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halfamoon2025-02-11 08:26 pm
apachefirecat) wrote in halfamoon2025-02-11 08:26 pm
Day 11: Fairy Tales/Fantasy - X-Men - Emma, Kitty - Survival
Title: Survival
Fandom: X-Men
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Emma, Kitty
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: Survival isn't what it's cracked up to be -- neither is wealth or fame --, and family and love always fail.
Word Count: 2,180
Written For: HalfAMoon 2025 Day 11: Fairy Tales or Fantasy
Date Written: 10 February 2025
Warnings: Spoilers, Cannon Character Deaths
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.
She should know by now that her life is not a fairy tale, no matter how much the good times and luxuriousness she often enjoys try to bewitch her into believing. Her life will never be a fantasy. She is always just one bad decision away from disaster and destruction that might well one day lead her to slumming worse than how she survived as a child. She has sworn so many times that she will never be reduced back to the desperation and hunger she had known then.
She has worked so hard to make sure that never happens to her or hers again. Yet it still does. Every time she swears she's not going to lose again, she does. Every time she dares to... to believe in love, Emma thinks, swallowing down first the lump in her throat and then the remainder of her bottle of champagne, she's stung again. She's worse than stung again. She's cried so much over the last several weeks, now that she is alone again, that she does not think she has any tears left to give.
Not for any man. Not for Scott, or her ex-husband, or that damn Banshee who she's even considered contacting recently. Surely he must have learned his mistake with Moira by now. After all, the bitch did literally skin him in his last life.
Not for her daughters. Not for her Hellions, any generation, and there have been far too many. Why does she keep trying? Emma wonders despairingly, burying her face in her hands. Part of her body has shifted into her diamond form, but only part. Her powers do not work like her daughters. She'll still feel the pain of her own emotions, no matter what encases her skin.
Why does she keep trying? She has lost so many. Yet still she tries. Still she offers up her heart on a platter to these bastards! No matter how much she is hurt, she still ends up wanting to help again. She does perhaps at times.
No, she thinks, violently shaking her blonde head, thrusting her fingers further up into her hair as though she can clench her very skull. But her skull is not her problem. Her mind remains one of the brightest in this world, or any of at least the majority of the other worlds she has visited. She is brilliant.
No, her heart is her problem. Her heart is always her problem. It's why the ghosts of the other children she slaughtered still pay her visits from time to time. It's why she can't find an end to her problems or feelings in any number of bottles, not like Tony, Sean, Wolverine... So many others. There is no escaping her pain, her grief, her remorse.
She downs another bottle with record speed, then pulls a juvenile tactic and crashes the bottle against the wall. What does it matter if she destroys this hotel room? Her life is destroyed! Yet again, she has watched everything she's worked so hard for over the last several years, since Charles first brought her into his faculty team for Xavier's School For Gifted Children, be completely destroyed. Where is Xavier for that matter? Where is the one man who believed in her when even she had no longer believed in herself? She can not sense his mind -- has not been able to since Krakoa's destruction and the utter slaughter of their people, not just mutants but X-Men. She can no longer feel him alive anywhere, just as she can no longer sense her daughters.
Her daughters. Her tears surge again. Tears she'd thought she no longer possessed spring anew, pouring down her face. She sobs and throws another bottle. Perhaps there is something mildly reassuring about the loud crushing sound, or the beehive of minds she can sense now running outside her door. Not a single one of them will dare to interrupt her.
Not a single one of them will ever know her pain. She could give it to them, make them believe they were the ones who had lost everything. She's gotten her wealth back, thanks to Tony, but the truth is money cannot buy anything that really matters. It cannot buy security. It certainly cannot buy love or family.
She had tried so hard not to love those girls. They were not hers by birth, after all. But they had come to feel like hers more than any other student she has ever taught. She had come to care for them more than any other child she has ever known.
No one cared about her when she had been their age, or younger. No one cared about her when she had been Kamala's age, or Katheryne's when she had first met the girl. She knows she's hurting too, but she also knows she's powerless to stop her pain. She could ease it perhaps, if the girl would only woman up and do what needs to be done for the mutant children who have most recently come into their lives.
But they did "woman up". They "womaned up" and lost everything, everyone... Katheryne even lost herself in the war that followed. She is convinced that Emma does not understand, but she understands far more than she lets on. After all, there had been a time when she had still been innocent. There had been a time when she had convinced herself that she could build a life for herself without having to kill, when she had believed she could just take man's wealth and use it to build a life for herself without having to actually murder anyone. She'd killed the guards in that first asylum, of course, but she had kept one alive and then tried later to refrain from taking another life.
It had been pointless. It was always pointless. Everything is pointless in the end. No matter what they build, no matter what security, house, or life they think they can build for themselves, hatred will always destroy it. It doesn't matter what they sacrifice, what they do for or to who, pain and death will always find them.
