(no subject)
(As a matter of fact, I’d been doing plenty - rendezvousing with the Shi’ar Empire, tracking vagrant Morlocks through the sewers - not exactly tea-and-crumpet work, you see.)
Scott had plenty to say about my wanting to be useful. I’d taken to reciting the 23rd Psalm whenever I had to be alone with him. Or just in close proximity. Or even on the phone. He’d begun a vendetta against Herr Professor and anyone who sided with him even marginally, and I was a recurring problem. I had a marred history, too - it had been less than a year since the Montana Incident, as we’d taken to calling it, and he still hadn’t forgiven me for my negligence in properly reporting our previous encounters with the Church of Humanity.
So when he leaned forward in his brown leather swivel chair, threaded his fingers and zeroed in on my face through his ruby quartz glasses, I sent up a prayer for patience and waited for the onslaught that was sure to come.
“Actually, Kurt, I do have an assignment for you.”
That was it? No lecture? No scoffing, no derisive snort, no “I’m sorry, Kurt, but I really don’t think you can be trusted with that”? I pried my eyes open and squinted at his face. As usual, his expression was unreadable. (The dark glasses didn’t help, and he was sitting against the window, backlit by the sunshine.)
I decided to tread with caution. “Ach, das ist wunderbar! And may I ask, what are the details?”
“Well, as you’re aware, Sean Cassidy did leave behind a will, and as of yet we haven’t had the time to see it carried out. Someone needs to organize his belongings and give Theresa the official documents citing her inheritance of the Keep.”
I stared at him in a kind of hazy shock. I think I was still smiling, but it was only a reflex. Scott looked back at me indifferently. My eyes were drawn to the photos of Jean and Emma side-by-side on the desk.
“Oh,” I said.
“Do you feel up to making a flight to Ireland? I can delegate this assignment to someone else. It’s not necessary that you take it.”
He was offering me a way out. His voice had softened too. I wondered if he felt bad for reminding me about the death of a close friend. Frustrated, I raked a hand through my hair and flashed him a grin.
“I’d love to go,” I assured him. “I would,” I added as he raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Sean’s will should be fulfilled, and Theresa shouldn’t be kept waiting.”
“I thought the mission should be appointed to one of Sean’s old teammates, since he was closest with us and we were hit the hardest by his death. You’re the obvious choice merely because I can’t spare anyone else at the moment.”
“You don’t have to explain.” I stood up to leave. “I’m happy to do it, mein freund. I have thought I would like to return to that place and pay my respects. I can only thank you for the opportunity.”
“Okay,” he said, already losing interest in me as he rifled through a fat manila envelope.
I lingered in front of the desk for a moment, rocking on the balls of my feet.
“Kurt?”
“Scott, do you - do you happen to have any idea when my team will be functional again?”
He removed a packet of papers from the envelope. Taking up an ebony fountain pen, he started to sign and initial the bottom of each page. There were at least thirty. “Your team will reassemble when I’ve drawn up a new roster. We can’t have a team with only two people.”
“Can you not reassign James and me elsewhere?”
“Rogue’s team is a no-go,” he answered without looking up. “Besides, I’m not sure what would be more of an issue, your non-relationship with Mystique or Warpath’s temper.”
This was the team with Sabretooth he was talking about, and he was concerned about James. “I can’t speak for James, but as for me, Scott, I would be willing to work here at the Institute. In any way you need, of course, though I -”
“You can’t be a teacher,” he broke in sharply.
My mouth clamped shut.
“We have less than thirty students,” he went on with a note of impatience. “And all the teachers we need. Furthermore, it’s the middle of February - not the time to introduce new classes. You can’t just jump in either; teaching requires training.”
“But we’ve never exactly run this places according to conventions,” I protested.
“Point, but frankly, it’s unprofessional. We want to attract more students, not scare them away. Would you trust this place if the first thing I said to you when you walked in was, ‘Welcome to our school, where our staff is just as uneducated and inexperienced as your children’?”
Well. Now I was reputedly a terrible leader and uneducated.
“I’ve taken enough college-level courses to know how to teach something, Scott. I could sub, and prepare for next year -”
“By next year your team will be online again. The roster is in development. I’ve told you that.”
“Why is it that every time I ask -”
“Because you ask nearly every day, and the answer never changes,” he snapped. “I’ll inform you when you’re needed. In the meantime, you’ve got a job to do. I have a lot of work, so I’ll let you show yourself to the door.”
Dismissed, just like that, as if I were - were Willy Loman. (The next time some girl invites me to a play, I’m going to make sure it’s comedy.) I left quickly, shutting the door behind me, then leaned my head against it for a long moment. The vestibule was dead silent. I noticed the big fern plant in the clay vase was beginning to wilt, neglected with Ororo gone.
