It had been a long winter.

The temperature had started to plummet around the time Zephyr had dropped her off back at the mansion. Her excuses seemed to satisfy the other students, the teachers were so used to students drifting in and out that they hadn't noticed, or, as in the case with a few of them, where not in the country to notice in the first place, and her mother naively asked, “How was the band tour? Cursive Rotation... right? ”

Katrina had then spent the rest of the calendar year with one ear bud constantly tuned into national public radio. She obsessively checked British news sites, ignoring the American ones that only cared about the Lion Forest scandal and whether or not he'd lose all his endorsements, and painstakingly combed through Tweets to sort out the probably true information from the almost assuredly false rumors.

The information coming out of Romania did not paint a pretty picture of what was happening.

Protests turned riotous, assassinations, mutants disappearing off the streets, terrorism, shootings, bombings, and throughout it all whispers of the dreaded camps. And no word from her friends that were over there. Ghost. Fausto. Slate.

Suddenly, things changed. The camps were freed, politicians changed their attitudes, people started returning home. Shin. Nurse Alex. Sam. They seemed a little worse for the wear; tattered, torn, and tired. Scarred and shell shocked, but alive.

It was getting warmer.

Slate had not come to see her.

It was nearly Spring.

And Slate had not come to see her.

She failed the first semester of math.

And if Slate was at Mondragon Labs Medical, Miss Noin had better page him right now.

Slate was not used to Noin Mortman sounding displeased with him. Most of the staff generally avoided that tone; their last employer had instilled in them a certain respect for authority that still persisted, though it had been over a year since the man had last been seen, and Slate had taken over their employ. In that time, things around the Labs had significantly relaxed. He heard, for instance, people occasionally laughing in the hallways. The X-boxes and LARP costumes were not necessarily hidden, when he walked into the break rooms. The judo secretaries had gotten in the habit of ruffling his hair when he failed in a particularly abysmal manner (an action, Slate noted, which did nothing to help his already disorderly hair).

He was not used to their displeasure, however.

"There is someone here to see you. I believe you've kept her waiting. Sir." The nine-fingered secretary's tone was polite and clipped.

Slate blinked, tilting his head against the phone receiver. "Who is it?"

"Katrina Dumonde. Sir."

...Slate found that he was cringing. It was an instinctive thing: he was not entirely sure where it came from. "Ah. Tell her, ah... tell her that I will meet her in the library. She knows the way."

Noin held him on the line for an unnecessarily long moment before hanging up. It seemed that the staff liked Katrina. This did not particularly surprise him.

Slate walked from the board room, ignoring--or simply not hearing--the polite greetings said in his wake. He was walking rather more quickly than usual.

He did not sit down when he arrived. He found himself standing near one of the library's comfortable chairs, facing the doorway. He found himself... smiling.

"Hello, Katrina," he practiced. "It's good to--" He cleared his throat, and tried again. "It's been awhile, Katrina, how have you..."

The door opened. Slate cleared his throat, and smiled, his hands clasped behind his back. "Good afternoon, Katrina. ...How have your classes been?"

The library door opened without its familiar creek. Someone had oiled it while she had been away. There stood Slate by the old comfy chair, smiling at her as she entered. She almost returned the expression, but his greeting froze it like an early spring frost before it ever had a chance to fully bloom. In its place, a grimace. She flopped into the comfy chair next to him with a sigh. (And without a hug.)

“Ask my math teacher.” Translated: not well. She shifted her gaze from the ceiling over to Slate's face.

“I had more important things to worry about last semester, like most of my friends in a foreign country where people were dying.” She searched his face. Had he known what he was asking them to do, when he had brought them all over there?

She came towards him. Slate's arms shifted slightly, in Pavlovian welcome.

She did not hug him.

She sat down.

Slate stood for a moment, then lowered himself into the chair next to hers. He folded his arms across his lap.

>> “Ask my math teacher.”

Ah. "Ah." Ah.

He lifted up his legs, tucking them under his body. His foot hit something cold, and rubbery, buried between the chair back and the cushion: he pulled it out. It was the lime green squeaky hedgehog. It seemed safer to look into its perennially smiling black eyes, than to meet Katrina's.

"I'm sorry. I... forgot. About tutoring you."

>> “I had more important things to worry about last semester, like most of my friends in a foreign country where people were dying.”

