Miles & Kyle, backdated to February 1

[x-otoxic.livejournal.com]

Kyle helps Miles process the death of Dan Hanrahan and figure out what are the limits of being a superhero.


Chalk it up to senioritis, but Miles had no interest in attending the lit mag meeting at Bayville or the evening's Generation X seminar. And that essay on The Bluest Eye would just have to wait. Perhaps if he wished hard enough, it would even write itself. Worst case scenario, one missed essay wouldn't have too detrimental an effect on his overall grade, anyway. So instead of participating, Miles holed himself up in a back corner of the library, reading an old copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe he'd found on the shelves, wishing he had a Christ-like animal to guide him to Good.

"Yo, Morales? You get lost in there I gotta send Topaz after you." Kyle had wrapped up the obstacle course he'd sent the rest of the kids through and then skipped his shower to find Miles. It was just plain weird for the younger man to skip a Gen-X seminar that involved flipping, tumbling and climbing around like a lemur. Spider-Lemur. "You missed agility day, man. Not like you to miss a chance to hang upside down from a trapeze."

Miles raised his head at the call, setting aside Edmund Pevensie's childish desire for Turkish delight, which, even though this was not the first time Miles had read this book, he still didn't know what it was. "I'm over here," he called back, loudly enough to be heard and tracked but hopefully not to call down the librarian's rain of terror.

Kyle made his way through the well-organized stacks. He picked up one of the free chairs on the way, and flipped it around backwards to plop himself down once he found Miles. "So, I'm gonna guess that you didn't end up here cause you got caught up in talking animals and fencing mice, right?" He paused, pointing at Miles book. "Wait, is the mouse in this one?"

"I think the mouse is in the next one, when they're on that boat? This one's got the beavers and the faun played by that guy who kinda looks like a really young Professor X." Miles closed the book and pulled up his legs so his knees were up against his chest, as if his legs provided a barrier between the two of them. "Sorry I missed class today, or whatever. If that's why you're looking for me."

"Well, it is but..." Kyle scratched at his own hair, still sweaty from the obstacle run. "Only cause, like, it's not like you to skip. Not to send you off to Gen-X time-out. No detention or anything. Just wondering what happened."

"I just wasn't feeling up for it, sorry." It wasn't an explanation, and Miles felt he owed more, but he feared the words would just spill from his mouth and he wouldn't be able to stop talking. Still, he hated keeping secrets and this one was too big to safely keep for long. "It's . . . okay, you're in the X-Men, right? You've been doing the super stuff for a while."

"Well, "in" like I have slacked off for a couple months." The last year, who was counting. "But yeah, I do the X-Thing. I have some armor pants, I might have some boots dumped in a closet somewhere." Kyle answered. "Since I was, uh, your age, right abouts. Pretty sure Scott lost his shit when I wanted to join, I had a legit trophy for getting Kyle-napped."

That brought a small smile to Miles's face, but it didn't stay long. "Okay, I've got a question and it's going to sound real weird so I'm sorry right now." He paused, trying to figure out the right way to ask, before settling on the most direct. "Have you ever killed someone? I mean, on a mission. And not necessarily on purpose. Like, if something you did made someone die."

"Man you don't screw around with the questions." Kyle let out a long breath, and then did it again just for good measure. "Uh. Maybe, I dunno. I know I looked the other way a couple of times when someone did that, so, I guess you could say I did?" Maybe he should've said no, or told Miles that it didn't matter, he thought, ever so briefly about both options, but neither was fair, or honest. "Never like, directly, but yeah, I probably caused a couple of people to die."

Miles nodded, processing Kyle's admission. "And are you okay with it?" he asked slowly, deliberately, in an effort not to stumble over his own words. "Like, how do you deal with it?"

