Work Text:
06/12/2018
If she didn't seriously have other shit to worry about right now, this would probably have been embarrassing.
Only when one of the estate's bodyguards, almost just as tall as broad, silent, and brooding as ever, just like Katja remembered these people, led her to the cellar, Katja realized she had not been to Emma's library even once back then. Not for more than a short glance at the tour through the house on day 1.
Admittedly, she'd not been much of a reader ever since childhood; sports had always taken priority over that, and that hadn’t exactly changed a lot since she'd mutated and moved in at Mutant High. Most of the literature she was exposed to were the textbooks and material she'd needed for her PhD at the time and whatever new material was published in her psychological and pedagogy fields relevant to her work ever since then. Or some raunchy short online piece for nighttime readings every now and then. Maybe life as a superhero was simply too packed and exotic all by itself to need much fiction to digest on top of that. Whenever Katja did try to bury her nose in some romance or crime novel every now and then, on these rare evenings when she didn’t have Scott in bed with her to fall asleep, she ended up faceplanting in those pages a couple of paragraphs in. And back in those weeks that she'd spent at Frost Ltd. for her own protection from the Brotherhood all these years back, loneliness, anger and frustration had unsettled her soul far too much for new hobbies as well.
As she entered the heavy brass doors this morning, after steeling herself for the argument inevitably to come, with a deep breath, she had a funny feeling, that lack of interest might not change a lot after today either. Sure, the view of the dozens of shelves, filled to the brim and reaching almost up to the hall's high ceiling, was as impressive as expected, the lavish chandeliers on the marble ceiling and the heavy, carved wooden chairs in the corners speaking of Emma's taste and wealth just like everything else in this house … But the sight of the woman awaiting Katja in one of these mahogany chairs, throned upon a small golden pedestal at the other end of the room, wasn’t half as pleasant, given the blank stare Emma captured Katja's shy gaze with, holding it for every single second, every too-slow step towards her, the dull thud of low heels an unnerving echo in the otherwise empty room.
Christ, what had she been thinking?
Now that she was already here though, there was no way back, and recalling that single devastating image to her mind that Mystique had sent the X-Men during this crucial conversation yesterday, of how sick and weak Katja's daughter had looked there in that foreign sick bay, with only members of a group hostile to Westchester looking out for her … That was more than enough not to stop her stride for a single second in the end. She had to try, there simply was no other choice. No matter how much she despised coming to this woman for help of all people, especially without telling even her teammates because she had a pretty good idea what they'd have had to say about this plan. Worst she could earn in here was a no, anyway.
When Emma finally did deign to address her, reaching for a glass with an auburn liquid inside Katja also remembered well from a lot of evenings spent together in friendship still in this house, the woman almost managed to have her turn on her heel after all, just when she'd almost reached the bottom of that small reading stage.
"The prodigal daughter returns."
"This is no longer my home," Katja reminded Emma through gritted teeth. "It never was. I wish I would immediately have understood that back then and put my foot down when Charles and Scott sent me to this place. That would have saved both of us a lot of regret and hurt pride. Then I wouldn’t have been as pissed with you after Washington because I would never have expected anything different than what you did at Mutant High in my absence."
Emma put her scotch back down on the crystal table next to her with a slightly too shrill noise, the expectation in her voice of welcoming a promising new-old pupil in the rows of her army, cooled down again as quickly as it had emerged. "I don’t need to listen to this."
"You did what you thought was right back then," Katja continued, ignoring the wave of rejection thrown in her face, stopping right before the pedestal with her head held high enough to look her mentor in the eye, her back straight. This whole reception was a pretty predictable, almost primitive horror cabinet. The times when Emma had been able to impress and manipulate her so easily were over. For that, her dear old mentor would have had to use her powers, and since Emma was very well aware the X-Men would have come here with the Avengers and the whole damn State army to raze this house to the ground if she'd have tried something like that ever again, there was nothing Katja had to fear in this place.
Save for not achieving what she'd come here for, maybe. And for that, there was at least one crow she'd have to eat. "I'm sorry about what I said to you after you let Artie leave without as much as consulting me about it, Em'. I was being rude and unfair to you. But I still don't think you were right."
"Then what are you here for?" Visibly reluctantly, Emma sat back in her chair again, crossing her legs, a hint of curiosity sparking in her bright eyes. Very aware of just how difficult it had been for Katja to utter even these few words of apology, it must be dawning on her now, there was a good reason for this visit.
