Liz Parker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
st_hotflashes) wrote2018-06-14 11:01 pm
st_hotflashes) wrote2018-06-14 11:01 pm
Liz Apologizes to Kitty
Liz hadn't spoken to Kitty in two days and missed a lesson. Liz was practically avoiding Kitty because she had said some stupid things and then some even stupider things and she wasn't sure how to fix it, or if she even could.
She had been sitting on a science paper for days now. No amount of revision could change the fact it was a completed paper with no mistakes left in it since Liz had been so thorough.
Eventually, Liz found her way to Kitty's door. How did you even apologize for all the things that she said? Liz hadn't even known why she said some of the things she said.
For a brief moment, Liz hoped Kitty wasn't home just before she knocked.
Kitty was sitting at her desk, hair up and schoolteacher mode engaged. It wasn't specifically because she expected Liz at some point, so much as because it got hot in the afternoons and hair up was cooler and she had work to do. She had a Danger Room to design and she'd been working on a variant of Cerebro to see if she could use it to detect new arrivals at the moment of their arrival and from there see if she could detect the connection points. She also had an entire notebook of plans for the Inn's educational system to implement--and when she was done with all of that, she had to spare some time to contemplate how entirely beyond the pale it was that she'd accepted they were stuck here sufficiently for her to start trying to turn everything into familiar bits and pieces from the X-Mansion.
Still, regardless of the reason, Kitty was in full Professor Pryde mode when Liz (she knew the knock) knocked. She sat back from her desk enough to face the door. "The door is open, Miss Parker."
She had never really heard Kitty refer to her as 'Miss Parker', so Liz was already aware things were different. She tried not to frown when she opened the door, but her expression was more dire than she wanted it to be.
She tentatively walked in, forcing herself to make eye contact with Kitty despite not wanting to.
"...I, um.. I finished my paper...."
"It's late."
Kitty held out her hand for it, her expression about as neutral as it could get without actually burning her. Deeper down, part of her acknowledged that Liz looked upset, but it would take more than a paper to fix the wedge Liz had driven between them. "And you missed a lesson."
She drummed her fingers on her desk. "Will there be anything else?"
"Um... No." Liz hesitated, then turned around almost like she was in shock. She made it to the door before she stopped, closed her eyes with a slight inhale, and turned around.
"Actually... I, um. I wanted to talk to you about... What happened."
Kitty mentally marked her up a point for having the courage to turn around and face her, but it didn't change the fact that Liz had been stupid and selfish. Just like the child she and Peter both insisted they weren't. She gestured to the chair Liz usually sat in. "I'm listening."
She pressed her lips together and forced herself to keep eye contact with Kitty. "I said a lot of things that were wrong. And.. I let a lot of my insecurities get in the way of talking to you. I should have... I should have been more understanding. And, the truth is, even though I didn't mean to and I didn't make the connection to any of it - to your necklace or to missing someone - it doesn't matter because what I did was still really shitty." Liz didn't normally curse, but it was an appropriate moment for one.
"You're right. It was." That came first, and somewhat flatly. But Kitty really doesn't have it in her to stay mad at a trying teenager. If she did, Illyana would never have lived to adulthood. "The thing is, Liz, it's not something you did once. It's something you keep doing. You talk without thinking. You ask questions only thinking about yourself and your curiosity without ever considering how the person you ask is going to feel about it. And while I understand that you and Peter love each other and being afraid of losing each other really sucks, you need to remember that there are people here in the Inn who have already lost people they love, whether from the Inn or by coming here. Do you even know what and who your friends here left behind?"
When Liz paused to consider it, she realized that she only knew about the people her age. She could tell Kitty most things about Xavin or Miguel or River, to some degree - though River was hard to understand on a good day. She had been treating the adults here like the adults back home - where you didn't really talk to them about their personal things because they were adults and you were a kid and they were either your friend's mom or a teacher or someone else in authority. It was different at the inn, wasn't it?
She ducked her head, looking down at her fingers which picked at invisible loose skin. "I guess - I haven't been treating you guys fairly." And pause. "It's not an excuse, but - I guess I just thought there were things people like you and Piotr wouldn't want to talk to someone like me." She closed her eyes for a brief moment as she looked up and shook her head. "Which is totally stupid." She wet her lips, looking at Kitty with a slight frown. "Is there... is there a way I can make things better?"
Kitty fought the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. She wasn't ready to let Liz off the hook by being exasperated instead of angry. "The point isn't that we want to talk about our war wounds with you, but that you never asked. I don't think for a minute you mean to be cruel or thoughtless, but you keep putting your foot firmly in your mouth and your head just as firmly in the sand."
