st_alksthroughwalls | [ Text ] Sunny, backdated to Maya's departure

To: Kitty
From: Sunny

I know. This place sucks.

To: Sunny
From: Kitty

I'm going to miss her like crazy.

Do you want to do something? Some kind of memorial?

To: Kitty
From: Sunny

Yes. I'm not sure what would be right, though.

Has Caroline happened to her room yet?

To: Sunny
From: Kitty

Dancing would be right, I think.

Don't know about Caroline, but probably not yet. It's not the first task on her to do list usually.

To: Kitty
From: Sunny

Dancing is almost always right.

And we may want to check, at least.

To: Sunny
From: Kitty

Check first, dance after?

If you're free now, I'll meet you there.

To: Kitty From: Sunny

That sounds perfect. See you in a bit.

Kitty caught up with Sunny on her way to the Austrian Suite. Even though they'd already said so, she didn't hesitate to offer another "This sucks," full of feeling, where feeling was equal parts rage with no direction to escape in and grief at losing yet another dear, dear friend to this place. Later, she was going to hug Illyana within an inch of her life, and because she was clearly 'having a feel', Yana would hug her back.

They were really the best words for the situation, unfortunately. Sunny of course didn't take the departure of anybody she actually liked around here well, but when that someone was one of the few people at the inn who wasn't white it hit all the harder. It wasn't a sentiment she expressed to many people, not expecting to be understood, but every brown face in this place was part of what held her together.

Every face of a friend was a safe place. With Maya gone, the inn was less safe for her. She knew this was an idea that somebody would find offensive. That person could fuck themself.

Though given she couldn't wish being here on anybody, it was hard to be sad exactly. Sunny was just pissed. "Yes," she said simply, her voice rough with emotion.

"I know she wasn't happy here," Kitty said as she kicked at the door to the Austrian Suite, actually forcing her foot to hit as opposed to passing through. "But it was better with her here."

Which was really the most you could say without wishing someone back in this hell of boredom and self-reflection. But it said a lot, between Kitty and Sunny, anyway, it said a great deal. Because she'd been another person who understood the different kinds of fucked up being different they'd suffered.

The two of them could pass through that door easily, but Sunny didn't point this out. Sometimes, you just needed to hit something. To feel it break under the force of your body. She let Kitty kick. "Most of us aren't happy here." They adapted, sure, but actual happiness was a tall order.

"I know she's not dead, but... I don't know if the difference really matters."

Most of them weren't, with the exception of Vax and Vex and company who were safer here and wanted to raise families, and even they would probably go home given their choice--well, Vax only if he could take Steph, but yeah. She kicked the door again, thinking of Lara, and how she'd never see her again for sure if she left here, and Maya who she might. She wasn't actually trying to splinter the door so much as distract herself from emotional pain with the physical kind.

"It only matters because it makes it harder to grieve," Kitty muttered. "At least for me. Part of me feels guilty for being sad because I know she's where she'd want to be."

"Yes," Sunny murmured. She didn't feel guilty, though. She wanted to, she wished she did, because it might mean she was a better person.

Instead she was just jealous. "At least, we hope she is."

"Right." Kitty shot Sunny a wry look. "Thanks." She'd stopped kicking the door, because she wasn't trying to break it and she didn't feel like hurting her foot.

She stuck her hand through the door lock, shorting it, then pull her hand out and turned the knob. "Shall we."

"Welcome," Sunny answered, responding to the question by preceding Kitty into the room. She knew it wasn't a helpful thing to have said. She should perhaps try biting her tongue some today.

When you had a family as big as Sunny's--there were no only children in her family tree--you saw your number of gatherings, including funerals. She'd been there when relatives passed and also after, when rooms had been cleaned and tidied. It was partly the nature of hotel rooms, the neatness and anonymity of them, but it really did feel like that. She shuddered once, and then tucked the thought away. She couldn't indulge in this right now.

Jews came in small numbers, small families; just enough to run whatever family business or maintain the family line without upsetting the community they were trying to integrate into. No siblings, part of her family just plain gone, and there'd been no funeral for Dad because no body. She associated death with rooms full of sentimental crap that no one knew what to do with but cry over--Dad's study for one, but Jean and Piotr and dozens of other X-men, gone and occasionally returned.

When people left here...most of them hadn't amassed enough stuff to make going through their things any kind of personal matter. She sighed and tucked her hair behind her ear. "This probably won't take long."

