Together or Not at All
An X-Men Evolution fanfic
Apology
Lance tells himself it doesn’t matter that she still won’t speak to him. He got the money off the test answers. He has what he needs, and he can live with the firm set to her mouth, and the way her eyes slide away every time she passes him.
“Oops.” Riley sneers as she bumps into him. His books fall, and he freezes.
That stupid test lies on the floor, the big A on the front mocking him, reminding him of the hurt on Kitty’s face from the moment she realized what he was doing.
He snatches up the test and crumples it as he grabs his books and storms out of the classroom–
And runs straight into Kitty.
She sucks in a breath and curls into herself, as though he might not notice her if she gets small enough. Her anger he can take, but fear–
“I’m sorry.”
She tightens her grip on her books. “What?”
“I–I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you.” There’s more he could say, but that’s the important part.
She watches him as though searching for a lie, then exhales slowly. “Thank you.”
Request
Kitty drops into the seat beside him, but doesn’t even touch her lunch. “I need your help.”
Dark circles rim her eyes, and she looks like she’s about to cry. He wants to hurt whoever hurt her. “What do you need?”
She glances over her shoulder and lowers her voice. “How do I make sure I don’t do . . . it when I don’t want to? I can’t sleep because I’m so afraid I’ll–” She breaks off and bites her lip.
He looks away, ashamed he can’t even give this much. “I don’t know. I still lose control a lot.”
“Oh.”
Her chair scrapes the floor, and he knows she’s leaving. He reaches up and snags the end of her sleeve before he knows what he’s doing. “But . . . we could try to figure it out together.”
She smiles. “I’d like that.”
Secrets
“I’ve been practicing,” she tells him. “Last night I went through my closet door.”
He pauses putting in his locker combination to grin over his shoulder. “That’s great!”
“My parents weren’t very happy, though. They’re still, like, trying to pretend it never happened.”
He grunts, and the locker door swings open. He reaches up to grab one of his textbooks, and the edge of his sleeve falls, revealing the purple bruise on his wrist. “Lance! What happened?”
“Huh?” He follows her gaze, and tugs the sleeve back up to cover it. “Oh, doesn’t matter.”
She had wondered why he was wearing long sleeves on such a warm day. “It looks bad–”
“It’s not,” he interrupts. “Doesn’t even hurt anymore.”
She purses her lips, but says nothing.
Plans
Kitty takes advantage of the nice weather to sit outside and do homework. Lance lies sprawled in the grass a few feet away, and it’s more distracting than it should be.
She nudges his shoulder with the toe of her shoe. “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
“Get out.” The answer comes too quickly. “After that, doesn’t matter, but I’m getting out as soon as I can.”
Her heart sinks. She’s a year behind him. She understands why he wants to leave, but he’s her only friend, and she doesn’t want to be left behind.
“What if you, like, stayed kind of close, just until–” She breaks off, realizing how stupid she sounds. Why would he want to stick around to wait for her?
He’s staring at her now, propped up on his elbow, and she doesn’t know what to make of the look on his face. “I’d give you my phone number.”
She grips her pencil so tight her knuckles turn white.
He lays back down and stares up at the sky. “And I’d tell you where I was going. You know, in case you wanted to come when you finish school.”
Offer
He catches her after school and leads her around the back of the building.
“I met someone, someone like us. Her power–it’s incredible! She can shape-shift into whatever or whoever she wants to be.”
Kitty can’t breathe. She’s only heard him this excited one other time. Her power isn’t that cool or interesting, and she can’t help but wonder, if she weren’t the first person with powers he met, would he even want to be her friend?
“How amazing is that?” he asks. “Wouldn’t it be great, just to be able to change like that whenever you want?”
There’s no reason to be jealous. No reason at all.
“She says she can help us. She has a place for people like us, and she can teach us to control our powers.”
It sounds too good to be true. “Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Anything would be better than where I am now, but if you don’t want to go . . . I get it. I told her you and I would go together, or not at all.”
Warmth floods her body and the jealousy evaporates. “I’ll talk to her.”