A trip to Ireland. To Cassidy Keep.
I wondered if the Star Wars cast needed an extra Wookie.
* * *
Sinyë, sinyë,
iriyakeri ye
Sinyë, sinyë,
Omiha dele kora ma loe
Come, come,
into the red river
Come, come,
You who were sprung from the water
* * *
At some point during the day (in between caring for Ororo’s plants and stalking a clique of rebel students who thought it would be neat to set off firecrackers outside Hank’s lab), Kurt realized he was procrastinating, and remembered that the last time he’d let himself procrastinate he’d landed in the hot seat with Scott yelling at him through a shower of spittle. Having no particular desire to relive the experience, he dragged out his trunk from under the bed and started packing to fly to Ireland.
Kitty often accused him of being a feng shui enthusiast because of his fetish for rearranging the furniture in his room. It had nothing to do with trying to harmonize with the flow of chi. He simply got bored from time to time, and having nothing better to do, he’d rearrange his room. Kitty would tell him he’s absurd, and that nobody in their right mind would position their bed diagonally in the center of the room, but for Kurt new layouts were refreshing (and that bed-centric design only lasted for a few days when a Sentinel blasted a hole right through the middle of his ceiling, and he viewed it as a chance to stargaze.) He’d rearrange his posters too, and once he’d replaced his light with a lava lamp - that stint ended when Logan pitched a football at him and it smashed the lamp to pieces.
Before heading to outer space, Kurt had fixed his room in a standard design: bed in the corner, desk near the window, dresser directly across. Posters hanging straight on the wall (instead of artistically plastered to the ceiling in a sort of collage), books lined up categorically and punctuated by bookends, and his ceramic rosary beads dangling from a nail by the mirror. The only hint of his signature was in the framed photos of his friends fixed to the door: using Photoshop, he’d copied his friends’ faces and placed them on the bodies of his favorite actors. He called it “Celebrities á la Xavier.”
(And people thought Piotr was the artist in the family.)
Thanks to this more orthodox format, he didn’t have trouble gathering his luggage. There wasn’t very much he needed; the Blackbird was equipped with necessities, including an emergency food supply he wasn’t supposed to touch unless he were starving and on the verge of chewing up his own fingers. He threw in some civvies, polo shirts which Kitty claimed made him look like her “thousand-year-old fossil of a Bio-Chem professor” and khaki slacks. He grabbed his wallet and a spare flashlight with extra batteries, then made his best attempt to shut the lid over the pile of books and DVDs he was taking along for entertainment purposes. It would be a lengthy, lonely flight.
There - done in less than twenty minutes. He’d one-upped Bobby once again. The Iceman’s record was twenty-five.
“Where are you off to?” Kitty asked when he ‘ported to the hall with the trunk hefted across his back. She was dressed in the yellow-and-black training garb - “worker bee duds,” as they’d come to be known - and clearly on her way to a Danger Room session.
Kurt paused a moment, turning to examine some graffiti on the wall (“Gambit, Gamby, Bambi, Bambit”). “Ireland. Cassidy Keep.”
“Holy cow, Kurt.” She looked at him with concern as well as mild surprise. “You going to be okay?”
“Ja,” he assured her with a smile. “I’m not going to perform a eulogy. I’m examining Sean’s will. Apparently, that sort of legal work falls within our jurisdiction now.”
“Because Scott jumps at shadows, black cats and lawyers?” Kitty quipped.
“Something like that. And how are you?”
“Busy. Wish I could come with you. You aren’t going alone, right?”
“Actually, yes,” Kurt replied, smiling when her mouth split open in protest. “It’s fine, Katzchen. In fact, it’s better this way. I may need the privacy for so delicate a process.”
“It’s not fine,” she objected. Her arms folded across her chest and her lower lip protruded in a pout. It was absolutely endearing. “He’s so insensitive!” By “he” she meant Scott. “You shouldn’t be doing this on your own. Take Rachel.”
“Was?”
“Rachel! She’s still lounging in the common room on our floor watching soap operas and crummy sitcoms. She was watching General Hospital, Kurt. General Hospital!”
“Ach, this is a crisis.”
“Don’t joke! I’m serious!” she cried. Kurt made himself scowl like James Cagney. “Ooh, I hate you sometimes!”
“I know you don’t mean that, liebchen.”
“Go talk to her,” Kitty advised, throwing her arms around his neck and pulling his head down to peck a furry cheek. “She could use some time out of the Institute.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it.”
“Katzchen...”
