Mirror, Mirror

Mirror Mirror Chapter Seven
Disclaimers Apply


A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse, Hamster Witch and Uberbeta…*glomp * (because I can! J ) InterNutter, TC, Maxwell Pink, Dracena and Greywolf are loverly and wondermous for archiving/hosting. J ProPhile: Party like it’s 5677… Morgan: Hello? Readers/Reviewers: Happy Rosh Hashanah to those who celebrate! And thanks for reading/reviewing, everyone!

“We keep running into each other,” Pete laughed, offering a hand up to Kitty.
Kitty glared at him from the floor of the dining hall. “This time, literally.” She accepted the help up and dusted off the back of her jeans with an air of annoyance. “Excuse me,” she said as politely as possible, moving to step around him. A surreptitious check proved to her that Kurt’s letter, as well as her own response, was still tucked in her sweater pocket. _Good, _ she thought. _It was hard enough to write the first time. _
“Hey, what’s the hurry?” Pete called after her, trotting to catch up as she strode towards the double glass doors leading to the courtyard between the dining hall and the back of the dorms. “I was hoping I could…um…”
Kitty snorted, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. “What? Buy me a carton of milk?” She paused, one hand on the metal bar across the door and the other tucked into her sweater pocket. “Maybe some other time. I’m sort of in the middle of something important.” She smiled sweetly at him and let herself out into the chill autumn air, the early evening breeze carrying a bite to it that spoke of a hard winter to come. She hoped that, by the time it was truly bitter and cold, she would be back at the Institute. The program was not what she had hoped it would be. Yes, she reasoned with herself, she had access to some of the most advanced equipment, the best scientific minds and one of the best academic libraries in the United States. But, she sighed mentally, she also had to fight upstream against ignorance, disrespect and people with superiority complexes that could make Magneto look downright humble. Reaching the back entrance to her dormitory, just across the courtyard, she fumbled with chilled fingers for her keycard, dropping it in the holly bushes framing the stoop. “Shit,” she muttered, bending to retrieve it only to come eye-to-shoe with a heavy workboot. “You again?” she groaned, straightening, card in hand.
“You’re in Miller’s advanced genetics lab, right?” Pete said without acknowledging her obvious annoyance. “We have a practical in there in a few days… some of us are getting a study group together and I figured I’d ask you now. Save me an email later.” He smiled genially, folding his arms over his chest as if to say ‘See? I’m being good! Keeping my hands to myself!’
Kitty swiped her access card through the slot and waited as the light blinked, then turned green before she opened the door. She paused halfway into the hall and turned back to Pete. “Seriously?”
“Why would I lie about it? If I wanted to ask you out, I’d ask you out. I can tell what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours,” he chided, his tone bland as his brows crept upwards. “You’re cute, Kitty, but you’re not irresistible.”
She felt color flood her face and she barely restrained the urge to growl in indignation. Instead, she swallowed her words and forced a smile to her lips. “Email me anyway. I need to know the time and place for this study group.” She did not look back as she turned and went into the hall, the slow creak of the door doing nothing to cut off Pete’s amused laugh. She managed to keep her steps slow and measured as she mounted the stairs, not breaking into a run until she got to her floor, dashing to her room and, after a quick glance to see that she was alone, phasing into her room and flinging herself on the bed. _How embarrassing, _ she thought frantically. _I just made an ass of myself! _ She rolled onto her back and blew out a harsh breath. “No,” she sighed. “I didn’t. He made me THINK I did!” Kurt’s letter crinkled in her pocket, almost as if it were reminding her intentionally of it’s presence. With a sigh, she pushed herself up and pulled both missives out into the open.
_Dear Kurt, _ hers began, _I know I haven’t been very good about responding but there’s been a lot going on. It’s so much easier to just email, you know? But I have been reading these and I’ve saved every one of them. There’s so much I need to talk to you about and so much I want you to talk to me about. _ The letter stopped there. She had no idea how to continue.
_I’ll just call him tonight, _ she reasoned. _Letters are too slow. _ Something was niggling at the back of her mind, something she could not quite put her finger on. She knew that Kurt was acting strange, at least according to Rogue and Scott, and she knew he had been withdrawn from almost everyone… Her reverie was interrupted by the trilling of her cell phone, muffled by her purse.
“Kit,” Rogue’s voice, made muzzy by the poor connection, “are you coming home this weekend?”
“Hello to you, too,” Kitty laughed. “I was just thinking about you.”
“Are you coming home this weekend?” the other girl repeated, sounding greatly impatient.
“Um, no… I have a huge test next week. Why?”
“Then I’m coming up. Me and Jean are gonna head up there tomorrow morning. When are you out of class?”
“Rogue, what the Hell is going on?” Kitty sat up straight, her frown deepening. “Is someone sick? Dead?” Taking a deep breath, she sent up a silent prayer that it would be something easy to fix, something that was not part of a scheme or plot.
“No one is sick. No one is dead yet,” Rogue sighed. “I just need to talk to you and I don’t think it’s a good idea to do it over the phone.”
A knot tightened in Kitty’s stomach, hard and painful and almost cold with fear. “It’s Kurt, isn’t it? What’s wrong with Kurt?”
There was a very long pause on the other end of the line before Rogue spoke. “What makes you think it’s Kurt?”
“I just know. Rogue… put Kurt on.”
“No,” Rogue snapped. “He’s busy with something for the Professor… Kitty, just trust me on this. You need to hear it in person.”
Kitty frowned as the line went dead. “Fuck this,” she muttered. There was a bus leaving for Bayville in two hours, she knew. She had been planning her flight from this place for weeks, since the first day Professor Miller told her that her theories were the worst kind of conjecture and she would never amount to anything. Grabbing a few items of clothing and her toiletry bag, Kitty scribbled a note and stuck it on her door as she left. _Gone for the evening/day. Leave a message. _

A/N Next chapter. What the Hell is up with Amara? FoH makes an appearance and Kurt is twitchier than usual.