xp_logs | Kurt and Scott, Thursday night

Scott stops by to check on Kurt. It seems they're both having a crisis of faith.

Scott purposefully knocked on the door, "Kurt!" he called. "Open the door, I'm not going anywhere till you do." A clear note of worry was present in Scott's voice, ever since they had got back from Madripoor his normally jubilant friend had been morose; locking himself in his suite and refusing company. Scott could understand his pain, but he wasn't about to leave a friend to face his pain alone like that.

There was a lengthy silence, but the door did eventually open to reveal a worn-looking Kurt, Triscuit snuffling anxiously around his feet. "Hello, Scott. Do you want to come in?"

"Please," Scott replied with a nod. He knelt down just inside the door to let Triscuit sniff his fingers and scratched his back. "You look, well you look terrible Kurt."

"Thank you", was the dry response. "Although I cannot really say you are wrong."

Straightening up Scott looked around the suite, at least Kurt didn't appear to be slobbing out on his couch he noted as he went to sit down. "So, do you want to talk about it?"

"Not particularly", Kurt said honestly. "But I suppose I should. If I can work out how to start."

"That is always the hard part," Scott agreed, "but Madripoor seems like as good a place as any to start."

"Madripoor", he said wearily, "did come as a shock. Not quite the simple pick-up of a new manifestation I was expecting."

"That any of us were expecting," Scott pointed out, "But how could we even plan for something like that? Seems to me our information and planning has been more than a little off recently." Scott noted sadly.

"We did have very little time for information gathering in this case." His voice was flat and bone-tired, reciting strained justifications without being convinced by them himself. "And as for Genosha, even X-Force were taken by surprise."

"That's not really an excuse," Scott noted, worried by the tiredness in his friend's voice. "We should have known more, better. We have the most powerful telepaths in the world here. How could we miss something like that?" Scott wasn't sure if he was talking about Genosha or Madripoor, or even if the question was rhetoric or not.

Kurt shrugged slightly. "Even telepaths are human, and Professor Xavier... has not been quite his old self lately. All we can do is take what comes and move forward."

"Including Rachel's miraculous resurrection?" Scott asked, taking a guess at the source of Kurt's pain.

He smiled wryly at that. "If only it was. But she is not our Rachel, and in her world it seems our counterparts have failed almost entirely."

"We're still fighting though, well some of us are still fighting." He was dead...Scott wasn't quite sure how to deal with that. He knew it wasn't him but another version of himself, but it was still shocking. "We never gave up, that's something."

"Perhaps. I am just not sure what kind of something."

Kurt's observation stopped Scott short. "Me neither", he admitted."Perhaps a sign that we're just too stubborn to give up."

"Something like that." He offered another of those unamused smiles. "And what it has done to this girl... the Rachel I knew was such a bright shining little soul, and if the worlds diverged after Genosha, this Rachel was too, once. Now look at her."

"In a way she's what we made her Kurt, the same as us," Scott pointed out, "a soldier. What would we be if we had grown up in a world of war. Her spark is still there, it's just seen too much now. I think perhaps we all have."

"What we made her!" Kurt repeated fiercely. "Exactly. And while it is not so extreme as hers, ours is still a world at war, and what are we making of our children? Two of them killed in Genosha out of necessity, others saw it done, and we are supposed to be protecting them, Scott. I do not know if I have it in me to take any more of them out there with us."

Try as he might, Scott couldn't disagree with Kurt, he didn't even try to, he agreed with his friend. "We've all seen too much blood, shed too much blood", he agreed. But how do we change it, Kurt? Tell me that. If I could I'd take all the students, every mutant I could onto an island or somewhere else safe. But where is 'safe' now? We could find somewhere, draw our line in the sand and say we're here and we're not going anywhere. We could use our powers as a threat, use them to make people leave the kids alone. But then what? While we're alive, while we're able, we stand as protectors. But what happens when we get too old or die? Our students will have to step up and protect the next generation."

Scott shook his head sadly, "Xavier's dream has failed, humanity doesn't want integration with us. At least not yet, but whatever else we do turns the kids into soldiers. And we've shed too much blood, seen too much blood flow to want that for them. But the world doesn't stop, and people don't care about the innocence of the young and I...we can't protect them from that. We failed them too." He looked up at Kurt sadly, "Are you leaving us, Kurt?"

"No", Kurt said after a moment. "There is nowhere I could go except back to my brother, and I think... the day Stryker took me to be his weapon, that way was closed. Not by Stefan, he would never do that, but that world is only a place I can visit now, once in a while. I will stay, but I do not know what I will do."

