xp_logs | Kurt and Haller, yesterday

Scott notices Kurt's seclusion and avoidance of visitors, and recruits Haller to help do something about it. This meets with some success, and progress is made, though it's only the beginning.

Kurt was not taking visitors, for now. He had a very simple way of ensuring this, which was just, whenever someone knocked on his door, to teleport upstairs to the shadowed back of the greenhouse and wait there until they'd most probably gone away. He wasn't in a mood to face people, just now.

Which would have been a perfect strategy, if not for the fact he had been using it for the past two days. By this point certain of the staff had noticed Kurt's continual avoidances, and unfortunately for him not all of their attentions could be escaped by a convenient teleport. Consequently, when Kurt materialized in the greenhouse there was already someone there waiting for him.

Jim looked up from his inspection of a half-unfurled orchid at the tell-tale bamf of displaced air. Without the slightest flicker of expression to indicate anything but mild surprise, the telepath sent, #Perfect. Thank you, Scott.# Oh, that was so unethical it's not even funny, but no one can say he's not a brilliant tactician . . .

"Hey, Kurt," Jim said aloud, straightening away from the flower. "Thinking about some gardening?"

Kurt blinked at him warily, unsure if this was pure unlucky coincidence or the intervention he'd been half-expecting for at least a day. "A little, perhaps. The place is peaceful."

"Yeah," Jim said, turning back to his study of the nearest collection of flora. "It really is nice. You and Ororo do a good job. I keep meaning to come more often, but I usually end up on the roof. It's the height. Sometimes you just need to be . . . out. Besides, I don't want to smoke in here. It would mess with the atmosphere."

"It is mostly Ororo, to be honest. I enjoy the place, and I do a little to the upkeep, but most of the plants are hers." He was still standing where he'd appeared, in the shadows.

"Even a little helps, though. Hobbies keep you sane. It's just -- having something that's yours, that nothing external can take. Untouchable." The fit of a cigarette in his hand. The smoothness of brushing new paint across a canvas. The arch of Betsy's stomach against his. Jim reached out a hand to touch a broad, flat leaf, rubbing it carefully. "I saw Marius today. He'll probably be out by Tuesday, Moira says. Healing factors really are incredible. This was the best possible place for this to happen."

Kurt stiffened, watching him ever more warily. "But if he had not come to this place, this would not have happened to him."

"No. If he hadn't he would probably be dead already." Jim let his hand drop, fixing his mismatched gaze on Kurt's. "Moira told me. I don't know how many people actually know this, but Marius was dying when he came here. It's his x-factor. His manifestation did something to his body chemistry. If he hadn't attacked Nathan they might never have found out how to treat him. And if he'd been somewhere like Muir, and tried to feed on one of the kids there . . . worse. A maladaptive mutation on top of everything else? Moira says that in the state he was in he probably wouldn't have survived it. Maybe not the child, either. The school saved his life."

Kurt fell silent, hearing this, his thoughts still troubled. "I trust Moira's opinion, of course", he said finally, since it seemed the safest thing he could say.

Jim noted the reserve in his voice, and shook his head. "Have you ever had to deal with maladaptive mutations before?" he asked softly. "I mean, mutations that were seriously harmful to the people who had them. I've heard about Jonothon, but . . . for the most part, Xavier's isn't really the place for them. That's what Muir is for."

He hesitated, then shook his head. "I have heard things, but... dealt with? No."

"It's hard. It's really hard." The telepath extended his hand to another plant, brushing the delicate green tendrils with fire-pitted skin. "I lived at the Research Center for a few years after I left Xavier's. It could be heartbreaking. I remember one girl who sweat acid. Jolie. She wasn't immune to it. She couldn't exert herself, and the room-temperature had to be just right all the time. A few months after I met her she got sick. An infection. The fever killed her. Burned her alive." Fragile. The creepers were so fragile. He drew back his hand carefully. "Some mutations are successful. Some . . . aren't. Marius is very, very lucky he's in a place where his can be compensated for, as much as it can be. It's nobody's fault. It's just the way evolution works."

"But... nothing like this happened when he fed from anyone else", Kurt said in a low voice. "Is there something about my powers? Something I should have seen, and not offered to donate?"

"How could you?" Jim asked, thinking back to the theories Moira had pieced together. "Your mutation never hurt you. It didn't hurt Marius when he had it, either. As I understand it, Marius' mutation is to -- adapt, basically. It saw your mutation as something beneficial and tried to mimic it, except because of the inherent flaw in his x-factor it couldn't copy it right. It could have happened with any power. It probably would have, sooner or later. Yours was just the first convenient excuse."

"I see", Kurt said quietly, possibly starting to accept at last that it hadn't been his fault, or his failure.

The telepath nodded. "What matters is he's being helped here. And making a pretty remarkable recovery, too. He'll be back up and around within the week. With two healing factors working on him it's doubtful he'll even scar." Physically, Jim knew, only physically -- but they would come to that when they came to it. All things in their time.

"I will go to see him", Kurt said, still quiet and not looking at the other man. "When he is able to have visitors."

"He's had a few already. Friends have been getting priority, though, and Moira and Amelia have been fairly tyrranical about making sure he gets his rest. Still, I think he appreciates the company." Jim regarded the other man steadily, eyes searching the shadowed features. "I know it's a silly question, but how have you been holding up through all this?"

Kurt shot him a sideways look, fully aware that Haller already knew the answer was 'not well'. "I have been... as well as could be expected, I think."

"Is there something else? Aside from the immediate, I mean. I know, loaded question, but . . ."

