she glanced up, blinking with sleepy eyes at a figure in the doorway.

"Um. Hello," Kitty said. "Want some? The first one's free."

Sooraya had to stifle a laugh at the woman speech at her coffee cup. "No thank you. I am more of a tea drinker. Unfortunately I just ran out of my favorite flavor this morning, so I figured I would come down to hunt some down." She moved over the stove, pulling out an old fashioned kettle and putting it on the flames.

Once the kettle was on, she looked back at Kitty. "If your friend there is keeping you up at night, you might want to find a new friend."

"Well, you know, I like to stick close to my friends. Anyhow, I don't know which keeps me up more--the coffee or having an actual roommate." Kitty sighed. "It's just... weird. He's all...famous. I keep wondering if I'm going to wake up and find that some member of the paparazzi is sticking a camera in the window."

"Who are you staying with again?" Sooraya poked her head back out of the cupboard where she was digging through various boxes of tea. "We have had so many new people coming to the mansion lately I kinda lost track of who is who and who stays where." The desired tea located, she moved to yet another cupboard to pull out a small tea pot.

"Jean-Paul. He was in the Olympics." Kitty shrugged as she took a sip of her coffee. "He just sort of appeared. Which is strange--that's more my sort of thing. But I walked through the wall one night and he was just there."

"Wait... he didn't ask you if you would mind sharing? Or anyone else checked with you?" She looked surprised, her eyebrows up fairly high. "Seriously?"

"It was all a big mixup." Her mouth quirked. "I wasn't..um..exactly graceful. I might've accused him of cheating on the Olympics." Kitty ducked her head. "What a lousy thing to say, huh?"

A wince stole over Sooraya's face. "I take it that didn't go over too well? But mix ups do happen... from both sides." Though if this version of Jean-Paul had the pride of the man she remembered, that would make things complicated.

"It could've been better. But it also could've been worse." Kitty said. "What's done is done, I guess. But I'm just not quite used to having a roommate again." She smiled. "But if that's the most excitement I have right now, maybe I should consider myself lucky. How about you?"

"Angel and I have roomed together for years, so we are very used to each other. She was my roommate when I first arrived here after Afghanistan and a brief stay in Great Britain." Sooraya explained.

"That sounds nice. The last person I lived together with for that long... it didn't go well, really." Kitty's voice grew distant for a moment, then she shook it off. "But at least here, I don't think it will be that much of a problem. If nothing else, we all seem to get caught up in the rest of the world's problems." Her mind drifted to those problems. She saw them reflected in all the teenagers' thoughts in their journals and she quietly marveled at that. It seemed sometimes like the kids were more astute and aware than she was herself.

"Since in a way we are kinda the world's problem in a way... that is not so strange." Sooraya moved over to the stove when the kettle finally started whistling. "Not to mention the fairly large group of people around here who tend to get actually involved in them."

"I know." She smiled ruefully. Kitty still hadn't completely wrapped her mind around her last set of adventures with Kane. The complexities of right and wrong when balanced against what they had done...like so many other times, she hadn't yet determined whether or not she believed they had done the right thing in allowing the legal system to assign the final blame.

"I suppose you can say we're the world's problem," Kitty paused. "But is that entirely our fault? If people didn't choose to be alarmed by us, do you think we would be as much a problem? Does expecting bad--or for that matter, good--in a person bring it to happen?"

"Not our fault in general, no." Sooraya shook her head emphatically. "But I think we also cannot blame the people who are alarmed. I have often wondered if it's really a choice or some kind of primal instinct that is really hard to override for some, easier to do for others. I only know from my education classes that students often rise to the occasion when a teacher has high expectations of them, so maybe there is a core of truth in that if we expect the bad of the worst from a person, they will rise to that."

"It's just hard living under the burden of expectations. Then again... in some ways, life felt easier when I was living out there--" Kitty gestured aimlessly toward the window. "Pretending I wasn't a mutant. No powers. But it was harder. You can't pretend forever to be something that you're not. But at the same time, it's hard to convince people not to be afraid of what we are. I'm not always so sure we can do it hiding away but I also don't know how we could accomplish it by standing out in the open." She frowned.

"I think at the moment the only choices we have are along the lines of doing the least amount of harm. Hide... get hurt in some ways you do not even know from the start. Stand out in the open... bring all kinda of forces in society against you. There is no winning, no good choice. After the damage in the world caused by M-day..." Sooraya finally emptied the kettle in the tea pot.

Kitty fell silent for a moment, then simply said, "Yeah."

After a moment's hesitation, she began to talk again. "Sometimes...I think there is so much good to be done in the world. I see the headlines and... and all I can think of is my family. That..."

She fell quiet again for a moment, assembling her thoughts. "I want to go farther than what we do here and yet, these terrible things overseas, how do you make those kinds of conflicts stop? They've been going on for longer than this country here even existed. At the same time, how can you not help those people? There was another time when the world's eyes and ears closed themselves to a small group like that..." She didn't finish the sentence. Her thoughts were moving into dangerous territory.

"When I started working at X-Corps years ago, I think the hardest thing for me to learn was that you cannot help everyone, even with the powers we have at our disposal... I still struggle with that..." Sooraya spoke hesitantly. "Somewhere along the way we are going to be forced to accept that we cannot help everyone or with everything. No matter how much we hate that fact."

