Thirty-One Decembers: #8
Dec. 11th, 2007 09:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
infiniteprydeFic: Thirty-One Decembers (#8)
Who: Kitty Pryde, Pete Wisdom
Disclaimer: Marvel's
"No. Get out." Kitty slammed the door behind her and advanced, pushing her visitor back into the foyer, back toward the front doors. "I don't care what you've got to say. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anything from you right now. There is nothing --"
"For fuck's sake, Pryde!" Wisdom's irritation made itself plain in the set of his mouth -- and in the fact that his eyes did not, for once, drop farther than her face. "Give me ten seconds before you go on the attack, will you?" He brandished the sheaf of papers he was holding, then shoved them at her. "I'm just the messenger. Invitation for the Grey girl, too, there."
"Invitation?" Kitty scowled at him, but didn't try to back him entirely into a solid object. "I'm not about to move back to the UK, thanks, no matter how many people you've chased out of your --"
"Just read the thing, will you?"
Reluctantly, Kitty glanced down. The seal caught her eye first; then she read the papers, and reread them.
"This is crazy," she said then. "I can't -- I mean, on this notice? Just pick up and -- look, you know what the political situation is like, what they're doing with passports --"
"Don't think you'll have too much trouble with the politics of it," Wisdom remarked.
"That's not the point," she protested, and found herself with nothing to follow the protest up with.
Wisdom filled it in for her. "The point," he said, "is that she's getting on in years, isn't she? Half of what both of us have done owes something to her. You lot would never have been able to put Excalibur together in the first place without her support."
"And you wouldn't be running it now if we hadn't," Kitty groused. "Sounds like a fair trade."
He let the barb slide with a shrug. "She'd like to see the two of you. And she's well past eighty. Might not be a chance next year."
"Are you kidding? The only time we hear about her having medical problems, it turns out to be her dogs acting up." Kitty held up the sheaf again. "Lemme go see what Ray thinks. No promises. And I swear to God I'm setting the security systems in the corridors to shoot-on-sight where you're concerned, so you wait here."
"Fair enough." He started to lean back against the doors behind him; reconsidered, perhaps remembering what sort of chaos was liable to boil through those same doors at any moment; took a couple of steps into the room and folded his arms.
Kitty glared at him once more for good measure before turning back toward the school. She didn't let her grip tighten on the invitation till she was on the far side of a wall from him. And at that, it wasn't the invitation itself that threw her, it was the note that went with it, and the signature: Love from Lilibet.
Who: Kitty Pryde, Pete Wisdom
Disclaimer: Marvel's
"No. Get out." Kitty slammed the door behind her and advanced, pushing her visitor back into the foyer, back toward the front doors. "I don't care what you've got to say. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anything from you right now. There is nothing --"
"For fuck's sake, Pryde!" Wisdom's irritation made itself plain in the set of his mouth -- and in the fact that his eyes did not, for once, drop farther than her face. "Give me ten seconds before you go on the attack, will you?" He brandished the sheaf of papers he was holding, then shoved them at her. "I'm just the messenger. Invitation for the Grey girl, too, there."
"Invitation?" Kitty scowled at him, but didn't try to back him entirely into a solid object. "I'm not about to move back to the UK, thanks, no matter how many people you've chased out of your --"
"Just read the thing, will you?"
Reluctantly, Kitty glanced down. The seal caught her eye first; then she read the papers, and reread them.
"This is crazy," she said then. "I can't -- I mean, on this notice? Just pick up and -- look, you know what the political situation is like, what they're doing with passports --"
"Don't think you'll have too much trouble with the politics of it," Wisdom remarked.
"That's not the point," she protested, and found herself with nothing to follow the protest up with.
Wisdom filled it in for her. "The point," he said, "is that she's getting on in years, isn't she? Half of what both of us have done owes something to her. You lot would never have been able to put Excalibur together in the first place without her support."
"And you wouldn't be running it now if we hadn't," Kitty groused. "Sounds like a fair trade."
He let the barb slide with a shrug. "She'd like to see the two of you. And she's well past eighty. Might not be a chance next year."
"Are you kidding? The only time we hear about her having medical problems, it turns out to be her dogs acting up." Kitty held up the sheaf again. "Lemme go see what Ray thinks. No promises. And I swear to God I'm setting the security systems in the corridors to shoot-on-sight where you're concerned, so you wait here."
"Fair enough." He started to lean back against the doors behind him; reconsidered, perhaps remembering what sort of chaos was liable to boil through those same doors at any moment; took a couple of steps into the room and folded his arms.
Kitty glared at him once more for good measure before turning back toward the school. She didn't let her grip tighten on the invitation till she was on the far side of a wall from him. And at that, it wasn't the invitation itself that threw her, it was the note that went with it, and the signature: Love from Lilibet.
