Kurt and Amanda, in the gym

[x-bamf.livejournal.com]

Amanda hunts Kurt down to ask a few questions about Marius, then tries to make him stop brooding.


Kurt had never found any activity that was better suited to meditation than trapeze work. Even sitting in the garden or the greenhouse, as peaceful as they were, didn't quite compare. He'd been spending increasing amounts of time down there, lately, trying to clear his mind as he worked.

The gym had never been one of the places Amanda frequented as a student, and she'd needed to get directions from one of the other students, having forgotten where it was. Opening the door quietly, she caught her breath at the sight of Kurt leaping and swinging from bar to bar, almost seeming to fly. There was something completely unfettered about his movements and she didn't need empathy to know it was something he loved to do. Pity to interrupt it, but she needed to talk to him, following what she'd been told by Forge about Marius' powers accident. Clearing her throat politely, she waited for him to notice her.

He caught sight of her as he swung round, and immediately headed for the nearest rest-bar, hanging upside down for a few moments. "Hello, Amanda."

"Hey, Kurt," she replied, smiling up at him despite herself. Kurt always seemed as at home upside-down as right-way-up. "You got a minute? I need to talk to you about some stuff."

"Of course", he answered with a smile, righting himself to sit on the bar. "What can I help with?"

"Um, you might want to come down. Save me straining my neck and all," she suggested, stalling a little as she tried to think of a way to start this - word from Moira was that Kurt had taken Marius' accident personally. "Shouldn't take long."

He nodded, teleporting to her side with barely a blink. "Would you like to go somewhere else? Or sit up there?"

She blinked at him, and then looked down at her clothes - t-shirt, jeans, leather jacket and Docs. Nothing that couldn't stand a bit of bamf-smell. "Why not?" she said with a grin. "Always wondered what the view was like from your little world up there."

"Then you shall see it", he said, pleased. "Though even this room cannot compare with a big top."

"I'm sure it can't," she replied, hesitating only a little before slipping her arms around his shoulders for him to teleport her up. "But 's still a lot more than I've had a chance to do."

The next moment, they were sitting on the beam, looking out over the room. "Perhaps that might still be changed, even if it is not the family circus", he suggested.

Amanda sucked in a breath, grabbing the rail beside her and looking down between her feet cautiously. Long way down. But Kurt's arm around her waist was strong and reassuring. "Me in a spangly costume swinging around like you? That's almost as funny as Angie's vision of me as a stewardess," she said with a nervous giggle.

"Not necessarily to go that far", he said with a quietly amused smile. "But to sit on the beam, and see what I see from that height..."

"One day, maybe." Swinging her feet a little, Amanda considered her starting point. At least up here he'd have her safety to distract him from the guilt tripping. She hoped. "I'm actually here on business," she said, looking over at him. "The X geezer asked us to look into a couple of missing students. So I've been here asking questions."


"...missing students", he said slowly, expression unreadable. "They have brought you in to help find Marius and Jennie, then?"

She nodded. "Made sense. You've got connections with a bunch of people who look for people on a regular basis, might as well use the resource." Looking down at the floor again, she continued: "Sarah and I've been chatting to their friends, teachers, trying to get an idea of what mental state they were in before they left, who heard from them last, that sort of thing. I know you were on Marius' list of donors... did you talk to him before he left?" Her tone was matter-of-fact, certainly not holding any accusation or implication.

"Not for some time", Kurt said quietly. "He did not want to see many people, I think. And he left of his own accord, I think because he did not want to be seen as a patient."

It fit with what his friends had said. "Did he seem angry at all, do you know? Resentful? Like the school had let him down?" She asked because it was particularly close to home - she had a sneaking suspicion that was why Remy had wanted her to go to the school. To eliminate the possibility Marius had taken a better offer from say... the Hellfire Club. It wouldn't be the first time.


"Not that I ever knew of", he replied, frowning. "If he was angry at all, it seemed more with his mutation and what it had done to him. But he was... quiet, in the last days before he left the school. Understandably, of course."

"'S always the quiet ones," Amanda said with a frown. The more she heard about Marius, the more she was struck by the similarities. "He and Jennie were mates, weren't they? Do you think maybe they planned to meet up whilst Jennie was on her hols?"

"It is possible. I suppose. But if they did, Jennie did not mention it anywhere that I could read."

"Well, with the whole coincidence thing with this place, they could have run into each other, I suppose. And Jennie's powers involve luck." She gave him a brief smile, intended to lighten the mood. "Maybe they've run off together and have a love nest in the Alps somewhere."

Kurt managed a chuckle, though his eyes were still troubled. "Maybe they have. Perhaps we should be expecting a postcard any day now." But he didn't really think so.

"They'll turn up." Amanda was sure about that. "Probably with stories about partying their way across Europe." She gave Kurt a Look. "Tell me you're not feeling guilty about this. Because if you are, I'd have to poke you and then you'd bamf away and I'd be stuck up here."


"I think you have been talking to people, little sister", he answered, would-be lightly and in a complete evasion of the question.

"And I think I know my big brother well enough by now to get that much," she replied, grinning but a certain determined glint in her eyes. "So, is that poking needed? Are you guilting yourself because a student refused to talk about their problems and didn't stick around long enough for the school to help?"

"No", he answered reasonably. "I am feeling somewhat responsible because that student's problems came of my intervening in a much lesser one, and one that others could have helped with at the time. And because it seems I did not do enough before he left us at least to keep him from vanishing."

"Being one of his donors, you mean? Kurt, Moira cleared you to do that. No-one could have known what would happen, or they wouldn't have let you do it in the first place. And you wouldn't have done it if you'd known." That was said emphatically. "As for Marius vanishing... you said it yourself, he wasn't talking beforehand. According to the people I've talked to, that was a pretty universal thing - whatever he was going through, he kept it to himself and gave everyone the happy go lucky Aussie bloke attitude. Never mind what was actually going on - believe me, I've been there and done that. I stopped believing anyone could help me so I stopped letting them try, and we both know where that ended up. And no-one was to blame but me. Marius might not have made a deal with a psychic vampire, but he was the one who pretended everything was fine and then took off. Beyond having the X geezer rip it out of his brain, if he didn't want to talk, there was no way any of you could have known what he was going to do."

Kurt blinked at her through this tirade, then smiled very faintly. "Perhaps not. And it is true he is no longer a student in our care. But it does seem as though he is in trouble, and even now we can do very little."

"Then we do what we can, even if it is a little." She gave him a slightly-embarrassed look - apparently she was still capable of teenage dramatics. "Fuck, I'm annoyed at myself 'cause I can't get a simple location spell to work. But getting down on myself isn't going to help with that." This time she did poke him gently. "I know you have this whole brooding thing down pat, but this time? Really not your fault."

He didn't teleport away, only shifting very slightly away from the poke. "Do you have anything that will help you to find them?"

"Besides contacts, threats and a good old-fashioned paper trail?" Amanda chuckled. "These are kids we're talking here, Kurt. To their credit, one with luck powers on her side and one with - up until recently - wads of cash in the middle of Europe. But they've got the trenchcoat brigade on their trail now - Remy might be an arsehole sometimes, but he's bloody good at what he does. We'll find them sooner or later." She winked at him. "In that love nest I mentioned, I bet."

"We can hope so", he said with a nod. It was the best of all the available options, after all.