PI - Kitty - June 9, 2002 --------------------------- Greenwood Properties--Chinatown A boxy, mid-sized apartment complex built in the somewhat popular, but very ugly semi-Spanish style. The walls are off-white stucco and the sloped roof is laid with dingy blue-grey half-lunette tiles that make the roof look like it was covered with cardboard tubes cut in half. Rows of metal doors, painted beige, face blindly outwards on both sides of the building, no windows can be seen. The complex is three stories tall with winding metal stairs connecting the floors at both ends of the complex. Steel-railed 'balconies' of concrete push out from each floor, alowing access to the apartment. The numbering system seems rather random, the bottom floor is all even numbers in the one hundreds, the second floor is odd numbers in the one hundreds, and the third floor is squentially numbered from 200 up. A small, cramped parking lot encircles the building. It's early evening when Kitty Pryde raps on Piotr Rasputin's apartment door: this being June, the sun's got some considerable time yet before it goes down, however, and it illuminates Greenwood's concrete-and-steel balcony quite nicely. The young woman's changed relatively little since the last time Piotr saw her - though, of course, this time she's not half-coated with white dust and struggling not to cough her lungs up. Her hair's a trifle longer, long enough to curl, still not long enough to look good; she's wearing blue jeans, a dark T-shirt bearing a diagram of a caffeine molecule in pale green, a battered brown backpack slung casually over one shoulder. No glasses. The knocking is quiet and polite and calm: she can't be sure if he's home, or awake, or busy for that matter, and if there's no answer she's perfectly prepared to try again. Piotr opens the shower door, clad in just a towel wrapped around his waist, hanging to mid thigh, the steam billowing slightly from the bathroom as he steps out of it. That was EXACTLY what he needed. A long, tense day at the museum needed to be soothed. He's relaxed a bit now, wiping some excess moisture from his face. He almost doesn't hear the door knocking... and when he does notice it, he doesn't remember his modesty. He takes a few hurried steps toward the door... "Just a moment, please," he calls out, padding across the floor and swinging open the door. "I am sorry, I was in the - " he starts... but upon seeing her... seeing Katya, a face he'd recognize anywhere no matter how it was adorned... he stops short. He'd almost given up on her actually visiting him... and he's stunned speechless for a moment... He isn't the only one stunned. Kitty has, admittedly, seen Piotr - or one of his counterparts - wearing less; there've been times when his /costume/ covered less than that towel. But all the same, her brown eyes widen further for a moment, and color rises promptly in her cheeks before (and as!) she glances hastily away. "Piotr - I - um. I'm sorry, I didn't - I can come back later, honest..." Without thinking, she takes half a step back from the door, substituting a few inches of physical distance for the social barrier of clothing. Piotr is slightly confused by her reaction, but when he suddenly realizes what he's done, the flush in his cheeks gets rather pronounced himself, and he mutters a Bozsie moi to himself... then offers an awkward smile... "Uhm.. just a moment, please..." The door slams hastily and some scrambling can be heard. "Do NOT go anywhere!" he admonishes from behind the door... until finally, it opens again, and he's clad in a t-shirt and gym shorts. Yes, the t-shirt is sorta sticking to his damp skin, but it's more polite than being almost naked. He hasn't worn his old costume in so long that he's no longer all that immodest about himself. "I am unbearably sorry for that... I did not expect you... please, come in, Katya... it is wonderful to see you..." His face is still predominantly red. What a way to break the ice, Piotr... Kitty does not, in fact, go anywhere. Other than another step back to lean against the railing, one hand pressed over her mouth, shoulders shaking silently. By the time the door opens again, her blush has mostly faded, and she's able to straighten up promptly in relatively good order. "I know - I'm sorry it took so long. I lost a couple of weeks along the way. Well, not /lost/, they went to a good cause, but I was expecting to be a lot more mobile." She runs a hand through her curls, a touch awkward herself, and glances at the blank wall to either side of the apartment's doorway. "D'you mind if we leave the door open? I get a little nervous if I can't tell what's going on outside." Piotr listens to her, curious about what she's been up to, but also not wishing to pry. It's so... strange, having her this close to him again. He still remembers his few moments with a different version of her that was here... how all that time he'd thought he was over her being flushed away by an ill-advised kiss at the lighthouse... and the image of that can't help but flash across his mind. MUST put it aside. He glances out the hallway as well, looking around for any danger. "Of course... whatever makes you comfortable. We shall have to keep the noise down, though, since Mrs. Abernathy across the hall has been known to take offense to the noise when I am listening to the Cowboy Junkies with my headphones on..." He smiles a little bit at that. "Please... have a seat, make yourself at home." Please... live here with him - NO, calm yourself, Rasputin. "So... what managed to take these last couple of weeks from you, then?" Piotr's Pad -- Greenwood Properties -- Chinatown The living room of a small apartment. The floor is carpeted