Kitty helps Alec stop brooding

[st_x5_494]

There was an outcropping in the woods, you had to climb it to get there, but when you did, it looked over the valley and in the distance was the Inn. It wasn't exactly as high as the Seattle Space needle where Max liked to go to think, but it was high enough.

He had no idea if that Star-Lord guy even spoke to Peter. Would he? He thought he might. The guy had a look about him that seemed to say he had seen some shit.

There was a fire going in the makeshift camp and there were supplies in a back pack off to one side. Currently he sat with his knees up, arms resting on his knees, overlooking the place. Dammit Peter, why couldn't you just be like a normal person?

Kitty hadn't precisely been looking for Alec, but he wasn't the quietest guy, and when he went off the grid, she tended to notice. What she noticed this time was that no one else seemed to be rushing around looking for him or trying to find him, which meant he was probably not injured. And he was still on the registry at the desk, so he hadn't disappeared for good.

It wasn't even actually a decision to go see if she could track him down. She'd just been doing the things that she did, searching for gaps in the framework of their world, looking for any exploitable anomalies, stretching the space as far as she could by windwalking as fast as she could for four hours...trying not to lose her mind. Which was how she found him, and assumed, logically, his fire-staring was him doing the same.

What was a decision was floating down to sit quietly nearby and waiting to see if he had anything he felt like saying.

Alec didn't seem to move or register Kitty for a long while as he looked at the fire. At first he thought he had nothing to say, then he wasn't sure what to say. Finally, his voiced sounded out in the silence. "Peter send you?"

"Do I look like Peter's valet?" Kitty stretched one leg out as far as it went and nudged Alec with a pointed toe. "I was just enjoying the wind and here you were."

He glanced to her when her toe touched him. "Uh huh." Why anyone would choose to come sit beside him, even on a good day, was beyond him. "New people arrived." He paused. "You ever heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Or Star-Lord. Or... Thanos?"

Emma could probably have told them both a whole hell of a lot about Kitty Pryde and the Guardians of the Galaxy, but fortunately or otherwise, it was nothing Kitty herself knew yet. Still, she didn't not know those names. "Yeah. Guardians, Avengers and X-Men cross paths once in awhile. Thanos is exactly no one's favorite nihilist. I'm guessing Thanos isn't here from the fact no one's running around screaming 'oh shit' as the world turns to ash."

His expression turned a little more grim as he pressed his lips together and looked back out into the fire. "No. He's back on Titan and Peter's there with his hero Iron Man and some guy named Dr. Strange and.."

He did a palms up gesture and shook his head.

"Well, if Stark and Strange are involved, there's the battle of titanic egos destroying everyone and everything before Thanos even gets to it," Kitty replied and then literally facepalmed. It wasn't that she didn't immediately recognize the world-ending devastation they were talking about, but there were only so many times you could prevent world-ending devastation before you took refuge in the humor of it.

Memo to her: Make sure Peter never learned from her lips that Illyana was Strange's peer and Sorceress Supreme.

"So, all right, in Peter's home world, he's fighting to save the universe alongside two of the biggest dicks in super-herodom. How does that lead to you being out here in the bush?"

It might have made Alec feel a little better that Kitty didn't seem to like Iron Man a lot.

"Star-Idiot hyped him up over all the fight and it's like Peter thinks he's going to some big playground." And he's just a kid and I don't want him to die or have to see someone he cares for die. And Quill should have known better. Alec could feel his shoulders tense.

"So I punched the asshole." And made an enemy of a raccoon.

"I'm not sure which of you is worse." Kitty sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. "You can't just punch a guy for telling Peter a story you don't like." Even if it was a true story that was probably going to get Peter killed. But that was a problem for another day. "Especially not when it's Peter you're mad at."

She lowered her hand from her face and looked at him. "I get it. I do. He's idealistic, and reckless, and too brave by half. He's afraid of the wrong things, and not afraid of the things he should be. He thinks wrapping someone up in a sticky web and delivering them to the authorities actually makes things better, but it usually just makes more enemies. But the thing is, it's his faith that he's doing the right thing that keeps him going. You can try to temper that, but you don't want to be what breaks his heart."

"That's what I want to prevent." Alec never said that out loud before, but there it was, and it felt like admitting it was somehow.. weird. He immediately felt uncomfortable. He paused and swallowed and forced himself to explain. "The kid's going to hit a wall so hard at some point if he's not careful and he might not be able to recover from that." Alec didn't want Peter to become jaded. To become like him.