She has killed to protect her children. She has killed so many times to protect her children, although she's never actually been a mother. There is an old saying that rings true among many women like herself: always a bride's maid, never a bride. She has been a bride. She has been married to a man who she never would have thought she'd wed before this all happened. Her marriage had not exactly been an unhappy one, despite all the death and war that had plagued it even in its formation. She never would have married Tony Starke, or any man, if their allegiance had not been necessary to survive this latest war.
Or rather, this latest, never-ending battle of the never-ending war. Humans will never let them live. They will never allow them to stay in peace. It's not even all humans. She knows that now, can admit it with ease, but it does no good. Hate still triumphs. It is not good that wins in a war like theirs. It is never good. Evil triumphs.
But one must truly be evil, through and through, to win. She's tried so hard to be the wicked, vile person both worlds have believed her to be for so long. But she is not. She is not... capable... of true, pure hatred, of being composed only of hate. She loves too much, gives too much, and as long as she does so, she is condemned to always, always sacrifice too much, too many.
So many children have died. So many children die every day, and it is not only mutants. She cannot save them. She cannot save any of them. Everyone she tries to save, in the end, she loses. To believe she can make a difference -- Now that is a true fantasy. In a hundred years, she will be dead, and she will have no descendants. In a hundred more years, her name will be erased from the annals of history, if she is not painted to only be the monster they have tried so hard to make her her entire life.
But she cannot be a monster. She cannot be the vile being, feeling only hate, that the world wants her to be. She cannot find it within herself to stop loving, to stop caring for the children. Her life would be so much easier if she could, but she has never been able to do so. Charles knew that -- he suffered the same pains --, and where is he now?
Where are her children? Where are her girls? She would give her own life to save theirs without a heartbeat wasted considering the alternatives. She would save them at any cost. She would save any of her Hellions again at any cost.
That is why she still, deep down, even now, cannot truly regret Krakoa. They tried. They failed. But they tried. She would try again, she knows, if she could only find them.
A scream rips through Emma's mind. Across the city, she feels Katheryne twisting in her bed that is only her childhood, human friend's couch. She senses her pain, her nightmares filled with memories. They have both done everything they could to help ensure a future for their people. They have both fought so damn hard to save the children. And they have both lost.
But throughout the city, there are others still needing them. There are so many young mutants who have somehow, for some strange reason, been gathered into this single city. Chicago is big, of course, but it is still so rare and unexpected that so many mutant children should be coming into their powers in one place. The humans will destroy them if they do not stop them. They have to stop them. They have to help the children.
She has to help the children wherever she can, however she can. Emma closes her tear-filled eyes, a hand pressed against her throbbing head. She reaches across the city, checking on not just Thao, Axo, and Trista but the others who she has recently located. There are so many innocent lives hurting in this blasted city for things they cannot help, for differences for which they never asked. There are so many mutant souls hurting. Once she's secured the children, ignoring the pain in her own mind and the blood beginning to trickle from her nose, Emma touches Kitty's mind.
It's not easy to break through the child's defenses, but she is still a child, especially to Emma. She still remembers that grief that hit her when Sebastian first killed Katheryne. She refuses to abandon her now, no matter how much Katheryne claims to want a "normal" life. Emma knows better; she recognizes Katheryne's defenses in trying to protect her own heart for they are not too much different from Emma's own.
There is a reason why she was in that coma before Charles offered her a teaching position amongst his people, amongst their people, and that reason is not too different from why Katheryne seeks normalcy now. They cannot kill themselves -- they are not made of that material -- but they can kill that part of themselves. They can stop the pain that way, or so they try to persuade themselves time and again.
Emma has learned though. Throughout her many years, her many ups and downs in this cruel and twisted life, she has learned that pretending to be somebody else never actually stops the pain. Even in the coma, all she had done in her own mind was drown in the deaths of her beloved students. And she did love every one of those children, just as she loved Celeste, Esme, Mindee, Phoebe, and especially little Sophie.
She screams and is only vaguely aware of the humans running from her in the hotel. In the next second, every one of the humans has forgotten her and the sounds they've heard coming from her room. She aches for her girls. But she can still help the remaining children. She can still help Katheryne now, when she could not before.
She eases the child's dreams and even places a strong mental suggestion in her mind that the dog to whom she is currently clinging is in fact a certain, purple dragon. She waits to confirm Katheryne's nightmares have eased for the night before reaching back across the city, once more checking on the other mutant children in Chicago. Such a great number... What would you have done, Charles? she thinks, leaving the thoughts open to the Astral Plane. If she tries to gather them all, there will be another bloodbath, Emma knows. What would you do?
