LOG: [Kurt, Marius] Meetings

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After the events in San Francisco Kurt feels compelled to conclude a bit of unfinished business in the Medlab.




He moved through the medlab on bare feet - not that that was unusual, he often went barefoot, but this time the silence was welcome. He didn't want to wake anyone, after all... even if it seemed that the person he'd come to see was still awake, if the light in his room was an indication. Kurt moved forward and knocked on the door very quietly.

Marius knew Amelia's knock well. The Russian doctor knocked like the person behind the door owed her money and then showed herself in regardless of whether or not they answered. This wasn't her's, and it was too late for a volunteer. So, a visitor.

Why not?

Not even bothering to sit up, Marius called, "It's open."

Kurt pushed the door open with no further ceremony, padding still-quietly into the room. He paused not far from the doorway to take in the young man - the smaller respirator, which was at least some kind of improvement, but also the return to the wrinkled skin he'd had before his departure. "Hello, Marius."

"Oh. Mr. Wagner." There wasn't a trace of hostility in the tone, just flat statement. Orange eyes slipped to the blue-skinned man for a moment before sliding away again, back to the ceiling and the tiles he couldn't seem to stop counting. Eighty-three. "Evening," Marius continued, just as detached. "Or mornin', I guess it would be."

"Just into the morning, yes", Kurt agreed, moving further into the room and closing the door, before stepping to one side of the glass pane. He didn't want anyone to know he'd come down here if he could help it, for reasons he couldn't have explained. "I came... to see how you are, I suppose."

"Well enough." Marius' ungloved hand twitched slightly against his bare abdomen, the scarred flesh starkly pitted beneath the fluorescent lights. Gaze still fixed on the ceiling, unseeing, Marius said, "I ask you something?"

Kurt stiffened, yellow eyes watching him warily, but he nodded. "Of course. I will answer if I can."

"You're the one stopped me, right?"

"If you mean stopped you from attacking Marie, and... brought you down when you seemed dangerous, then... yes, I am."

"Thought so. Thank you for that." There had been no real need to ask. Marius remembered. Wild blows sliding off Marie. Sharp edges scouring Kurt's skin. Not having or wanting control, driven only by the urge to hurt.

And then the impact of concrete against his skull, over and over again, until, mercifully, it stopped.

Marius pulled his eyes away from the ceiling and met Kurt's, amber on yellow. "Next time just save everyone the trouble and kill me."

Kurt didn't flinch, didn't look away... but oh, how he wanted to. "You do not know what you are asking", was all he said, in a low voice. Three close calls, now, and still he'd never killed. But if there was a next time...

"No?" the boy said quietly. The image of the livid marks on Jennie's palms came back to him, bright and angry against corpse-white skin. Marius settled back against the stiff pillow of the cot, the moment of attention broken. "Just want to ask. How many people you let a rabid dog bite before you put it down?"

"You are not a dog, Marius", Kurt said sharply. "And you are not the first to have an incident with their powers that has driven them out of control. No one here is ready to give up on you, if they ever will be."

Marius' hands twitched again, almost imperceptibly. "Right," he said. "It's fine. Because I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

It just seems that's what I'm made for.

"At any rate," the boy said with an air of finality, "you shall be pleased to know that I am doing quite well thanks to Rahne's generous donations. I have been deemed no longer a threat to myself or others an' am to be released as soon as I feel ready to face the inevitable questioning of my peers regarding my abrupt return after so stealthy a departure, and consequently your concerns on my behalf are appreciated but entirely unnecessary. That all?"

Kurt studied him, yellow eyes unreadable, from his place near the wall. "I think we both know that your issue concerning bone marrow is not the only one you may be facing. But I am far from the person who should try forcing you to talk."

He could have yelled. He could have told Kurt what he was screaming in his head: that the physical inconveniences of his mutation were the farthest thing from his mind now. That he didn't give a shit about his skin or his lungs or his looks or even the damned deficiency anymore. And that at this very moment, as far as he was concerned, he owed explanations to exactly two people -- one of them upstairs and no longer speaking to him, and the other lying almost dead in a hospital in Monaco.

He could have. But instead the only thing Marius said was: "I meant it when I said 'thank you'."

"And you will understand", Kurt said flatly, "that I hope there never will be a next time. Because if there is, I cannot be sure I will not do what you ask." And then I will be damned in truth.

Marius shrugged, bare shoulders moving against the linen. "Wish I could promise there wouldn't, but it doesn't so much work like that, does it? Sort of the problem, really."

"Few things can be promised", Kurt agreed, voice hard. "But there are things that can be done to make it less likely."

Marius studied the teacher for a long moment, face impassive. Then he turned away. "In the matter of precautions taken, you'll have no cause to worry," he said softly. "So far as that goes."

"So far as that goes", Kurt echoed, watching the boy still. "And yet, somehow... I find I am not reassured."

Marius' head snapped back at Kurt, dreadlocks whirling. "An' what've I got that can reassure?" he demanded, voice shaking with barely-suppressed rage. "All I've been told since I bloody got here is it's not my fault I can't control it, it's just how my power is. Doesn't anyone get what bein' told a thing like that means? Doesn't anyone get that hurting people because you're built that way isn't all right?"

The boy's entire body trembled with anger, but it wasn't aimed at Kurt. Marius grit his teeth and said, calmer but just as bitterly, "I'm sorry if my lack of certainty offends you, but I'm done tryin'. Look what happened when I tried for a fix. Didn't work. All I did was drag two mates down with me." The sheets twisted under Marius' hands as he whispered, "I'm done."

It took Kurt a few moments to put the words together for any real answer to that, though his eyes were still... not so much calm as utterly blank as he looked at Marius. "Would you say, Marius, that causing a little pain to a willing volunteer once in a while is better or worse than feeding from a girl who is not capable of saying yes or no? Or than cracking a man's skull with a piece of concrete - or a brick - when he is not capable of stopping whatever he is doing to pose a threat?"

Marius met Kurt's stare, unblinking, as the respirator rasped. "So far as right an' what you did an' what I did goes," Marius said, "we're not even lookin' at a comparison."

"Why?" Kurt demanded bitterly. "Because you wanted to die - or wish now that you had - and they did not? Would that have made it any less my sin if I had killed you?"

"Don't know about that. Not much for theology." He turned to fix his eyes on the hinge of the door beside Kurt. "I think what I think because you were doin' what you had to. I was only doin' what I wanted to."

That got a faint sad smile. "We both had alternatives, if we had only stopped to think of them. And, I suppose, neither of us planned the way things turned out. Not that it is an easy thing to see."

"Yes, well. Unfortunately I was never much for thinkin', either." Too bad for Jennie and Manuel.

Kurt opened his mouth to answer... but at that moment, the door started to open as Dr. Voght came to check on Marius. The next moment, Marius was alone in the room except for a rapidly dispersing cloud of bluish smoke.

From the look on Amelia's face the dissipating wisps of smoke and telltale smell did not go unnoticed, but Marius said nothing and she didn't ask. Her bedside manner may have left something to be desired, but he did like her tendency to not ask obvious questions.

Now if only everyone else could be trusted to do the same.