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Shiva	BY : Nemain Category: X-Men - Animated Series (all) > General Dragon prints: 5097
Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men Evolution, or any of the characters from it. I make no money from from the writing of this story.

SHIVA—CHAPTER 14 (NC-17)

Standard disclaimers apply

A/N Mille grazie a Foxfeather. She hasn’t killed me yet for sending her all this fic and
translations, so she gets extra karma points. J And thanks oodles to all who reviewed—makes me
all mushy inside. (Hint, hint)

“Reichst du
mir bitte den Saftkrug?”[1] Kurt asked around a mouthful of
pancakes. Kitty was picking dejectedly
at her bowl of cottage cheese and pineapple, seemingly not hearing him. “Katzchen,” he asked louder and without the
obstruction, “Reichst du mir bitte den Saftkrug?”

“Huh?” She looked up at him with narrowed, confused
eyes.

Kurt sighed
as if she should understand him perfectly and pointed with his fork to the
pitcher of juice near her elbow.
Slowly, he said, “Pass auf…[2]Reichst
du mir bitte den Saftkrug?” Kitty
stared at him as if he had grown another head.
Logan, making coffee at the counter snorted softly and Kurt fought the
urge to smile.

“Fuzzy,
what on Earth did you just ask me?”

Kurt sighed
loudly and rolled his head back in exasperation. “Reichst du mir bitte den verdammten Saftkrug!”

“Watch it,
Elf…” Logan stepped to the table and passed
Kurt the pitcher of orange juice as he pulled up his own chair.

‘Oh, like,
why didn’t you just say so?” Kitty
shook her head and returned her attention to picking at her breakfast. She was a little less sad than the day
before but still very distracted, Kurt noticed. “I think this is getting too mushy to eat…”

“Pancake,
Half-Pint?” Logan shoved the platter of
breakfast at her, still piled relatively high since most of the other mutants
were not yet up.

“Um…maybe
one. Or two.” Kitty moved to put her bowl in the sink and grab a plate from the
cabinet. “Where’s all the silverware?”

"Brauchst
du eine Gabel?"[3] Kurt produced an extra fork from his place
setting, waving it between two fingers at Kitty.

“Um…huh?” Kitty looked from the fork to him and back
again, then repeated her question.
“Huh?”

“Brauchst
du eine Gabel?” I am getting tired
of repeating myself…

“I…guess
so…” Kitty reached a tentative hand out
and took the fork. “Uh, thanks.”

Logan
snorted again, muffling it with his coffee cup. “So, Half-pint, how’re you doing today?”

“Well,” she
cut her pancake neatly into squares, “I’m sad but I think I am healing. I mean,
she’s gone and I can’t bring her back.
I know she wouldn’t want me to mope around after her like this. But it still hurts so much. When I think I’m getting over it, I remember
something she did once or I’ll hear a voice that sounds like her…” Kitty sighed. “It’s going to take a while.”

“Hmmm. Well, you know I’m here if you need to work
out some frustrations. I got strong ear
drums…you can yell and rail at the Universe as loudly as you want to. Until then, I’m off to run a sim with Jamie
before school.” Logan rose and quirked
an eyebrow at Kurt. “Good luck,
Elf.”

“What did
he mean by that?” Kitty asked when the older man was gone. Kurt shrugged, saved from answering by
sipping on his juice. Kitty munched on
her pancakes for a minute, watching as Kurt scraped the last of the syrup from
his plate and licked his fork clean.
“Why aren’t you speaking English this morning?”

Kurt cocked
his head to one side and, as if he had not heard her, said “Du bist noch nicht
mit Essen fertig."[4]

“Kurt!” Kitty shoved her chair back. “Why the Hell are you speaking German at
me?”

Kurt rose
calmly and put his dishes in the sink.
He took up Kitty’s plate and glass and place them likewise before
turning to face her. Slowly, so that
maybe she would catch on, he said “Wenn du nicht so stur wärest, würdest du es
bereits wissen.”[5]

Kitty’s
brain clicked into gear. She had spoken
Yiddish often and long enough that some of the words were registering. “Hey!
I’m not being stubborn!” Kurt
rolled his eyes and nodded that yes, she was.
“Am not! Kurt, I told you
before, I’m just not in a place to take on something like learning a new
language yet!” Kitty sighed and rose to
her feet. “I can’t understand why this
is such a big deal to you!” Kurt’s eyes
widened and he opened his mouth to retort but Kitty cut him off. “Unless it’s in English or another language
I speak, I don’t want to hear it!”