But there is no answer. There never is anymore. And she cries and, in her own mind, screams again and again and again until at last the world turns black again.
The End
Fandom: X-Men
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Emma, Kitty
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: Survival isn't what it's cracked up to be -- neither is wealth or fame --, and family and love always fail.
Word Count: 2,180
Written For: HalfAMoon 2025 Day 11: Fairy Tales or Fantasy
Date Written: 10 February 2025
Warnings: Spoilers, Cannon Character Deaths
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.
She should know by now that her life is not a fairy tale, no matter how much the good times and luxuriousness she often enjoys try to bewitch her into believing. Her life will never be a fantasy. She is always just one bad decision away from disaster and destruction that might well one day lead her to slumming worse than how she survived as a child. She has sworn so many times that she will never be reduced back to the desperation and hunger she had known then.
She has worked so hard to make sure that never happens to her or hers again. Yet it still does. Every time she swears she's not going to lose again, she does. Every time she dares to... to believe in love, Emma thinks, swallowing down first the lump in her throat and then the remainder of her bottle of champagne, she's stung again. She's worse than stung again. She's cried so much over the last several weeks, now that she is alone again, that she does not think she has any tears left to give.
Not for any man. Not for Scott, or her ex-husband, or that damn Banshee who she's even considered contacting recently. Surely he must have learned his mistake with Moira by now. After all, the bitch did literally skin him in his last life.
Not for her daughters. Not for her Hellions, any generation, and there have been far too many. Why does she keep trying? Emma wonders despairingly, burying her face in her hands. Part of her body has shifted into her diamond form, but only part. Her powers do not work like her daughters. She'll still feel the pain of her own emotions, no matter what encases her skin.
Why does she keep trying? She has lost so many. Yet still she tries. Still she offers up her heart on a platter to these bastards! No matter how much she is hurt, she still ends up wanting to help again. She does perhaps at times.
No, she thinks, violently shaking her blonde head, thrusting her fingers further up into her hair as though she can clench her very skull. But her skull is not her problem. Her mind remains one of the brightest in this world, or any of at least the majority of the other worlds she has visited. She is brilliant.
No, her heart is her problem. Her heart is always her problem. It's why the ghosts of the other children she slaughtered still pay her visits from time to time. It's why she can't find an end to her problems or feelings in any number of bottles, not like Tony, Sean, Wolverine... So many others. There is no escaping her pain, her grief, her remorse.
She downs another bottle with record speed, then pulls a juvenile tactic and crashes the bottle against the wall. What does it matter if she destroys this hotel room? Her life is destroyed! Yet again, she has watched everything she's worked so hard for over the last several years, since Charles first brought her into his faculty team for Xavier's School For Gifted Children, be completely destroyed. Where is Xavier for that matter? Where is the one man who believed in her when even she had no longer believed in herself? She can not sense his mind -- has not been able to since Krakoa's destruction and the utter slaughter of their people, not just mutants but X-Men. She can no longer feel him alive anywhere, just as she can no longer sense her daughters.
Her daughters. Her tears surge again. Tears she'd thought she no longer possessed spring anew, pouring down her face. She sobs and throws another bottle. Perhaps there is something mildly reassuring about the loud crushing sound, or the beehive of minds she can sense now running outside her door. Not a single one of them will dare to interrupt her.
Not a single one of them will ever know her pain. She could give it to them, make them believe they were the ones who had lost everything. She's gotten her wealth back, thanks to Tony, but the truth is money cannot buy anything that really matters. It cannot buy security. It certainly cannot buy love or family.
She had tried so hard not to love those girls. They were not hers by birth, after all. But they had come to feel like hers more than any other student she has ever taught. She had come to care for them more than any other child she has ever known.
No one cared about her when she had been their age, or younger. No one cared about her when she had been Kamala's age, or Katheryne's when she had first met the girl. She knows she's hurting too, but she also knows she's powerless to stop her pain. She could ease it perhaps, if the girl would only woman up and do what needs to be done for the mutant children who have most recently come into their lives.
But they did "woman up". They "womaned up" and lost everything, everyone... Katheryne even lost herself in the war that followed. She is convinced that Emma does not understand, but she understands far more than she lets on. After all, there had been a time when she had still been innocent. There had been a time when she had convinced herself that she could build a life for herself without having to kill, when she had believed she could just take man's wealth and use it to build a life for herself without having to actually murder anyone. She'd killed the guards in that first asylum, of course, but she had kept one alive and then tried later to refrain from taking another life.
It had been pointless. It was always pointless. Everything is pointless in the end. No matter what they build, no matter what security, house, or life they think they can build for themselves, hatred will always destroy it. It doesn't matter what they sacrifice, what they do for or to who, pain and death will always find them.
