driftfleet | [ Video/Action | Open ] Rosh Hashanah

Who: Kitty Pryde and YOU!
Broadcast: Video, open
Action: Iskaulit, feel free to run into her
When: Nowish!

[Kitty is on screen looking much more feminine than last time.]

Does anyone have any apples or honey or anything close to either from the last stop? I was...just thinking about it today. [Softer.] Not that I even know how to tell when sundown is in space.

[But she knows it's close to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, but nailing down a date would take calculating she can't do based on a moon that's not even here. She's not really a religious person and has some definite issues with god especially after everything she's been through back home, but the traditions remind her of better times when she was young with her family. She didn't think about it much in the last place because they didn't run off of a calendar she was familiar with, but here it brings back memories.]

Anyway, I'd trade for some if you do. We'll work something out.

Leshana tovah. [She's wishing people a good year in Hebrew, but she doesn't bother explaining the meaning.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[It isn't long after when she arrives alone with a dish. She's back to her usual, non-male body. She's not sure how she feels about any of this. She used to be so pleased to see him. He'd get an inviting smile and if anything she would try to act more reserved than she felt. Except that one time she was a little drunk at her birthday of course. And now she's reminding herself to walk normally. Nothing too timid, but not aggressive either. She doesn't normally put this much thought into walking. Of course she'll miss those thoughts now that she's with him and will need to find words again.]

Hey.

[It's still a slight surprise to see Kitty there. He hadn't been certain whether she would; new year or not, things had not ended on the best note the last time they had spoken. It is, at least, less strange than speaking to her while she was a man. He doesn't need to remind himself who he's talking to.

Erik shifts the box under his arm and nods slightly at her greeting.]

Hello. I don't think I would have known the date without your saying so. [Even knowing when Rosh Hashanah starts at home, that was 1983. They're a long way from there and then.]

[Didn't end that great the time before that either, but all the times before that one were good. You know, before he went to work for the guy who sponsored the army that murdered her parents and trashed her world. No big.]

To be honest I'm not sure if I have it exactly right. I just figured it was around now and as long as I had it on my mind...

I wasn't sure if you celebrated. [She knows what her Erik does, but he's clearly not here.]

[He hadn't been sure if he would either. Part of him still hisses about how pointless it is, when the people he'd shared it with are gone. It isn't the only part of him that exists, though.]

When I'm in a position to, I have. [That's close enough to the truth. He hadn't in prison, with no way to tell the date or anything to mark the occasion with. He hadn't for some years after the camps, too angry and alone to bother. But he had in his later twenties. He had with Magda and Nina. And now... he is today.]

Me too. It's been a few years. [It was impossible to get any kind of indication of time in the prison and back home had gotten harder and harder. Some years she just couldn't bring herself to celebrate or even hope for better for the coming year. It felt too much like a let down.]

I introduced Winn to it. I think he wants to learn Hebrew now. [She smiles despite herself. It's so easy to let it be easy. It reminds her of getting to know Hank. Reminding herself to be cautious and yet finding him easy to be with and yet...that Hank never had been with Apocalypse. It was cruel to blame him for another's actions. Is it foolish to forgive Erik because another Erik was important to her?

...But this Erik had been important to her too.]

[He nods, feeling a bit absent. There's no roadmap on how to proceed with Kitty now. He can't be the kind of man that Magneto had been in her world - that much was painfully clear. And he isn't capable of being the way he'd been before Apocalypse, either. Too many things had changed or fallen apart to go back to 'normal'. His normal had vanished. Forgiveness, in particular, is something Erik never chases. He's fortunate enough that Charles and Raven never gave up on him, despite all common sense.

After a protracted pause, Erik holds the box out to Kitty.]

Here. There are two. [She can give the other to Winn, he supposes, if the man is learning about the custom.]

[That would explain this feeling she has of not knowing what to expect from him now. There's too much history for it to feel like starting fresh, but she also doesn't know what kind of person he is and what he'll do from here. She hopes it will be good and not just for her sake. For Kurt's and Hank's and Charles and Raven. Everyone in the Fleet really. And for Erik too. She's had too many enemies in life. She doesn't want another.

She looks at him thoughtfully when he makes the offer and inclines her head just enough to register as a nod before she reaches up to take them.] You kept some for yourself I trust?

I did. [He had simply used up all of the week's supplies and made as many as possible. There were three left on the Heron; some he would leave out for others to take as they pleased.]

Good. Do the others celebrate with you? [Hank, Charles, Raven. She doesn't list the names.]

[The question takes him by surprise.]

I've never-- [Been around them for long enough to do that. Would he have done that, had he actually stayed at the mansion? In 1973 or now? He shakes his head, cutting off the thought.] I celebrated with my family. That's all.

[That's all and that's gone.]

[See that line? Kitty's going to go ahead and jump right over it now. Metaphorically speaking. No actual jumping is occurring. She does pause first though, because she sees the line. She just thinks it might be something he needs to hear and she may be a lot younger, but both their lives have been deeply marked by loss. Their parents. Friends. Hers to Apocalypse. His to the Holocaust. Their spouses. Hers to madness and death—her own followed by Piotr's. His to...to whatever it was. She doesn't know. She never had a child. She was young, but she had wanted that. She still wants it and it still feels impossible. And she's lost people to being abducted. Of course she's found a few that way too. She assumes it's the same for him.]

I think they might be your family too if you let them.

[And you might lose them too. That's the scary part. Where you care so deeply and it doesn't mean you get to keep them. Maybe they choose to leave you and maybe they don't. But if you stop trying... Well, that's when you do stupid, terrible things like becoming a horseman of the Apocalypse.]

[He flinches at the comment. Not because it rings false, or because it's a truth he's never heard before. He knows already what they mean to him. Raven, Hank... Charles most of all. To hear it from Kitty, in a place like this, after he struck down her misplaced faith in him... that's what hits him unprepared.

After a moment, he looks away, back towards his shuttle.]

They are. But that doesn't make things any simpler. [Not after everything that's happened. Not after he lost the family he spent ten years letting into his heart. Not after he left Charles from his own fear, and then woke up here to realise he'd broken a promise that he hadn't remembered. Not when his very presence in people's lives tends to ruin them.]

[He should go.]

[She sees the words land deeply.] Not simple. Not easy. Just...important.

[She takes a deep breath.] Thanks, again for this. [Nodding to the bread.]

[He just nods, and turns to go, Kitty's original mention of apples forgotten in the wake of where the conversation turned.]

[She doesn't say anything more, but she does follow after, holding out the apples and honey for him to take. She carefully avoids his eyes as she walks away.]

[ Video/Action | Open ] Rosh Hashanah

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