“Warum hast
du damit ein Problem?"[6] Kurt could not help the note of
annoyance that crept into his voice.

“Damn
it! What did I just say?” Kitty threw down her napkin and spun on her
heel to leave the room. Kurt leapt
forward and grabbed her by the elbow, pulling her back flush against his
front. “Kurt, please…”

“Bitte…”

“I said
please…”

“Sprich mir
nach…”[7]

“No. Go to school.” Kitty understood “repeat after me” from all the times her
mother’s mother had tried to teach her something in Yiddish or Hebrew. For some reason, Kurt’s version of Berlitz
was making her seriously irritated and she was not about to hide it from
him. Twisting from his grasp, she faced
him and growled, “I said I am not ready to learn another language! How many ways can I say this?” She proceeded to repeat the statement in
Ladino, Yiddish, Russian, and Greek before storming from the room. Kurt sighed and wilted into a chair. He was not looking forward to spending a day
knowing that he had angered Kitty.

Jean was
pulling her hair into a ponytail when she caught a whiff of Scott’s
cologne. “Hey.”

“Hey
yourself…” His hands slid around her waist and his mouth descended on the nape
of her neck. God, she tastes so
good!

“Watch
it!” Jean danced away from his grasp,
her new intimacy with Scott still uneasy in her mind. He sighed and stepped back, allowing her to slide back in front
of the bathroom mirror and re-fix her hair.
“What’re you doing in here, anyway?”

“Just
wanted to see you before school…I mean, I know you’re not into the PDA so I
figured get my fix this morning instead of suffering.” He offered her a cheeky grin and she rolled
her eyes, turning to lean against the counter top and meet his eyes.

“You’re
more affectionate than I thought.”

“That a bad
thing?” He frowned a little then and
crossed his arms defensively.

“No! I just don’t know how to handle it…” Jean
sighed ruefully. “I guess I’m still
learning.”

“As much as
I hate to mention it, didn’t Duncan used to hold your hand and junk at
school?”

‘That’s
just it…” Jean levered herself up and spread her hands in supplication. “He did it. I was just…there…um that kind of brings up a sore point, Scott.”

“What’s
that?” Even as he asked, he knew the answer.

“I still
haven’t told Duncan about us.” She all
but whispered this, half-expecting an explosion from Scott.

“Why
not?” His sad tone surprised her. “Are you embarrassed?”

“What? Why the Hell would I be embarrassed? I just don’t know how to tell him!” Jean stepped forward, reaching tentatively
for Scott’s arms. “I’m a little scared
to…”

“Why? Why
should you be scared to tell him that you’re with me? That we’re together?”
Scott pulled Jean into a loose embrace and murmured against her hair,
“Is that why you’re hesitant to let me hold your hand at school? You’re afraid he’ll see?” Jean nodded but otherwise did not
respond. “Jean, I don’t know how to ask
this, but does he hit you?”

“No!” She jerked back to look at Scott in the
eyes.

“Well,
there has to be a reason that you’re afraid.”
He let out a long breath and pulled her close again. “You’re just afraid.”

“Yeah…silly,
huh?”

“Nah. I can see how you can be afraid of
Duncan. I mean, he’s frightening as
Hell compared to Kitty’s cooking that you eat on a regular basis or the Danger
Room sims that you run every day. Hell,
compared to those two, Duncan is a monster!”

Jean
snorted against his chest. “I see your
point. I’ll tell him today.”

“Can I?”

“You sound
too eager…no.” Jean smiled then and
tipped her chin up for a kiss. “I think you can get your morning fix now…”

“Never one
to turn down a lady…” Scott grinned in
return and pressed his lips to hers, schooling himself to be polite, not to
throw her down and take her then and there.

Jean surprised him, though. Her tongue darted out and laved his lower
lip. When he gasped in shock, she took
the opportunity to gain entrance to his mouth and proceeded to render that
morning’s cold shower useless. When she
finally pulled away, she smiled easily.
“Whoever said I was a lady?” she murmured as she shoved him out the
door.

Amara blinked as Scott stumbled out
of the bathroom, nearly knocking her down.
She could see Jean as the door swung shut, smiling like a cat in
cream. For one brief moment, jealousy
flared in her breast but then, as Scott saw her seeing him and a look of pity
fixed on his features, she dismissed the emotion. Drawing herself into a posture of regal disdain, Amara snarled
“Is this a private bathroom now or am I permitted to use it with the
commoners?”

