Lines in the Sand: Chapter 3

An X-Men Evolution fanfic

Kitty hummed to herself as she headed to the Brotherhood boarding house. I was getting close to curfew, but she hadn’t gotten to talk to Lance all day, and if she hurried, she could see him for a while before she had to get home.

About a block away, she passed Tabby. She started to wave to her, until she noticed the way the younger girl was stomping away, and decided not to bother. She really didn’t want to be on the receiving end of one of her bombs.

Then she noticed the duffle bag slung over Tabby’s shoulder. Was she moving out? Kitty couldn’t imagine any of the boys kicking her out. Had they had a fight?

Kitty pursed her lips and shook her head. She’d ask Lance about it, and then call Tabby later to see if she needed a place to stay.

She reached the boarding house and was about to skip up the steps, when she spotted the long, black car parked in front.

That couldn’t be good.

She ran up to the house and peeked in the living room window. The couch, now turned on its side, filled most of her view, but she could see Pietro, Fred, and Todd crowded behind it. As she watched, Lance hopped the couch and hid behind it too. He turned his head, and his gaze caught hers. His eyes widened, and he shook his head.

Kitty ran, but not away. As she reached the back of the house, the ground trembled and she could hear the boys' screams. She phased through the wall and heard a girl screaming too. Then a woman spoke, her words quiet but forceful. Kitty couldn’t make them out, but they seemed to calm the girl, and silence settled slowly back over the house.

She hesitated. The danger seemed to have passed for the moment, but if something was wrong–she needed more information. She slipped into the hall closet.

“That should give you some small idea of what Wanda can do.”

Kitty clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle her gasp. She knew that voice. The professor had told them about Wanda’s escape, but none of them had considered that Mystique might have been behind it, or that she was back with the Brotherhood.

She didn’t bother to listen to anymore. She phased outside, then slumped against the back wall and bit her lip to try to hold back her tears. She should have known she and Lance would never be able to make this work.

All Lance could think as Mystique and Pietro argued was that he should have known something like this would happen. Nothing good ever lasted, and he had actually dared to be happy in a school he didn’t hate, with friends who accepted him with or without his powers, and a maybe-girlfriend who, despite all odds, actually liked him.

Of course the universe would take that all away.

Mystique kept talking, probably explaining what she actually wanted from them, but Lance wasn’t paying attention. He wondered how much Kitty had seen or heard, and if she was still outside. He hoped she hadn’t been hurt, but thankfully the damaged seemed to be confined to the house.

When Mystique finally, finally left, and he heard her car drive away, he counted another minute, then got up.

“Wait, where are you going?” Pietro asked, popping up from behind the couch, where he was still hiding from his sister, even though she had gone upstairs a while ago.

“Outside.”

He swung the door open, then froze when he saw Kitty standing on the porch. Her hands were on her hips, and oh, she was angry.

For a minute, he toyed with the idea of shutting the door and just walking away, but that would make things so much worse. Reluctantly, he stepped outside and shut the door behind him.

“So, like, when were you planning to tell me you’re working for Mystique again?”

“Hey, she just showed up today, so it’s not like I had a chance!” He stopped as he remembered again why they shouldn’t have even tried this. “And–and why should I have told you? You don’t tell me everything old baldy’s up to. If he sent you to fight us, you wouldn’t tell me.”

“Yes I would!”

He crossed his arms and stared at her. Her certainty faltered. “I–I would.” The last word was so quiet he almost didn’t hear it.

“You wouldn’t betray your team,” he said, “And neither would I.”

Kitty stepped forward. “But she’s not your team. She’s just using you! All of you!”

“And your professor’s not? Tell me, how many of those jobs you do for him do you do because you want to?”

“He still cares about us, but she doesn’t care about you at all!”

“Well at least she bothered to come back! No one else even bothered to do that much!” Kitty staggered back a step at the force of his words. He closed his eyes. He hand’t meant to say that.

“Lance . . .”

“I think you should go,” he said. “Clearly this was never going to work.”

He made the mistake of looking at her then, as she bit her lip and her eyes filled with tears. Then she turned around and ran.

He turned back to the house, then stopped when he saw Todd, Pietro and Fred all staring at him out the window. Of course they were spying on him. Of course.

He stomped inside, slammed the door, and ignored the other boys standing around the living room pretending to be busy.

Wanda stood in the middle of the stairs. She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes when he tried to pass. “Who was that?”

“Doesn’t matter anymore,” he said.