"Ah," Slate said again. "I..." He lifted his gaze, his lips in a thin line. "You should not have tried coming with us, Katrina. It was dangerous. "

He said this very authoritatively. He was a Faction Leader, after all. She could not simply do what she wanted: he would not allow it.

He...forgot. Well, he was a very busy person. Who did important things. And she was just a teenager with consistently plummeting math scores and a penchant for finding herself in troublesome situations.

“I thought it would be like when we lived with the Resistance.” Katrina frowned at Slate, not caring that he wasn't looking at her. She had been planning on helping out behind the scenes, holding down the fort at whatever hideout they ended up choosing. It hadn't worked out that way at all.

Katrina's own lips tugged downward at the corners as Slate chastised her for trying to get involved in Romania. Who did he think he was, the king of the world? Or her mother? She had one of those, thanks.

Authority + teenager = sarcasm.

“If it is so dangerous, why did you go? Why did you ask Fausto to go? And Zephyr? And Ghost? And Sam?” It's not fair that they should all risk their lives to help save the world while Katrina had to sit home and wait to hear if any of her friends had died. She didn't envy the danger, but she wished that she could have done something to help. Something other than sign an internet petition and post peacefully inspiring quotations on Twitter.

>> “I thought it would be like when we lived with the Resistance.”

Slate balanced the little hedgehog on the arm of his chair. It was looking rather worn--the colored tip of its nose was wearing off, and there was a crack beginning near its belly.

The time of the Resistance was a scattering of memories, for he and Calley both. He had half conversations, half storybook readings, half study sessions. He only had his own memories. Before the Resistance, there was mostly nothing. Kat was in most of the memories he did have. He wanted her to be in more memories, from now on, for a long time to come.

It was unforeseen that he's lost no one in Romania. He had expected deaths.

Death was where memories stopped.

>> “If it is so dangerous, why did you go? Why did you ask Fausto to go? And Zephyr? And Ghost? And Sam?”

His hands rolled into fists in his lap. He observed them from a distance, as his baby blue eyes finally rose to meet hers.

"Because we had to try, Kat. Nothing changes unless someone tries. The changes people were trying for, there... they were the wrong ones. If people wish for violence, they will have violence. We had to change the way they thought."

"Kat... during the Resistance, did we do anything? We stayed inside, and we talked with the others--but what did we do? We were useless back then, weren't we?"

It was an honest question. If they had indeed done something, anything, more concrete than 'moral support,' than it was too fragmented for him to piece together.

"Did it ever occur to you that you might help us the most by staying here, and staying safe?" He frowned, looking away from her. "Sometimes you need to let the adults handle things, Katrina."

>>>"Because we had to try, Kat. Nothing changes unless someone tries. The changes people were trying for, there... they were the wrong ones. If people wish for violence, they will have violence. We had to change the way they thought."

Slate sounded so sure of himself, when he gave his reason. If the aging green hedgehog had anything to add it would have been something like, “Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try.” Maybe Katrina had been watching too many movies and reading too many inspirational quotations, but the little guy did have a point.

“What exactly did you do in Romania?” Thoughts didn't change very easily, especially when it came to fear and hatred and prejudice and anger. How was anyone supposed to convince a whole country to change its collective mind in just a couple of months?

As for the Resistance, Katrina thought hard about it. She had to admit that she hadn't really done anything helpful at all. She'd pitched in with the training exercises, but in the end that had only contributed to the fighting. The best they had been able to do was hide. It was her turn to look down at the little hedgehog that was a small part of so many of her memories from those days, avoiding getting caught in his baby blue gaze. They hadn't done anything other than keep themselves safe; was that really what she had wanted to do in Romania, too?

>>>"Did it ever occur to you that you might help us the most by staying here, and staying safe? Sometimes you need to let the adults handle things, Katrina."

Her brow furrowed in response to that and she directed a glare, albeit a mild one, in Slate's direction. Hypocrite. He wasn't an adult any more than she was. Maybe even less.

“I don't see how me staying safe at home helps anyone. It's just the same as I did before; stay hidden, stay safe. That isn't going to make any difference to the world.”

>> “What exactly did you do in Romania?”

Slate was still looking anywhere but at Katrina. He decided he liked it that way, for this answer. "Somewhat... questionable things. The X-Men helped refugees escape. The Order mindlessly crushed things, and people, together with the Romanian Underground. The Kabal... influenced political matters through gratuitous amounts of money, and by harnessing the other 'talents' afoot." Such as the Order's murders. Those had been quite effective, for showing wavering politicians the alternative to renouncing their current views. Also, Slate's own powers. He... did not really wish to mention the specifics of those, to her.

