Work Text:
06/04/2018
Katja had originally intended to distract her husband a little from tiresome but unavoidable tax obligations with her report from that encounter with a certain new pupil of theirs on the sick bay.
Accordingly frustrated she was when she found Scott, instead of at his desk, in front of the monitor wall of the com station in his office, with his hands folded behind his back, absorbed in a recap of exactly the unconventional first therapy session she had wanted to tell him about. His attention however was less on the images of the freshly returned boy with the healing factor and the secondary persona – which was unusual, given the kid's devastating fate – than on the camera angle to the other side of the room, to where Katja's improvised training session could be seen. And on the readings displayed on another monitor, which were admittedly remarkable, even for such a beginner's workout.
Katja tried it with a suggestive smile, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, her back thrown out enough to have her blouse accentuate her chest favorably. Actually, that always helped to avoid unpleasant topics. “You do realize that the times are gone when you had to spy on me if you wanted to stare at my ass, right?”
Not even the loving reminder of Katja's own arrival at Mutant High back then, of Scott's and her very first meeting, elicited even the slightest hint of a grin that she could have detected in the reflection in one of the deactivated monitors.
“By now, your results are off the charts, Katja.” Katja, at least that, not Flashwind or, even worse, Cat. Maybe the next pointless debate could be killed before it had even started after all.
Demonstratively unbothered, Katja strode to Scott's desk and sat down in the middle of the table, crossing her legs, which was usually also a foolproof weapon to either annoy her husband enough or to provoke him into forgetting about some negligible fluctuations in mutation tables. “What did I miss? Is improving a bad thing suddenly?”
Unfortunately, Scott was at least as good at the discipline of vicious sarcasm as she was, especially when she tried to bullshit him of all people. “It's not? Then you being chronically overworked must be the reason that you haven't been starting to look into why your mutation suddenly includes enhanced endurance and stamina at least in the level 2 range, like yesterday.”
“I'm not overw...”
Katja swallowed the rest of an unfriendly retort and rested her forehead on her palm with a sigh, forcing herself to breathe deeply, counting to ten in German, English, French, and Dutch until the knot of anger throbbing in her stomach disappeared. That wasn't how she and Scott wanted to treat each other, not even when they had a disagreement, and since occasionally, they both tended to have the same short temper, it was always better for one of them to cut the cord early enough. As great as the invention of makeup sex was, Katja preferred to avoid the need for it as much as possible. Especially when she was the cause of said argument, as much as she hated to admit it.
It wasn't exclusively her fault though that Scott and she rarely found the energy to deal in depth with irregularities in their private lives, especially around this time of year. And if he had forgotten about that for a moment, Katja's meaningful glance down at the back of his hand, where an inches-long bruise was visible even under a long-unneeded bandaid from a fresh needle prick, was enough to immediately make Scott feel a little guilty on his part.
“If you're under so much pressure that you can start the week only drugged to the brim already, I'd say I'm not the only one with too much on my plate for eventualities.”
“That's Hank's obsession, not mine, as you damn well know,” Scott replied, even more irritated, crossing his arms in a not-exactly-subtle way to hide the damaged patch of skin, just like his slight flinch when the vein, damaged after all this time of overuse, promptly protested.
“Can we not do that again, Katja? We made a promise to each other when we had Sassy, didn't we? Our family counts just as much. You count just as much. If you're serious about not wanting to cause me even more stress, it's not helping to wall yourself in again as soon as I want to have your back about something.”
“But there is nothing I need you to ...” Katja paused again. Pointless.
Sure, she could have continued to play dumb, reminding Scott that she was a former athlete, had been with one foot on the state team as a teenager and had maintained that shape throughout her life, not least because it was her biggest advantage on a team with a bunch of mutants, all of whom had much more useful powers than she did. Or that she had had far too much energy as a child already. Unfortunately, this would only have prompted her husband even further to associate her recent, indeed ever-increasing fitness level with certain possibly mutation-related antics in her youth.
The fact that she'd only presented with her gift at the age of 20 for the first time did not mean that they had not always been dormant in her genes, or that her unconscious mind hadn’t installed one or two emergency switches as a precaution already; Hank and Jean had already made that clear to Katja during her pregnancy at the time. But the low rumbling and the short but heavy downpour outside Scott's office window, especially in view of this one painful memory of a certain beloved deceased person in their lives, was already enough of an admonition as to why all these considerations were completely meaningless.
