xp_logs | Kurt and Amanda, Sunday night (Reply)

As arranged in this email, Kurt visits Amanda for dinner. There's a lot of talk and some actual progress on both sides.

He'd never been to the brownstone before, and Kurt was interested to see where Amanda was living now, as he walked relaxedly up the steps to ring the doorbell. He was wearing an image inducer, for now, but intended to turn it off as soon as he was safely inside.

Inside, Amanda was wrestling with cooking. Like she'd told Crystal, she was no great shakes in the kitchen, but she did know how to fend for herself. It was just for others that things got tricky. Still, she'd been sensible and stuck to something basic (and you didn't get much more basic than pasta, even when you made the sauce yourself) and things weren't too chaotic. Except when the doorbell rang of course - she would be in the middle of things.

"Um, hands are full right now, Kurt," she called over her shoulder at the door. "Let yourself in, it's open."

He smiled and pushed the door open, making sure it was closed behind him before he turned off the image inducer. "Do you need any help with anything?" he called into the kitchen.

"Um, no, I think I've got it..." The water for the pasta was boiling over and Amanda managed to turn down the heat before she flooded the stove top. Things under more marginal control, she turned and smiled at him, brushing her hands absent- indedly on the back of her jeans. "Sorry, everything happened at once. I see you found the place all right."

"It is not so hard to find", he assured her. "It is a nice building, if not to Emma's usual standards from what I know of her. But then, few things are."

"You should have heard the bitching from the others," Amanda said with a giggle. "Mind you, I've lived in plenty worse. And there's... something, 'bout fixing a place up yourself. Makes it more yours." Her smile as she glanced around the small apartment with its sea-green walls and sparse furniture (she'd focussed on bookshelves first and kind of forgotten the decorative touches) was proud. "'S not exactly Vogue, but hey, I like it."

"Did you paint it yourself?" he asked curiously, liking the colour choice.

"Yeah," she said, a little nervously, hands moving to twist her t-shirt a little. "Didn't have a lot of choice with the colour - Cain brought 'round some stuff from the school so it was this or the blue Nate painted Rachel's nursery with. I liked the green better." Shrugging a little, she moved to pour pasta into the pot of boiling water. "I hope you like pasta - 's the best thing I cook apart from grilled cheese and I didn't think you wanted that." She tossed a grin over her shoulder at the last. The expression did much to relieve the tiredness on her face.

"Pasta will be fine", he said with a returning smile, which dimmed a little when he noticed the tiredness. "Are you all right?"

"Just tired. 'S been a long week." Amanda shrugged a little. "Had a few home truths pointed out, plus this whole hallucinations thing. I had one myself, out clubbing with Angie." She busied herself stirring the sauce. "Nothing awful, just a reminder of how things can be different."

He looked at her sharply, no less worried. "Do you want to tell me about it? I have had one of these visions myself."

She realised she was worrying him - and this was about him not being worried, dammit - and clarified immediately. "I saw Remy. Like all that stuff with Gambit being activated and Lorna dropping the building on him and him nearly dying... like all that never happened. He looked the same as he did when he came here." She sighed a little. "Like I said, it was a reminder about how things might have been different. I've been getting a lot of those this week and it's... hard, is all. And I haven't exactly been pro-active about changing any of it." Jennie had been very clear about that point.

"Then perhaps this should be the week to start", he suggested quietly. "But I hope you know that nothing that happened to Remy was anything you could have changed?"

"I'm starting to reallise it's not." Stirring at the sauce again idly, Amanda sighed again. "It's just so hard, seeing him in pain all the time. He's popping painkillers like bloody Tic Tacs and hoping none of us notice and there's fuck-all I can do." Stir poke stir. "Still, there is something I can try and fix. Well, if you help me, that is."

"Anything I can do to help", he promised. "What is it?"

"Margali doesn't want me talking to Meg," she began, leaving the sauce alone for a moment and turning to face him across the kitchen. "But maybe that shouldn't be her choice to make - maybe we should let Meg decide. So, I want to write to her, but I need you and Stefan to make sure she gets it without Margali getting involved. If you don't mind going against her, that is."

"In this instance", he answered carefully after a moment, "I think she is wrong. Stefan is not in a position to say that publicly, but... I know he does not disagree. I think he will help me in this."

"I don't want to put you two in a bad way with the caravan and the family and all, but... I need to do this. Give her the choice, at least. Me of all people should know how important it is that she get that, after everything that's been done to her." She gave him a small smile. "Thanks. I fucked up and it's about time I did something about it, instead of whining."

"It seems a little enough thing to do", he reassured her. "I will send any letters you wish to Stefan, I think, so that he can pass them on."

"Thanks," she said again, before the pasta started boiling over and demanded her attention. "Shite." Turning down the heat a little she grabbed a fork and fished out a piece to taste test. Done. Carrying the pot to where the strainer was sitting in the sink, she continued: "What about you? What did you see with this whole vision thing? If you don't mind me asking?"

"Ah, I saw..." He almost evaded the question, but then decided it was past time he stopped. "I saw Mystique, in a corridor of the school, dressed in team leathers."

Nearly dropping the pot, Amanda turned to look at him> "You wot?" she said, lapsing into her old accent. "Mystique, in the school? In the bondage gear?" Shaking her head, she looked at him in concern. "You okay? After the other week..."

"It was something of a shock", he admitted quietly. "But I was not alone, and... I knew it was not real. That helped."