Dream
Principal Darkhölme’s vision is . . . intoxicating.
She talks about her employer’s plan to create a place for people like them to live openly without fear. And in the meantime, she promises a home where they can learn to control their powers and meet even more mutants.
That’s the word she uses, and it’s nice to have one.
Kitty’s parents are harder to convince, but they’re worried about her, and they seem to think as soon as she learns control, she can come home and be “normal” again.
She packs her things, and Lance drives them both to New York. Principal Darkhölme returns in her own car, but Lance doesn’t want to leave without his Jeep. Kitty decides to stick with him.
His music is very different from what she usually listens to, and she doesn’t recognize any of the songs, but she cranks it up loud and throws her hands up to feel the wind as they drive. Lance laughs with her, and she feels like she could fly.
Brotherhood
Kitty isn’t used to sharing a house with so many people, but she comes to enjoy it.
Rogue has a thing about touching people (hugs aren’t allowed, handshakes aren’t allowed, pretty much nothing is allowed), but it’s nice to have a girl friend to talk to.
For as much as Todd annoys her with his pranks, he always manages to make her laugh, even when she’s homesick, or upset over the football team’s latest comments.
Fred is surprisingly sweet, and he likes to watch all her favorite cheesy rom-coms with her after spending the afternoon making cookies together.
Pietro acts like he’s above the rest of them, but he’s protective in his own way, and the football team tends to lose their homework or uniforms on days when they mess with her.
They spend a lot of time in detention, but she manages to get them out sometimes. The teachers like her, and they can’t understand why she spends so much time with those “delinquents”.
She doesn’t know how to explain that they’re more like her than they seem. They’re all just looking for a place to belong.
Deserter
Rogue leaves them a few weeks later. She doesn’t give an explanation, but Kitty guesses it’s because of a certain dark-haired boy with red sunglasses.
She can’t blame her. If Lance were an X-Man . . . she doesn’t know what she’d do.
Still, she tries once to convince Rogue to come back.
“We miss you,” she says.
Rogue shakes her head. “I think you’re the only one. Besides, Mystique lied to me, and I won’t go back after that.”
The arguments die on Kitty’s lips. She knows how much it hurts to have someone you trust lie to you.
“You know,” Rogue says, turning away as though she doesn’t really care. “You could come too.”
“I can’t.”
Rogue seems to understand, and in an uncharacteristically sentimental gesture, she squeezes Kitty’s hand. “Just–be careful.”
Refuge
Magneto’s plan is not what they were promised.
There’s only room for so many, Mystique explains, and that’s why they must compete with the others. Todd’s already been eliminated, but it’s four against three, and it seems certain the rest of their team will make it.
Then Lance is on the ground, unconscious.
Kitty starts to run for him, but Pietro grabs her. “We have to hurry. They might leave without us!”
She’s pulled into one of the metal orbs, and the top closes in over her. She takes a deep breath and phases through it as it floats away.
She crawls over to Lance. She’s never actually seen Rogue use her power before, and the way he dropped–
She shakes his shoulders. “Lance?” He stirs. His eyes widen when he sees her leaning over him.
“Kitty? But–”
He never gets a chance to finish because Evan looms over them, pointing one of his spikes at Kitty.
She’s not afraid of him. He can’t hurt her.
He seems to come to the same conclusion, because he turns, pointing it at Lance instead. Her heart leaps into her throat.
“Tell us what they did with Rogue,” he says.
Promise
Mystique is gone.
None of them really think she’s dead, but she never comes back, no mater how many times Kitty swears she hears her shoes on the doorstep.
She can’t help but remember Rogue’s warning. But Mystique wouldn’t abandon them, right?
She goes into the kitchen for a snack and finds Lance sitting at the table, head in his hands. He told her he was working on a budget. It doesn’t seem to be going well.
She walks over and lays her hand on his shoulder. He covers it with his own. “I think you should go home.”
Her heart stops. “What?”
