Kurt and Jeanne-Marie

[x-borealis.livejournal.com]

Jeanne-Marie prays for guidance regarding recent difficulties with her brother and gets company instead.



Guide me. Jeanne-Marie knelt upon the flat of a small section of roof, tense body poised in a posture of desperate praise. Despite everything, some part of her still held tenuously to her faith and such habits still came to the surface when her world seemed intent at coming apart at the seams. Jean-Paul had gone. Was still gone. And though he had promised it would be a short trip, she did not know when he would return and she did not understand the sudden need to tear from her side. The return of their original abilities should have been a good thing. Something to make them closer, not add a further degree of distance. Shouldn't it?

God seemed to have no opinion on the matter. No epiphanies, no imparted wisdom, only the same sinking feeling that had gripped her since her brother's departure and the distant sun beginning to rise against the cool morning air.

It might not be as good as imparted wisdom or epiphanies, but God had sent her some company. Tentatively, having been alerted by some small noise to her presence, Kurt poked his head above the edge of the roof where he'd just reached the top of the wall. "Oh. Good morning, Jeanne-Marie."

Light eyes jolted open upon the familiar voice and the dark form peeking at her from the roof's edge. Jeanne-Marie forced her fingers apart and dropped her hands and looked at him, attempting to discern if she had the energy or the will to force a disingenuous smile after a night spent almost entirely in flight and in thought. She did. "...Bonjour, Monsieur Sefton. You are up early. Is my brother rubbing off on this place?"

"Perhaps more that the place rubs off on some people here", he said lightly. "Although in my case, it is a habit of long standing. May I join you for a little while?"

"Perhaps," the Quebecois acknowledged with no particular commitment and a fleeting, half-hearted lightness that was soon quelled by Kurt's request. She had not expected company, but perhaps it was better than another period spent speaking to an aloof and voiceless deity. Or to herself. She shifted, moving further to one side to allow him more space to sit, "Certainly. Though I have my doubts about my worth as company at the moment."

"I would not force anything on you", he said quietly, noticing her hesitation, but started to pull himself up onto the roof anyway. "And a few moments to rest, sitting here, will be enough if you do not wish to talk."

"Non, I do not mind," Jeanne-Marie reassured him quietly after another brief consideration, "Unless you would prefer to catch your breath." She lifted a hand to guide her dark curls behind her ear. "What has you out and worn so early in the day?"

"I have breath enough for conversation", he assured her, then answered her question. "And I took my morning exercise in scaling the outer wall. I like to keep myself in form."

"Ah, oui." This was something she could understand immediately, a simple answer to a simple question among a collection of complexities that left her feeling somehow soothed. Grounded. "I have been working to get back into proper form again since my arrival. A disadvantage to leaving active duty, I suppose." And Jean-Paul enjoyed the significant difference in their top speeds far too much. She needed to catch up and-- Her thoughts sobered. There was no certainty in what their training might become once her brother returned and they began attempting to navigate powers that had been put to bed almost twenty years ago.

"You intend to return to active duty?" he asked, head tilted curiously. "Or do you just mean proper form for your own standards?"

Jeanne-Marie gave the man an unsteady look, as if she had never even considered such a notion, then shook her head. Her focus now was her brother and her recovery and that was enough. She had no place on Alpha Flight anymore. "My own standards." She forced herself to slip on a mask of faint amusement and added, "And my brother's standards. I do not like being the 'slowpoke'."

"Of course, you are a speedster too", he remembered, dropping the subject of team duty quite easily. "I am sure Jean-Paul would be happy to help you practise."

"He has been a dutiful coach. Though, our regimen will change when..." She hesitated as an uncertain if creep into her thoughts, then dismissed the absurd (if distressing) notion hastily, "...he returns."

"It will not be so long", he agreed. "What do you have in mind for your new regimen?"

The twin fought down an urge to question Kurt on this certainty and instead nodded wordlessly as he continued. She looked out toward the sun, still crawling gradually upward in the sky pale. Its light seemed to have little measure against theirs. "I do not know, but it must change. It is a matter of necessity."

"Because of this power set your brother mentioned, that he - and you? - must relearn?" Kurt asked gently. "It must be hard, readjusting so."

Jeanne-Marie nodded again and hesitated for along moment before finally finding her voice. "I did not think it would be," she admitted. "Once my head cleared from the initial manifestation, the fact that things had returned to what they were meant to be seemed...promising. An opportunity to set matters right after all this time. Perhaps even a blessing." An edge of some distant bitterness occupied the edge of her tone. She should know better than to use that word. "But it is not so to Jean-Paul."