>> Hypocrite.

"I am technically nineteen. Almost twenty." His cheeks slowly colored; he looked back to the teenager. He was technically twenty, yes, but she was not twelve anymore.

>> “I don't see how me staying safe at home helps anyone. It's just the same as I did before; stay hidden, stay safe. That isn't going to make any difference to the world.”

Slate picked up the hedgehog, and ran a finger through its rubber quills. It seemed a safe neutral ground, for both of their eyes. "What would you have done differently in Romania, if you had stayed? Most of us... most of us ended up in the Camps, Katrina. I did, as well. So did Sam, and Ghost, and Shin, and others. Do you think you would have avoided being caught? Do you think if you had, you would have been able to find the Underground, and help lead the breakout?"

He pushed in its top; the hedgehog softly wheezed out a squeak. "I was useless too, for the past month. I did nothing but mop the floors of the blood that guards had put there. If I knew it was your blood, I believe I may have done so less calmly. I believe I would be dead now if you had also been captured, Katrina. If they had... hurt you."

"You're special," he said. "You gather people. People would die for you. That is why you must stay safe: so people do not gather around you, do not die for you, when they should be doing something else."

Baby blue eyes slowly snuck up to met hers, if hers were also willing. "We are more than our mutations. We are more than where we stand, in the physical world. Isn't there a way you can help, but keep yourself safe? "

>>>"Somewhat... questionable things. The X-Men helped refugees escape. The Order mindlessly crushed things, and people, together with the Romanian Underground. The Kabal... influenced political matters through gratuitous amounts of money, and by harnessing the other 'talents' afoot."

The Kabal. So that's what the mysterious third group was called, the one for people who didn't quite fit in with the two more visible mutant groups in New York. Fausto's secret group. And Dio's, too, probably, since he hadn't flinched an inch when she had told him she was doing work for Slate in Romania. It was hard to imagine those three all in the same group, with their different personalities.

Everyone had been there, in Romania. Or, at least, representatives of all three groups had been there. Certainly it wasn't a coincidence that they were all present in the same country at the same time. From what Katrina could tell, the groups didn't take that many trips abroad.

She just couldn't figure out why they would all be working together, since most of the time they, the X's and O's that was, seemed to really hate each other. What miracle did the mysterious Kabal perform that somehow got them to cooperate? Katrina puzzled quietly for a few moments, letting it all settle in. His answer gave away a lot, but it hid even more. Money from where? What talents? and most of all, Why? Slate had asked Fausto to go... had he asked everyone to go, or had someone else asked him first?

“Did the bribes really work?” Her father had been a politician. He had supported the Registration Bill as it had passed into law. He had believed it was right. Some politicians she had met along the way she could imagine taking bribes, but others did things because they actually believed in them and money, even gratuitous amounts, wouldn't change that.

>>>”Almost twenty.”

She wanted to counter 'Almost three, more like', but instead looked him over carefully. He actually had grown up a lot since the Resistance days. The goatee made his face look a little older, but it was more his manner than his looks that did it. The way he spoke, he really did sound like a grown up now rather than a confused kid in a young man's body. Somehow she felt cheated that she had missed the change.

>>>"What would you have done differently in Romania, if you had stayed? Most of us... most of us ended up in the Camps, Katrina. I did, as well. So did Sam, and Ghost, and Shin, and others. Do you think you would have avoided being caught? Do you think if you had, you would have been able to find the Underground, and help lead the breakout?"

Katrina winced at the mention of the camps. It was the first time anyone had really talked about it to her. It explained why they all had come back looking so worn out.

What would she have done? It was a good question. She wasn't sure she had an answer. She certainly would have tried to avoid getting caught. Invisibility might have helped her, like it did before, but even that wasn't foolproof. As for finding the Underground, she wasn't sure that she would have thought to do that. Besides, that sounded an awful lot like a repeat of the bloody camp breakout that had happened in New York City, which was a pretty violent way of doing things. But was there a better way?

It was hard to know what she would have done when there were so many pieces of the puzzle missing.

“I would have...” ...found the camps and snuck in free everyone? ...started peaceful protests that would have inspired politicians to change the laws back again? ...magicked everyone back to the United States? “...I don't know.” Who was she kidding, as a fourteen year old, she really was kind of useless.