"You and me both," Scott muttered softly to himself. "It was before that I think, the day we manifested, became different from the norm our lives changed. We'd never have been able to live normal lives. Even if we had been able to hide away from the world could you? With everything that you've seen, everything going on we have the power to do something and neither of us are capable of sitting back and letting it happen."

"I never manifested in the way you mean, my friend", Kurt reminded him. "The powers came in their time, of course, but I was born very different from the norm, and the parents who loved me did hide me away from the world as long as they could... but I have known since I was twelve years old what humanity can be. On both ends of the spectrum, and you are right. Even then, I could not stand back and watch."

"And neither can the kids," Scott pointed out tiredly, "they believe in equality and hate injustice just as much as we did at that age, or even now. By bringing them here and exposing them to all this are we forcing their hands, setting their path for them. Just like Charles did to us."

"Ah, but the world is full of injustice", Kurt noted sadly. "More than can ever be set right. This is a world where my sister and my lover kill people and I cannot in good conscience say they are wrong to do it. And my mother... I will never join her, her methods disgust me, but I do understand her. How many of our students came to us with their lives already damaged, if not ruined, by what they are?"

"Too many," Scott noted, "Do you ever wonder if we're doing the right thing fighting for integration? Through our blood and sweat we're trying to force integration on a hostile world. And it leaves us, the kids and our families all vulnerable. I don't agree with his methodology, but is Magneto right? Can we co-exist peacefully with humanity?"

"It is so hard to separate his methodology from his ideas, as the supremacy he wants could only come by oppression." Kurt shook his head. "One way or another, there must be some kind of peace, but we may be in for a long and painful wait."

"I don't know Kurt, is there going to be a peace? It doesn't feel like there is any peace on the horizon." Scott admitted. "Magneto was wrong, there is no doubt of that; genocide is never the answer. But is Xavier's dream any better?"

"You know it is better", Kurt said instantly. "But I know what you mean is, is it more workable, and that I do not know. But we have already given so much for it, can any of us turn away now with no alternative in sight? I just fear for what more will happen to our children. My own son does not remember me because of the struggle, and then Genosha... I fear more of them will turn out like Rachel and there is nothing we can do to protect them now."

"You're right, it's a better dream, but I'm scared it's just that, a dream. We've all given so much of our adult lives to this place, we've shed blood and limbs to protect the school and everything it stands for. But in all this time, what's changed? None of us want to lose another child like Rachel, or see a kid like Sooraya struggle with taking a life and losing their innocence. How much do we have to give up; how much do they have to feed this place before it's finally satisfied?" He smiled wryly at Kurt, "Although it sounds like you have your answer, we'll keep doing what we're doing because we can do nothing else."

"And we will hope that everything we do changes one little thing, somewhere", Kurt said with a wry smile in return. "Perhaps if we keep chipping away, things will change in the long run. After all, mutants continue to be born every day and nothing those who hate us can do will change that."

"Maybe," Scott agreed, "It's something to hold onto at the very least."

"For myself, what I hold onto is that Friends of Humanity wife and her son. I changed her mind, though I think she was not a fervent believer in the first place, but if I could persuade her and she then went on to influence her husband..."

"Changing the world one person at a time?" Scott asked with a smile. "Individuals have never been the problem though, the majority of people don't really care one way or the other, it's the organizations and key individuals who whip the mob up into a frenzy and unleash them. We can try changing people's minds one at a time but I'm afraid that it just won't be enough," Scott admitted.

"Those key individuals will not live forever", Kurt said with a shrug. "It may be a thin hope, but the only thing we can do is keep at it and try to make those on our side outnumber those who are not."

"Individuals may die but the institution lives on," Scott pointed out. "Perhaps we can get the majority of the population on our side, stop the hate and persecution one day. But they're not ready for it, not yet."

"One day is all we have, and the fact that hate and persecution is not all there is. You know that your isolation idea would not really work either, there would always be those wanting to break it down. So the Professor's dream is really the best game in town."

Scott nodded slowly, "I know isolation wouldn't work, where would we get our food or infrastructure? But I'm just not sure anymore, Kurt, Charles may have the only game in town we can support, but the best?" he shook his head. "I don't know about that, he certainly has the best dream."

"Best, only, it comes to the same in the end." Kurt shrugged again. "Genosha hurt him as badly as it did the rest of us. I would not want to see him lose the will to carry on, but I find I am tired, these days, and I like being a teacher better than a fighter."

"In a perfect world we could all be teachers and forget about fighting, my friend," Scott replied. "Sadly, I don't think the world is willing to let us go that easily; hopefully our sacrifice means our children can choose what they have to do."

"Hopefully", he said simply. "But for right now, I think we both need a drink."

"Now that sounds like a good idea," Scott agreed.