She sighed now and met Liz's gaze steadily. "You didn't know about Lara, because, for the most part, I deal with my emotions privately. I don't blame you for not knowing, but I do hold you responsible for hearing what you wanted to hear." Liz wanted to make it better, and this wasn't going to be a simple process. "I can forgive you, but if you want to make it better, you need to not only listen to what people are saying, but care about them and not just the answers. You don't have to be a person's closest friend to care about them, and I know you know that. So start showing it."
Liz thought she had been doing that with Piotr - learning Russian to surprise him and make him feel like there was a part of home here and he wasn't alone, though she wondered now if that was enough. Did everyone she talk to feel the same way? She felt her heart drop into her stomach and she managed a nod to Kitty, her gaze lifting momentarily to give another nod to her before she looked back down at a spot on the floor.
"So here's what I want you to do, are you ready to listen?" Kitty gentled her voice, because she'd been in that place where Liz was where you'd fucked up something you were trying to get right and gotten called on it, hard.
Liz was finally able to force her eyes back up and she held Kitty's gaze this time. "I'll do whatever you think I need to do."
"First, you need to forgive yourself. Friends fight. It happens." Kitty's shoulders came down and she started to relax. "Second, I think you should take on some responsibilities around the Inn that don't have to do with Peter or learning. I'm thinking serving on the welcoming committee, helping Regina and/or Caroline when they ask for volunteers, and doing shifts in the clinic with Butters, Kash, Jackson and Pike. You have a good heart and you want to do the right things. You just need to get out of your own head."
Liz actually thought maybe she'd like to help out with the people who just arrived. She knew that stuff could be hard for some and maybe, especially with anyone under 18, she could really help them. She nodded again. "Okay. That sounds... kind of nice." She even smiled a little, though her guilt that she felt tempered it a bit. Working with Pike at the cafe was nice, so seeing her at the clinic would be okay and Jackson was nice, too, though made her blush sometimes. Kash and Butters were nice too, even if she didn't know them very well.
"Should I... should I start tomorrow?"
"If you feel like you're recovered enough to start tomorrow, go for it. I'm not going to be mad if you need to take a little time to think about what I said first. It's not an easy lesson, especially when you're used to being caught up in a serious, potentially world-threatening drama. Learning to look outside what's happening to you takes practice." Kitty knew as well as anyone that at sixteen, it was hard to care about anything but what was going on with you, but this was a small space and Liz needed to get better at seeing the other inmates as people with their own concerns.
"Whenever you start, what I want you to focus on is observing the people you're working with. Don't pry into their lives, but try to see the things they're not saying. Ask them why they became healers, or what they did before they got here. Don't try to compare it to you. Just let it be about them. Does that make sense?"
She nodded, understanding what Kitty was expecting of her, and she was willing to do it all. She didn't think, under the circumstances, that any of it was unfair or unreasonable. "Yes. And I'll do that, I promise."
"I'm going to hold you to it," Kitty warned. "There may be pop quizzes." Not that she'd necessarily know the answers, but being right wasn't the point. Observing people and caring about them was. "I think maybe we should also practice roleplaying conversations. Maybe you and Peter, with me as a coach. I think it could help you guys get over some of your awkwardness about talking to adults. What do you think?"
"Oh, um." She flushed a little. Maybe it was the simple idea of 'roleplaying' which always implied acting and pretending and Liz wasn't sure she was very good at it. Much like with PE, the arts was something Liz did not necessarily excel at. It was ironic she was learning to draw and play the guitar here and she was mediocre at both at best. "I mean, I guess so, if that's what Peter wants." Though if she talked to adults back home like that, she'd probably get some weird looks.
"Public speaking and persuasion are good skills to have," was all Kitty said about that. She wouldn't push until she actually had a lesson plan for it, which, even if she wasn't going to do all the stuff her angry-inventing brain had decided she would do, wasn't anywhere near the top of her project list.
"And speaking of skills..." Kitty pursed her lips but she wouldn't let herself fidget with the ever-growing hole in her jeans. "I owe you an apology for how I reacted to your abilities. I should have and wish I had been more supportive about your empathic precognition."
Liz looked a little surprised, then shook her head with a meek, small smile. "It's okay. It's um. I just suddenly said it and at such a weird time." Really, she should have or could have said it a lot better. "And, you were right. I mean, it's not like they're useful in any way. Not really. I don't even think I'm supposed to have them." She was pretty sure it happened when Max had saved her.
"No," Kitty said patiently. "It's not okay. I know how traumatic it is to suddenly have powers. I know what it's like for the adults around you not to take you seriously. I was mad as hell, but that's not an excuse, because I'm your teacher and I'm supposed to do better." So she waited a beat to let those words sink in and then said, "I'm sorry."
She gave a small nod. "Thank you." She said about the apology. She did appreciate that Kitty apologized. She understood about saying things when you were angry. "Maybe sometime, um. We can talk about it. Later."
