ax_main | Tommy and Kitty | Backdated September 20

Tommy and Kitty touch base and she discloses new information about the Brotherhood. They also discuss theoretical physics.

With everything going on with Illyana, and trying to keep a low profile with the professor, Kitty hadn't had a chance to talk to Tommy about what had happened on Sunday night. Really, he was like, the most important person to talk to, but it had taken time, so it wasn't until Wednesday evening, just before dinner, that she'd come knocking on his door, hunched in a hoodie and comfortable Star Wars leggings, looking like the world had given her a one-two punch.

Grateful for the interruption -- whatever it was going to be, it had to be better than staring blankly at his homework -- Tommy shut his laptop and grabbed the door. Any wisecrack he'd been about to make died on his lips when he took in Kitty's expression, and he just stepped back, holding the door open for her. "S'up with you?" he asked, brow furrowing.

Kitty stepped inside, taking a slow breath. "Don't be mad at me. I've already got heaps of that..."

There had been roommate drama - Tommy knew that much, especially considering Billy was now apparently running a drop-in shelter for wayward mutants. This seemed like more than that, though.

"If this is about the tracker, I should be taking half the heat on that," he admitted. "Not be mad at you."

"Yeah well," Kitty looked around aimlessly. "I took the info and went on my own."

There wasn't a whole lot to look at in the spartan room, the furniture still dorm-issue basic and barely anything out on the beds or desks to show anyone lived there.

Tommy dropped to sit on the edge of his bed, an expression of hurt flashing on his face almost too quickly to see. "What, you didn't trust me to have your back? Billy's the only one I'd gratuitously ditch somewhere." Not really, but it sounded good, more like mouthing off than complaining.

"It's not that," Kitty sighed, finding a desk chair to sit in. "It's that I thought - thought being, like, the key word there, that I could just, you know, slip in, slip out, no one would ever know I was there. That kind of thing."

"And given the extra use of the past tense in there, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that's not what actually went down." Tommy sat forward, elbows on his knees, and waited to hear the rest.

Kitty shook her head. "I got down to the server room - they've got a briefing room too by the way - and had just hacked into the system when their leader walked in. I was so stupid and hyped up on adrenaline that I forgot to take out the security feeds. He saw me phase in."

"A briefing room? Like an honest-to-God war room? Hunh." Tommy's eyebrows went up at that one. Either they were a lot closer to paramilitary than he'd assumed, or they knew something that Xavier's school didn't. "He caught you? But you're okay - he didn't try and hold you, did he? I'd have loved to have seen his face when you waltzed right out of there."

She pulled her arms around herself, remembering the moment - the man. "He didn't try and stop me. He gave me a flash drive with the information we need. He...said we're on the same team. But he also knows a lot about us. More than we knew about him. Tommy, he knows the Professor. Like, has known him for years. Their server room looked almost identical to ours."

Now that got his mind whirring. Not in a single useful direction, but all over the place like usual, and it came back with nothing good. "Identical equipment, collecting teams of superpowered teens who don't know any better - no offense, Kittycat. I'm including myself in that too -- and we run into each other on basically the same mission?

Tommy drummed his fingers against his knee, a rapid-fire beat. "If we hadn't tripped over the other guys at the Right's facility, I'd have said we were looking at multiple cells of the same shadow organization. But if we are, then their information channels aren't worth shit.

"And we're not exactly on opposite sides, so it's not like it's two armies being built to go up against each other. Their boss -- I know he rescued a couple of other kids from a place like the one I was in. So whoever he is, he's not all bad." Asking the thing he really wanted to know was going to expose more than he should, but then he'd been hurt that she hadn't come to him, so...? Fuck it. "This guy - he have a name? What did he look like?"

Kitty took a deep breath. "That's the thing. He...asked about you. His name is Erik Lehnsherr, but his codename is Magneto, because he has the ability to manipulate electromagnetic energy. And...certain metals, I guess, is what he said. I'm not sure how that works. Anyway, he's the dad of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch. He wanted me to ask you if you had your power before you were in, you know, the Right's facility."

It shouldn't matter that Erik - Magneto? - had asked about him. It didn't matter. (That was a lie - it absolutely did.) Something unnamed and unknowable twisted up inside Tommy, a wanting to know that was so strong it scared him.

"I asked the same thing," he said instead. "About that guy Quicksilver. I thought-" he glanced down at his hands, his fingers drumming faster. "Maybe they'd taken my powers and transferred them to him. It was the kind of thing they were experimenting with. But I've had mine for years. And apparently so have the other guys -- Magneto's twins. Billy's the only newly-powered kid on the block in this fucked-up scenario. I guess word's getting around."