Scott stared down at the essay he was trying to grade. When they first showed up, he thought the new mutants respected him. Apparently that only lasted until he tried to teach. He massaged his temples and tried to read Bobby’s essay again.

A couple of paragraphs on the practical applications of their last physics lesson. That was all he had asked for, and yet the whole thing seemed to be nonsense. He had tried reading it four times, and still couldn’t follow more than the first sentence. When he reached the end of the first paragraph, his eyes started to blur.

The first line caught his eyes again. Reading the first letter of the first four lines spelled the word “this”. Scott’s heart sank, suddenly certain Bobby did this on purpose.

He read aloud down the line. “This . . . is . . . stupid."

He sighed and tossed the essay aside. “Stay at the institute and teach, he said. It’ll be a great learning experience, he said. Well it sure is a learning experience. I’m learning I hate teenagers.” He chose to ignore the fact that he was still technically a teenager. For a few months, at least.

Someone knocked on his door. “Come in.”

As the door opened behind him, the essay floated back up onto his desk. “Grading not going well?” Jean asked.

“You could say that.” He turned around. “I think Bobby put more work into avoiding the work than it would take to actually do it.”

She smiled. “That sounds about right. Sorry to interrupt, but the professor wants us to meet in the library.”

Scott stood up. “Did he say why?”

Jean shook her head. “It doesn’t seem good, though.”

Everyone else on the team was already in the library when they got there.

“So what’s up, professor?” Scott asked as he and Jean sat down.

“I’m afraid we have some trouble. Ever since Wanda disappeared, I’ve been doing my best to find her. Tonight, Cerebro was able to locate her. It appears both her and the Brotherhood boys are at the Bayville mall.”

“What’s she doing with the Brotherhood?” Rogue asked.

“I don’t know, but the mall has been closed for hours, so I doubt it can be good. I want you all to suit up and find out what they’re doing.”

“But–Professor, if we don’t even know what they’re doing, are you sure we need to go?” Kitty asked.

“It’s precisely because we don’t know that I need you to go,” he said.

Kitty shrank back into the couch. Scott didn’t know what was up with her lately. For weeks she had been giddy nearly all the time, first out the door on the way to school, and last to come home at night. But for the past couple of days, that had completely changed. Now she came home as soon as school was over, even if the others stayed out, and she withdrew from everyone else, staying in her room whenever she could. Jean had tried talking to her, but she hadn’t been able to find the problem.

“Besides, they’ve got to be up to something," Evan said. “When are they not?”

“Don’t worry, Professor,” Scott said. “We’re on it.”

Kitty stared down at her phone. Rogue had already changed into her uniform and gone downstairs, but Kitty was stuck.

“If he sent you to fight us, you wouldn’t tell me."

“Yes I would!"

Was it betraying her team to tell him? Did it even matter? They weren’t–whatever they had been–anymore, so there was no reason to tell him.

Except–she said she would.

She was angry, she was hurt, but . . . she still cared about him.

She took a deep breath and typed out a quick text, then before she could change her mind, she hit send.

Lance walked another lap around the mall balcony. Mystique had claimed the X-Men would show up, but they had been at the mall for a while, and there was no sign of anyone else.

His phone vibrated, and he pulled it out. It was a text from Kitty.

His finger stopped over the “open” button when he read her name. They hadn’t talked since–since the night Mystique came back. Still, he missed her. He pushed the button before he could lose his nerve.

We’re on our way to the mall.

He frowned. When Mystique told them she would get the X-Men there, he hadn’t really believed her. He wondered how she managed it. He knew he shouldn’t, but he texted back anyway. How did you know?

A few seconds later, she texted back, Cerebro.

He knew about Cerebro of course. They had mentioned it while he was staying at the mansion, and he’d followed Dr. McCoy around for almost a whole day asking questions about how it worked. A lot of it he hadn’t understood, but he understood enough.

Enough to know something was very, very wrong.

He could tell her. She had gone behind her team’s back to warn him, and he could return the favor now.

But he had chosen her over his team before, and he didn’t want to do that again. He wouldn’t betray them.

Kitty’s voice echoed in his head, saying Mystique wasn’t a part of the team, but that wasn’t true. She had formed the team in the first place. She had been the one to find them, to get them out of the bad situations they were stuck in. She had given them a home.

And then she left.

But she came back, he reminded himself. That was the important part. Never mind that if he and Pietro hadn’t gotten jobs, they wouldn’t have had anything to eat. Never mind that they had been so behind on paying bills that the city shut off the water. The important thing was that she came back.

Would Mystique have even cared if they left?