"For help," Katja got out after another thick swallow, with almost as much effort as it had cost her to protect the X-Men's jet with her powers from hostile fire at Watergate that fateful night the day before yesterday. Just barely, as it was, with her mutation radius being just as small as it had been when she'd come to Westchester first and her lightning bolts not having half the strength as Ororo's. That finally had to stop; she'd been hiding from her own gift long enough.
"I need to advance my powers so I can face the Brotherhood in New York without biting it at the gates already. This time, I will not just abandon a kid to their fate. Not my own."
Emma's jaw was grinding; it was visible she was fighting herself already about if she should just show Katja the door, after everything that had gone wrong between them not even considering support of any kind. Or if that would hurt her much-needed reputation with the X-Men too much, especially since there was a minor involved in the middle of this conflict that Emma had surely already heard all about on the internal superhero network located in Angelica's flat that they all regularly used.
"How is the kid?"
"Recovering, slowly. They say. I'd hate to take the word of terrorists for that though." Katja rubbed the shiver running down her arms under her leather jacket away, blinking away somehow the veil over her sight that the renewed reminder of that image of her far too pale, unconscious little girl on a foreign sick bay produced.
"You could have asked me to go to Watergate with you. I could have helped you get in far faster and easier. Then none of this would have happened." No, Emma wasn’t done just yet, sending poisoned verbal arrows to Katja's heart, in the shape of the merciless reminder that not trusting this woman enough to call her in for missions at least every now and then, always harbored the risk of things going even more wrong.
But this, too, was a decision Katja was fully backing her husband up about. A team like theirs could only function when everyone had unlimited trust in each other, or misunderstandings and irritation would cause distraction and unrest in life-threatening situations of all times. One almost-casualty in that terrible confrontation at an enemy base had been bad enough.
"You help us much more by continuing to go to Washington for your high society dinner parties, Em'. We need to know what the fuck is going on there. Who the hell has half of the US government on strings so much that we still haven’t seen a single army helicopter do as much as circle New York since the takeover. We need to know who protects the Brotherhood before we can consider what we do about this catastrophe, and fast."
Emma's reaction was similar to the one Scott had already had to accept in their last com conversation about this subject, a small, vague nod that lacked a depressing amount of optimism for someone usually so self-assured, and Emma reaching for a glass already half-empty again, with a hand no longer entirely steady. That government-sanctioned attack at the night of Alkali Lake back then that had almost cost the woman two of her beloved pupils, had never been forgotten, for neither of them. "I’ll try. I have to be careful. If I’m not, they’re coming for my kids, and I can’t be in two places at once."
"I know." Dejected silence, even louder this time between the hundreds of backs of impeccably dusted off books surrounding them, so much passion, knowledge, and history packed in a single room … And yet not an answer anywhere to the question of how they should proceed with the global civil war threatening all life on this planet once more.
The only thing they finally did need to accept, difficult as it was, was that they could only do it together. "I didn’t thank you yet. That you helped us when they invaded our home again anyway. That you were there for us when we needed you. Again."
Only at these last few words, Katja couldn’t look at her mentor anymore suddenly, at those sentences that needed even more force to be articulated, even more of that old anger trying to blacken Katja's heart about that one time all these years back when she'd also relied on this woman for help … and then had come home to her old mentor having sent away Katja's favorite charge to an uncertain future in his most vulnerable moment.
A small hand coming to rest on her shoulder without any pressure, for a light squeeze of comfort, chased at least a little of that hurt back then away from her soul. "I will always be if I can, whenever you call, Cat. I should have been around in Westchester to help you people out far more often after Charles left, in fact. That’s something I do often regret."
"Then why weren’t you? Why aren't you?" Katja could have kicked herself in the behind for even asking but knew at the same time that when it came to such a possible fruitful partnership, her own wishes and sensitivities could never come before the good of the school. Before the good of the children there who often could have needed additional help with their powers and an experienced pedagogy shoulder to lean on.
The relief she should have felt at Emma's fierce headshake never came, thanks to a certain name on her former friend's blood-red lips that had been the reason for never-dying anxiety and uncertainty at Mutant High even before its owner's birth.
"Noemi."
"Em' …?" Katja was afraid to ask and yet had to, her own hand suddenly shaking when she reached for the one holding her shoulder almost a little too tightly now.
Almost, as if Emma was the one needing something to hold on to for once, the way her eyes half-closed as if she was looking at something inside that made her tremble there in her usual skimpy white clothes, listening to a voice only she could hear maybe ...
Suddenly, Katja was pretty sure she didn’t want to know whose that was.