Of course, Katja knew what was going on, and not just since yesterday. It just didn't make any difference.
When she looked up again, Scott was standing right in front of her, gently putting a hand on her cheek, wiping away the brief touch of wetness there before it could even properly come; his very own, very welcome way of giving in, which she only too gladly nestled against, with a light kiss on his palm.
He still deserved an answer, even though it actually shouldn't have been necessary. “Whatever exactly is happening to me right now ... I don't give a fuck, Scott. And to be honest, I'd prefer you not to as well. If it bothers you so much that I'm ahead of you during our morning running training, I'd be happy to join Logan's group again like when we were young,” she added with a rather lopsided grin, but not even the small sting in Scott's ego and his increasingly rare fits of jealousy regarding his former biggest rival on the team drew even half a grin from him this time.
She knew what he was about to say, all without having to enter his mind via their mental link, she could see it in the deepening of the crease of worry between his eyebrows, his shoulders drooping under the weight of old grief, old guilt. “Last time we just ignored the fact that one of us developed stronger powers, that ended pretty badly, Katja.”
“I'm not ignoring it.” She let her lips rest on one of his high cheekbones on her part, under the edge of his quartz-coated glasses. She tasted salt. Almost 20 years, and still you couldn't think about it in peace. Which was another reason why this whole thing wasn't worth a second thought. One completely unhinged mutant on the X-Men's team had been enough for a lifetime. “I actively decided against acting on of it, so that it won't end badly. Big difference.”
Katja was almost relieved about the interruption in the shape of a warning beep from one of the surveillance monitors, which almost immediately turned into a reassuring, affirmative hum when the sensors detected what kind of visitor it was that was on their way to them.
Accordingly, Scott only had a quick glance over his shoulder at the image of a Quinjet in the distance before turning back to her. The frown had now been joined by deep lines of tension around the corners of his mouth, which even the most tender touch of Katja's lips could not chase away. “There's a chance you may not be able to enjoy the luxury of not having to give your all for the team forever, Cat.”
Great, now they were back to that point again after all, which in the past, had occasionally ended with a night spent in her horse's stall or with a slammed door. Which was why Katja only clenched her hands a little harder around Scott's shirt – she liked him better without creases anyway – so as not to let him back away in the first place, and returned this critical glance of her leader, which she knew was resting on her, and which she had only been allowed to see directly once in their entire relationship. Scott had to understand, especially when there was a new, bigger crisis possibly looming out there right now, of the kind that guests like this usually brought with them to Mutant High. And there were certain things that both of them could only express without drowning the evening in vodka when they could feel the closeness, the unconditional affection, the strength of the other as their last most necessary support.
“I have never given less than 100 % for the X-Men. You should know that best. But in the last conversation with one of my best friends, I also promised that our children would always come first for me, whether they were our own or our students. And these children need me in a functioning shape, not as a dangerous wreck.”
She pulled Scott towards her gently, her hand buried softly in his hair, below his glasses strap as usual, so that he could find his composure again with his face braced on her shoulder while she searched for her own. She didn't think they would ever be old enough to fully come to terms with this old grief, with the anger, the injustice of having to lose Jean that way, just when it had seemed as if everything would finally be fine after Dark Phoenix.
It never had been. It had always been clear that it would end one way or another. And Scott, who had to watch with his own two eyes as Jean had once again been almost swallowed up by her second identity while fighting attackers who had threatened her newborn child, had perhaps had to realize this much earlier than Katja. It was the fear that someone else on his team would suffer a similarly cruel fate, and that this time it might be a member of his own family, that she could hear trembling in his usually so calm, deep voice.
“Sometimes going beyond limits is the only way we can protect those we love, Katja.”
This time she didn't even have to say much; the way her fingertips tenderly brushed the deeply discolored spot on the back of his hand, which so mercilessly testified to Scott's own difficulties with his mutation, said enough.
You first.
“Me, I have tried," he commented on Katja's request, whispered in discouragement in their link. ”That's the difference. I've reached a dead end with my blasts, where the only way forward would be into space, and for that, no one has time right now. You are facing far lower obstacles.”
“Let's both think about this again once it becomes necessary, shall we?” Katja let her lips rest on Scott's temple for another long second and then slightly bent aside to give the landing clearance for the foreign jet with a few quick taps of a fingertip on his keyboard, before the automatic guns would target it as a purely precautionary measure.
At least for the moment, this tiresome matter for them both had been settled, one way or another.
“I believe they're calling for you, Principal Summers.”