Kitty, Amanda - Monday
Sep. 6th, 2004 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsKitty has some questions for Amanda about two of her roomies. She gets answers, some which are more reassuring than others.
Kitty was not on the warpath, and it helped to remind herself of that. She was just looking for Amanda, someone she considered something of a friend, to talk. She was not on the warpath, and would remain not on it until at least after she had heard Amanda's side of things. Admittedly, right now it didn't look too good for the witch, but Kitty would be the first to admit that Illyana could be biased and that it wouldn't do to take only her word about anything that might have happened. And so, here she was, only back in the Mansion a few days and hunting down Amanda.
Amanda, for her part, was doing her best to keep a low profile. Breaking your fellow students' arm was not generally something that endeared you to the general populace, no matter what the circumstances. And she certainly wasn't going to share those with all and sundry. So she was holed up in a corner of the library, figuring of the people who would think to find her there, Paige she could actually talk to, Shan would be too polite to ask questions, and Nate was still too fragile himself to get involved. She frowned at the Arabic textbook she was working her way through, and tried to ignore the nagging feeling that she ought to go find a mystic artefact and drain it dry right about now.
The thing with hunting someone down was that you eventually looked everywhere, and Kitty was familiar enough with the library that once she thought to look there it wasn't that hard to find Amanda. Of course, she'd checked everywhere else first, and so she wasn't in the best off moods when she did find Amanda. Reminding herself again that she was not on the warpath, she said, "Hi, Amanda. How's it going?"
Almost dropping the book with a startled squeak, Amanda looked up and smiled. "Hey, Kit-Kat. Heard you were back. How're you doin'?"
"Well, I'm very glad to be out of Chicago, that's for sure," Kitty said. "How about you? What are you doing in the library? Classes haven't started yet..."
'Hiding' was the first answer that came to mind, but not the one she was going to use. "Um, catchin' up on the Arabic - missed a few classes lately, an' I didn't want t' fall too far behind." There was something about the expression on Kitty's face, determined almost... Belatedly Amanda remembered whose roommate Kitty was. "An' keepin' low," she admitted. "Did some pretty stupid stuff, an' 'm tryin' t' keep out of people's faces," she admitted, guiltily squirming.
"Yeah," Kitty said, softly. "I heard about some of the stupid stuff." And I have my suspicions about others... "What are the chances you want to talk about it?" She was doing her best to be non-confrontational, especially when she realized that Amanda wasn`t happy with the way she'd behaved.
"Want? Absolutely zero. Have to? Pretty much odds on." A faint grin tugged at Amanda's mouth, before resignation set in. "In a nutshell? Jubilee did somethin' that went way over the line, an' I popped her one. Broke her nose. She was the one who brought powers into it, tho'."
Kitty gave Amanda a brief answering smile before her expression became serious. "Powers came into it? I... hadn`t heard that. Given what happened, I`m not really surprised, though, that it got serious."
Amanda scrubbed her hands through her hair - this was hard, although not as hard as it could have been. The link was reassuring in its presence, after days of numbness. "She... panicked, I s'pose. I had her down, thumped her a good few times, an' she used her powers t' get me off her." She held up forearms no longer bandaged, but still showing the red weals shaped like fingermarks left by Jubilee's fireworks. "I sort of lost it, let her have it good with the magic. Broke her her arm." Amanda wasn't proud of what she'd done - quite the contrary. Her whole posture had slumped into miserable guilt. "She just got caught up in the middle, I s'pose. Manny an' I were havin' issues, she decided t' have herself some fun with him, an' I... I couldn't handle it. Not her fault, not really."
Kitty's anger was rapidly evaporating in the face of Amanda's obvious distress. "Well, I'd hardly say she was blameless, and neither, I think, would she." Uninvited, she settled down into the chair across the table from Amanda. "Bad decisions all around, it sounds like. Hardly a first, here at Mutant High."
"Some _really_ bad decisions," Amanda agreed. "An' yeah, she did choose t' fu... have sex with Manny, but I should've handled it better. Problem is, she hits all me buttons, an' I do the same for her - we're never gunna be mates, that's for sure."
"Well, honestly, if it had been Jamie... I probably wouldn`t have stoped with breaking an arm," Kitty admitted, remembering an amazingly bad, well, couple of weeks so very long ago and that she still hadn`t really forgiven Piotr or Warren. Which reminded her of the other thing she was worried about. "Yeah, you really don`t seem to get on with my roommates, hey? Any problems with Terry I should know about?" Her tone was light, but her eyes serious.
"Terry? Nah. She doesn't get up me nose the way Lee does, an' she doesn't scare the fuck out of me like Illyana does." Amanda realised what she'd let slip, and watched Kitty carefully for her reaction.
