Transit Lounge - Berlin and Surprises

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Completely without planning on it, Wanda and Amanda find each other in the Berlin airport.


Grumbling to herself, Wanda dropped her beloved and much abused leather satchel on the floor of the ladies room.  The one upside to having her flight delayed due to inclement weather was that she had the chance to change into a fresh shirt in one of the stalls and make use of the sinks to wash some of the travel off of her.  She'd been country hopping ever since she'd started her vacation, a fast and furious pace that had suited her needs perfectly, especially after the slow recovery from her illness.

Still, she thought as she wrestled a new shirt over her head, a pause would be good.  Even if it was in an airport terminal.

It was ironic, Amanda thought as she pushed the door of the bathroom open, narrowly avoiding taking out a skinny teenage girl who glared at her. Two teleporters in the family and neither of them could get them back home any faster. They'd been stuck for hours now and enforced time with Cammie was definitely getting on Amanda's nerves. She sighed as she found an empty cubicle and sat down, listening to the sound of someone getting changed in the cubicle next to her. Someone who was definitely too tall and too long-limbed for the tiny space. Ah, people. You had to laugh at them or you'd start slaughtering them by the hundreds.

Her shirt was backwards.  Wanda glared down at the tag sticking out and then at the stall around her before tucking her arms in and trying to shift it back around.  Elbow met wall and she hissed out a yelp of pain followed by a curse before diving out of the stall, fully determined to fix her shirt where she had room to breathe, let alone move.

Amanda barely repressed a snort of laughter at the thump that signalled her neighbour's elbow hitting the stall. She finished up and left her own cubicle, determined not to meet the eyes of her fellow traveller lest she actually burst out laughing. The woman having a shirt semi-stuck over her head made it easier and the blonde moved to the sink to wash her hands, avoiding the flailing only barely.

With only a minimum of ripping, and with the knowledge that the restroom had at least one other person, Wanda sighed in relief as her head finally popped through the correct hole with the shirt on the right way. "You'd think I'd know how to dress ... "  In the mirror, her eyes widened as she got a good look at person at the sinks. "<i>Amanda</i>?!"

"Wah!" Amanda started, splashing water all over herself. She wasn't going to win prizes for observation this time. "Bloody fucking... Wanda? What the hell are you doing here?"

With half a mind to clutch at her heart because she'd been just as startled to see the blonde witch as she was to be seen, Wanda shook her head in amazement.  "In the midst of traveling," she responded.  "I was trying to transfer flights but anything even remotely connected with New York City is unable to budge.  I was supposed to be heading back but now I am trying to see if I should hop to another country while I wait for the chaos to die down."  She took in Amanda and smiled.  "Trying to get home, I suppose?"

Grabbing some paper towels to start wiping the water off her front, Amanda shrugged. "Pretty much, yeah. We did the family thing for Christmas and now we're waiting for New York to clear up." She gave Wanda a careful once-over, looking for signs of fatigue or illness. "You're not overdoing it, are you?"

"I have been good, I can promise you that," she responded, stepping up to another sink so she could wash her hands and face.  "I spent Christmas in one place and have been resting accordingly. The last thing I want is a relapse - the worst part of being ill or injured is the sheer inactivity."  She shuddered.

"Well, I could be nice and not say 'I told you so', but I've been stuck in this airport for hours, so, nope, not gunna be nice." Amanda stuck her tongue out at her boss. "So, you'll listen next time I tell you putting pickles on your hot dogs doesn't count as eating your veggies?"

Wanda winced a little bit.  "I think after the illness - yes, pickles no longer count as my main vegetable of the day, I promise.  I never actually think about food but I suppose I am going to have to start."

She grabbed a handful of paper towels and started to dry off, careful to not drip water onto her shirt.  "Food is fuel but I need to expand my thinking, I think."

"Well, it might be fuel, but you can't get away with putting crude oil in your tank instead of unleaded," Amanda pointed out, although the metaphor was likely to go right over Wanda's head, being a non-driver. "C'mon, you can help distract me from strangling Cammie."

"Cammie's here?" Wanda asked, looking surprised as she started to gather up her satchel.  "I know Kurt is fond of her but..."  She grinned at Amanda, knowing full well what the other woman thought.  "How did that come about?"

"You know Kurt - has to adopt every homeless waif he finds and take them home for the family holidays." Amanda scrunched up her face rather expressively. "I wouldn't mind so much if he didn't insist on picking the ones who break into people's houses in the middle of the night, breaking their noses."

Wanda decided it was probably ... prudent to not bring up the fact that someone had once turned Jake into a frog.  She had been unpleased about the incident as Amanda but had long ago had to stop worrying about Jake's choice of friends.  She skirted ulcers enough on her own.  "Kurt and his heart of gold," she mused instead, looking both amused and wistful at the same time.  It had been one of the big reasons she had ended things with Kurt, far too aware that he would certainly feel something more than she ever could.

"Heart of gold and a head of straw sometimes to match," Amanda admitted wryly. "At least when it comes to picking his friends. Still, if he'd been sensible he'd have had nothing else to do with me after Selene, so I s'pose I can't argue too much." She looked up at her mentor. "I just worry, you know? That the business with Mystique... he's vulnerable to people taking advantage and I don't want him - or Meggan and the rest of the family - getting hurt 'cause of it."

“Can’t say I blame you for worrying,” Wanda agreed, laying an arm across Amanda’s shoulders.  “Kurt was exactly the kind of person Pietro and I would play our sob story before making off with his wallet.  But I think it helps that he has a number of highly skilled, irritable women with steel toed boots on hand to make sure the next person who tries to take advantage quickly regrets it.  I would hate to see someone attempt to make a move against your family, my dear, simply because I know exactly how it would end for that person.”

"With lots of screaming and begging," Amanda agreed. "All right, I think I'm ready to face the masses out there again. Wanna go drag my relatives to a bar so we can get good and plastered while we're waiting?"

“Stuck in an airport with a million other cranky people?  You could not drag me, kicking or screaming, away from the nearest pint if your life depended on it.”