Cecilia and Kurt

[x-reyes.livejournal.com]

Tuesday afternoon, Cecilia meets Kurt in the kitchen. Once she reminds herself that he's a mutant and not a demon, they actually get along rather well, and she learns a little about what initially brought Kurt to the mansion.



Kurt, true to his decision to get out and about the mansion a bit more, was wandering in the general direction of the kitchen, keeping an eye out for any of the recent arrivals he hadn't met yet. It surely couldn't be long before he ran into one of them.

Not long at all - especially not at lunch time. Already in the kitchen was Cecilia, seated at the table with a glass of juice and a granola bar held between her teeth, nibbling idly as she scanned a textbook held open in her lap.

Kurt arrived at the room and walked in - seeing her there, he headed over to the table, waiting for her to look up so as not to startle her.

Cecilia was dimly aware that someone had come in, but in the kitchen, it wasn't precisely an odd occurance. She continued with her reading for a moment before she realized whoever had come in was waiting nearby, and curiously, she lifted her head - and didn't really notice as she dropped her granola bar, blinking owlishly up at Kurt. Madre de Dios.. "...hello?" she said slowly, her voice slightly hoarse and wary.

He gave her a friendly smile - which, okay, fangs, maybe wasn't as reassuring as he'd hoped - and replied, "Hello. I am Kurt Wagner, a teacher here."

Hadn't Wanda mentioned him? With a slow nod, Cecilia drew in a deep breath before offering a sheepish smile. "Cecilia Reyes. I'm sorry about that, you.. startled me, a little." She paused. Where did her snack go? Blinking, she cast a quick look around before quickly scooping the dropped granola bar up out of her book and dusting crumbs from the pages. Oops.

Kurt nodded. "And I am sorry about that - I was trying not to." It wasn't the first time he'd had that reaction, but there seemed little point embarrassing her with it further, so he took her words at face value.

"It's not your fault," Cecilia said with a dismissive wave of a hand, looking back up and managing a much warmer smile. "If it's any consolation, I nearly fainted the first time I met Hank. I'm just not quite used to blue people yet." Especially not ones that reminded her she was raised Catholic.. but that was hardly Kurt's fault, either.

He shrugged lightly. "Physical mutations can be a shock, when you first encounter them. No offense taken, honestly."

She nodded, and couldn't help but look relieved. "Thanks for being so understanding," she smiled, then blinked as she remembered he'd been waiting there until she'd looked up in the first place. "Oh! Did you need something?"

"Not especially - as I said on the journals, I am trying to be more social than I have been recently, so I was looking for the people I have not yet met. And you were one of them."

"Fair enough," Cecilia nodded, casting a brief look down at her textbook. "Well.. if you don't mind if I'm splitting my attention between you and a bit of homework, you're welcome to pull up a seat and chat for a while."

He smiled, doing just that. "How are you finding life at the mansion?"

"Insane," Cecilia replied honestly, grinning wryly at him. "I have no idea why there aren't more people with ulcers in this place, honestly."

Kurt chuckled wryly in return. "It does seem that we never get much respite between crises. The trick is in taking full advantage of the peace when it comes."

"Respite? What respite?" Cecilia rolled her eyes in amusement, propping her chin up in a hand. "It's so.. odd, that people here don't seem to think it so unusual that crises are the norm."

He shrugged, a little sadly. "You come to get used to it, after a while. I have been here just over a year."

Cecilia made a thoughtful noise, nodding once. "I'm a little worried about what it says that it's that consistant an issue to get used to, but.. not much to be done, I suppose. Even if I think the arguement that you can't expect much else in a house full of mutants is ridiculous."

He considered his answer. "I am not sure it is so much "house full of mutants" as "house full of teenagers", at least some of the time. Of course, there are the incidents where someone's power goes awry and causes a crisis, but those are not too frequent." He grinned a little wryly. "The attacks on the mansion itself by outsiders seem to have stopped now, though the same is not true for all the residents."