"There is always something else", he said wearily, more so than he usually allowed to show. "It is something you get used to, when there is nothing to be done but go on."

A faint smile ghosted the telepath's lips. "Preaching to the choir. I'm not unused to having a 'something else' that just has to be borne. But in this case, what specifically is it that you've gotten used to?"

"Many things." And at times like this, it was harder than ever to keep going. But times like this always passed. He was too tired to keep up the usual front right now, though. "But in this case, specifically... how hard a man like me must drive himself. No man can be perfect, but I must try harder than most."

Jim paused. Not an answer he'd been expecting -- but then, also not one he was entirely surprised with. "Why is that?" he asked quietly. "What do you mean 'a man like you'?"

"Can you not guess?" he asked with a faint wry smile, gesturing to himself. "Amanda calls me Saint Kurt, you know. Sometimes. And I am no saint, but... better that name than 'Margali's demon'. So, I must strive to deserve it, as far as I can."

"Ah. Yeah, I understand that." Jim smiled, a little sadly. "I was 'Defective David' for . . . longer than I want to think about, actually. Not starting out in the same place everyone else does means you have to try more, and it's hard, because you can't ever forget it. No one will let you." Least of all yourself.

Kurt nodded. "I think a few in the other clans actually believe I am a demon my mother summoned, rather than the truth of what I am. So. I have always had to work hard, to try to counter it. Nathan told me I was being too hard on myself, but I have to be."

"And driving yourself is okay, to a degree. Even necessary for people like us. It's just when you do it to destruction that it becomes self-defeating." I will be very good and not use Scott as the obvious example, Jim thought, a little guiltily. "When the steadiness is just an act for the benefit of other people, and just becomes the shell you hide inside -- bad things can happen. Even if no one else can see them. Maybe especially."

"And what happens", Kurt asked softly, "when the shell has been worn for so long that you no longer know how to come out of it? When you have been set apart for so many years that holding yourself apart becomes a habit you cannot break?"

In the back of Jim's mind something burst into wild laughter. After the previous day's very calm, very controlled goodbye to Cain that was almost too much. Right. We are David, the one so very good at letting the mask drop.

"Then you need to allow others in to help you break it," Jim said, holding the other man's eyes with his own. The laughter was viciously stomped on. In no way did Kurt's pain deserve that kind of scorn. "People understand about being different here, in their own ways. They'll help you if they can. You don't even need to reach out. They'll do that for you. Just . . . let them understand."

"I do not know how to start", the other man confessed. "Even my mother, and my brother and sister, though I know they love me... I do not always know if they understand."

"Precise understanding is probably too much to hope for in cases like ours," Jim conceded, "but there's no direct comparison to any human experience. What matters is equivolency. Do most of the people at the school know what it's like to be so obviously an outsider? No . . . mercifully. But have they felt it before, even when the people around them had no chance of knowing? Yeah. I think so. The details may be different, but the essential truth of the experience is the same."

"But for them to know that there is something that needs understanding", Kurt began, sounding the words out for possibly the first time, and certainly the first in a long while, "then I must... speak. And while I have tried, sometimes, it is..."

"Hard," Jim finished with a lopsided smile. "Yeah. It is. Sometimes you get so good at acting a part you're trapped by the fact it's what everyone expects of you." Inwardly he thought, We're not projecting at all, are we.

"Exactly. Sometimes I feel that what they need of me, here, is steady, reliable Kurt, who comes through everything almost unshaken... or recovers quickly when he is affected. And so that is what I must be, and what I am."

"What you have to be and what you feel you should are two entirely different things," Jim pointed out. "You've been laboring under other people's expectations of you all your life, in one way or another. How is perpetuating the illusion going to make things better? You don't deserve that, and neither do your teammates. You trust each other with your lives. They deserve a friend, not a cipher. And you deserve to be one."

"It is not entirely an illusion", Kurt objected mildly. "I am not that good an actor. But... you do have a point, I know. I just do not know how not to, as I said."

"I can't say I've had a lot of personal experience there myself," Jim smiled apologetically. "But I do know that it helps to try to be aware of it. It's easier just to go with what's safe, but unfortunately easier isn't really better in this case." The smile quirked again. "It doesn't need to be anything big right away. Just little steps, as often as you can manage. You may still have some problems, but at least you'll be making forward progress, right?"

Kurt nodded slowly. "It is just about knowing where to start. It is three years since the incident with Stryker, and... well, that was not the beginning of my being set apart."

Jim winced inwardly. No, that wouldn't have helped, would it. "Even if you haven't had something big and dramatic in your life -- it's the culmination that'll kill you. The big things will knock you down, but the little things will keep you there." He risked moving closer to give Kurt a brief squeeze on the shoulder. "Just keep reminding yourself it's better to fall once and let someone help you the rest of the way than it is to fall twenty times and pretend nothing happened. I think that's easy to forget when you're in a place that's so deeply in crisis so frequently, and being able to keep functioning is the only option."

"It always has been", Kurt said with a faint regretful smile, acknowledging the offered comfort. "Ororo would like to make me a CO, I think. And I would have to keep functioning... but perhaps it is time to learn new ways."

"New ways can be good ways," Jim smiled. "And if you can handle the CO stuff . . . I think you'd be good at it. Masks can be a good thing. Having one in the field and as a teacher is sort of necessary for doing the job. You just have to keep in mind that's not all you are." He drew back, placing his hands in his pockets. "Just something to think about."

"It is." The smile got a little stronger, for the first time in days. "Thank you."

"None necessary." Because it means we can at least do something. The younger man nodded towards the stairway back to the lower level. "Come on. Let's go figure out when you can see Marius."