Kyle shook his head slowly. "Man I do a lot of therapy. I talk to the Prof, I drink a lot of decaf tea, I beat up robots in the Danger Room. Sometimes I don't deal. I mean, sometimes I go camping for a few days, sometimes I, uh, indulge in a couple of bad habits." Sometimes he tried to get drunk, which never worked very well. "I talk, like, a lot. I don't know I have great answers for you." He shrugged. "No quick fortune cookie wisdom, dealing with it's kind of a lot of work."

"I don't have any bad habits," Miles lied, and then shook his head, knowing how ridiculous and unbelievable that sounded. "Do we know anyone who can go back in time? Make things happen differently."

"Probably not?" Kyle answered. "I mean, maybe they did already, maybe it hadda happen. But like, no fortune cookie wisdom here." He pointed at himself. "I don't think anyone's got a Time Turner, or any flying phone booths." He rested his chin on the back of his turned-around chair. "Back to the Future says if we did know anyone who could do that, you wouldn't know, cause it'd create a separate branch of time, so I think even if we find a time traveler, you're stuck with the hard work part."

"That is the worst time travel theory ever." Miles sighed and buried his face in his knees. "I just don't know what to do. I thought I saved someone. A bad man. He should've gone to jail forever. That's what I wanted to do. But, you know, stop someone from falling fast without bracing them and snap!"

Kyle reached out to rest a hand on Miles' shoulder. "I wish I did know somebody who could fix it for you. You tried, you tried your best, and I know that's pretty much doing nothing to make you feel better. Man, this is what's eating you up and keeping you from Gen-X stuff? I don't blame you, this is heavy stuff."

"And the worst part is, I don't know if it's my fault. Was he already dead or did I kill him?" Miles had asked himself these questions so many times, but he has yet to find any answers or clarity. "And, like, how can I even trust myself anymore to do the right thing if that happened, you know what I mean?"

"Kinda, I mean, mine's a little different, but... " Kyle said, with a wave of an arm that indicated his feet. "I kinda live inside mine, but I get you. I think, I mean it's easy for me to say it now, it was a whole lotta therapy homework for me for years, but it's not like you tried to kill a guy, Miles. You tried to do the opposite. I think you need to remember that more."

The younger man nodded. "Bobby said pretty much the same thing." Replicated results. He must have been on the right track, then. "So, um, thanks."

"Bobby's a pretty wise dude for a snowman." Kyle said, with a matching nod. "Did he tell you it was cool if it took you a while to figure it out? Cause if not, one, he missed out on a pun about cold, and two, I am gonna tell you that. Dealing with heavy stuff is hard work, if you're still figuring it out when you're halfway to being Doctor Spider-Miles, PhD in spider-stuff, nobody who knows anything about heavy stuff would blame you."

Conceptually, everything Kyle said was so simple, but that didn't make it any easier to accept. The feeling of a fist clenching Miles' heart didn't lighten, but the overall sense of dread casting a pall on him did seem to recede a little, like there was a path out of this.

"I don't think that's a real degree," he responded instead of saying anything of substance.

"Bet you another free Gen-X session skip that I can find at least one person who has a doctorate in studying spiders." Kyle retorted. "I win, you go run the agility course mid-week, you win, I let you skip the next seminar that you hate."

"Spider-stuff about actual spiders, sure. Arachnologist. SAT word. But not, like, my spider stuff." Miles hrrmed thoughtfully, considering that. "I wonder if I could study superheroism in college. I have no idea what major to take, and that sounds like the best for me."

"Man I don't even know where you'd start with that. I did a whole essay in one of my Lit classes on Superman but that was like, a cultural thing." Kyle said. "But real life superheroes, geez. I mean you could do a doctorate just on like, Captain America and patriotism and all that and that's just maybe a few dudes in the same costume."

"I could do a doctorate on why Captain America is the best and why is all the cool merchandise so expensive?"

"I dunno man, can someone counter a doctorate with you're wrong because Cyclops is the best? Cause how does that work, do you duel if someone counters your sociology doctoral thesis?" Kyle asked, with a snort and a laugh.

"Maybe a rap battle? Get a little Hamilton up in there."