[snuggle up real close everyone]

[cephalon]

Who: The fair crew and visitors of the Windrose
Action: Aboard the Windrose
When: May

[It's a mingle! Make friendly everyone~]

Comments

[pain_train]

Yeah, your world is fucked.

[But she's looking at him like she can see through skin and muscle and down into his bones.]

I know what it's like, Kurt. Not exactly, because we're from different places and the details of the shit we were up to our necks in are different. But I know what it's like when you spend all your time being tough as hell and then everything goes tits up in your brain and you have to figure out what in there is real and something you need to worry about and what no longer applies.

They take you out of the shit and don't even wipe you off before they dump you somewhere nice and clean and expect you to know how to act and how to deal with real people like you're a people too. It's hard.

But figuring stuff like this out is a start.

[ecclesiophobic]

[Wrath does not, as a rule, frighten Kurt.

That isn't to say that he underestimates her capability to cause him grievous injury even with her back the way it is. Part of what's kept him with her past that first night is the comfort of knowing that she's as much a soldier as he is, maybe more. She's not a civilian, he won't have to protect her (and he'll surely never bury her.)

But that look there, like his secrets are laid bare for her to peruse, terrifies him right down to his bones. Knowing intellectually that she's not a telepath is the only thing that keeps him still like a mouse instead of bolting. She's too damn accurate, even though the implication of him not being a person makes his jaw tighten against the urge to shout, because he is. He's a man goddammit, not a demon or a pet! (He used to be a man. Now he's just a ghost that breathes and forgets he's dead from time to time.)

Darkholmes, he and his mother both, are secrets kept and lies spun. Shapeshifters are liars to everyone but themselves, and his mother expected him to be one like her. When in another world Margali Szardos was teaching her adopted son to tell the truth, Raven Darkholme was teaching him how to deceive. Then he became a teleporter instead, but being able to spin a pretty tale and keep the X-Men's secrets was still valuable. And then he met a beautiful broken woman who thought he could be her bloody co-conspirator, and he was. After her he met a good woman just as stunning who saw a hero and a husband in him, and he was for her too. And then Logan, after him Meggan, and now?

Now Kurt releases in a slow sigh the breath he'd not been aware of holding until his lungs began to ache, and brings a hand up to rub at his eyes. He can't look at Wrath or he will run, or lash out to piss her off. Why was it so much easier to let those observations slide off his fur when it was Xavier making them?] Wrath, this is my somewhere clean and nice. I.. once before, I had somewhere nice. Pretty home, pretty wife. But the world was in pieces from the first war, all the dying and the dead. And then it broke again.

[Kurt makes himself stop, because that's not what she asked and his throat is tightening anyway. What happened to the man who laughed in the face of horrors that came stumbling out of McCoy's labs? (Dead, all his nerves on the outside, and even back then those abominations showed up in his nightmares.)]

[pain_train]

I know. [That this is his somewhere clean and nice. Just like it's hers, more even than the sudden shock of civilian life in Proles.] And I'm sorry. [It doesn't bother her in the slightest to hear that Kurt had a wife, any of it.]

The past doesn't just go away. [Not unless they excise it from your mind and leave nothing but holes that smell like honey behind. No. Stop that, Wrath. This isn't about you.] And pain sticks harder than happiness, because pain is more important to just surviving than happiness is. That's why this stuff keeps fucking us up. We expect the pain and the shit to keep coming because it's better to be prepared.

And then when it doesn't, what do you do?

[In a way, this has answered her question. Because Kurt has some very specific baggage about Charles, obviously, yes. But it's the endless wellspring of paranoia that fuels it.

Softly:] You keep looking til you find it.

[Maybe Compliance has done her a favor, by leaving her less than ten years of memories from a 42 year life. She understands things on an emotional level, and yes she still has the occasional fear and paranoia response that makes even less sense because she can't directly relate it to an experience. But it means she can't remember all the things she should be scared of, can't go looking for them until they've already hit her and it's too late.

Maybe it's not force of personality that's saved her, after all, or helped her maintain her positive attitude. Maybe she's been stupid and egotistical to even entertain that thought. She just doesn't know what to be afraid of, so she doesn't hesitate.

Maybe she really is a thing created artificially, shaped by mental surgery after surgery, and this (her stupid pink hair, her glittery shoes, her love of fluffy skirts when it's not uniform time) isn't her combating it--it's her being exactly what she was created to be.

No, she tells herself firmly again. Even if that's all true, this isn't the time for her to have some kind of stupid crisis about something that can't be fixed and isn't actually hurting anyone. There's no time for confusion. Focus on Kurt. He's the actual person.]

[ecclesiophobic]

[Kurt huffs out a mirthless laugh.] You apologizing to me, after I tell you like this that I've been married. [He doesn't know if it matters to Wrath; some women, it matters the world to. There's too much on everyone's backs, a dead wife is just more weight to deal with, someone else in their bed even when there are only two bodies. The prospect shouldn't make him sad; for so many reasons, he doesn't deserve the comfort and companionship Wrath offers.

But because he is a selfish man, he accepts it. He sits here and listens to Wrath try to work through his problems when she has so many of her own, instead of pulling himself back together and reassuring her that he'll be fine. Why is it suddenly so difficult?

Kurt draws in a slow breath, not quite as steady as he'd like it to be.] I don't know how else to live. I don't--I've mentioned meeting other versions of myself, ja? Or being told about them? [Kurt raises his head to look at her, the dim glow of his eyes brighter for being overly wet] None of them have lived as long as me. Kurt Wagner--the priest, not the one here--was in his late twenties when he died. Kurt Waggoner was fourteen. They were both from good worlds, at least Wagner was. So why?

All I can think is that they both weren't expecting it. Maybe because their world was good and gave them little reason to believe tomorrow wasn't a guarantee. Maybe because they weren't raised by my mother, who taught me how to look for the lies when I was small. I don't know, all I know is that the last time I let my guard down, I buried my wife.

[pain_train]

Do you think that matters to me? [Little miss casual-sex-and-polyamory? Besides. It's not like they're in a relationship or something, so it's not even her business.] You're my friend and I care about you a lot. So of course I'm sorry that you've lost someone you cared about so much.

[She listens intently. Everything he says makes sense, but she expected it to. You don't build up things in your head in a way that don't make sense, not if you're mostly sane. But.]

Sometimes there isn't a reason. You might be right. I don't know, but you don't either, and sometimes there just isn't a reason. And that's the scariest thing to contemplate. It's easier to believe that there's something you could have done when bad things happen, even if it hurts because it comes with all that guilt. [Because it makes you feel like you at least have some power over your own life, and that you can keep it from happening again. Sometimes you do. Sometimes you don't.]

You have to do what you have to do to survive and do your job. But you're in a different place and these are different people. [She tilts her head.] And some of the things you think helped you survive might not be what actually did the job, and you have to be willing to think about that too.

[Maybe she really does have it easier because she has comparatively so few memories. Maybe she has it easier because her brain's been carved up to specification and she lacks these particular paranoias.]