Kitty smiled at her finally. "Maybe sometime. Right now, you're two lessons behind. Go get your notebook. We have work to do."
She had been sitting on a science paper for days now. No amount of revision could change the fact it was a completed paper with no mistakes left in it since Liz had been so thorough.
Eventually, Liz found her way to Kitty's door. How did you even apologize for all the things that she said? Liz hadn't even known why she said some of the things she said.
For a brief moment, Liz hoped Kitty wasn't home just before she knocked.
Kitty was sitting at her desk, hair up and schoolteacher mode engaged. It wasn't specifically because she expected Liz at some point, so much as because it got hot in the afternoons and hair up was cooler and she had work to do. She had a Danger Room to design and she'd been working on a variant of Cerebro to see if she could use it to detect new arrivals at the moment of their arrival and from there see if she could detect the connection points. She also had an entire notebook of plans for the Inn's educational system to implement--and when she was done with all of that, she had to spare some time to contemplate how entirely beyond the pale it was that she'd accepted they were stuck here sufficiently for her to start trying to turn everything into familiar bits and pieces from the X-Mansion.
Still, regardless of the reason, Kitty was in full Professor Pryde mode when Liz (she knew the knock) knocked. She sat back from her desk enough to face the door. "The door is open, Miss Parker."
She had never really heard Kitty refer to her as 'Miss Parker', so Liz was already aware things were different. She tried not to frown when she opened the door, but her expression was more dire than she wanted it to be.
She tentatively walked in, forcing herself to make eye contact with Kitty despite not wanting to.
"...I, um.. I finished my paper...."
"It's late."
Kitty held out her hand for it, her expression about as neutral as it could get without actually burning her. Deeper down, part of her acknowledged that Liz looked upset, but it would take more than a paper to fix the wedge Liz had driven between them. "And you missed a lesson."
She drummed her fingers on her desk. "Will there be anything else?"
"Um... No." Liz hesitated, then turned around almost like she was in shock. She made it to the door before she stopped, closed her eyes with a slight inhale, and turned around.
"Actually... I, um. I wanted to talk to you about... What happened."
Kitty mentally marked her up a point for having the courage to turn around and face her, but it didn't change the fact that Liz had been stupid and selfish. Just like the child she and Peter both insisted they weren't. She gestured to the chair Liz usually sat in. "I'm listening."
She pressed her lips together and forced herself to keep eye contact with Kitty. "I said a lot of things that were wrong. And.. I let a lot of my insecurities get in the way of talking to you. I should have... I should have been more understanding. And, the truth is, even though I didn't mean to and I didn't make the connection to any of it - to your necklace or to missing someone - it doesn't matter because what I did was still really shitty." Liz didn't normally curse, but it was an appropriate moment for one.
"You're right. It was." That came first, and somewhat flatly. But Kitty really doesn't have it in her to stay mad at a trying teenager. If she did, Illyana would never have lived to adulthood. "The thing is, Liz, it's not something you did once. It's something you keep doing. You talk without thinking. You ask questions only thinking about yourself and your curiosity without ever considering how the person you ask is going to feel about it. And while I understand that you and Peter love each other and being afraid of losing each other really sucks, you need to remember that there are people here in the Inn who have already lost people they love, whether from the Inn or by coming here. Do you even know what and who your friends here left behind?"
When Liz paused to consider it, she realized that she only knew about the people her age. She could tell Kitty most things about Xavin or Miguel or River, to some degree - though River was hard to understand on a good day. She had been treating the adults here like the adults back home - where you didn't really talk to them about their personal things because they were adults and you were a kid and they were either your friend's mom or a teacher or someone else in authority. It was different at the inn, wasn't it?
She ducked her head, looking down at her fingers which picked at invisible loose skin. "I guess - I haven't been treating you guys fairly." And pause. "It's not an excuse, but - I guess I just thought there were things people like you and Piotr wouldn't want to talk to someone like me." She closed her eyes for a brief moment as she looked up and shook her head. "Which is totally stupid." She wet her lips, looking at Kitty with a slight frown. "Is there... is there a way I can make things better?"
Kitty fought the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. She wasn't ready to let Liz off the hook by being exasperated instead of angry. "The point isn't that we want to talk about our war wounds with you, but that you never asked. I don't think for a minute you mean to be cruel or thoughtless, but you keep putting your foot firmly in your mouth and your head just as firmly in the sand."
She sighed now and met Liz's gaze steadily. "You didn't know about Lara, because, for the most part, I deal with my emotions privately. I don't blame you for not knowing, but I do hold you responsible for hearing what you wanted to hear." Liz wanted to make it better, and this wasn't going to be a simple process. "I can forgive you, but if you want to make it better, you need to not only listen to what people are saying, but care about them and not just the answers. You don't have to be a person's closest friend to care about them, and I know you know that. So start showing it."