"He'll recover." Kitty hadn't wanted to get into this with...anyone, really, but Alec kind of needed to know at this point. "I've met an older version of him. He's still cracking jokes and swinging from webs, even when he's saving the world. That's the thing about Peter. He's resilient. If and when he hits that wall, it might take him awhile, but he'll bounce back." Unless whatever happened to him was... "And if he doesn't, it wasn't something we could've protected him from anyway. Being 'smarter' doesn't keep it from hurting when you lose."
The problem was that Alec didn't want Peter to ever hit the wall, but he didn't actually know that in words as he never really experienced this sort of feeling before. With Max, he never really had to worry about her because he knew she could handle herself without anyone else and she was already jaded. Alec had never run into such an idealist who he liked before. It messed with his whole general 'take care of number 1 first' mentality he usually had.

"Peter mentioned there were other hims around." And as always, was worried he couldn't compare - like everyone was always comparing themselves or something. Alec sighed softly. It was the sort of sigh that said 'I know you're right, but I still don't like it.'

"If you want to help him, tell him your stories. Be honest, even if it's hard. Don't tell him what to do or what not to do, just show him your mistakes and what they did to you," Kitty said quietly. "I haven't been as open with him and Liz as I should be, but it's hard, because they don't listen and they don't actually care." She tipped her chin toward him. "But they do care about you."

Alec was pretty sure Liz just put up with him because of how Peter thought of him, though he also knew he often purposefully made things uncomfortable when Peter needed help with a situation and he was okay with being that person. But still... Alec turned to Kitty. "You really think they don't actually care?" Usually he got that kind of line. And sometimes he didn't, though often he did and wouldn't admit it. He paused. "He came back the day of the party and mentioned you were drinking a lot and asked me what to do. I told him sometimes people need space." Alec often needed space - maybe that's not what other people needed. Alec glanced into the fire. "I don't think he knows what to do when he hears we have shitty lives because he can't fix it." Alec was pretty sure that was the reason they half some of the time.

He shifted his position, stretching out his legs. "You do this a lot back home? Deal with kids?"

"I think he thinks he cares, and I think he wants to care. I just think that the people he work with treat him so much like a kid and don't let him in that he doesn't really know how to." Kitty shrugged and mirrored his gesture, pointing her toes as she stretched her legs and then flexing them. "Which, honestly, is pretty normal for teenagers. They're used to their adults being the carers and the caretakers. The first time they have to be the grown-up, it's pretty earth-shattering. It tends to turn their worlds upside down for awhile. So I don't feel bad about it. It just tips over my baggage cart."

She grinned a little at the metaphor, enjoying the images, before she continued saying, "Which should tell you that I have some experienced with powered teens. It's not what I was doing when I left, but I have taught and I probably will again if I ever go home. If I can teach them how to be people and not just vigilantes, that would be something worth doing."

He looked over at her. "Why you ever want to be around more than the number that's at this inn, is beyond me." He thought about the kids he had run into when Manticore had first been destroyed and how Max had tried to teach them how to blend in and be regular people. Even then he found them pretty annoying. "People just just skip that stage." Grumpy Alec was grumpy.

Kitty rattled off some of her answers, using her fingertips for counting. "One, paying it forward. My teammates did it for me. Two, because I've been doing it for my younger teammates for years, and it's a habit." Especially Yana had been, but Yana's story was hers to tell or not. "Three, making sure they don't get picked off by the Brotherhood, who are the mutant supremacists. Four, preparing them in case the government turns against us again." She shrugged. "Besides that, I tend to like the smart ones a lot."

Alec had heard about the Brotherhood. They sounded like a bunch of douchebags that, much like White and his cult, should go burn in whatever Hell they believed in. "You sound a lot like my friend Max." He paused. "Except maybe with a little less insults thrown in between." He thought about her at the barn with those kids and then at Terminal City with the transgenic 'resistance'.

"You really think you can do all that?" Especially the last two parts.

"I try to save the insults until I really get to know you." Grinning softly, Kitty tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. "Or until I'm fighting you." Brain, heart, and liver insults came up regularly when she was fighting people. Being able to remove internal organs made for good banter.

"And I don't know whether I can do any of it. What I know is that I definitely can't if I don't try, and if I don't try there aren't that many people who will, you know?"

"Yeah." He did get that part. If she could, then she should try. He might feel the same way even though often he played it off like he didn't. "I guess you have a good trial run here with all the teenagers around."

"I could use a hand with it," Kitty observed, not quite pointedly. Alec had run off and saddling him with responsibility wasn't going to help anything. But if he realized he could actually help and not just by shoving words in Peter's face, maybe he wouldn't do it again.

"A hand with the teenagers?" Alec looked at her. "I'm pretty sure I suck at the whole nurture thing."

"Who said you had to nurture them?" Kitty laughed and elbowed him. "I spend more time telling Liz to get her head out of her ass about Peter and focus on herself than I do cuddling and tucking her in."

He considered that for a moment then nodded with a shrug. "Alright, fine. But you might need to give me some Cole's notes at the beginning. Top five tips on how not to make them cry."

"Mmm, top five tips on when it's okay to make them cry," she offered back. "Number one: in workouts..."