with dull tan mid-weave. The walls are a clean, bright white. A small glass lighting fixture and three brass lamps light the room. Large posters of modern art are framed in black plastic on the wall. There's a giant Mark Rothko print called 'Orange and Yellow' that dominates the right wall. The back wall displays a massive, full color picture of the gleaming bronze cast called 'Unique Forms of Continuity in Space,' sculpted by Umberto Bocconi. A modest stero system and a small, wooden cd rack rests underneath the gleaming picture. A deep woven throw rug adds a big bright splash of green and gold to the floor. A large blue futon is pushed against the left wall. It faces a ten inch TV which rests on top of a low bookshelf, filled with books on art and a few stacks of art supplies. Two worn yellow beanbags are slouched next to the futon. The room has a feeling of chaotic familiarity, the rioting colors blend to create a strangly comfortable atmosphere. The door to the small bedroom/bathroom suiet is towards the back of the left wall. A painter's easel, with a few stacks of canvas nearby, sits next to the left of the entrance to the apartment. A small kitchenette, really just one corner of the room, is up against the back right corner of the room. Kitty's eyes flash with humor at the comment, though the amusement isn't reflected in the rest of her expression. "I don't know about you, but /I'll/ notice if any irate neighbors get close enough to listen in." She steps through the door, holding it absently open with the heel of one foot, and glances about the apartment with decided interest: she hasn't seen the place from the inside yet. Bright. Colorful. Definitely alive, with an altogether different form of chaos from Wisdom's place. "Actually, I wound up - no panicking, here - in the hospital. That so-called 'meningitis outbreak' the newspapers were on about for a day or two. Psi accident, long story, but it wound up dealt with, no casualties, happy ending and all. Everything been all right with you?" She sounds utterly unworried about the entire incident; pleased, in fact. Piotr smiles a little bit at her relation of this story... it reminds him of the days of constantly stumbling into new adventures, strange and unbelievable accidents and events that became commonplace enough to shrug off like this. He feels a bit of worry towards her hospital stay, but she's hardly affected now... so he doesn't let it bother him. "It is good to hear that everything has ended well... but I hope you will not mind me asking to be informed the next time you are in the hospital." He smirks a little jokingly, but the request is true. "For me, things have been very low-key. I have... sort of retired into what was once dreamed of as a 'normal life.' I work with the security of the Beacon Harbor Museum of Art, and my hours are somewhat erratic... but I try to paint as much as I can... or do SOMETHING artistically." He pauses a moment, waiting for her to sit down before doing so himself, watching her mannerisms. "Although I must admit I still have the occasional 'itch' to return to some sort of action." Kitty doesn't seem to be intending to sit down: she leans back against the wall beside the door instead, after flicking a glance over her shoulder at it to double-check and make absolutely sure that she'll be interfering with no pieces of artwork. "I'll see what we can do about letting you know," she admits. "I still don't have anything like a passable identity here, so - it'll be interesting." Her eyebrows flick up this time, as she relaxes slowly into letting her reactions show a bit more. "Security at the art museum? I'll have to keep that in mind." And she grins, openly. "Though it sounds like something you'd enjoy doing. Only second-best to /creating/ the art, but second-best isn't that bad - I never did manage to get into either research or computers full-time, back home. Then again, I never got all the way out of the action, even when /I/ tried to retire. Guess my system can't handle life without adrenaline." Piotr feels a little disappointed as she loiters by the door... seemingly anxious to get this over with... or so the impression may come across. He makes one last attempt to get her to at least SEEM comfortable to be in the same room with him - he can only imagine what Wisdom has said to her. In a soft voice, he smiles and says "You have nothing to fear from me..." making a small motion for her to actually enter the place, but it's not demanding. He responds to the rest of what she says, too. "I do enjoy my job, although it is not always creatively satisfying, of course. It is enough to allow me to live on this new world though... I believe it was this separation from my true reality that has caused me to slow down as much as I have. That... and the fact that the Charles Xavier of this world was a rather disturbingly vicious man. When I was still in his good graces, he provided me with the proper papers I needed to seem offical in this world." He pauses a moment. "Discovering the truth made the dream seem that much more distant for me, I suppose..." And what Wisdom /has/ said to Kitty would probably surprise Piotr considerably. She shakes her head a little, her expression gentling into a softer smile - if a brief one, not so comfortable with letting it show for long. "I know that, Piotr. I'm not afraid; most of this is just habit. I'd heard about the Xavier here -" The shadow that passes over her eyes is as fleeting as the brighter expressions. "I'm sorry you got mixed up with him. It's easy to presume the people you first run into are the same, though. When you don't have anything else to hold on to, when you don't know what's going on ..." She bites her lower lip, glancing away, and slides down to a seated position there on the floor. Crosslegged, of course. Almost always. "It's so strange to see all of you. Where I came from - I think I mentioned - the whole team was wiped out when I was practically still just a kid. I'm not used to /thinking/ about you, or Xavier, or Logan. Or the dream - not calling it that, anyway." Piotr nods to her, walking around the couch, moving towards her again... she's not going to sit down normally... so he'll go to her. He sits on the end of it, watching her slump down like that - there's actually a casual oddness about it that he finds interesting. There are two ways to take the 'not used to thinking about him' comment, and he's not going to dwell on the thought that her Piotr wasn't really worth thinking about very much. He's trying not to be overly sensitive... trying not to look for every little nook or cranny in her demeanor that might indicate a flicker of anything. It's not fair to her, to Wisdom or to himself. This is a different person, Piotr, and you will respect that. "I see... I am sorry for what you have had to endure." he says, genuinely. "The only tragedy of that magnitude I have suffered is the removal from all of my friends and my new family there upon my arrival here. I have been here for a few years now..." He shakes his head at how odd that sounds. "And as much as I am loathe to admit it, thinking about the dream is no longer commonplace for me, either." He runs his fingers through his damp hair for a moment. "I do not suppose that makes me a good student." he adds, a bit somberly... "It's not exactly obligatory here, though, is it," Kitty replies, her head tipping back to let her look at him more directly. "I mean - sure, if you go too public with what you can do, you'll have problems; sure, there are unpleasant, even horrific things going on in the darker corners... but they don't have the kind of hysteria here that led to the Sentinels." It's only a guess that he'd recognize the name, but Logan had - it seems likely. "It's /possible/ to live a fairly normal life here, if you want to. You have been, for years. And in the end that's half of what the dream was about." She crooks a slight grin, the once more. "I'm kind of looking forward to it, in a way - I spent the last ten years swapping off between being a thief and trying to systematically undermine largish parts of the U.S. government. This place is practically a /vacation/." It's a joke, or at least it's said as a joke, but her eyes are watching his reactions fairly closely despite the better humor in them. Piotr nods in recognition of the Sentinels. It is amazing what IS shared across dimensions... how much tends to be sadly similar among alternate Earths... but he smiles as she makes an interesting point about how his recent life has perhaps not been a disappointment to everything the X-Men held dear. He watches her closely while she speaks, generally having a slight smile about him as he listens to all her words. Just her voice makes him a little happier. He does cock his eyebrow at hearing that she's a thief and a conspiritorial type. With a smile that may or may not be forced, he feels compelled to ask a little more. "A thief? Really? I imagine your abilities would make that a relatively easy task... this is curious, though, as the Katya I knew would not really have leaned towards such things." He seems oblivious to the fact that that might sound condescending, and his tone of voice seems to indicate that he did not mean it that way. "I have come to find myself fascinated by the differences that can abound between alternate selves. Can I ask what led you to that particular line of work?" He plays it off as casually as he can, although there's some sort of little creak of heartbreak within his massive chest somewhere - although the fact that she seems to be SICK of it buoys that breakage somewhat significantly. He is determined not to let it show, as it is not fair to her. The government-undermining is apparently not as much of an issue - fighting the Sentinels could fit into that category. "Feel free to let me know if you get weary of such questioning, though... I could grill you for hours on end about the minute differences between your homeworld and mine... and I know not everyone shares such enthusiasm." His spirits are light, although there's a faint sense that it's a struggle to keep them that way. Kitty eases her backpack to the floor beside her, shrugging her arm free of it without looking away from Piotr. "I was fourteen," she replies with that ongoing touch of amusement, "on my own, without credentials, without contacts - well, barring Lockheed - and I knew I was being chased as Katherine Pryde; when I tried to get in touch with my mom, I almost got hunted down. And if I was gonna find out if there were any survivors from the team, any captives, I needed equipment /fast/. I didn't have a whole lot of alternatives. If Pete hadn't been nearby when I came through the portal here, I might've wound up in pretty much the same boat again ... presuming I didn't get smeared across the pavement by the car that was coming, but I probably would've noticed it on my own anyhow." Again, that last is unconcerned, light. It didn't happen: therefore, nothing to worry about. "And I /like/ figuring out the differences between worlds - who knows, if enough of us got together on it, we might get enough information in one place to actually learn something eventually. I'd like to hear about you and your Katya sometime." And there's a hint of regret there, when she says that. "If you wouldn't mind talking about it. She sounds like a nicer person than me."