"That's another thing. He didn't ask about Billy. I'm not sure he even knows about him. And...well, the guy, Magneto, he has white hair. Like you and Quicksilver." She sighed running a hand through her hair. "He wants to talk to you. But look, before you go running off and do something stupid, a got a bad vibe. He was all nice and inquisitive at first - even praising my skills. But the minute he got tired of it, I swear, I saw this mask of his just...drop. Like there was this side of him with so much anger."

Kitty pulled into herself a little more, thinking about it. "Maybe we're all mutants, and maybe we have a lot of things in common, but I'm not sure the Brotherhood (that's their name even though it's just a bunch of kids like us) is going about it the best way."

So Pam hadn't said anything to her boss after all. Tommy wasn't quite sure what to make of that. Or maybe she had and Magneto was keeping it under wraps for some reason of his own. "There are too many moving parts to this," Tommy complained aloud. And some of them were only complicated because he was keeping them secret. "And I'm not a fan of old guys with anger issues. Been there, done that." It figured, somehow.

But there was still Wanda.

Tommy paced around the room, grabbing a coke and a cheese-and-crackers package from his under-bed stash before he sat down again. He put them on the desk and pushed them toward Kitty. "I haven't got any chocolate, but you look fried." And then he flopped backward, stared at the ceiling, and thought about it. "And this whole thing is a hell of a lot weirder than you know.

"I promised to keep it quiet because of how we found out, but now that Simon's come out it doesn't matter anymore. He read Billy's DNA." Tommy snuck a peek at Kitty, to try and gauge her reaction. "I didn't know about it until afterward or I'd probably have stopped it, but whatever, it happened. And Simon apparently brain-fried so hard he ended up in the infirmary overnight because of it.

"Billy told me that he saw... time travel. Reincarnation. I don't know. But Simon swore -- and Billy believed it -- that somehow Billy and I are the Scarlet Witch's kids. Reincarnated backwards to before we were born. It supposedly explains why we have identical genes but different parents. And powers that match hers - and her brother's."

Kitty let him get all the way through that speech before turning to reach for the coke and crackers. "I feel like I should be having Saturday's alcohol now." Then she paused and looked at him. "So Magneto is your....well, your previous life's grandfather?" No. Nope. It was too crazy. Way too crazy. She opened the coke and chugged.

"If you believe Simon and Billy, yeah." Tommy glared up at the plain white ceiling, but it didn't provide any answers. "But it's too out there to be true, isn't it? I mean, there's 'x-gene and superpowers' weird, and then there's 'not even the SyFy channel would buy this script' weird." His question was more than a little hopeful, like Kitty would have the answer that would make everything make sense again.

Kitty frowned. "It's crazy, yeah. I've never heard of any story talking about reincarnation happening backward. But I do believe that there are souls, and that the transmigration of a soul isn't that difficult to believe, based on the fact that energy is never truly destroyed."

She took another sip, thinking. "Normally, I would say that a soul would have no bearing on what the body it inhabits looks like or what genes it possesses. Those are physical traits relating to the biology of your parents. But honestly..." she looked up and made a face at him. "I'm finding it more and more difficult to apply the laws of science to mutants. I mean, you've seen what Billy can do. And Yana, for that matter. What happens when a magic mutant gives birth to two souls? Can we really quantify that at all?"

Tommy made a face at her. "Those aren't your lines," he groused. "You're supposed to say 'don't be ridiculous, Tommy, here are five pages worth of quantum physics proofs that show why that could never happen and there's a logical explanation for everything.'"

Kitty gave him a tired smile. "Tommy, I can move my atoms around at will and phase through solid objects. You can like, break the sound barrier or something."

"Ehh," he sighed, with no force behind it. "What do you know, anyway." Tommy frowned after a second, and poked her gently with his toe. "How're you doing?" he asked, with actual concern. "You look like shit."

"Well, you know, I just got interrogated by your soul's previous incarnation's grandfather then lost my best friend, so," Kitty shrugged tiredly.

Do you remember where you put her down? Tommy bit back the sarcastic commentary, his better self actually winning out for once. "Yana?" he guessed. And "she found out about the tracker." Oops.

"I told her. I had to," Kitty made another face. "Pyro was going to anyway. I'm a horrible friend because I said I was going to have her back about Pyro and then...I guess I totally blew that one. I used them to get into Asteroid M. Though hey, bonus, we have all the information we need on the Right now, and I even know the makeup of the Brotherhood."

"Which is useful and important," Tommy said firmly. "And you know as well as I do that Pyro was here to get as much information about us as his little brain could carry, along with whatever else he was up to. It's what anyone would do in the same situation. If he's pissed off, it's because he got outsmarted at his own game.