He drags his free hand down his face. “The last bit of money we’ve got . . . I don’t know if it’ll last until I can find a job, and now with Tabby here–you’d be better off going back to your parents.”
She shakes her head. “No, I’m not going. We go together or not at all, remember? I’ll stay, and I’ll find a job too, and we’ll figure it out, okay?”
He tugs on her hand and pulls her into his lap. He wraps his arms around her, and she hugs him tight.
Return
Months too late, Kitty’s prayers are answer. Mystique returns with an angry girl and a plan for vengeance.
Kitty isn’t sure what to do with Wanda. She’s even pricklier than Rogue when she first showed up, and Kitty can’t seem to get past her defenses.
Pietro spends the first three days hiding. She’s sure if they just talked things out, he wouldn’t have to keep tiptoeing around his sister, but whenever she suggests it, he just shakes his head. “You don’t know Wanda,” he says.
Mystique explains her plan, but after seeing him on Astroid M, Kitty isn’t so sure she wants to fight Magneto.
“We owe her,” Lance says, over and over. “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for her.”
She’s not sure which of them he’s trying to convince.
Runaways
They’re alone again. Summers left Mystique behind, and Kitty can’t decide how she feels about that.
This time, though, they can’t go home.
She phases them into a gym after-hours so they can clean up and sleep on the padded floor. Todd grabbed a bunch of Wanda’s clothes on the way out, and Wanda let her borrow some, so they, at least, have clean clothes to put on after their showers. She feels bad for the boys.
Lance stops her when she comes out of the bathroom. “There’s nothing we can do tonight, but you really should go home. You’d be safer there.”
She latches onto his shoulders. “I’m staying, I’m staying. How many times do I have to say it before you believe it?”
She doesn’t know how it happens. One minute he’s staring at her like he’s never seen her before, and the next–
She’s imagined kissing him before, but never quite like this.
His hands are tangled in her hair, and his lips are parted under hers. She’s melting under his touch, and all she knows to do is wrap her arms around his neck and pull him closer.
Scapegoats
After their first battle with Magneto, Kitty didn’t think it could get any worse.
They’re back at the boarding house now, but everything is falling apart.
When Lance chews out Principal Kelly for kicking them out, she’s right there beside him. Outside, she sits on the stairs and cries. Lance says nothing, but the slight tremors in the ground betray his anger.
They both lose their jobs. They search and search for something new, but no one wants to side so blatantly with mutants in the current political climate.
They’re getting desperate, and when Pietro explains his plan to pretend to be superheroes, she only has one question. “What if someone gets hurt.”
“No one will get hurt,” he promises. “If we’re the one’s causing the accidents, then we can make sure of it.”
Lance is more hesitant, but he keeps staring at the check the lady from the train gave them.
“Let’s do it.” Kitty says.
Apocalypse
The X-Men haven’t spoken to them since the train accident, so it’s a surprise when Kurt shows up on their doorstep.
It’s even more surprising when he says, “we need your help.”
Lance doesn’t care about Apocalypse or the humans who turned their back on them, but when Kurt leaves, it’s with Wanda on his heels and Kitty standing at the door, staring after them.
Kitty turns back to him. “Lance . . .”
She won’t leave without him, he knows. “We’ll go together or not at all,” he said, nearly two years ago now, and she’s stuck to it, following him through thick and thin. He supposes it’s his turn to follow this time.
He doesn’t care about Apocalypse, but he cares about his team.
“We’ll need a plane.”
Future
They get another job offer from another stranger who wants their mutations. It feels so much like the first time he met Mystique, but this time Lance has an actual contract lying in front of him. He’s read it five times and can’t find anything wrong with it.
He looks up at the one-eyed man in front of him. “And this is for the whole team? All of us?”
“Any who are willing.”
Lance looks at his team. “What do you all think?” If any of them say no, that’s that. They’re sticking together, no matter what.
As each one of them meets his eyes, they nod. When he reaches Kitty beside him, she takes his hand. “I think it’ll be good for us,” she says.
He turns back to the man. Their new boss, it seems.
“We’ll do it.”