“Tone it down, Amara. We were just talking.” Scott shook his head. “What’re you doing up, anyway?”

“I’m depressed, not dead.” She shoved past him and into the bathroom,
cutting off his reply with the slamming door.
Jean jumped in startlement then smiled.
“Why aren’t you in your own bathroom?’

Her smilidiniding into a frown,
Jean responded “Showers’ broken. I
think Bobby froze my pipes again.
What’s with you?” Jean picked up
on strong feelings of anger and confusion mixing with Amara’s sadness. “Feeling better?’

Amara sniffed turned the cold
shoulder to Jean. Busying herself at
the shower’s knobs, Amara missed the look of pity that mirrored Scott’s passing
over Jean’s face. After adjusting the
water to her liking, Amara sighed and said “I think he did it to mine,
too. All I got was cold water in my
room.” With that, she shed her robe and
stepped under the spray, shutting Jean out officially. By the time she got out of the shower over
forty five minutes later, Jean was long gone to school along with the others,
save Kitty. Dripping wet, Amara used
the corner of her robe to wipe the steam off of the long mirror in the communal
bathroom. She saw herself then, took
brutal stock of all that was there. Stringy hair, scars all over my
body—most of them my fault, I have no hips, I have no breasts, I have no shape
whatsoever…Knobby knees, round thighs, long feet. I’m hideous. I am Nova
Roman elite, damn it, I am supposed to be beautiful and a goddess on
earth! What’s happened to me? Unconsciously, her hand dropped to her belly
and pressed there, feeling for the life that was not to be. How could this have become my life? Her gaze found her feet again and the fine
chain that Lance had secured there only the day before shone around her
ankle. I think he’s delusional. He can’t want position—my position in Nova
Roma has no cachet here. Money…none. Sex?
He can have that with whoever he wants almost. Why does he want me?
The steam was slowly taking over the mirror again and she sighed,
wrapping her now-damp robe around herself and edged silently into the
hallway. Lance had moved a lot of his
belongings in last night to a room down the hall from her own. He had told her that the guys at the
boardinghouse thought he was moving in because he was sick of the mess there,
which was partially true. He had said
he let them believe it was because she was putting out. That had made her laugh, she
remembered. Not a happy laugh but one
of self-derision, one that made Lance shudder behind her back. She had kicked him out of her room sometime
after noon the day before, not giving him a reason but burning inside with
shame that she had felt so content, so safe, while lying with him. Lance had looked sad but did not question
her. Now, as she stood alone in her
room, naked and dripping water onto the carpet, she wished he were there
again. With pained steps, Amara forced
herself to the figurine in the window.
Reopening the gash in her hand, she let several drops of blood drip into
Poena’s offering bowl and focused her intent in her mind. With careful, measured movements, Amara
placed several herbs and a hank of her own hair into the bowl and lit the
mixture. It flared briefly and sent an
acrid smoke wafting over her. Hear
me…bring Tabitha to me now. Let her
meet fit punishment at my hands…
She was not sure how long she had been lost in her trance, only that her
hair was almost dry when she came to.
Amara rose and thanked the goddess silently, rolling her neck to relieve
built-up tension. She noted that it was
past ten a.m. and surely Kitty would be by to make sure she had started her
daily work. Maybe I should give her
a scare and stay naked… The idea was quickly dismissed, however, in favor
of her own innate modesty where people other than Lance were concerned. She drew on a rather staid dress in tones of
black and gray, set off by the anklet and the stone, which she had bound in a
silken cage made from a ribbon taken from another dress, wrapping the stone so
that it hung in a precarioradlradle around her neck, resting in the hollow of
her throat. Feeling cooped up, Amara
gathered several textbooks and her binder and made her way to the library,
hoping to avoid Kitty. Hellfire.

The girl was sitting dead center of
the mansion’s library, poring over a stack of books and taking studious
notes. Kitty looked up sharply and,
seeing Amara, plastered a false smile on her face. “Oh, hey, Am. I was just
going to come see if you needed any help with your work today.”

“No’m f’m fine,” Amara replied stonily.

“Hm. Okay.” Kitty frowned
slightly and continued, “You want to sit here?
I mean, no point in both of us ignoring each other while we’re the only
ones in the room…”

Amara sighed and shrugged. “Fine.
Just don’t talk to me.” Amara
all but stomped over to join the other girl and dropped her books with a
clatter. “No, I don’t need help, no I
don’t want help and no, I will not ask for help.”

