Half a Moon: 14 Days of Celebrating Women

Title: Harsh Truths
Fandom: X-Men
Author: Apache Firecat
Characters: Shadowcat, White Queen
Rating: PG-13/T
Summary: Teacher Emma Frost embarks a harsh truth to a former, wouldbe student.
Word Count: 2,427
Written For: HalfAMoon 2025 Day 4: Murder and/or Mayhem
Date Written: 2 February 2025
Warnings: Spoilers
Disclaimer: All characters within belong to their rightful owners, not the author, and are used without permission.






She knew she was watching her, knew she'd been watching her for the last several hours after the kids had left for home that evening. She had followed her here to club and been "watching over" her ever since. She knew she had been waiting for her to lose control, to vent, to have a fit, to do anything that will give her room to gloat. She sensed, rather than felt, the second Emma uncrossed her long, sexy legs and began gliding purposefully across the floor to her. The woman had always been powerful and sensual, she could give her that while equally knowing she'll never admire her sexually or even trust her, never again.

She never should have in the first place. She could blame Emma for what she's become, but that would be too easy. Besides, it wouldn't be fair. Emma hadn't forced her after all. She had merely given her the means, means to do things Kitty had wanted to do for so very long if she was being truthful, even if only with herself. Logan had always warned her about the bloodlust that accompanied killing. She'd read and listened to countless horror stories about watching the light fade from people's eyes and knowing you were responsible, but when those people were so full of hate, and you were too, it was disturbingly easy to get a rush from the power of that kill.

"Think of me whatever you choose," Emma told her quietly, surprising Kitty with the fact that she actually spoke the words aloud rather than invading her mind's privacy. She supposed it was something to show she still held some respect from the older woman. Not that she should care what Emma thought. She never had, when she'd been younger. But when she'd been younger, she'd been able to turn the bloodlust down. She'd been able to turn down power. She'd been able to not become a killer, even when she'd had every opportunity and had known she would only look like a pawn. Of all the things she'd endured, of all the worlds she'd saved and all the villains she'd fought, of all the freaking galaxies she'd adventured through even, she had never killed anyone -- until Krakoa.

They had all warned her. Every single one of the X-Men had warned her. Illyana had cried over the lives she'd taken and not tried to hide the tears from Kitty, and the last time she'd almost taken another's life around 'yana, she'd even cried for Kitty. Rachel had come close to killing again, for the first time outside the Hound persona into which she'd been forced in her own time, to save Kitty. It had been Magneto, of all people, who had stopped her. Even the infamous Master of Magnetism regretted taking lives. Kitty had known all this, been around all of these wonderful and evil warriors who had stopped taking lives and urged her to never take one as long as there was any other avenue.

She looked across the table from her, where Emma was now sitting and directly staring back at her. She half expected the older woman to blurt out something mean at any moment, or at least to try to convince her there had been no other avenue. There was always, always another way. A better way.

"Wipe your face, darling. People will begin to stare." Emma leaned over and gently dabbed at the tears streaking down Kitty's face with a silk napkin. "If we're going to do this, perhaps here is not the best place."

"How do you do it?!" Kitty finally spat out.

Emma hesitated, her hand lingering right before Kitty's face. She kept her voice calm and level as she reiterated, "How do I do what, Katheryne?"

The formal name was meant to draw her out of her thoughts, Kitty knew, but she didn't care. She didn't care what Emma or anyone else called her. She had almost lost the kids, almost lost this chance the Fates so bloody determined to give her. As she had told them all before, she could not blame any of them for turning away from her. She was a killer. Perhaps it had not begun in cold blood, but she had enjoyed and before long she had been killing freely in cold blood and enjoying every mutant-hating life she had extinguished. There had been times when the fights had made the kill better, when her opponent had almost bested her, when they had almost thought they had stood a chance against her... But she'd been trained by the very best, and what people like he and she did was never pretty, never fair, never good.

So why in all the seven Hells had it felt so damned good?!?! Why had she so quickly went from sacrificing her blood virginity to being eager for each kill, and to even smirking about the murders she committed?! She had been every cool as Emma Frost constantly exuded. She had been ruthless, again like Emma. Why hadn't the kids called her out?! Because they expected it from people like Emma, a part of her brain even in her turmoil answered with smooth simplicity. They expected women who dressed like Emma, carried themselves like Emma, exuded power and confidence -- People like that got away with killing and never seemed to bat a damn eye about it.

"How do you do it?!" she exclaimed again, almost seething now. She gripped the arms of her chair so as to prevent herself from making an even bigger scene. Her teeth were clenched, but she demanded again, "How do you do it?! How do you sleep with yourself?! How do you parade around in spotless white and always act like you don't give a damn how many innocents you've killed?!"

Emma dropped the napkin between them and recoiled back to her seat, but when she spoke to answer Kitty's demands, her voice was as cool and smooth as the rest of her demeanor. "Because," she said, gazing unblinkingly directly back into Kitty's tear-filled eyes, "not a single one of them was innocent."

Kitty's mouth shut, opened, and then shut again. At last, she said, "That can't be true!"

"Were yours?" Emma asked, piquing a smooth, dark brow at her. "Katheryne, Kitty," her face softened suddenly, the mask dropping as she spoke to a girl she had watched over many long years grow into a powerful woman in her own right, "if you had not killed them, how many more mutants would have perished at their hands?"