"Blaming it on the people being mutants or teenagers is a bit silly," Cecilia shrugged, waving a hand towards the door. "Take that approach, and you could blame it on being New York." She paused a moment, thinking, and quieted her voice, for privacy's sake. "I'm fairly sure that if this were just a school, without a jet in the basement and the team who uses it? Things might be a little calmer around here."

"A little, perhaps", he agreed. "But the team has its place, I think. Almost all of us are also teachers, after all."

"The team does have its place," Cecilia agreed, before shrugging a shoulder. "I just don't know if the basement of a school is it. But, as it isn't something that's going to change.." She smiled wryly. "We work with it."

He returned the smile. "We do. The Professor feels that the two are compatible, and for the most part, it has worked out. Crises come and crises go, but we have always pulled through." The smile turned sad as he remembered his arrival at the school. "Even through the occasional losses..."

"They're hard to avoid sometimes," Cecilia admitted, eyeing Kurt's change in demeanor with a faintly concerned tilt of her head.

He noticed this, and decided he ought to explain. "The woman who came with Ororo to offer me a place at the school - Jean Grey - was killed shortly afterward, while on a rescue mission to retrieve some of the children from a man named Stryker who had kidnapped them. As I understand it, it was people who had worked for him who also kidnapped Wanda Maximoff. But I am getting off track. Jean was Scott's fiancee - I barely knew her, but she was a good woman."

"Hardly off-track," Cecilia blinked, lips twitching downwards into a small frown. Hank had covered a lot with her when she first arrived, but apparently, there were still things she didn't know. "I'm sorry to hear that."

He gave her another slight sad smile. "It was her choice - I think that made it a little easier, when the first shock passed - although for Scott, perhaps it was harder to know that. She was a telekinetic, and she placed herself in the path of a flood in order to hold it back while she also helped the jet to lift off out of danger. Once the jet was high enough, she let go."

Rather than give voice to her initial thought, which was to ask why she hadn't just done it from inside the jet, Cecilia simply smiled. "Lots of sacrifices made in this house," she said quietly. "And for it."

Kurt nodded. "I think most of us here would go to great lengths to protect the place and the people. It becomes like a second family, the longer you stay. Or the only family, for several of the children and a few of the staff."

"I can relate to that," Cecilia admitted, and it was her turn to offer a slightly sad smile. "I'm still working up to 'friends', though. Family comes after that. Maddie, though.. she's pretty close, now, I think."

Kurt nodded. "It is something that creeps up on you, in a way. I intended for a long time to go back to rejoin my family in Germany, but... it never happened permanently, in the end."

"Having somewhere just to visit is good, though," Cecilia murmured thoughtfully, casting a look towards the window. "I probably should, now that I think about it."

Kurt nodded in agreement. "It is... not entirely healthy to spend all your time in one place, even when you live and work there. Perhaps especially."

"Especially," Cecilia agreed, looking to Kurt again with another smile. "Madelyn gets me out of here once in a while, for a trip to Harry's or to just get a little air. It does help."

"Time out is a good thing", he answered placidly. "Do you have anywhere you can go if you should need more than a few hours, though?"

Cecilia had to think about that for a minute. "School," she answered lamely, though with an almost hopeful smile. "Library, or just.. out, if need be. But apart from that.. no, not really." She shrugged helplessly.

Kurt grinned slightly. "My foster mother likes to look after people. I am sure she would be happy to put you up for a week, if you needed it", he offered, only half-joking.

Cecilia blinked, giving Kurt a rather surprised look. "Are you serious?" People she barely knew didn't just offer to let her hide with their family for a week. It wasn't done.

He shrugged. "She always complains that she never gets to meet people from here. You are one of the people from here now."

"This is true," Cecilia allowed, propping her chin up in a hand. "Well.. I wouldn't be opposed to meeting her, finding out if it would work out if I ever needed to run away for a little while," she said after a moment, smiling slightly. "Thank you."

Kurt smiled back. "You're welcome. If she comes to visit, I will introduce you."