Work Text:
06/05/2018
While Logan and Hank retired in favor of further investigations as soon as the team returned from that gruesome cemetery in Alaska, which had once been such a hopeful sanctuary for young mutants, and the teenagers disappeared too, to process for themselves what they had just seen, Katja went to look for Ororo. She was obviously not exactly looking forward to that conversation; but she didn't want her friend to have to hear about this terrible betrayal by one of Ororo's closest friends only for the first mission logs or even only at the debriefing later.
And from the way Logan had looked at Katja pleadingly when they'd just touched the Blackbird together in the hangar, this was apparently her job. Logan had been forced to deal with his past enough for one day.
She found Ororo in the same place where Scott and she had been drawn to yesterday, but her friend wasn’t visiting the cemetery to grieve, at least not only. She had one of her personal students with her, who had a complicated nature mutation. It wasn't the first time that the two of them were trying to revive the poor soil of the small patch of grass right by the backyard wall with their powers, and once again in vain.
Ororo didn't seem to have expected great success today of all days either anyway; it was more of a playful exercise that she enjoyed doing together with the little one, to develop his gift, which would surely be very powerful one day. With a smile so exuberant that it hurt Katja's heart that she would have to wipe it off Ororo's face in a second, she was kneeling on the ground next to the Thai boy and watched as he let his slender hands hover above it. When he actually got the delicate white blossom of a tiny daisy to bloom, she embraced him in delight. Katja could hear her soft laughter all the way to the tall rose hedge where she was waiting, hesitating.
Only when Ororo turned halfway in her direction from where she cowered, did Katja notice that her friend's dark eyes weren't smiling along. And that Katja had long been noticed.
Ororo sent her student back to the house with a little kiss on his forehead before she slowly got up, mechanically brushing the remains of grass and earth off her tight black trousers. “So? What is that couldn't wait?”
Katja told her, everything that she had found out in Jericho's laboratory in this camp, regarding the former priest's involvement with some psychopathic believers of the Catholic Church who wanted all mutants dead. Her words came softly, chopped, accompanied by empty phrases that could only be the wrong ones anyway. At least she managed not to stutter.
She hadn't expected an open outburst, but the way Ororo just turned away without a word before she'd even finished her last sentence and tended to her rosebushes as if nothing had happened, hurt anyway. Actually, the two of them had been through too much together to not support each other in such difficult situations ... and especially to not accept any help.
At first, Katja was very tempted to just leave Ororo alone. It was hard enough in her everyday job to get through to often completely distanced, aggressive children, to teach them that the staff in this mansion wanted to heal them, not to torture them with their memories. With someone who should actually know that exactly, she was eventually running out of patience for it. She couldn't force Ororo, damn it.
But mid-movement, her gaze fell on Jean's grave, on a soft shine that the afternoon sun painted on it, almost reminiscent of the never-fading glow of an eternal fire, and Katja froze. They were all upset. Angelica's warning yesterday, about that virus that had wrecked this camp in Alaska, and today the confirmation of their worst fears ... They couldn't afford to start letting each other down; they'd made that mistake too often with Jean back then. At least Katja had to ask. Her friend didn't have to lay her whole soul bare in front of her if she didn't feel like it, but they could at least have sat down in the communal living room for a cup of tea and hot chocolate.
“Ororo, why don’t we ...?”
“I wish I'd let that bastard die back then. By the gods, Cat ... What have I done?” The voice that interrupted her was rough, filled with pure hatred. Katja didn't even need to explain any further these shocking news she had found in Jericho's private quarters in that underground bunker. Ororo had understood exactly what these could only mean, maybe even faster than Katja had earlier.
Jericho hadn't just also been involved in the plans of the people who had executed Jean's murder back then, he must have actively participated in it. It was the only explanation for the fact that those bastards had had weapons and knowledge that they could only have obtained from the Mutant High network or the U.G.E.R. mutant laboratories in Canada where Jericho had used to work. While Katja had relied on Jericho's loving support during the Phoenix crises, that son of a bitch had betrayed them all.
Yet, she hoped that Ororo's initial reaction, just like her own, was mostly angry wishful thinking. That through all the defeats, all the tragedies over the years, her friend had been holding on to the principles they had all grown up with. Even if it meant living with the knowledge that she had slept with a murderer not once but twice.
“You could never have, and you know that.” Since the sky above them remained surprisingly clear, Ororo seemingly having more control over herself and that gift that the two of them shared, than Katja had expected, she dared to approach her friend and take her firmly by the shoulder. And she didn't startle back when the incredible blackness in her friend's eyes turned in her direction either. “It's not your fault, Ororo. You don't make these people.”
Ororo's hand clenched around the stem of a rose so firmly that small traces of blood ran trickled over her skin. Her bitter snort changed into something else, just for a second, until Katja gently took her into her arms. She wasn't crying. Not for people who weren't worth a tear. “But it is amazing how attracted psychopaths are by me, don't you think?” The endless bitterness in her voice broke Katja's heart, and she did nothing to calm the nightmares and memories of the last few days.
Still, she didn't say a word about the fact that she, too, was still suffering from what had wrecked her life shortly after Alkali Lake. That hadn’t been Ororo's fault, and Katja never wanted her to feel differently. ”You never got over Avery.” She lovingly let her friend's short gray hair strands slip between her fingertips.
It was a sight that still hurt her sometimes, even after all these years. This hairstyle did not match Ororo's age or her enchanting beauty a bit. But it had been her decision, just like her formal, unadorned clothing. Her refusal, her distance from every single man who had wanted to get closer to her over the years than to the edge of her bed. Ororo had left the chapter called love behind, and in a way that was just as bad a scar as the ones Katja had been left with thanks to her own stupidity of trusting a damn Brotherhood member of all people for a while.
“What did you expect, Cat? I was only too happy to swallow that asshole's lies back then, just for a bit of shallow entertainment to distract me from Alkali Lake.”
“You had no way of knowing ...” Katja protested once more, but no longer with the necessary energy in her words. For that, she, too, was still too haunted by what her own carelessness had brought upon her with regard to one of Scott's archenemies. And not only upon her, physically, but, much worse, psychologically on Scott and Ororo, forever.
“If we had all bothered to ask what the hell that was that had happened between Scott and Avery at the time, then I would have.” By now, Ororo had at least reached the point where she no longer denied Katja's admittedly comparatively negligible share of responsibility regarding this thing, knowing full well that Katja needed such admonitions time and again so that none of them would ever make such a dumb mistake ever again, just because they were trying to avoid clarifying conversations. “As it is, we'll all have to live with always being haunted by the hatred that we feel for what that son of a bitch did. And with Jericho, I didn't look properly either, when it would have been most important, none of us did. Contemplating this crap over and over won't change that, Cat. Let it go. Right now, we really have other things to worry about.”
She hugged Katja gently once more, but then pulled away, managing a smile, somehow. “I don't let guys like this throw me off course anymore, and neither should you. They're not worth that. Let's make the best of this. At least now we finally have a lead about Jean's death too.”
Her gaze, too, wandered at the smaller gravestone in the middle of the meadow for a sad moment, then she took Katja by the arm encouragingly and pushed her towards the house. “Come on. Time to get to work.”
Katja remained silent and did what was most helpful in such conversations with such skilled actors as patients. She grinned, nodded, and fought back her own tears as best she could.