Again, Kitty's mouth seemed to work soundlessly. Emma knew she was struggling for an answer, quickly scanning every face of a victim who she had killed and who haunted her every time she tried to sleep. She was trying desperately to find not necessarily the answer Emma wanted, but the one she herself wanted to be able to give. She wanted to blame herself, wanted to say that those she had killed could have been kept from killing more of their kind through some other, any other means, but for all her skills, Kitty's intellect was the greatest. Emma knew the answer. Her blue lips drew into a thin smile not because she was proud of the answer but because she truthfully felt Kitty's lack of being able to answer her was the second step in her recovery, the first, of course, having been when she had first stopped running from the truth and had to face what she had done.

"They did not give you very many choices."

"There's always a choice! There had to be a better way!"

"Katheryne, it was kill or allow to kill, as it so often is. You do not want to know at what age I lost my precious blood virginity." She nearly spit the words. Her white-gloved fingers arched, but she stopped herself, albeit just barely, from making quotations in the air. "We've shared many secrets over the years, you and I. You know about my time as a child in the psychiatric ward. What you do not know is that it was my own parents who placed me there."

"Because you were a mutant -- "

"Because they were afraid my mutant gifts might prove more powerful than their own." She watched the surprise register in Kitty's brown eyes before she moved on, "They were also responsible for my brother, Christian's, death because of how greatly his differences embarrassed them. He would not hide who he was, what he was, and you know I am not referring here to anything resembling a mutant gene."

Kitty nodded mutely.

Emma continued to speak slowly, allowing each word to sink in. "I did what I had to to survive growing up. I did what I had to to free myself and find a way to survive, make a way. And I stopped, by whatever means necessary, anyone who would stand between me and my chances for survival." She flexed a hand, bright, blue fingernails reflecting the neon lights of the club. "When they saw I clawed my way up the ladder of success with the Hellfire Club, Kitty, they mean it quite literally."

She had had to stop herself again. Like every other part of her body, Emma's tongue was trained long ago to be very sharp, hard, and powerful, but she had not come here this night to belittle Katheryne. She had come here because, despite what the child still thought, she truly did care for the girl. She still remembered the guilt that had washed over her when Shaw had killed Kitty back in Madripoor, and when he'd nearly killed Lockheed as well. She'd never admit to a soul, not even the dragon or his girl, but she missed that little dragon. He had been her constant companion in the days following Kitty's brutal murder. Thank God for the Resurrection Protocols, or the girl wouldn't be here now, fussy as she is.

"Katheryne, think about it," she said, trying her best to not sound as harsh as she felt like being. She hated that Kitty was growing through this. She was a good, hard, strong warrior and had always done what was right, or at least chosen the better of two evils, for as Emma had known the girl, which had been very shortly after her mutant powers had first manifested when she had been a mere fourteen years of age. Granted, she had been older with far more loving parents than Emma had, but still she had always done her best for the world and for her friends, and Emma hated to see her beating herself up over mutant killers.

"I know you wish there had been some other way. I know you have convinced yourself that you are as that naive child called you, a cold-blooded killer, but Theo did not know the situation. You have to kill in war, Kitty, and this isn't your first war -- "

"No, but it's the first one I've killed in!"

Emma caught and kept her tearful gaze. "And if you had killed before," she asked her point blank, "instead of drawing back from your full capabilities, how many mutant lives might you have been able to save? How many more of our kind die every time we let a mutant hater go? Do you think those you killed before would not have gone on to kill? Even if they had not been able to kill you, they would have still survived to take lives again. Had you not killed them when you did, they would have killed more mutants."

Katheryne fell silent, her tumultuous thoughts Emma could sense even coming to a stop for the first time in hours. Emma continued to hold her gaze and speak patiently with her like the sad child she was, "What choice did you really have, Katheryne? What choice did they give you? You're beating up yourself now for taking their atrocious lives, but if you had not snuffed them out, how many more would have died? How many you saved the moment you made that painful decision?" Recognizing the girl's surprise, Emma shrugged her slender, bare shoulders. "It was painful for you. It was painful for me the first hundred or so times I did it. But I literally grew up in a kill or be killed society."

She leaned back in her seat and sipping champagne from the glass Kitty had not even noticed arrive. She continued to sip calmly as silence fell between them. She could read Katheryne's emotions as they struggled for dominance on her face as easily as other teachers read a textbook. She watched as Kitty started to speak, then stopped, only to start again and stop again.

Emma Frost downed her glance, uncrossed her long legs, and leaned back across the table again. "I tried to convince myself twice before that killing might not be necessary. Do you have any idea how many of my children are lying in their graves right now because of the poor choices I made by not killing someone? Or at least they were, before Krakoa. Selena slaughtered my Hellions to get to me. My own sister later killed a boy who had been placed underneath my charge and protection by your own treasured Professor. And as much as I too love Charles, let us not forget what refraining from doing what his instincts told him was best eventually caused for him."

Kitty nodded, but she had no words left. She downed the remainder of her glass instead. Emma signaled the nearest waiter. "Whiskey. Your oldest bottle. Save the glass." When the bottle came, Kitty drank for a while longer but did not speak again. At length, knowing it would take time for her to come to terms with the knowledge she had just imparted, Emma rose and left. They all needed some alone time sometimes, and the child needed some right now. Besides, she'd be close enough to come help again if she was needed.

But as she stepped outside, sliding her sunglasses onto the bridge of her nose though they were not needed, she could feel her one-time would-be student's circling thoughts. Damn. She's right. Emma faced the world with a smile, but inside there was a part of her that felt like crying. She was right -- she was always right --, but it didn't necessarily mean she wanted to be.



The End