TITLE: Painful Revelations

AUTHOR: Jos Mous

Email: wotan_anubis@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMER: Characters not owned by me, profit also not being made by me.

UNIVERSE: X-Men Evolution

RATING: PG-13

PAIRING: Still working towards Kitty/Rogue

Rogue sneaked into her bedroom. It didn’t take her long to realise that that was actually pretty silly. It was her room after all, she didn’t have sneak in or anything. But, then again, people sneak when they’re in a certain frame of mind. Rogue was about to do something which was not what one might call totally acceptable, so she sneaked because that’s what good people do when they feel they’re up to no good.

Feeling far more nervous than she should and glancing around nervously, Rogue casually sauntered over to Kitty’s laptop. She sat down at the desk and opened the portable computer. While it was booting up, she looked over at the clock. Kitty had gone to the mall with Jean for God knows what so she probably wasn’t going to be back here anytime soon. Hopefully.

The laptop had finished booting up and was now waiting for the password. Rogue knew it from memory. That is to say, from Kitty’s memory. During the last Danger Room session, Rogue had accidentally touched Kitty for a moment. The result had been that she had promptly fallen straight through the floor. She had also learned that Kitty had protected her laptop with a password and had discovered that there stuff on its hard drive that made Kitty somewhat uncomfortable in more ways than one. Rogue wanted to know what it was. She hoped it would prove her wrong about her suspicions concerning Kitty’s… interests.

Rogue entered the password.

Not long after, the desktop wallpaper showed up, showing two schoolgirls drenched in rain and kissing.

Rogue didn’t know a lot about music, but she could guess what Kitty liked.

Rogue leaned slightly back in the chair. Just from looking at the desktop she could guess that Kitty might possibly be somewhat bi. To put it gently.

Rogue started up Explorer and started browsing through the files. She felt embarrassed and more than a little guilty, but she didn’t let that stop her.

Kitty turned out to have a folder marked “Images”. The images inside it made two girls kissing each other full on the lips look like a friendly, platonic peck on the cheek.

So, it was pretty safe to say that Katherine Pryde really was into girls.

Damn.

Rogue absentmindedly tapped on the desk. She shouldn’t be doing this. She had gone too far already. Did she really want to know what and who Kitty liked? Wasn’t ignorance bliss? More importantly, wasn’t she violating her roommate’s privacy? For so far there can be “privacy” in a mansion housing a couple of very powerful telepaths.

Ah screw it. Too late now for ethics.

Rogue opened the e-mail program and was met with such sights as “shadow_cat, ENLARGE YOUR PENIS NOW!” and “Underage Slut Takes It Up The Ass!!!” Rogue assumed Kitty hadn’t gotten around to deleting them yet. Or so she hoped.

Rogue browsed through some sub-folders. One marked “fic” turned out to contain on-line lesbian fiction or something. By now this didn’t surprise Rogue any more. Another one marked “books” was simply boring. Frilly little romance novels just weren’t Rogue’s thing. Deep philosophical debates about the nature of God, life and existence interested her for a moment, until she once again became aware of the clock ticking happily away somewhere behind her.

With some measure of reluctance, Rogue arrived at the “personal stuff” folder. Figuring it was a safe bet, Rogue opened open a mail named “Re: Crush help”.

>> So, she cute?

She, Rogue noted. Kitty hadn’t told anyone in the mansion about her preferences, but she had told some random stranger? Life was weird.

> Cute? No way. She’s like this total goth type. But she is gorgeous though. And totally straight. :(

“Shit,” Rogue muttered under her breath.

This settled it then. She really hadn’t been imagining things. Kitty really did have a thing for her.

Crap. How on earth was she going to deal with this?

Rogue turned everything off and left. There was stuff she needed to think about and she couldn’t do that in here.

The sun shone brightly, though fortunately wasn’t putting in lots of overtime to really heat up the entire place. Rogue was sitting on a bench somewhere in the shopping district. She was basically watching people. Boys with T-shirts and shorts. Girls in pretty little dresses. Morons who thought smoking made them look cool without any extra effort. Bimbos who plotted about the fastest way into their idol’s pants. Just nice, normal, non-mutant people going about their daily business. It was like watching an ant farm, a crawling mass of life blissfully unaware of anything outside their daily existence.

And Rogue knew that all she needed to do to blink out one of those meaningless lives was to reach out and touch someone.

No wonder mutants went bad all over the place. They say power corrupts, after all. And mutants, they damn near had absolute power.

Rogue grinned with little humour. On the other hand, she couldn’t really kill people, could she? She could just take away everything that made them “them” and make it her own.

We are the Rogue. You will be assimilated.

Rogue looked up and then quickly down again to avoid staring into the sun.

Kitty.

Goddammit, what to do with her? OK, so she was gay, so what? Rogue didn’t care about who loved who and in what way as long as she didn’t have to look at it. But why did she have to have the hots for her of all people? Why not… why not Jean for Chrissakes?

Well, no use pondering about that. Better think about how to let her down gently.

Then again, did she really have to do that? Kitty hadn’t made her intentions clear in any way. Sure, she lamented on the Internet and, when you paid attention to it, spoke whole volumes in body languages. But she hadn’t actually tried anything, had she?

Well, she wanted to be friends.

People can settle for friends, can’t they?

Fuck, that was just Hollywood talking. Kitty’d do something sooner or later. If nothing else but a sleepover party in their shared bedroom. Probably with something to drink and a game of Truth or Dare.

Out of the blue, Rogue chuckled. She’d definitely read one too many of those stories Kitty collected when she’d raided her e-mail. Hell, maybe she would end up with Kurt and Kitty would get all jealous and everyone would assume that she was jealous of Rogue and then Rogue would confront her and Kitty would confess that she was really jealous of Kurt and Rogue would realise she loved Kitty too and everyone would live Happily Ever After. Even Kurt.

Yeah, she had definitely read too many stories.

Rogue’s mind focused back on the street, looked at all the scurrying little lives and wished she had one too.