"Well, that`s good to hear, I guess," Kitty said, keeping her voice level. "So why does Illyana... worry you?" It sounded marginally better than `frighten`, both for the light it placed `Yana in and for saving Amanda a bit of face.
Amanda sighed. Kitty was going to think she was just being bitchy, especially in the light of what had happened with Jubilee, but it was either that or look completely paranoid. "There's somethin'... off 'bout her. Magically, I mean. Somethin' I can't get a handle on, but whatever it is, it scares me." She took a deep breath, took the plunge. "It feels demon-y t' me."
"Demon-y?" Kitty asked, looking confused. "Is that what you told Piotr, then?" It was just a suspiscion, but she looked confident as she said it, not expecting Amanda to deny it.
"Somethin' like that. I never said she was evil, just that there was stuff she wasn't tellin' him, like the magic." Amanda knew she was treading on very delicate ground, and took another breath to marshall her thoughts. Easy does it. "She spent eight years in a demon dimension, Kit. You lot don't know demons, but I do - not much, but more than I'd like. They're _evil_, pure evil; you saw what it was like there. An' I don't buy this cock-an'-bull story 'bout bein' rescued straight after we lost her - there's somethin' 'bout her, somethin' that hits all me instincts wrong. It ain't her fault, but it's there, an' I can't make anyone believe me." She looked unhappily at Kitty. "Includin' you, I'm guessin'."
Well, there was the proof that it had been Amanda who had started the thing with Piotr. Not that it really mattered, but it was good to know. "I can believe that demons are pure evil, but you`re right, I don`t believe she`s evil. Couldn`t be that whatever it is you feel is, I don`t know, just residue of Limbo? Not actually part of her?" Kitty didn`t understand magic, not beyond fantasy novels, so while she was curious she felt rather out of her league.
"I'm not sayin' _she's_ evil, just that there's somethin' there..." Amanda shrugged unhappily. "Look, I ain't sayin' this t' be a bitch, but there's somethin' not right with her. Like the magic thing. She swore black and blue that she couldn't do magic, but then Strange rumbles her an' guess what? She can do magic. Why hide it? 'S not like it's an issue, not with me here. An' there was that stuff with the Skippies - she got Artie out of the warehouse, but wouldn't tell anyone how, denied flat out she was a mutant. But again, when she got done for the magic, she comes out with the news she's a teleporter." With a sigh, Amanda slumped back in her chair. "She's hidin' somethin'. I'm the last one t' be sayin' it's on purpose, that she means us harm - if she did, she would've done somethin' by now. But demons're bad bloody news, an' their magic's worse."
Kitty looked serious. "You may be right, certainly you know more about demons than I do, or want to. But... I trust her. If she is hiding something, I`m sure she has a reason, and Piotr being an idiot isn`t going to help anyone, himself included."
"That we agree on." Amanda looked Kitty full in the face. "Believe me, I never meant for him t' dump her like he did. I figured he'd talk t' her, maybe get the X geezer involved..." She made a face. "Bloody pillock."
"Glad to know it's not malicious, though," Kitty said. "If nothing else, I like you and I like 'Yana, and I'd hate to have to kill you for doing that to her on purpose." She half grinned to show she was kidding, mostly. "Look, Amanda, maybe 'Yana is hiding something, but she's hardly the only one here who is. Maybe you're right and it'll turn out to be a bad thing, but maybe it won't. If you want to keep your eyes open and be suspicious, go ahead. As long as you two don't start, well, screaming at each other in the halls, it doesn't do anyone any harm, right?"
"No screamin', I promise. 'M perfectly happy t' keep avoidin' her like I have been doin'. Tends t' lead t' bad things. An' speakin' of which..." Amanda gathered up her books, and began to stand. "I've gotta go heal Lee some. Part of the punishment Strange handed out."
"Oh?" Kitty asked. "Well, I guess that`s fair, although she can hardly do the same in return."
"'S different for me. Magic... 's all about balance. You don't use it 'less you have to, you take into account what comes of it. Everythin' I do comes back t' me threefold, so if I use magic t' hurt someone, I can expect t' have t' live with some pain of me own." She gestured at the burns. "'S why I ain't healed meself yet - Lee first, then me. It ain't so bad - least the blisters're gone now."
"That... actually makes sense. I'm not sure why I'm surprised that there are rules to magic, but I kind of am. Glad to hear it, but surprised."
"There's rules t' everythin', Kit-Kat. 'S just a matter of knowin' 'em. I didn't, before." Amanda paused, her Arabic text in her arms. "'M tryin' t' fix that. Have been, since the whole potion business. Somedays it's harder 'n others."
"Ah, sure. Expect me to have been rational about it..." Kitty smiled faintly. "Somedays everything is harder," she added, propping her chin on her hand. "All anyone can ever really ask, though, is that we keep trying, even through the hard bits."