Emma, sadly, had never been someone to go easy on her when she'd been closing her eyes to anything. "The danger that haunts Noemi ever since she existed was never gone. You know that, Cat. Phoenix warned you people about it when she brought Jean back to life for a second time on the Scapels moon. I’m trying to keep Noemi from it best as I can but … It can happen. It might happen. Someday. And then I can’t be anywhere around you guys. I need to keep myself away from Phoenix. Power has always been my weakness, and Phoenix is the pure incarnation of it."
Katja found herself inevitably taking a step away from the other woman, only really realizing it when a cynical, sad smile curled on Emma's lips about this proof of a fear Katja had always claimed back then she didn’t feel in her friend's presence … But that had been long before they'd all been even aware of that cosmic demon that had taken over Jean's soul more than once. That in theory could possess anyone suited for their power.
"I thought you …"
"… left that behind?" Emma turned away, still with that dejected grin, to sit down on the edge of the stage and reach up to get her glass again, this time nodding Katja along though, and after a second of hesitation, she followed. No more time for old childish pettiness now, for either of them.
"Yes, mostly. But then something like New York happens and I just get so angry. Then I think, if only I had the necessary power, I could just make it all right. I would make myself Queen and make everything good for the people. It’s just short moments, I never act on it but …" Emma stared down at her almost empty glass for long seconds, her shoulders looking painfully tight, a wrinkle of tension and age under her corset forming on her back that Katja had never noticed before.
"But what you people like to forget is that we all have this dark side. Like that priest in the New York II camp did. He got a chance to act on it when these bastards managed to engineer that deadly mutant virus, and he did. Contrary to what most think, I’m not arrogant enough to tell myself I’m better than him. And for me, it wouldn’t just be releasing a lethal sickness on those I don’t think they deserve to live. It could be the end of the world, just because I wanted to save it."
The silence prevailing between them this time was almost as choking as the fine layer of dust and the smell of yellowing pages in the air. When Emma could bring herself to turn her head Katja's way again cautiously, not even the favorably warm shine from the countless candles above could hide the deep lines around her lips, her eyes. "Are you afraid of me now?"
"Do I need to?" Katja asked after long seconds of clueless silence. She knew she would have to talk about what she'd just heard when she'd get home, at least with her husband and certainly with Noemi … But before that, she still had a mission to fulfill she'd come here for. And if anything, the fact that Emma was more aware than ever of her flaws and how careful she needed to be with exploring her powers, that gave Katja even more an assurance that she'd been right about getting on her bike even before sunrise.
"Not as long as I keep myself safe," Emma replied firmly, much to her relief.
Katja wanted to believe her, so badly, wanted to have the assurance just like back then that Emma had learned her lesson and wouldn’t put this world at risk again … But with an insane cosmic bitch like Dark Phoenix involved who would happily have thrown herself at the chance of a powerful new host to rip this universe to pieces, almost was never good enough a certainty.
"Would you tell me if you were ever not safe?"
"Not you. Noemi. Because she’s the only one who could still stop me then," Emma added when Katja frowned in confusion, so shaken already once more by all she'd learned in that conversation that she actually only too gladly accepted when Emma offered her a glass of her own, though she was usually not much of a drinker at all.
"An emergency brake," Katja realized thoughtfully, the heavy weight of her doubt about this trip slipping off her shoulders more by the second.
It seemed indeed, Emma was stable enough to trust her at least with the occasional support every now and then these days … And she still had that ability of telling Katja exactly what she needed to hear at exactly the right moment, before Katja had even had a chance to address certain things going on in her mind. Such a plan for possible risks with unstable powers was maybe exactly what certain people in Katja's home, including her own husband, could use if they were ever to decide to expand on what they could already do …
"Sometimes I think all mutants should have one," Emma confirmed as if she'd once more read Katja's mind, and for once, Katja couldn’t even really mind that she probably was. "I certainly know Jericho thought so."
That certain reminder though, of a man who'd sacrificed the children entrusted to him to a bunch of psychotic Catholics thinking all mutants to be the devil's work, quickly put a damper on that brief enthusiasm about a new possible solution for old issues. "Isn’t that what normal people want for us?"
"Yes. But we’d do it by choice." Emma's fine fingertips came to rest on her chin to turn her face her way for another of these intense glances, and from up close, these deep, passionate eyes still never failed to have Katja stop in reverent silence.
"It’s all about the freedom of choice, Cat. That’s the hardest lesson I had to learn in my life, and the one I'm most grateful for."
You made your decision, Cat. And he made his.