>>>"I was useless too, for the past month. I did nothing but mop the floors of the blood that guards had put there. If I knew it was your blood, I believe I may have done so less calmly. I believe I would be dead now if you had also been captured, Katrina. If they had... hurt you."

That image was hard to swallow. She could feel it knotting up in her throat like she'd bitten off too much reality to get it all down. The camps had seemed so far away, but they had really happened and Slate was here to prove it. Far away, there were others, no longer here, to prove it too.

That ellipses was even harder to swallow than the image of Slate mopping up red. It was a very serious and sad sounding ellipses. It was a reminder that she had been hurt like that once, and hadn't been able to do anything to save herself. Going to Romania had been just as dangerous, perhaps more so, than walking alone in Central Park. The realization of what she had almost done made her shiver, down to her bones and suddenly she didn't want to be sitting alone in her chair anymore and climbed into Slate's instead, if he'd have her. It was a cushy chair and neither of them was very large.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered as she settled herself next to and/or on his lap. “You're right. I shouldn't have gone.”

Then Slate elaborated on the reason why she shouldn't have gone, in a way that echoed something Sam had told her a few days previously. She wasn't just her mutation. She was a leader? People followed her, would die for her. I don't want them to do that. She may have wanted to act all grown up, but that wasn't a responsibility she was ready for.

“How else can I help?”

>> “Did the bribes really work?”

"Surprisingly well, combined with the death threats." Slate stated, quite honestly. "Death threats as provided by the Order's rampant assassinations of pro-Registration politicians, that is. A monetary incentive not to die helps make the decision more obvious." He doubted strongly that the Order knew how helpful they'd been. Certainly, he was in no hurry to inform them. The politicians who did not accept the Kabal's offer, and had not repented accordingly in a public manner, had more or less ended up dead.

Survival of the fittest, indeed.

As Katrina continued to speak, and listen, she grew... less sure of herself. More aware of reality, and her own frustratingly small role in it. Slate suddenly wished he had shut up, and simply let her yell at him. He did not want Katrina realizing these things. She was Katrina: Katrina was sure she could go anywhere, do anything, and trust anyone. The green-eyed man had already stolen part of that from her. Slate had no right to take the rest.

When she curled up on his lap, he curled back, his arms wrapping around her in a hug. Hugs seemed to be an appropriate action, when feeling bad about oneself in the company of friends, or when friends themselves were feeling bad. Or both. He believed this had become a case of 'both.'

>> “I'm sorry. You're right. I shouldn't have gone.”

"Please do not apologize," he said quietly. "You did nothing wrong, and nothing wrong came of it. You were only being who you are. Please, do not apologize. I was just... very concerned, when I learned you had come."

>> “How else can I help?”

It was a big question. Slate was used to thinking about it, but only for himself, and for those he could use. He would not use Katrina.

"First," he asked, "what is it you want to do? Exactly. A concrete goal; it must be something reachable, and something that you can recognize when you've reached it. Other goals can come later; choose only one for now, and focus on it."

This was the process his own thoughts went through. Perhaps it would help her, too.

"Next, how can that goal be achieved, using the means you have on hand? What needs to be done? What is already happening, that you can turn to your own ends?"

Katrina was a leader, too, or she was going to be. Perhaps it was time she was trained as one.

(1000!)

She would not have thought that bribes would be that helpful and death threats would just add to the hatred of mutants. Yet, Slate seemed so optimistic about it, that it had worked. That it would continue to work.

“How do you know they won't change their minds back once you stop paying or threatening? It doesn't sound very permanent.”

>>>"Please do not apologize," he said quietly. "You did nothing wrong, and nothing wrong came of it. You were only being who you are. Please, do not apologize. I was just... very concerned, when I learned you had come."

That concern was more of a deterrent than any scolding could ever have been. It was a sad kind of pain that made her want to never inflict it on him again. Her instinct was to say she was sorry again for making him worry, but he had just said not to apologize, so she couldn't.

“I was worried about you, too,” she admitted. “All winter long. I had no idea if you were alive or ...” she trailed off. She didn't want to make him feel guilty, too, though that was probably what she had just done. “I mean, any time a friend goes away I worry about whether they are safe or not.”

Talk of goals and helping was better than feeling sorry for oneself, so Katrina turned her thoughts towards Slate's questions. The way he phrased it reminded her of the way he used to help her with math logic games.