"Think about it, Kitty. You said Magneto knows Xavier. Which means he also knows about us, at least in the abstract. And that there were likely to be kids here who needed the information that he stole -- and he had his 'Brotherhood' torch the place anyway. It wasn't some innocent 'cleaning up after ourselves' thing, or he'd have gotten in touch with the Professor and offered him the data the next day. Things are a lot more complicated than 'I followed my roommate's date.' And it's not your fault that Illyana isn't seeing that yet."

Kitty sighed at him and bit into a cracker, munching as she thought. Finally, she sighed again. "You're right. I know you're right. I've told myself the same things. But I still betrayed her. No matter what the reason, she's right - I wasn't there for her like I said I would be. I used her date to get the data I wanted."

Be that as it may, Tommy still couldn't find it within him to have too much sympathy for Illyana. What did she think was going to happen? Mind you, he wasn't dumb. Telling a girl that her best friend liked to blame other people when she felt bad about something was an easy way to get himself maimed. "And he used her to get the data he wanted. It all evens out."

That wasn't enough, was it? She was being miserable in his chair, and he really didn't have anything reassuring to say about the likelihood that Illyana would forgive-and-forget any time soon. "It'll all blow over," he compromised. "And in the meantime we have a lot more pressing concerns. Like what kind of overdramatic asshole names a secret base 'Asteroid M.'"

"It's a club too," Kitty told him. "So it's like, an actual club-house. Emphasis on the Club and the House. But no, you're right. I need to start going through all of the data."

She pulled out her phone and pulled up the picture she'd taken of the photos in one of the rooms at the Brotherhood's club. "Here's a picture of all of them, just for future reference."

He'd meant it as a joke, a way to get a smile back on her face, but either way at least the subject was changing. It wasn't like he knew how to do feelings anyway. Tommy held out his hand for her phone, moving so he could get a good look at the screen. There was the blonde from the lab, the handful of others he'd seen at a rapid flash as he'd screamed through to grab Kitty, Pam and Alex and a couple of others he didn't recognize at all. And them.

He hadn't gotten a good look at Pietro and Wanda before, not with his brain buzzing and all of the chaos at the labs, but there, in still form, even small he could see it. Tommy pulled out his own phone and called up the selfie he'd taken of himself and Billy, and set it beside Kitty's. "Shit."

Kitty watched him, worrying at her bottom lip. "Yeah, I know."

"She's a probability warper, which sounds a hell of a lot like Billy's 'magic' to me," Tommy said, blowing up the picture of Wanda and Pietro to get a closer look. "And Magneto was already asking about me. Whether Pyro saw Billy or not, one way or another, he's going to find out." And come find them? Saying what? 'Come home, children, you're family now?' Hardly.

"Whenever Billy is spotted, yeah," Kitty agreed. "They'll put two and two together, and Magneto will want to talk to both of you. He thought that maybe his son's DNA was put in you while you were in the facility. But once he knows that's not the case, it's all going to get a whole lot more messy."

"And when Billy finds out what you've learned, he's going to want to find them even more than he already does. I'd rather get in there first." Tommy handed Kitty back her phone. "Send me a copy of that? If we wait around here for something else to happen, then either the Professor's drinking buddy there drops in on us to pay a visit, or Billy's going to cast something that'll start all kinds of balls rolling. But if we set something up, something controlled, with backup - maybe we get can get answers to more than just the family tree."

Kitty eyed him uncertainly as she started texting him the images she'd taken. "Just don't underestimate him."

"Yeah, I'm getting that," Tommy muttered under his breath. "But it's not him I'm thinking of," he said a little louder. "Not at first. I know these two." He pointed at Pam and Alex in the photo appearing on his phone screen. May as well lay the rest of his cards out on the table.

"They're survivors. Not the same place as me, but a similar one. And once the Brotherhood saw me and got the files, they got in touch. Not their boss, just them, and I got the distinct impression they were worried about getting in trouble for it too.

"Before Yana decided to bring Pyro to the party, I was thinking I'd try and get a straight answer about their hq -- or if not, then see if I could convince them to meet me and slip one of them the tracker. It's a moot point now, of course, and I have no idea if they'll even talk to me anymore, but it would be somewhere to start."

Kitty slumped a little lower in her seat. If she'd known, she never would have run off without Tommy. But then again, her running off without him - not saying anything - had maybe screwed things over with his relationship with these other mutants. "I'm sorry. Look, explain that it was just me. That I'm a jerk and think I know everything and didn't tell anyone what I was doing."