Of course she would. She wouldn’t have anyone to fight Magneto if they left.

Tabitha had cared when Lance left, and when he came back. She had teased him and given him a hard time, but she was still glad. The same for the boys. They were glad when he came back, and not just for what he could do for them.

And he had just let Tabby leave. When it came down to her or Mystique, he just watched her walk out the door, even though she had no where else to go, and who knew if her dad was out of prison yet or not?

And what if Mystique decided one of them wasn’t worth it? She treated Todd worse than the bullies at school, and if tonight went well, if she decided Wanda was enough, and she didn’t need Todd anymore–or him, or Fred, or Pietro–what then?

When Kitty confronted him before, Lance thought she was asking him to choose between his team and her, but really, that wasn’t the choice at all.

Right now, he had two options: his team, or Mystique. And with those options, it was hardly a choice at all.

He called Kitty.

“Lance, I can’t talk right now,” she whispered. “I told you we’re on our way.”

“It’s important,” he said before she could hang up. “The professor couldn’t have used Cerebro to find us because we didn’t use our mutations.” Sure they could have used their mutations to break in, but Todd’s variety of lock picks were easier and less messy.

“But–”

“Listen to me, the only way anyone could have found us is if they already knew where we were going.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone, and he was afraid the call had been disconnected. Then she said, “oh, oh no.” It seemed she had reached the same conclusion he had. “Did–did you know?”

“Not until you texted me.”

She was quiet for another moment. “Thank you for telling me. I have to go.”

Just before she hung up, something warm and wet wrapped around his hand and stole his phone. Lance whirled around to find his teammates glaring at him. Pietro snatched his phone out of the grip of Todd’s tongue and wagged it in Lance’s face.

“You ratting us out, Romeo?”

“No! They were coming here anyway, remember? Mystique sent them to test us.”

Fred frowned. “So what were you doing?”

Lance straightened up, hoping to remind them that he was in charge here, and also that he definitely knew what he was doing. Definitely.

“Ratting out Mystique.”

“What?" Todd’s eyes bugged out.

“Are you stupid?" Pietro asked.

Fred folded his arms. “Why would you do that?”

Lance stepped forward. “Do you really want to be stuck under Mystique’s thumb until she decides we’re useless?” He looked at Todd. “Tossed around?” Pietro. “Bullied?” Fred. “Kicked out like Tabby? We were doing just fine on our own, and we don’t need her!”

“Well yeah, but what’s she going to do when she finds out you ratted her out?” Todd asked.

“How would she know? Kitty’s not going to tell her.” It surprised him just how certain he was of that, even after their fight.

Pietro scowled. “So you’re just making all our decisions for us now?”

“What, you want to keep working for Mystique?”

“That’s not what I said! I just don’t see why you get to make that choice!”

“I don’t want to work for her either, yo,” Todd said.

“Me neither,” Fred said. Pietro’s scowl deepened, but clearly he didn’t want to either.

Everyone turned to the newest member of the team, who hadn’t spoken yet at all. Wanda frowned at the attention, but shrugged slightly. “I’m only here to find my father.”

“But does Mystique even know where he is?” Lance asked. “I mean, you might be better off looking for him yourself.”

Pietro was in his face before he could blink. “You kicking her out?”

Lance shoved him away. “No, I just thought she might not want to be stuck with Mystique either.”

Pietro opened his mouth, but Wanda interrupted. “She doesn’t know where he is?”

Lance shrugged. “I mean, she might, but I doubt it.”

“Yeah, I mean, if I betrayed her, I wouldn’t wanna hand her a big red sign that says, ‘here I am’,” Todd said.

Wanda looked at each of them for a moment, then turned around and walked away.

“Wanda! Wait, Wanda, where are you going?” Pietro ran ahead of her, but she pushed him aside.

“To find our father.”

“But you don’t even know where to look!”

“I’ll figure it out.” The escalator started up when she reached it, and the two of them rode down.

“But, Wanda–”

“I’m going, so just leave me alone!”

Pietro kept pleading with her the whole way out, and Lance felt bad. He hadn’t really meant to make her leave. Still, they should be fine if they stuck together, and they could always come back if there were trouble. He and the other boys watched the pair until they got out of sight of the mall’s windows.

“He’s just leaving us?” Fred asked.

Todd shrugged. “She’s his sister. Guess we can’t really beat that.” He turned to Lance. “So what now?”

In the distance, Lance saw a familiar black and driving towards the mall. He smirked. “Time to give Mystique a show.”

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