When Katja could bring herself to pull away then, it wasn’t because that comforting touch of an old friend was unpleasant any longer but because her cheeks had flushed in shame at the memory of how the two of them had talked about the burden of choice last. And maybe, after all this time, Katja suddenly understood it at least a little better why she'd come home with her favorite charge no longer present at Mutant High that day. And that it indeed wasn’t only Emma to blame for that.
She wished she could have told the person that sudden painful realization concerned most, too, but the grief that this might probably never happen again, she'd had to accept long ago.
"Did Artie's choice leave him alive?"
"Yes," Emma answered easily as if that question hadn’t been torturing Katja for the last 15 years, with all desperate attempts to acquire even a shred of information from various partnering groups of the X-Men failing. "He’s in New York now. He's lived with Synch's family for a while after he couldn’t stand being with the Morlocks or in public foster care anymore, before Synch's parents were murdered right before the boys' eyes. Bigots allegedly, and Mystique was lucky enough to be close by that day. She had it easy with both of them."
"Why didn’t you …?" Katja's voice was hoarse with shock; she couldn’t even get up, get some distance between Emma and her again, at these crucial relations not only about that boy she was missing so much finally revealed, but also about one of Mystique's most powerful warlords, in passing, as if this whole conflict wasn’t concerning Emma in the least.
Emma soothingly held up her hand. "I only learned when they left Watergate the day before yesterday, and I could finally get a look into the heads of some of these people. And you had to be ready to hear this. I think you are now."
Katja hesitated for another long moment, still trying to process all this but decided that in this case, too, she could give Emma the benefit of the doubt for now. In the end, it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway. Watergate might as well be on the moon, as far as its still unknown exact location and accessibility were concerned. And the same now went for New York. "Will Artie ever come back to us, Em'?"
"I don’t think so." Emma gently took Katja's hand not holding her glass, rubbing a bit of warmth in her suddenly far too cold skin but still not even attempting to go easy on her in any way, and for that, Katja continued to be as grateful as ever. She'd run from certain truths for far too long. "Things are changing. Many more of the Morlocks and other shunned mutants will go to Mystique, too, but those who don’t want to live in a city that isn’t theirs … You might see them in Westchester soon. I think the tides are shifting. Those who don’t like what the Brotherhood did … They won’t stay hidden forever. When the war comes, we won't be helpless, Cat. We never were. And you’ll never be again, not if I have anything to do with it."
"So now you can tell the future too, huh?" Katja let out a shaky chuckle, that was easier than giving in to the tears suddenly sitting far too close to the surface at even the smallest hint at that one time when all control had been taken from her physically, leaving her scarred for a lifetime. Back then it had been only thanks to Emma that the others had found her in time in the canalization to save her life. Maybe it was that, she should remember more often in spite of the hurt, the anger.
"No. But I see." Emma's fingertips on her cheek didn’t allow her to lower her sight again, not even for a second, her eyes narrowing for a second, then going wide when Emma seemed to spot something with one of these intense gazes in Katja's soul that she'd actually not been meant to see, not yet … But that was probably alright too; this was what Katja had come to this place for after all. "And that much I can promise you. I’ll always tell you what I see."
"Then that’s all I’ll ever ask for." Katja forced herself to smile, and this time, it wasn’t as difficult but then gently pulled away again. Though she'd long decided she was ready to give this woman another chance … They could do that without the additional, not entirely unpleasant but also completely irrelevant reminder that there had always been not only friendship but also the occasional physical attraction between them.
Scott would already be pissed enough upon learning about Katja's trip here, without another chapter in their thankfully long-closed book of jealousy.
Emma grinned silently to herself, probably able to guess what was going on in her mind without taking another look.
"So how about you let me make amends now about not being around two days ago, and we go see what that secondary mutation of yours is about?"
"Couldn’t help yourself, hm?" Katja grimaced a little dramatically, knocking against her forehead.
Emma got up from the stage with a nonchalant shrug and nodded her along. The gym was waiting. "Didn’t need to look. The Generator needed to up its power supply two times since you walked in here. You're loading up like a battery."
"Good." A bitter grin curled on Katja's lips when she slowly clenched her hands into fists, opening them, closing them once more, feeling the faint but undeniable tingling under her skin, from her cells being filled with an almost limitless amount of energy though she'd hardly slept last night. "I got some power to spare then."
"More than enough to bring down a whole city's defenses, I'd say," Emma answered with an unmistakably proud little smirk. "At least with the right training. So let's get moving, Flashwind."