Kurt and Yvette - Apples

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On Thursday evening, Kurt goes to visit Yvette and they have a long chat about family and being different.



Kurt didn't often come down to the student floor, but there were sometimes exceptions. Like visiting a certain small red girl who had never been thanked for leaving him gifts while he was in the infirmary. He stopped at the right door - he hoped - and knocked.

"Please to be coming in?" came the answer, Yvette's Slavic accent easily identifiable. As Kurt opened the door, she peeked over the back of the couch, where she'd been sitting, reading one of her new books she'd received as a Christmas gift from Laurie. At the sight of Kurt, she beamed, the expression still new on her formerly-stiff face, and her electric blue eyes glowed. "Hello, Mr. Sefton!" she chirped, pleased to see him well again.

He smiled right back at her, not missing the progress she'd made with her mutation, and made his way into the room. "Hello, Yvette. I thought I would come to see you, and thank you for the apples."

She ducked her head shyly. "You are being welcome, Mr. Sefton," she replied, a little bashful. "I am being glad to be seeing you are better now." Casting a shy glance at him, she tilted her head as something caught her eye. "You are being very better, yes?"

He chuckled slightly, moving round to join her on the couch. "Yes, I am very better. I cannot tell you very much, but... you might call it a miracle."

He looked well, certainly. He also looked somewhat... fuzzy? Yvette was already kneeling from when she had peered over the back of the couch; now she leaned forward, peering at him. Then she remembered her manners and jerked back, feeling rude. "I am being sorry, I am... how you say? intrude? But I am thinking this is being a very big miracle for you."

He smiled at her reassuringly. "You are not intruding, Yvette. There is no harm in only looking closer. And yes... I do not think there could be many bigger, that would not be miracles in the true sense of the word. But this is enough of one for me, as I would rather not need another."

She nodded rather vehemently at that. "Being hurt is the bad thing, yes. I am glad, that you are liking the apples. When I am feeling bad, they are making me feel better."

Kurt tilted his head curiously. "I like apples very much. But why do they make you feel specially better? If not just that they are good for you."

"When I am being the little girl, back in the camp where they are looking after my mother and me, food is being... not fresh? In the packages, for the aid. It is being good for the body, but it is not always tasting good. But sometimes, we are getting fresh food, the fruits and vegetables. They are being hard to be getting, but sometimes we are lucky." Her voice grew a little distant. "There is the doctor, who is being looking after us. He is saying I am needing
to be eating more because I am being so small. So he is giving me the apples." She smiled a little softly. "When I am eating them, I am remembering him, and how good they are being when it is being so long since the last one."

Kurt listened to the story in silence, then smiled down at her. "It is a good thing to remember, even here where you can have all the apples you want. And he sounds like a good man."

"He was." She sounded a little wistful. "He is being the France-man, and he is giving me my name when Mama is asking him to. When we are finding there is the family in Kosovo, we are leaving the camp and going away. I am not seeing him again." Then she smiled again. "But I am trying to be like him, with the small things. Like apples."

"And I think you are doing very well", he told her firmly, then paused. "I do not suppose you remember his name?"

She shook her head. "He is being called Dr. Marcel, but I am never knowing his last name. He is working for Medicans Sans Frontiers, a long time ago, when I was being the very little girl," she added with all the dignity of her fourteen years.

A first name, and the fact of who he'd worked for, as well as where and at least roughly when. That might just be enough to track him down. Kurt smiled and changed the subject. "So it is your first day of classes on Monday, yes?"

"Yes." There was an enthusiastic nod. "I am being looking forward at going to the school again. I am being very boring when everyone is in the classes."

"Bored", he corrected with a chuckle. "I do not think you will ever be boring, Yvette. And I hope you will enjoy the classes as much when you are in them."

"I am liking the school," she said, smiling a little in return at Kurt's laugh. He had a nice laugh, she decided. "And when I am being better with the English, I will be learning the German from you, yes?"

"As soon as you feel ready, we can start on that", he promised. "And perhaps even a little of my first language, too."

"The Romani, yes?" She remembered their conversation in the greenhouse. "I would be liking that, I think." She paused, and then asked, a little hesitantly. "Your family, the Roma... can I be asking about them? It is seeming very interesting to me, but perhaps this is, how you say... forward? To be being rude to ask?"

Kurt hesitated... but then, what could it hurt to answer a few of her questions? She only wanted to know more. "It is not rude, or forward. Of course you can ask."

"I am seeing, on the journals, that you are having the sister here also. But she is being very... different to you." Yvette was delicately polite about the rather brash witch she'd seen in the journals. "Your family, when you are being changing... are they being good to you? I am hearing from the other students that sometimes it is being dangerous to be a mutant, when you are looking different. Sometimes the family is not being so good, like Tommy."

"My sister was not raised with me", Kurt told her by way of explanation of the obvious differences, though some of them were just Amanda. "And as for the other... I never changed. Some mutants - not many, but some - are born physically different. I was one of those."

She blinked, eyes glowing brighter. "Your family is being very good, then, to be not afraid." Then she realised what she'd said, and hastened to add: "Not because you are being scary, Mr. Sefton. But you are being different, like me. It is being hard to be accepting, when you are not ready." She gave him a small, wry smile. "Like when I am being waking up in the hospital place downstairs. I am not expecting to be like this at all, and I am being frightened."

Kurt nodded. "Yes, they are very good people. Especially since... I was not born to them, but adopted. It is something I can... sympathise with, to have changed that way, but it is not something I know. The closest I have is when my powers manifested."

"You are being adopted?" Yvette filed that away with 'sister not raised with me'. It seemed Kurt's family might be as odd as her own. "I am being getting used to it," she said, with a small gesture as if to brush it away. "And being at the school is being good for that."

Kurt nodded again, in agreement. "Yes, the school is good for many things. Not least as a refuge for those who look different, where it is not considered a bad thing, as it sometimes is outside."

"Angel is being asking me to come with her to her birthday, in the town," Yvette confided. "But I am being nervous that I will be making trouble for her party. I cannot be hiding what I am being."

Kurt considered this carefully. "Some parts of town are better than others - but I am sure Angel will choose well. And you will not be alone. I think you should go."

She took his suggestion as seriously as he had given it, small pointed face solemn. "I am not wanting to be afraid," she said at last. "And you are being right - there are people to be looking after me." Reaching over, she patted his hand carefully. "It is being hard, being the Piglet. But even Piglets can be brave."

"Someday", he said with a faint smile, "I would very much like you to meet my brother Stefan. I was the small boy who looked different, when we were children, and he was the one who looked after me. I think you would get on well."

"If he is being like you," she sad with a smile. "I am very much wanting to meet him too."