Liz thought she had been doing that with Piotr - learning Russian to surprise him and make him feel like there was a part of home here and he wasn't alone, though she wondered now if that was enough. Did everyone she talk to feel the same way? She felt her heart drop into her stomach and she managed a nod to Kitty, her gaze lifting momentarily to give another nod to her before she looked back down at a spot on the floor.
"So here's what I want you to do, are you ready to listen?" Kitty gentled her voice, because she'd been in that place where Liz was where you'd fucked up something you were trying to get right and gotten called on it, hard.
Liz was finally able to force her eyes back up and she held Kitty's gaze this time. "I'll do whatever you think I need to do."
"First, you need to forgive yourself. Friends fight. It happens." Kitty's shoulders came down and she started to relax. "Second, I think you should take on some responsibilities around the Inn that don't have to do with Peter or learning. I'm thinking serving on the welcoming committee, helping Regina and/or Caroline when they ask for volunteers, and doing shifts in the clinic with Butters, Kash, Jackson and Pike. You have a good heart and you want to do the right things. You just need to get out of your own head."
Liz actually thought maybe she'd like to help out with the people who just arrived. She knew that stuff could be hard for some and maybe, especially with anyone under 18, she could really help them. She nodded again. "Okay. That sounds... kind of nice." She even smiled a little, though her guilt that she felt tempered it a bit. Working with Pike at the cafe was nice, so seeing her at the clinic would be okay and Jackson was nice, too, though made her blush sometimes. Kash and Butters were nice too, even if she didn't know them very well.
"Should I... should I start tomorrow?"
"If you feel like you're recovered enough to start tomorrow, go for it. I'm not going to be mad if you need to take a little time to think about what I said first. It's not an easy lesson, especially when you're used to being caught up in a serious, potentially world-threatening drama. Learning to look outside what's happening to you takes practice." Kitty knew as well as anyone that at sixteen, it was hard to care about anything but what was going on with you, but this was a small space and Liz needed to get better at seeing the other inmates as people with their own concerns.
"Whenever you start, what I want you to focus on is observing the people you're working with. Don't pry into their lives, but try to see the things they're not saying. Ask them why they became healers, or what they did before they got here. Don't try to compare it to you. Just let it be about them. Does that make sense?"
She nodded, understanding what Kitty was expecting of her, and she was willing to do it all. She didn't think, under the circumstances, that any of it was unfair or unreasonable. "Yes. And I'll do that, I promise."
"I'm going to hold you to it," Kitty warned. "There may be pop quizzes." Not that she'd necessarily know the answers, but being right wasn't the point. Observing people and caring about them was. "I think maybe we should also practice roleplaying conversations. Maybe you and Peter, with me as a coach. I think it could help you guys get over some of your awkwardness about talking to adults. What do you think?"
"Oh, um." She flushed a little. Maybe it was the simple idea of 'roleplaying' which always implied acting and pretending and Liz wasn't sure she was very good at it. Much like with PE, the arts was something Liz did not necessarily excel at. It was ironic she was learning to draw and play the guitar here and she was mediocre at both at best. "I mean, I guess so, if that's what Peter wants." Though if she talked to adults back home like that, she'd probably get some weird looks.
"Public speaking and persuasion are good skills to have," was all Kitty said about that. She wouldn't push until she actually had a lesson plan for it, which, even if she wasn't going to do all the stuff her angry-inventing brain had decided she would do, wasn't anywhere near the top of her project list.
"And speaking of skills..." Kitty pursed her lips but she wouldn't let herself fidget with the ever-growing hole in her jeans. "I owe you an apology for how I reacted to your abilities. I should have and wish I had been more supportive about your empathic precognition."
Liz looked a little surprised, then shook her head with a meek, small smile. "It's okay. It's um. I just suddenly said it and at such a weird time." Really, she should have or could have said it a lot better. "And, you were right. I mean, it's not like they're useful in any way. Not really. I don't even think I'm supposed to have them." She was pretty sure it happened when Max had saved her.
"No," Kitty said patiently. "It's not okay. I know how traumatic it is to suddenly have powers. I know what it's like for the adults around you not to take you seriously. I was mad as hell, but that's not an excuse, because I'm your teacher and I'm supposed to do better." So she waited a beat to let those words sink in and then said, "I'm sorry."
She gave a small nod. "Thank you." She said about the apology. She did appreciate that Kitty apologized. She understood about saying things when you were angry. "Maybe sometime, um. We can talk about it. Later."
Kitty smiled at her finally. "Maybe sometime. Right now, you're two lessons behind. Go get your notebook. We have work to do."