"Yeah, unlikely." Tommy dismissed the suggestion immediately. "I made the call to plant the tracker on fire boy as much as you did, and it's not like you knew there might have been other options. What it comes down to is that Billy and I need to meet Wanda. One way or another I need him to look her in the eye and see if any of this could possibly be true. And since the Professor doesn't seem too interested in introducing us to his old friend, and the shit seems to be hitting the fan around here on a regular basis, it's better if I do it sooner rather than later."

"Wait." Kitty stared at him. "You're going to meet Wanda?"

"I said I want to, not that I know if I'm going to get to. Fatale said no the first time I asked about it. I'm thinking about taking Fatale-" Tommy pointed at the picture of Pam in the photo "-up on her offer to meet, and see if I can convince her to introduce us."

"No, but seriously. Tommy. This is playing with serious time travel antics here. Whatever you do, you can't tell her who you are. I mean, even meeting her is a risk," Kitty told him.

"What kind of risk? Other than the 'knowingly walking into the lair of a potential sworn enemy' thing?" he asked, not getting it.

"Um. Have you ever heard of the grandfather paradox? Except in this case it would be the 'mother' paradox. If you talk to Wanda and tell her who you really are, she may make decisions about her life differently from now on, and then you're never born in the first place!" Kitty explained emphatically.

"That may not be such a bad thing," Tommy muttered under his breath. Except that it would effect Billy as well, and as annoying as the hugging was, he didn't deserve to be erased from existence. "That's assuming that this is normal time travel stuff - and how did I get to a point in my life where that's a sentence I'm actually saying out loud?"

Tommy pulled one of his legs up and wrapped his arms around it, resting his chin on his knee. "But what you're saying is that if she is -- if she will be -- our mother at some point in the future, we can never actually meet her." And the ache of loss for someone he didn't know and certainly didn't need briefly turned his insides into an echoing cavern.

Kitty chewed on her lip. "I'm saying you can't tell her who you are. I mean, who you will be. Ugh, time travel. I mean, you did see her at the facility so I'm guessing you can meet her. Just don't, you know, affect her decisions on baby-making."

"I'm fifteen, Kittycat. Actual baby-making is for preventing, not discussing." He waved her off before she could give him grief for being sarcastic. "I know, I know what you mean." And really, what had he been expecting would come out of it anyway? Wanda was barely older than he was, at least this time around. Whether she had a kid in the future or not, that kid wouldn't be him. Not really. She didn't owe now-him anything at all.

An even more disturbing thought followed on from that. "So, wait. If time travel works like that, then what happens to Billy and me when she does have kids? Twenty years down the line are we suddenly going to stop existing?"

It was a dark question that Kitty hadn't really wanted to ask herself. "I don't know," she said quietly. "There are different philosophies about time travel. Some hypothesize that when time travel is initiated, it creates a parallel spacetime in which the traveler does and does not exist, which would allow you to exist alongside your previous self. Then the 'many worlds' theory states that you may have been sent to an alternate universe than the one from which you came, which would mean that in this world, Wanda may not even have kids at all, but, yay, you still exist."

"Looks like you're about to get a real-time experiment playing out. Too bad you won't be able to publish the findings once ... whatever happens happens. No-one would believe it." He smiled wryly, one corner of his mouth tugging up.

"Also, I wouldn't have any findings for the next twenty or so years," Kitty pointed out.

"Unless some or all of us explode the first time we end up in a room together. That would be messy, but conclusive."

Kitty waved that off. "You wouldn't explode. You just might cease to exist. A lot less messy."

"That makes life easier for the cleaning crew." Tommy was bored with sitting, his feet restless and an itch under his skin. He bounced to his feet and zipped to the window, looked out, to the bathroom to grab a glass of water, then back to close the door before it had finished opening. "So what do we do, then? Magneto's dangerous, one slip-up talking to Wanda could mean none of this ever happened in the first place, and Pietro's apparently more of a dick than I am. But if we wait it out, they'll probably come looking for us anyway."

Kitty sighed. "I guess all you can do is make a game plan of what you - and Billy - are going to say when it happens?"

Tommy scowled. "I don't like the idea of hanging around and pretending everything's normal around until someone else decides how it's going to play out. If I'd been better about getting the hell out of dodge the first time danger signs went up, I might not have ended up in the Right's hands in the first place."

She shrugged and stood. "I don't have the answers. You've got to decide what you're going to do yourself. If that means talking to Wanda...then do it. I need to open up these files and start wading through them. If you need my help - or any back-up, let me know?"

He nodded, turning over all the new information in his mind. "Yeah. Just promise me the same - and that you're not going to go off on your own again, all right? ... Bobby would be upset if anything happened to you."

"Trust me," Kitty smiled wearily. "I'm never doing anything like that again on my own."