"Probably not," Sunny mused, looking around at the relatively huge space. Her own room wasn't small, but it also wasn't this. Still, she only hesitated for a moment before she went looking for closets. Anything that mattered would probably be put away somewhere.

While Sunny hit the closets, Kitty went through the drawers. There probably wouldn't be anything important there, but the kind of stuff you didn't want strangers to see usually ended up shoved in the back of one. Maya was a private enough person that if she had anything like that, Kitty didn't want Caroline to be the one who found it. Not that Caroline would be indiscreet; just...she wasn't Maya's friend.

The closets at first only yielded the sort of things one would expect, namely clothing out of the boutique. But as she moved further back there were easels and... "I think I found something," she said as her fingers ran over what felt like animal hide, some life coming into her voice for the first time today.

"Nothing much here," Kitty replied after sorting through the toiletries and personal items and finding nothing too personal or sexual. Caroline or the inn itself could take care of the regular left-behinds and Vex would get the clothes, so she headed in the direction of Sunny's voice. It was a big enough room that she actually couldn't see her immediately.

"What's in there?"

"I'm not sure," Sunny said, trying to get the whole bundle in her arms at once. It was considerable, though, and she couldn't manage it smoothly, but she carefully drew the fabric out of the closet. "I think this was her Easter egg gift."

As soon as she started drawing it out, Kitty recognized the bundle and nodded. "Yeah," she said and offered a hand getting it from the closet. "I think you're right. She said something about a sweat lodge." Her Chief's maybe?

"She did," Sunny murmured, studying the material in silence for a long moment. "We need to think of what to do with this before someone else decides that's a project they complete because they read a book once." There was only one other Native person at the inn, and Sunny didn't think she'd be interested. Anybody else, themselves included, really had no place using a tipi.

At Sunny's words, Kitty's brows knit over a very pained face. "Oh my god. That would be awful." And it could happen, too. "Or worse, turned into decoration by the Inn for the Indian Room of something."

She rubbed her fingers between her brows where a headache already wanted to lodge itself. "I read once that a lot of Native ceremonial artifacts weren't intended to be preserved but left to the elements. But I don't know if that applied to Maya's people. I'd rather put it all somewhere safe. Don't you think?"

Sunny nodded. "The Temple maybe?" She didn't want to keep it in her room. She didn't want to risk destroying it the next time she felt the need to burn it down.

Also it was a bastion of racism and no.

"The Temple's supposed to be for everyone, though," Kitty pointed out. "It feels like an invitation to use it for something it was never intended to be." And she didn't really want to keep it in her room, because that felt wrong.

"How worried are we? Because there are places you and I can go that other people can't."

"Very," Sunny said plainly, after shooting down a few other responses about well-meaning white people who had already said blindingly racist things. "There's plenty I wouldn't trust white people with. There must be plenty you don't trust Gentiles with. Native peoples are understood and respected even less than either of our groups."

Kitty nodded. She supposed it was a demonstration of Sunny's point that she didn't explain that Gentiles weren't a problem for her, in general, or that there wasn't much to keep away from them, since almost everything meaningfully Jewish in a religious sense already belonged to the Gentiles already. And there wasn't anything cultural left after the Holocaust. It was just...not the sort of thing she'd say to someone who wasn't Jewish.

So she tried to think what she'd do if it was something of Moonstar's, because Dani was the only other Native person she really knew. Probably, she'd give it to Yana, since they were a lot closer, and Yana would probably put it somewhere in Limbo. But Yana didn't really know Maya and that didn't feel appropriate.

"The Inn's got some crawlspaces between the floors. No one would have any reason to go looking there."

It did not entirely feel right, but the problem was that nothing they did would be entirely the right thing to do. It was just the best they were capable of, and the best their own experience on the outside of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant American cultural norm that somehow still survived and thrived in a bubble universe could tell them to do.

Sunny nodded. "All right. Let's do that."

Kitty thought about it a minute more. "Do you think it would be better if we put them inside the mountain? I could do that." She didn't know if Sunny's abilities would allow her to go inside a rock-and-dirt structure, but Kitty could.

That actually got the first hint of a smile out of Sunny all day. "Would you hit me very hard if I said that's hardcore?"

[ Text ] Sunny, backdated to Maya's departure

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