She has killed to protect her children. She has killed so many times to protect her children, although she's never actually been a mother. There is an old saying that rings true among many women like herself: always a bride's maid, never a bride. She has been a bride. She has been married to a man who she never would have thought she'd wed before this all happened. Her marriage had not exactly been an unhappy one, despite all the death and war that had plagued it even in its formation. She never would have married Tony Starke, or any man, if their allegiance had not been necessary to survive this latest war.
Or rather, this latest, never-ending battle of the never-ending war. Humans will never let them live. They will never allow them to stay in peace. It's not even all humans. She knows that now, can admit it with ease, but it does no good. Hate still triumphs. It is not good that wins in a war like theirs. It is never good. Evil triumphs.
But one must truly be evil, through and through, to win. She's tried so hard to be the wicked, vile person both worlds have believed her to be for so long. But she is not. She is not... capable... of true, pure hatred, of being composed only of hate. She loves too much, gives too much, and as long as she does so, she is condemned to always, always sacrifice too much, too many.
So many children have died. So many children die every day, and it is not only mutants. She cannot save them. She cannot save any of them. Everyone she tries to save, in the end, she loses. To believe she can make a difference -- Now that is a true fantasy. In a hundred years, she will be dead, and she will have no descendants. In a hundred more years, her name will be erased from the annals of history, if she is not painted to only be the monster they have tried so hard to make her her entire life.
But she cannot be a monster. She cannot be the vile being, feeling only hate, that the world wants her to be. She cannot find it within herself to stop loving, to stop caring for the children. Her life would be so much easier if she could, but she has never been able to do so. Charles knew that -- he suffered the same pains --, and where is he now?
Where are her children? Where are her girls? She would give her own life to save theirs without a heartbeat wasted considering the alternatives. She would save them at any cost. She would save any of her Hellions again at any cost.
That is why she still, deep down, even now, cannot truly regret Krakoa. They tried. They failed. But they tried. She would try again, she knows, if she could only find them.
A scream rips through Emma's mind. Across the city, she feels Katheryne twisting in her bed that is only her childhood, human friend's couch. She senses her pain, her nightmares filled with memories. They have both done everything they could to help ensure a future for their people. They have both fought so damn hard to save the children. And they have both lost.
But throughout the city, there are others still needing them. There are so many young mutants who have somehow, for some strange reason, been gathered into this single city. Chicago is big, of course, but it is still so rare and unexpected that so many mutant children should be coming into their powers in one place. The humans will destroy them if they do not stop them. They have to stop them. They have to help the children.
She has to help the children wherever she can, however she can. Emma closes her tear-filled eyes, a hand pressed against her throbbing head. She reaches across the city, checking on not just Thao, Axo, and Trista but the others who she has recently located. There are so many innocent lives hurting in this blasted city for things they cannot help, for differences for which they never asked. There are so many mutant souls hurting. Once she's secured the children, ignoring the pain in her own mind and the blood beginning to trickle from her nose, Emma touches Kitty's mind.
It's not easy to break through the child's defenses, but she is still a child, especially to Emma. She still remembers that grief that hit her when Sebastian first killed Katheryne. She refuses to abandon her now, no matter how much Katheryne claims to want a "normal" life. Emma knows better; she recognizes Katheryne's defenses in trying to protect her own heart for they are not too much different from Emma's own.
There is a reason why she was in that coma before Charles offered her a teaching position amongst his people, amongst their people, and that reason is not too different from why Katheryne seeks normalcy now. They cannot kill themselves -- they are not made of that material -- but they can kill that part of themselves. They can stop the pain that way, or so they try to persuade themselves time and again.
Emma has learned though. Throughout her many years, her many ups and downs in this cruel and twisted life, she has learned that pretending to be somebody else never actually stops the pain. Even in the coma, all she had done in her own mind was drown in the deaths of her beloved students. And she did love every one of those children, just as she loved Celeste, Esme, Mindee, Phoebe, and especially little Sophie.
She screams and is only vaguely aware of the humans running from her in the hotel. In the next second, every one of the humans has forgotten her and the sounds they've heard coming from her room. She aches for her girls. But she can still help the remaining children. She can still help Katheryne now, when she could not before.
She eases the child's dreams and even places a strong mental suggestion in her mind that the dog to whom she is currently clinging is in fact a certain, purple dragon. She waits to confirm Katheryne's nightmares have eased for the night before reaching back across the city, once more checking on the other mutant children in Chicago. Such a great number... What would you have done, Charles? she thinks, leaving the thoughts open to the Astral Plane. If she tries to gather them all, there will be another bloodbath, Emma knows. What would you do?
But there is no answer. There never is anymore. And she cries and, in her own mind, screams again and again and again until at last the world turns black again.
The End