Tagging: @masterofmagnetism & Kitty Pryde
Where: Erik’s home, Genosha
When: The night before everything went to hell in a hand basket
His menorah was untouched.
If she hadn’t already been on edge, it would’ve tipped her right over. Instead, it felt a little like falling, that sinking feeling in her stomach that shouted this is wrong. It usually came right before Widget launched them into a new time, a new dimension. It came right before cities were laid to waste. It came right before she found herself standing in front of a gravestone, wondering how many people she could lose before she made it to her twenties. It came as she walked right through the front door of Erik’s office.
Where his home had seemed sterile, his office felt stale. She knew the smell of too much alcohol, how it would cling to clothes and breath and the air. She knew how it felt to choose numb over grief or despair or curling anger. Because sometimes anger had nowhere to go but in. It built and built and– Kitty wondered if Erik was letting it build, or if it all went away and he was left with nothing. No anger, no grief, no family with whom to light a menorah. Only alcohol, and a hollow space where all of those things had been before.
She found him sitting by the balcony, an open bottle of scotch in one hand. He looked sloppy in a way she couldn’t ever remember seeing him; he was always so wrapped in an air of composure, always adopting righteous anger or care above all else. Erik was drunk, his menorah was untouched, and Kitty felt like she was falling.
She dropped cross-legged onto the floor beside him, pulling the bottle of Scotch gently from his hand and taking a pull that burned all the way down. It was quiet for a moment, then “So, why are we sitting on the floor?”
