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[Colossus]

September, 2007
Xavier's
2:34 pm
_____________________

<To Mister Piotr Nikoliavich Rasputin, As a representative of the Siberian Government, I take no pleasure in informing you of the recent events occurring within the past week. It was brought to our attention that your family was come under attack and everyone... Was lost...>

Pete could read no further. He kept staring at the words on the paper, trying to will them into rearranging themselves into absolutely any other combination imaginable. There simply was no way. No way that these words could be true. Someone had to be playing a cruel prank on him. Maybe Roberto or Lucas or even Samuel...

No, as much as he wished he could blame someone for this being a joke, he knew that Lucas and Samuel wouldn't go this far, and even if Roberto might, which he also doubted, he knew that Da Costa wouldn't have had the patience to properly translate the letter into Russian. But there was more in the letter, and so Piotr paused his musing to continue reading.

<We regret to inform you that the people who murdered your family... Mother's wrists sliced open... Father hung... Sister's corpse not found, suspected of being taken off and... before being killed... Men were not found... Your presence to confirm the bodies is requested, as is your presence to verify the future of the Rasputin property. Please inform us at the earliest convenience when a representative should expect to meet with you.>

Piotr crumpled the letter and flung it across the room, the piece of offending information bouncing into the waste paper basket. The urge to scream was kept under control, but only barely. The young man sprang to his feet and gripped the chair in front of his roommate's desk, metal spreading across his features, and his grip splintered the chair's back to pieces.

"Damn it!" Piotr flung the broken chair to his side of the room, and replaced it with his own. He'd have to apologize to him later at the game. Which he was late to. A stupid pick-up basketball game that he agreed to be in. He didn't want to go to it now. He wasn't going to go to it. "Damn it!"

Pete grabbed his jacket and exited the room, slamming the door behind him, hearing it crack a little. A small girl who happened to be walking down the hallway was staring at the giant metal Russian and gawked.

"What?" he grunted, brushing passed her and heading to the basketball court. He wouldn't let them down just because of an issue that he no longer had control over. He'd already failed. The worst part was, ever since the first day he'd come to Westchester with Xavier, he knew this would happen. The best thing he could hope for was that his mangled emotions and thoughts wouldn't throw up red flags to anyone like Jean or Alix or any other telepaths around today. He could hide his pain from everyone else by staying metal, but for people who picked up on such things like thoughts, he might as well walk around with a billboard.

He walked out o the back doors and saw the other guys he was going to play ball with. "Afternoon Tovarischen!" he said, plastering on a fake smile.

[Alix]

Careful, calculated eyes watched Piotr with marked intensity. She studied him while he moved, her cautious manner taking in every possibility that could present itself with marked analysis. Every move she made was done in complete stillness, her mind far more devoted to figuring out just what it was that had struck Colossus so vividly that it would've struck her so forcibly. It was the downside, as she'd learned multiple times since coming to the school, of actually meeting and acquiring friends. Investment. Not just on the distant level that she treated everyone with-- even those she helped-- but the ones that had taken time to, in one way or another attempt to invest in Alix.

It didn't show on her features, however. Even with the acute awareness she had, her facial expressions remained completely and utterly placid. No matter the craziness, no matter the amounting conflicts in the world, no matter what terrible things happened, she remained absolute. A single crack in the facade would've been in a word, relieving. It would've shown that the humanity behind the fragile seeing girl that had been moving just along the sidelines of classes for months now existed. That somewhere, somehow, there was something more to her than a soft spoken student who may or may not've been telepathically cheating on every lesson she was given.

Of course, those that knew her knew fully well that the facade was not particularly complete. It was necessary-- especially in moments like this where a fellow student's feelings could hit her so hard. The fact was, however, that behind that facade and seemingly uninvolved status, she was absolutely no where near as aloof and segregated as she seemed to be. If there was trouble, she was there. If there was an issue or a problem she was wordlessly on standby, ready to throw everything she could do or be into the fray to help whoever was needed. Friend or not.

It was by nature that she was a meddler. Everything she was, everything she built herself to be was done completely by others. Their thoughts, their memories, their emotions. It was far easier to use the things other people knew than to rely on her own basis. It meant forgetting all the horrible things she knew and living the lie that was so much easier. It meant forgetting the past and living in the present. Classmates and their problems. That was something she could consume herself with to forget whatever issues she had all her own.

Piotr was no different, excepting the fact that he'd been one of the few she'd actually gotten to know. Perhaps, in all, it was his opposite nature to her own. He was all strength and brawn, emotion that didn't go checked while she was no where close to any of those things. Their friendship was awkward, but present. Sure, she wasn't the best at friends and often gave only exactly what people wanted and needed to ensure comfort and happiness of the other party-- but she did try to be better. Somehow. It always fell short and sometimes ensured socially awkward moments. She'd followed Piotr easily outside to his game after picking up the sheer ferocity of emotion that had come from him. Something was wrong and, on a level, she already caught on.

Still- flat out asking what was wrong? Even though she knew very well exactly what was wrong? Not going to happen. Instead, she stood wordlessly by the court where he'd gone, her strange eyes focused in complete unreadable analysis.

[Colossus]

He didn't know just what it was, but on top of the pain and anger and sadness that dominated his emotions, he had this strange feeling. It was a cliché, he knew, but one of the most famous lines spoken in almost every genre of movie and television program was very applicable at the moment.  'Have you ever had the feeling that you were being watched?' crept across his mind as he looked over his shoulder, but saw nobody. That was very disconcerting for the metal Russian. He could have sworn on his life that someone had been right there, peering at the back of his head. But no, he saw nobody who seemed expressly interested in what Piotr was doing. Out here there were quite a many students. A lot of them he knew very well, like Bishop and the other two who were already limbering up for the game, and a few, like that Alix girl who'd just come out of the building, Pete had only just met. 

Piotr had become fond of the girl. She was a little shy, in fact he didn't think that he had heard her actually speak more than a few onomatopoeias since he'd met her, which wasn't at all bad. Piotr himself wasn't exactly a man who spoke everything he thought either. But the girl was damn smart too, inconceivably so. Sometimes he was sure that she could have been teaching the classes instead of taking them. That was one of the advantages to towering over everyone, you could see not only how often someone took notes or doodled, but you could also glance over anyone's shoulder and tell if their answers were right or not. Something he'd been caught doing without even thinking about it before. She was smart, if a little shy, and she was a very pretty girl. So of course Piotr talked to her. Or, kind of talked to her... He'd talked to her as well as two people of rare words could talk a couple of times. He considered her a good friend even if he hadn't known her very long. He might not have said a lot, but she had come to know many things that had she reiterated them to anyone else, they'd think she made it all up. 

She knew about the things that kicked off his emotions, where everyone else saw someone who was as hard as cold steel on the inside in his flesh as he could be when he was all metaled up. Their friendship was awkward, but even if she wasn't the best friend he had, she most often gave exactly what Piotr needed. She listened to him without assuming he was Billy Badass and not allowed to have feelings. It always fell short, however, and Piotr was sure that it was because his failure to perfectly grasp american idioms sometimes ensured socially awkward endings to a conversation. Half the time, he'd be about to learn something deeper about her, and he'd apparently say or do something that would get her to close off again. He didn't know how he kept doing it, but it happened almost every time.

She came up and stood wordlessly by the court where he was stretching, still trying to figure out where this feeling of privacy invasion originated, and he paused long enough to smile and wave before turning to the three other guys.

"Hello Alix, nice day, Da?"