“I suppose world peace is too big of a goal,” she mused out loud as her mind whirled the globe into smaller more manageable pieces. Peace for one continent? Peace for one country? A state? A city? Even that seemed big, especially considering the city in particular that she lived in. But maybe it was possible... maybe.

As for his questions, what means did she have? “Means could be powers, or people, right?” Happenings... most of the big things that happened in this city involved the Order and the X-men or the Order and the police, at least the ones that she heard about. She might have to do more research on what else was going on before she started trying to change things. And more thinking. Slate was good at giving her a lot to think about.

>> “How do you know they won't change their minds back once you stop paying or threatening? It doesn't sound very permanent.”

"Ah. Well." Slate found himself looking at a point on Katrina's shoulder, rather than at her eyes. "One can hope that the initial fear will last at least a few months, in the absence of evidence claiming the threats' removal." Which is to say: the Kabal saw no need to inform the Romanian politicians that the Order had not been working for them, and that they were not likely to return to smash in a few more heads. "In that time, popular political support can help to push through legislative changes that will be hard to overturn in the future, including desegregation laws and more tolerant educational policies to be taught in schools. The bribery, of course, will also be maintained for now. Better a government corrupted by good than one that kills its own citizens."

A stray hair had settled on her shirt; Slate innocuously brushed it off.

She had been worried about him, too. He did not know why that hadn't occurred to him. Or why it had not occurred to him to maintain basic contact with her. After all, he had a blackberry.

"Do you have a telephone, Katrina?" He asked, as if this would be a novel technology for a teenage girl to possess. "Or an email address? I could contact you the next time I go on a mission, or arrange for Ms. Mortman to send you updates as to my status, should I forget."

Personally, Slate did not find world peace to be too large a goal, if properly sectioned. He let Katrina continue to think things through for herself, however. Her question as to means earned a simple nod. "Means are anything you can make use of. Mutations, people, events. Anything."

Her continued goal-mulling earned a twitch at the corners of his lips. "I believe I have given you a homework assignment. Perhaps we can discuss this further, when I help you with your mathematics. How does tomorrow afternoon, after your classes end sound?"

>>>"Ah. Well." ... “Popular political support...blah blah...legislative changes...blah...tolerant educational...blah blah... kills its own citizens.”

Katrina stared. Slate watched her shoulder. Katrina stared some more. Slate brushed a hair off her shoulder. Eyes that had been glazed over snapped back to attention at the movement. She was paying attention to all his words! Really! Even if he was sounding an awful lot like a stuffy old politician. If he had been trying to get her off of that particular subject, his tactics had worked far too well and she was glad for a change of subject.

“I do have a cell phone!” Katrina reached into her pocket to dig it out. It was a shiny red one, previously owned by Mars. The Abyss brother had given it to her so she could always call them if she needed to. It had come complete with a list of contacts, most of whom she didn't know, but she hadn't bothered to delete any of them, opting instead to add her own contacts to the already long list.

“I have email, too. Updates would be nice,” she admitted. “I tried to follow what was happening on the news, on blogs, and on Twitter, but hearing things from you would be better. Or Ms. Mortman. She's cool.” Also, she'd be a good backup in case of forgetting to leave messages, which seemed to be something both Caleb copies seemed to have a habit of doing.

>>>"I believe I have given you a homework assignment. Perhaps we can discuss this further, when I help you with your mathematics. How does tomorrow afternoon, after your classes end sound?"

More time to think before having to discuss her answers would be good... except, “I already promised Calley a sleep over tomorrow after school. Can you wait until Saturday afternoon?”

…Slate had the sudden, disquieting feeling that he was competing with himself. And he had lost.

"Oh." He replied levelly. "Yes. Saturday afternoon would be fine." It was fine. There was no real difference. It was simply… not Friday. Because Calley had already booked her for Friday.

"What day would you prefer, for recurring study sessions? I can schedule you in." He pulled his own Blackberry from his pants pocket, and navigated to the calendar with ease. Not that he was trying to appear technologically suave, or busy enough to need to schedule the girl in between other matters of Important Business: Slate had no particular ego of which to speak. Of course.

Dates and contact numbers were exchanged; farewells were said, and rides back to the Mansion arranged.

Slate did not mind meeting her on Saturday. There was no reason to mind it: therefore, he didn't. Of course.