Amanda smiled then. "Yer'd be surprised at how often I've been hearin' that lately. Ta, Kit-Kat."
Kitty was not on the warpath, and it helped to remind herself of that. She was just looking for Amanda, someone she considered something of a friend, to talk. She was not on the warpath, and would remain not on it until at least after she had heard Amanda's side of things. Admittedly, right now it didn't look too good for the witch, but Kitty would be the first to admit that Illyana could be biased and that it wouldn't do to take only her word about anything that might have happened. And so, here she was, only back in the Mansion a few days and hunting down Amanda.
Amanda, for her part, was doing her best to keep a low profile. Breaking your fellow students' arm was not generally something that endeared you to the general populace, no matter what the circumstances. And she certainly wasn't going to share those with all and sundry. So she was holed up in a corner of the library, figuring of the people who would think to find her there, Paige she could actually talk to, Shan would be too polite to ask questions, and Nate was still too fragile himself to get involved. She frowned at the Arabic textbook she was working her way through, and tried to ignore the nagging feeling that she ought to go find a mystic artefact and drain it dry right about now.
The thing with hunting someone down was that you eventually looked everywhere, and Kitty was familiar enough with the library that once she thought to look there it wasn't that hard to find Amanda. Of course, she'd checked everywhere else first, and so she wasn't in the best off moods when she did find Amanda. Reminding herself again that she was not on the warpath, she said, "Hi, Amanda. How's it going?"
Almost dropping the book with a startled squeak, Amanda looked up and smiled. "Hey, Kit-Kat. Heard you were back. How're you doin'?"
"Well, I'm very glad to be out of Chicago, that's for sure," Kitty said. "How about you? What are you doing in the library? Classes haven't started yet..."
'Hiding' was the first answer that came to mind, but not the one she was going to use. "Um, catchin' up on the Arabic - missed a few classes lately, an' I didn't want t' fall too far behind." There was something about the expression on Kitty's face, determined almost... Belatedly Amanda remembered whose roommate Kitty was. "An' keepin' low," she admitted. "Did some pretty stupid stuff, an' 'm tryin' t' keep out of people's faces," she admitted, guiltily squirming.
"Yeah," Kitty said, softly. "I heard about some of the stupid stuff." And I have my suspicions about others... "What are the chances you want to talk about it?" She was doing her best to be non-confrontational, especially when she realized that Amanda wasn`t happy with the way she'd behaved.
"Want? Absolutely zero. Have to? Pretty much odds on." A faint grin tugged at Amanda's mouth, before resignation set in. "In a nutshell? Jubilee did somethin' that went way over the line, an' I popped her one. Broke her nose. She was the one who brought powers into it, tho'."
Kitty gave Amanda a brief answering smile before her expression became serious. "Powers came into it? I... hadn`t heard that. Given what happened, I`m not really surprised, though, that it got serious."
Amanda scrubbed her hands through her hair - this was hard, although not as hard as it could have been. The link was reassuring in its presence, after days of numbness. "She... panicked, I s'pose. I had her down, thumped her a good few times, an' she used her powers t' get me off her." She held up forearms no longer bandaged, but still showing the red weals shaped like fingermarks left by Jubilee's fireworks. "I sort of lost it, let her have it good with the magic. Broke her her arm." Amanda wasn't proud of what she'd done - quite the contrary. Her whole posture had slumped into miserable guilt. "She just got caught up in the middle, I s'pose. Manny an' I were havin' issues, she decided t' have herself some fun with him, an' I... I couldn't handle it. Not her fault, not really."
Kitty's anger was rapidly evaporating in the face of Amanda's obvious distress. "Well, I'd hardly say she was blameless, and neither, I think, would she." Uninvited, she settled down into the chair across the table from Amanda. "Bad decisions all around, it sounds like. Hardly a first, here at Mutant High."
"Some _really_ bad decisions," Amanda agreed. "An' yeah, she did choose t' fu... have sex with Manny, but I should've handled it better. Problem is, she hits all me buttons, an' I do the same for her - we're never gunna be mates, that's for sure."
"Well, honestly, if it had been Jamie... I probably wouldn`t have stoped with breaking an arm," Kitty admitted, remembering an amazingly bad, well, couple of weeks so very long ago and that she still hadn`t really forgiven Piotr or Warren. Which reminded her of the other thing she was worried about. "Yeah, you really don`t seem to get on with my roommates, hey? Any problems with Terry I should know about?" Her tone was light, but her eyes serious.
"Terry? Nah. She doesn't get up me nose the way Lee does, an' she doesn't scare the fuck out of me like Illyana does." Amanda realised what she'd let slip, and watched Kitty carefully for her reaction.
"Well, that`s good to hear, I guess," Kitty said, keeping her voice level. "So why does Illyana... worry you?" It sounded marginally better than `frighten`, both for the light it placed `Yana in and for saving Amanda a bit of face.