"It was a shock to Jean-Paul, I would think", he noted quietly. "Perhaps he just needs a little time to come to terms with it, and then you can start to work forward."

"Bien sûr. To both of us." The Quebecois suppressed a frown and brushed back her hair once again before continuing, though the dark strands had not strayed from their pinned position behind her pointed ear. "Perhaps. We will work because we must, but I do not know that we will move forward. It is a rarity, regardless of our intentions." She hesitated and ventured after a moment, "...Do you have any siblings, Monsiuer Sefton?"

"I do." He smiled slightly. "Adopted, at any rate. One older brother and four younger sisters. My family is a little complex."

Complex or not, the man seemed happy to have them and the notion left Jeanne-Marie's features softened, but only in passing. "I suppose all families are, in their way." Her history with her own brother sounded like something from a poorly and savagely written soap opera. Long lost twins, love triangles, break downs. Worse things. She traced her fingers together slowly. "Do you ever worry that you do not, cannot, do right by them? That you are incapable of giving them what they need?"

"All the time. My brother and my sister Jimaine are a long way from here, both with heavy responsibilities, and... I fear sometimes that they would need me there but do not want to ask. As for the three of my sisters here in New York... well, the youngest is the only one I do not really worry about, and she is not yet seventeen."

"Do you...fear that you hurt them? And that you may only hurt them?" she pressed, more quietly.

"Sometimes", he said equally simply. "Certainly with my two oldest sisters. Marie and Amanda... they have both been through many things, and sometimes I fear trying to help them without being in their shoes may only hurt."

The twin looked at him for a long moment, then frowned and turned her pale eyes away again, back to the sun still making its slow progression upward. "It is...'complex', is it not? Always."

"Most things do seem to be", Kurt agreed ruefully. "All the more so, the older we get."

"Oui...though, that is not the insight I was hoping for," Jeanne-Marie replied slowly, a weak and joyless smile twitching at the edges of her lips before the dull humor in her dissipated.

"You were hoping for advice on how to make it simple?" He flashed a quick wry grin in turn. "That, I am afraid, I cannot offer."

"Not a simple answer," she corrected, "Just an answer. But it seems beyond the scope of man or deity to offer one. Not that I do not appreciate the effort."

"Then my answer would be... perhaps your presence is one of the things your brother needs, or will be when he returns. However it may seem that you are no help at all."

"That is not simple?" Jeanne-Marie chided, a faint but more genuinely rooted smile touching her expression and lingering there until her somber eyes lowered. "...I promised him I would not run again. I have no wish to and no intention to. Not unless I must. I want to be here with him."

"It is only simple if things between you are", he countered, then nodded. "I believe he missed you, before you came back here, and he did not turn you away then. I think he will not try to do so now."

"Non. He did not." The forgiveness that she had been so easily granted, once a relief, now left Jeanne-Marie vexed and unsettled. Was there anything he would not forgive, any transgression or need strong enough to allow him to cut her out of his life if it became a true necessity or would he continue to let her return and inflict injury after injury upon him until there was nothing left but scars? She recalled the mark she had left upon his neck and suppressed a shudder, speaking quietly, "Perhaps he is too kind to."

"Or perhaps he just loves you", Kurt said softly. "I have long believed, and said before, that there is nothing we cannot forgive those we love... if we want to."

"He does," the twin replied, voice maintaining its hushed quality. She did not trust herself to speak with any greater volume. "And I love him. Very much. But...what of those things that should not be forgiven?"

"Even those. Because 'should not be forgiven' is something that is often thought by those who have done those things and cannot forgive themselves. And as I told my sister Amanda once... that is when the forgiveness of others is needed - and deserved - most."

Jeanne-Marie shook her head, "For a man speaking of complexities, you offer many simple answers." Forgiveness was not without its merit, but there was nothing noble about devotion that would allow for a repeat of what had happened in Laval. Or worse. She could not find the words or the will to voice this weighted sentiment and the assurances she found herself silently listing, of her progress and her intentions, felt hollow.

She forced a thin, apologetic smile, "...I told you I would not be good company, non?"

"You did warn me", he agreed equably, "and I did not end the conversation. And now, the sun is up and I find myself hungry. Would you like some breakfast?"

The Quebecois could not help but look surprised, both by the abrupt shift of tone and topic and the fact that his simple comment seemed to make her famished. She was not certain when she had last eaten and now that her metabolism had been reminded of the fact, it was unlikely to let the matter lie. "...I would. I can cook, if you would like." The corners of her lips twitched faintly and she added, "Consider it penance."

"I was about to offer the same myself, but I have no doubt you are better at it." He smiled back. "Even if no penance is required."