Wearing a sprite-like grin, Kitty waved and tripped off down the hallway, her curly ponytail billowing like a banner behind her. Kurt loaded the trunk on his shoulder and ‘ported off to see Rachel.
When the team came back from Shi’ar territory, Rachel stayed in orbit a little longer, plotting vengeance with Alex, Lorna, the Starjammers and her new “friend,” Korvus. (Kurt always put mental quotes there because it was no secret that they were much more than friends, but he didn’t consider gossip becoming of blue furry mutants.) She showed up in her own little pod a few weeks after Kurt and Xavier had returned, disheveled, red-eyed and mum about what she’d gone through out there. Kurt hadn’t seen her much since; after Hank treated her wounds she locked herself in her room and wouldn’t come out, even though both her roommates begged her. Kitty tried to bribe her with a whole pint of cookie dough ice cream, and Laura even offered to work out in the Danger Room with her (which may have only worsened the situation). She finally emerged three days later and took to the common room, watching television or flopping in the armchair by the window and gazing outside at nothing.
That was how Kurt found her, huddled on the couch in a ratty, too-big UConn sweatshirt and gray flannel pajama pants, a bowl of soggy Rice Krispies on the coffee table. The curtains were half-drawn and the television was tuned to some talk show with Tyra Banks. Her voice blared through the speakers amid cheers and applause from the enthusiastic, high-on-caffeine studio audience.
Rachel glanced up as he entered. Her hair was tangled and unwashed and her eyes rimmed with dark circles. “Hullo,” she murmured indolently, lifting a Kleenex to her nose and sniffing.
Dismal, he thought, lolling against the doorframe. Good to cut straight to the point. “Guten abend, liebchen. I was wondering if you were up to going on a small assignment with me.”
She made some sound akin to sigh and hugged a bulky cushion to her chest. “No, I really don’t think so.”
Kurt blinked. He hadn’t expected her to decline so readily. “It’s nothing too strenuous,” he elaborated, watching her carefully. “I’m going to Cassidy Keep to sort out Sean’s possessions.”
“Sounds depressing.”
“Ja.”
“Jeez, Kurt, I don’t want to go.” She sniffed again.
“You don’t want to go to Ireland? With its lush, rolling hills of emerald and magnificent castles of unparalleled splendor, not to mention men in skirts and hats with pom-poms?” He bared his teeth in an enticing grin, treating her to his best come-hither eyebrow waggle. “I’ll even take you to the Cafe-en-Seine when we pass through Dublin.”
“We never spent much time in Ireland,” Rachel contested. “And the Cafe-en-Seine is supposed to be expensive.”
“What harm is there in indulging ourselves with a little extravagance from time to time? Besides, you look like you could use a drink.”
He had her attention now; at any rate, the Kleenex had fallen to the floor and she wasn’t staring blankly at Tyra anymore. “Who else is going?” she asked with a frown.
“Just me,” he replied.
Her face immediately fell and the lower part of her face disappeared back behind the cushion. Annoyed, he folded his arms and glared at her. “Come now, am I really that un-fun?” he prodded.
“It’s not you, Fuzzy,” she answered, mumbling into the threadbare cushion. “Just leave me alone, okay? I’m not going, anywhere unless I have to, and that’s final.”
How had her attitude changed so quickly? This wasn’t the Rachel he knew. That Rachel, Ray the sweetheart, Ray the larking tomboy, would be all over him right now, wanting to hug him and pack her things and be there already all at once. Incredibly vibrant and impossible to restrain. Who was this spiritless, melancholy doppelganger and where was the colorful, the passionate Rachel hiding?
He could order her to go. He was still the team leader, despite Scott’s lack of confidence in him (though at least Scott didn’t provoke him, unlike Bobby and his favorite “let’s-try-Kurt’s-famous-patience” game). But observing her, curled up so dolefully and seeming vulnerable as week-old kitten, he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
“All right then,” he gave in, dropping his shoulders. “In that case I want you to do me a favor. Don’t just sit around here while I’m gone. Kitty’s in a training session right now - you could work out with her. Or the kids would love it if you organized a flag football tournament. We never got around to that student-versus-faculty baseball game we planned last summer.”
She nodded, still staring bleakly at the TV screen, looking for all intents like she wasn’t going to move from that spot until daisies bloomed on Mt. Kilimanjaro. Kurt wanted to say something more, but she’d already tuned out. It upset him to be ignored by her. They were supposed to be friends - why was she acting so distant?
But he had to try to be understanding. Whatever had happened in Shi’ar space had really done a number on her spirit. So he had to comfort her as best he could. Reaching out, he gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze.
Her body tensed and she whirled around in a panic.