Chapter Text
THEY WERE ROOMMATES... EVENTUALLY
An X-Addendum
by Niels van Eekelen
THE FIRST NIGHT
Katherine Anne Pryde had been in advanced classes for as long as she could remember. (Figuratively, because her memory, even of her youngest years, was quite good.) So often in her life when not among grownups, she’d been surrounded by older kids. Even then she was used to being one of the smartest people in the room.
And there was nothing... nothing... that got on her nerves worse than when the older kids—by only one or two years—had treated her like a child.
Among the X-Men, she was once again the youngest, but she’d earned their respect as a teammate and an equal. Mostly. There were a couple of them who she was still working on. And Ororo mothering her didn’t count, no rational being could possibly object to that. The point was, they sometimes forgot how young Kitty still was.
And secretly... secretly one of her favorite things about living at the school in Professor Xavier’s mansion was the fact that nobody here ever thought to wonder if young Kitty Pryde ought to have a bedtime.
That’s how she found herself wandering the dark halls to fetch some soda she probably shouldn’t be having past 2 AM. She wasn’t the only night owl on the team, but perhaps the only one who hung around indoors. Logan was weird. And sometimes a li’l scary, if you innocently asked what he did outside all night. Kitty rubbed her eyes, bleary from staring at her computer screen for what even she admitted was too long. Let the Wolverine roam the grounds all he wanted—she was happy to have these halls all to hers—
“Yaaah!” she shrieked.
A figure had appeared in the doorway to the lounge, silent as... as Logan, but much slimmer.
“Hello, Cat.” The moonlight reflected in blue eyes as the figure stepped forward. “Tch. Kitty. Hello, Kitty.”
“Illyana!” Kitty said calmly and not at all in a shrill and terrified voice. “Still up? Couldn’t sleep?”
“No,” Illyana said without further explanation. She regarded Kitty with equally bleary eyes, staring through her as if looking for someone else.
Her teammate’s sister was not scary in the way that Logan was, but she was... unsettling. That was the best way to put it. And Kitty honestly wasn’t sure if she felt that way because Illyana genuinely did unsettling things, or because she was so different. A week ago, Illyana had been six years old (“almost nearly seven!” if you’d asked her, in Russian because that was the only language she used to speak) and now she and Kitty were of an age, or close enough. Seven years of her life lost to... another dimension, where time moved differently.
“Oh... all right, then.”
Neither of them moved. That definitely counted as unsettling, right? The way Illyana just quietly watched people now, with something like suspicion in her eyes, or... sadness? Longing?
Kitty shook herself and rubbed her eyes. Living with telepaths was giving her ideas—she couldn’t read this girl’s mind. Not even Professor Xavier could, he’d let slip as much. And Kitty wasn’t sure how she felt about him trying that sort of thing without a body knowing, but she couldn’t say it wasn’t warranted. Unsettling.
Then, because it was very late at night, she yawned.
Illyana yawned back. Kitty almost laughed. No matter how stoic or weird the other girl came across, she was human enough not to be able to stop herself from doing that, even if she briefly looked cross with herself for it.
“It’s getting way too late,” Kitty said. “I’m gonna go to bed. You really should too, y’know?” Great, now she was trying to enforce other people’s bedtimes.
From a moment, Illyana looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t, so Kitty turned around and started walking back to her room, holding herself back from glancing over her shoulder.
Halfway there she remembered she’d been on her way to fetch a soda. Eh, that had been a bad idea anyway. She’d get a glass of water from the bathroom and lie awake with her brain buzzing for another two hours anyway, whether she had any soda or not.
That night, though she couldn’t figure out why, she spent most of those two hours wondering whether Illyana had followed her advice and whether she was getting any sleep at all...