“Geez! Okay, okay…I’ve got my own thing to do…” Kitty shook her head and returned her
attention to the books Storm had given her the day before.

Amara glared for another moment and
then opened her math text. A thousand
niggling thoughts crept into her mind, flitting about like gnats. He loved her. Why? Will he again? Does he still? Why me now? Amara
found her gaze returning to Kitty, taking stock of what she saw and comparing
it to her own self-assessment. She’s
pretty. A little on the plain side…How
can Kurt see past those freckles? And
she’s too pale…Her hair! Ugh! I don’t care if she is in mourning, if Jean
is to be believed. At least wash your
hair![8] Narrowing her gaze, Amara was satisfied to
notice a small red pimple on Kitty’s hairline.
At least my skin is clear…

“What’re you staring at?” Kitty felt rather than saw Amara’s
gaze. Long years of Kurt staring at her
had made her able to notice when people were looking.

“Nothing.”

“Fine. Stare at nothing over that way, then.” Kitty glared at Amara and the Nova Roman glared back. After a moment, Kitty sighed and asked, “So
long as you’re here, can I ask you something?”

“No.” Busying herself with her book, Amara showed Kitty the top of her
head in response.

“Tough tits, chica. It’s like this…Kurt is trying to teach me
German. I mean, he just like
blitzkrieged me with it this morning and it really pissed me off! I told him a ton of times that I’m just not
ready to learn another language yet!”

Amara looked at her in
disbelief. Slowly, she rose to her feet
and leaned forward, resting her weight on her arms as she bent to Kitty’s
level. “Let me get this straight. You have a boyfriend who is insanely devoted
to you, would walk to Hell and back for you and smile while doing so, you have
an wide network of friends who would not hesitate to lie, murder or steal just
to keep you safe and happy, yave ave almost everyone at the mansion dancing to
your tune, Kurt leading the way…”

“It’s not like that!” came Kitty’s
horrified response.

“I’m not done yet! Far be it from me to defend that blueak, ak,
but Kurt has twisted himself into knots for you since the dawn of time, if what
I hear around this place can be believed.
All he wants you to do is learn his native language and you have a
bitch-fit about it! Fucking hell,
Kitty, grow up!” Amara trembled with
barely-checked emot “W “Wait
here!” She stormed over to the
reference bookshelf and returned clutching three books. “Read these!” She dumped a German-English dictionary, an elementary German
lesson book, and a German phrase book into Kitty’s lap before dropping
haughtily into her own seat.

Kitty stared at her lap for a long
time, then looked at Amara, livid with anger and staring back at her. A giggle erupted from Kitty’s throat and it
soon turned into an outright laugh.
“Oh, God! You’re right! You’re absofuckinglutely right! Who’d have thought I’d live to see the day?
God!” Tears were streaming down Kitty’s
reddening cheeks

“What, might I ask, is so
funny?”

“Lance is making you soft!” Kitty gasped. “There was a time when you would have just told me to stuff it
and stomped out of the room!”

“I’m glad that you find me so
amusing,” Amara replied sarcastically.

“No, sweetie! It’s isn’t that…God, I haven’t laughed in days! It’s just that I was surprised…oyd…oy. Amara, you’re a trip!” Kitty gathered her books, even those Amara
had dumped on her, and stood. “I’ll
leave you alone—I need to go eat lunch anyway.
Thanks, though. Seriously.” Pausing at the door, Kitty said, “If you
need to talk to me about ….anything…you know, like Lance or something, I think
I’m just about the world’s leading expert on his moods and such…” Kitty sged ged and said, “Ya know. Whatever.
Hey, I’m gonna make some soup.
I’ll save you some.” She left
the library considerably cheered, leaving Amara staring after her
uncomfortably.

Damn it. Why is she always so damned good? Why am I the only bad one here?

[1] Pass me the
pitcher of juice, please? (Thanks, Foxy!)

[2] Pay
attention. (again, Thanks Foxy!)

[3] Do you need
a fork? (aw, Hell…Just know that Foxfeather translated everything into German
and that I am thanking her profusely even as I write and Kurt speaks… ;) )

[4] You haven’t
finished eating yet (yeah, these are gonna be long footnotes…)

[5] If you
weren’t being so stubborn, you might already know.

[6] Why are you
having such a problem with this?

[7] Repeat after
me.

[8] In deep
mourning, sitting shiva requires that you do not shave, wash or do anything
considered vain for the entire period of mourning.

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