"Must have been a hell of a shock, seeing a villain wandering around the place like they owned it and all..." Amanda finished draining the pasta and reached up to the cupboards to get a couple of plates down. "She's that blue shapeshifting type, yeah? Forge mentioned about her."

"That would be her", Kurt agreed, voice carefully neutral. "And it was more... another thing that might have been, as you said. But never will be, I think."

"Well, not unless she turns out to be like Pete, going really deep undercover or something." Amanda gave him a curious look. "You seem a bit rattled - you're doing that whole really calm thing you do when you don't want people to know you're upset."

He laughed quietly, but not amused at all. "There are... things you do not yet know, to explain that. And perhaps, more than a little... I wish that what I had seen could be real."

Ah. Definite 'Don't go there' vibes. Amanda nodded and continued ladling food onto plates. "That seems to be the thing with some of these things," she agreed softly. "Wishing they could be real." She paused. "Tho' I don't think Jono on a horse is really one of those."

"Well, perhaps for some people", he observed, amused, then sobered again. "I will tell you, if you want to know. I am... trying not to keep so much to myself."

"Only if you really want to," she said, pausing in what she was doing. "I don't want you to think you have to spill your guts to me whenever... but it is good you're not bottling as much. I worry about you sometimes."

He nodded. "You said as much in the email. Thank you for that. Now I must just..." He made a vague gesture with his hands, trying to figure out how to tell Amanda the truth. "...have you ever seen a picture of Mystique?"

Amanda nodded. "On the journals, as part of that whole 'people to run the hell away from' security thing Lee had. Not that it makes a lot of difference when she can look like anyone, but yeah, blue skin, yellow ey--" She stopped, looking at Kurt. "Sort of a bit like you, actually."

She was quick, he'd always known that. "More than a little like me, yes. And there is a very good reason for that."

"Why am I thinking this isn't going to be because she saw your poster from the circus once and is a really big fan?" Amanda asked with a small amount of trepidation. Considering Nathan's last year, she wasn't really optimistic.

Kurt shook his head. "As far as anyone knows, that form is her true one. And... yes." He finally just got it ut. "She is my birth mother. I have it from Margali, who would know."

"Your mother? But she looks young enough to be... well, your sister, I suppose." Amanda shook her head. "Welcome to Xavier's, where coincidence likes to bite everyone's arses on a regular basis. You okay with this? Knowing who she is and all?"

"That may be due to her powers, in some way", he pointed out with a shrug. "And... I do not have much choice. She is who she is, and it is not as though it really changes very much."

To his surprise, Amanda barked out a short laugh. "You're not feeling guilty and blaming yourself for having a mum who's a bad guy? Wonders'll never cease," she teased. The food was getting cold so she nodded at the tiny table in the corner of the kitchen. "Have a seat and you can tell me all about it if you want."

Kurt nodded, sitting down and starting on the food. "It is... something that... another reason I must work hard. But I try not to feel guilty for the things she has done. Her actions are hers."

"Good." She couldn't have been any more emphatic if she'd been able to say the words in red pen and a highlighter. "After all the stuff Nate went through, I'd hate for you to be so stupid as to blame yourself for something you didn't have any control over."

Kurt looked up at her, expression almost wry. "Did Nathan talk to you, then?"

She shook her head, twirling pasta around her fork. "He said you weren't doing so well, but didn't say why." Giving him a look, she groaned. "Don't tell me you have been blaming yourself. Kurt, there is such a thing as taking the whole Catholic thing too far you know."

"Not for Mystique", he said hastily. "But... there was an incident with Marius, recently. He was hurt, and it was more or less directly because I lent him my powers."

"I heard about that." Jennie's description had been painfully vivid. She poked at her food with a little less appetite than before. "When you say 'more or less directly'... was it more or was it less? Could you have seen this coming at all?"

"Scott and Nathan say not. But I could not help thinking there should have been something..."

"Exactly what? You're not a pre-cog, Kurt. Hell, even Angie accepts there's stuff she can't possibly know, even with her powers." Amanda checked herself and tried another tack. "Let's change places for a minute. If you were me, and I was saying this sort of thing... what would you say?"

"Exactly what you and the others are saying to me", he admitted with a wry grin.

"See?" Amanda leaned her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her hand, gesturing with her fork in the other for emphasis. "Fuck knows I know about guilt, Kurt, but there's a limit you have to make as to what you can and can't feel responsible for. It's awful Marius got hurt, but by the sound of it it's like every other powers accident we've had at the school. It sucks and it's horrible, but it's no-one's fault. And if you try and take that on yourself, well, where do you stop? Do you blame yourself for Captain Fuckwad losing an eye, just 'cause you weren't there? For Nate getting his back broken at Youra? If someone says, yeah, it's your fault, then feel as guilty as you bloody well like." A brief, wry expression crossed her face. "But if you try and take the weight of the world on, you'll only crush yourself, and I've gotten to like you so I'd be sort of pissed off."

He blinked up at her at that, then smiled. "Was that an admission that Saint Kurt is not so irritating after all?"

She grinned at him. "Saint Kurt can drive me totally balmy sometimes. But my big brother Kurt? Him I've got plenty of time for."

"And if they are one and the same?"

"Then I'll just have to learn to live with it." Amanda shrugged, and pointed at Kurt's plate. "'S getting cold and you haven't been eating properly to look at you. Eat up." A wicked grin crossed her face. "Or I'll tell Moira on you."

Kurt laughed, settling down dutifully to eat. "Anything but that."