Amanda sighed. Kitty was going to think she was just being bitchy, especially in the light of what had happened with Jubilee, but it was either that or look completely paranoid. "There's somethin'... off 'bout her. Magically, I mean. Somethin' I can't get a handle on, but whatever it is, it scares me." She took a deep breath, took the plunge. "It feels demon-y t' me."
"Demon-y?" Kitty asked, looking confused. "Is that what you told Piotr, then?" It was just a suspiscion, but she looked confident as she said it, not expecting Amanda to deny it.
"Somethin' like that. I never said she was evil, just that there was stuff she wasn't tellin' him, like the magic." Amanda knew she was treading on very delicate ground, and took another breath to marshall her thoughts. Easy does it. "She spent eight years in a demon dimension, Kit. You lot don't know demons, but I do - not much, but more than I'd like. They're _evil_, pure evil; you saw what it was like there. An' I don't buy this cock-an'-bull story 'bout bein' rescued straight after we lost her - there's somethin' 'bout her, somethin' that hits all me instincts wrong. It ain't her fault, but it's there, an' I can't make anyone believe me." She looked unhappily at Kitty. "Includin' you, I'm guessin'."
Well, there was the proof that it had been Amanda who had started the thing with Piotr. Not that it really mattered, but it was good to know. "I can believe that demons are pure evil, but you`re right, I don`t believe she`s evil. Couldn`t be that whatever it is you feel is, I don`t know, just residue of Limbo? Not actually part of her?" Kitty didn`t understand magic, not beyond fantasy novels, so while she was curious she felt rather out of her league.
"I'm not sayin' _she's_ evil, just that there's somethin' there..." Amanda shrugged unhappily. "Look, I ain't sayin' this t' be a bitch, but there's somethin' not right with her. Like the magic thing. She swore black and blue that she couldn't do magic, but then Strange rumbles her an' guess what? She can do magic. Why hide it? 'S not like it's an issue, not with me here. An' there was that stuff with the Skippies - she got Artie out of the warehouse, but wouldn't tell anyone how, denied flat out she was a mutant. But again, when she got done for the magic, she comes out with the news she's a teleporter." With a sigh, Amanda slumped back in her chair. "She's hidin' somethin'. I'm the last one t' be sayin' it's on purpose, that she means us harm - if she did, she would've done somethin' by now. But demons're bad bloody news, an' their magic's worse."
Kitty looked serious. "You may be right, certainly you know more about demons than I do, or want to. But... I trust her. If she is hiding something, I`m sure she has a reason, and Piotr being an idiot isn`t going to help anyone, himself included."
"That we agree on." Amanda looked Kitty full in the face. "Believe me, I never meant for him t' dump her like he did. I figured he'd talk t' her, maybe get the X geezer involved..." She made a face. "Bloody pillock."
"Glad to know it's not malicious, though," Kitty said. "If nothing else, I like you and I like 'Yana, and I'd hate to have to kill you for doing that to her on purpose." She half grinned to show she was kidding, mostly. "Look, Amanda, maybe 'Yana is hiding something, but she's hardly the only one here who is. Maybe you're right and it'll turn out to be a bad thing, but maybe it won't. If you want to keep your eyes open and be suspicious, go ahead. As long as you two don't start, well, screaming at each other in the halls, it doesn't do anyone any harm, right?"
"No screamin', I promise. 'M perfectly happy t' keep avoidin' her like I have been doin'. Tends t' lead t' bad things. An' speakin' of which..." Amanda gathered up her books, and began to stand. "I've gotta go heal Lee some. Part of the punishment Strange handed out."
"Oh?" Kitty asked. "Well, I guess that`s fair, although she can hardly do the same in return."
"'S different for me. Magic... 's all about balance. You don't use it 'less you have to, you take into account what comes of it. Everythin' I do comes back t' me threefold, so if I use magic t' hurt someone, I can expect t' have t' live with some pain of me own." She gestured at the burns. "'S why I ain't healed meself yet - Lee first, then me. It ain't so bad - least the blisters're gone now."
"That... actually makes sense. I'm not sure why I'm surprised that there are rules to magic, but I kind of am. Glad to hear it, but surprised."
"There's rules t' everythin', Kit-Kat. 'S just a matter of knowin' 'em. I didn't, before." Amanda paused, her Arabic text in her arms. "'M tryin' t' fix that. Have been, since the whole potion business. Somedays it's harder 'n others."
"Ah, sure. Expect me to have been rational about it..." Kitty smiled faintly. "Somedays everything is harder," she added, propping her chin on her hand. "All anyone can ever really ask, though, is that we keep trying, even through the hard bits."
Amanda smiled then. "Yer'd be surprised at how often I've been hearin' that lately. Ta, Kit-Kat."