"But how do we choose? How can we choose?" Kitty fell silent again.

"If I knew the answer to that, I would happily share it. Unfortunately I haven't found it yet..." Sooraya eyed her teapot, then pulled a mug from the cupboard and poured some in. "The furthest I have gotten that it might be better to help some people all the way then a large group with only a little bit? But even that is pretty shaky."

"Welcome to Xavier's." Kitty offered a wry grin. "Some things never change."

"That sounds about right." Sooraya rolled her eyes a little and sipped from her tea. "Living at Xavier's: taking on unique challenges... But we cannot deny its home."

"Maybe. I just always pictured home a little differently. Husband, kids, all that." She shrugged. "But life doesn't always happen as planned. In fact, I think it almost never does. Where did you see yourself when you were younger? Was it anything like this?"

Sooraya smiled sadly. "I was born in a nomadic tribe in Afghanistan. The furthest I often thought was hopefully a good husband, a non too bad mother-in-law and several children. So this... this is something I never could have imagined."

>Wow. Way to go, Pryde. Feeling awkward, Kitty offered her a smile in return. "Whether or not you could've imagined it, I hope it's been good in the end."

"Yes, a very good thing." Sooraya nodded. "Lots of good things as well. People, chances to learn and to do things I never held possible."

"We've all gotten those chances. It's amazing, the people I've met since I came here." Kitty poured herself another cup of coffee, breathing in the steam that lifted off the cup. "And it's hard to stay away. The world out there is different. I just sometimes wish I could have both things."

Sooraya nodded. "I think we all wish that in some way. I only have to think of the teens and how some of their friends and family react to their powers. It sometimes seems impossible to have both..."

"Unless we separated and formed our own place. But even then, I don't think the world would let that stand." Kitty smiled but there was no heart in it.

"You mean, like if we had our own country?" That had her looking up from her tea, a frown playing around her eyebrows.

"I wouldn't suggest that," she sighed. "We don't exactly have a homeland. Where could we settle, even if it was a good idea, that wouldn't be taking from others?"

"I have no idea..." Sooraya shook her head slowly. "And even if we did find a place we would not take from someone else, there is still a major chance of everyone else wanting to interfere."

"Maybe they'd be right to." Kitty said. "No hiding place is the sanctuary you think it will be."

"Of course not. And if you think about mutants like Magneto and his followers... I am not surprised governments would be suspicious of any mutant sanctuary." Sooraya commented somberly.

"Good thing they don't know about this one then," Kitty remarked.

"The public might not, but the government knows. We are just lucky they leave us alone. Or they don't want to rattle us, knowing what lies inside the walls of the mansion." Sooraya stayed somewhat somber. "Or they might not think of us as a threat yet."

"Yeah." Kitty shuddered. "Well, I guess that's the risk we take. It isn't any worse than being out there though." She gestured aimlessly at the window.

"Each carries it's own risks.That would probably be the best way to say it." Sooraya sipped some more of her tea. "Look at us being all somber this morning..."

"I blame the season. Fall always brings it out in me." Kitty smiled. "I'm always a little sad to see summer's end."

"Each season has their own charm. Extreme heat or cold all the time gets very boring." Sooraya commented knowledgeably. "That is one thing here I like a lot more."

"Extremes have their own advantages. Like an excuse for sleeping in," Kitty grinned. Then she turned serious. "Is there anything you miss though?"

"My mother mostly... and the rest of my family I suppose..." Sooraya shook her head. "It's been since a long time since I saw her... Not like you can easily pop back for a short visit."

"But you still talk to her, don't you?" Kitty felt a little guilty whenever she thought of her own convoluted relationship with her mother. She wasn't entirely sure that she'd miss the woman if she disappeared and the very notion made her feel guiltier still.

"We still keep in touch, but it's not as much as I would want to sometimes. But with the situation in Afghanistan as it is... going there is littered with risks." Sooraya explained sadly.

"When's the last time you were back?" Kitty couldn't restrain her curiosity. She wondered how hard it would be if she had been separated from home for so long. Then again, she reflected, I've been such a drifter. Would it make a difference?

"At least five years... Even then it was only a brief visit. Like I said... too many risks." Sooraya replied, somewhat lost in thought as she considered her mother.

"What is it like for mutants there?" Kitty asked, wondering if that was the risk that Sooraya was speaking of.

"Often not good." Sooraya shook her head. "The situation varies from seen as evil till being used as a human weapon or a slave to being murdered."

The other woman fell silent in response. Her own discovery of her powers had felt like the end of the world--for Sooraya, however, it must have meant much, more more. The thoughts played across her face as she considered all of the questions that, for once, she was afraid to voice.

"Are you...the only one in your family?" The question threatened to open a Pandora's box--of that, Kitty was certain--but she still couldn't restrain it.

"From what I know, yes. But I have not seen them in a long time, so someone else might have manifested." Sooraya replied after a moment of hesitation.

"Do you have brothers or sisters then?" Kitty paused before she asked.

"No, but I do have several cousins. So who knows..." Sooraya shrugged a little. "I don't quite know where my family is at the moment."

It seemed wise to leave the conversation there. Kitty hesitated, struggling to think of something to say that wouldn't inadvertently wound. She tilted her head, then offered a faint smile. "At least...at least we're building something like a family here, at Xavier's."

"It is." Sooraya agreed with a smile. "It is both a family and a home."