Author: Dendey

Fandom: X-Men

Genre: kinda self-insert, if you don't mind, though I am going to make her a bit different from me in some ways

Legend:

... thought (mostly just Alex)

"..." spoken (English)

"..." spoken (German)

...'...'... not the best word to express what's needed to be expressed but the only one available at the moment

"" specialy emphasised word

It was dark outside already. No wonder. , she thought distractedly, The movie did start at half past eight. , she reminded herself. Walking to the bus station she studied the plan and came up with the same information she knew already. The last ride to take her home today would leave in ten minutes, so it would arrive in about eight minutes, she decided. Reaching down into her bag, the one slung over her right shoulder and the only one she carried around everywhere, she pulled out her mp3-player and turned it on. Canta per me, from the Noir-CD was a bit longer than three minutes, so she could put it onto repeat and close her eyes for the first repeat. At the beginning of the second repeat she'd have to open her eyes again, to look out for her autobus, but until then she could have some peace, so she simply leaned against the wall of the station and closed her eyes, while already listening to the first soft tunes of the guitar in the background. It was raining so she would be soaking wet when she arrived at home, but it didn't matter to her for she liked the rain, a lot, it always managed to soothe her.

Next time she opened her eyes she simply couldn't believe the image they projected into her head, so she blinked and tried to make them change what she saw, as if it had been just some funny turn of her imagination playing a prank on her mind, but as the image didn't fade away to be replaced by the familiar bus station, she just turned off her music and did the next best thing that came to mind: she swore.

"Holy fucking shit!", it was out of her mouth a lot faster than it would've normally been. But today wasn't a normal day. Today was the day she'd seen 'X-Men III-The Last Stand' with English synchronization and German subtitles, which she had totally ignored. But before that she'd done a lil' X-Men session at home, watching the first two movies just before leaving for the cinema to have a go at the third. See she was a German twenty-one-year-old, so it wasn't natural for her to swear in English.

She had just an eye blink of time to take in the office and the assembled people around, before the verbal assault began. But what she could tell after that tiny amount of time was a surprising lot. She was apparently leaning against a bookcase in Charles Xaviers study, the man himself, smiling like he knew all the secrets of the world, was seated behind his desk, probably in his wheelchair, in front of the desk and to her right there stood Nightcrawler with a shocked expression plastered across his face, probably about the 'holy' bit of her earlier statement. To her left Storm was lounging in an armchair, obviously she was quite comfortable there and not in the least put out by her sudden, how had that happened by the way, appearance nor her quite rude comment, to Nightcrawler's left and with that quite much in front of her, Cyclops was standing, halfway turned around to be able to see the one who had dared to use such bad language in his presence while not going by the name of Wolverine. Considering that Wolverine too was in the office, standing off to the left, arms crossed in front of his chest and leaning casually against the door, blocking the only escape route apart from the windows and with that sealing the gathering off from prying eyes, she was surprised to be still alive. Okay, so maybe she wasn't the most threatening kind of person, but she certainly would consider someone appearing out of thin air a threat. Well, maybe not after all they were already accustomed to Nightcrawler, weren't they? And just how did she know that that in front of her was a gathering? Easy to tell, as they were all wearing their battle gear and by the way, her leather coat was the only leather article in the study that was dripping wet, but nobody seemed to care about the mess it made out of the carpet.

"I resent that statement!", the blue mutant declared with the passion for his belief clearly showing in his eyes.

"What are you doing here anyway? You aren't allowed to be here, get out!", Cyclops was fuming with anger and it wasn't too comforting for her to know that she was the cause for his anger or had she just fueled it? Maybe Wolverine had been picking on him again and he was just letting go of some steam he couldn't take out on anyone else at the moment?

"Wouldn't you like to sit down?", Storm gently offered her, creating a wind to blow an armchair to her right where she was supposed to sit down now.

"I agree.", nobody was quite sure if Wolverine had meant her earlier statement, the one of Nightcrawler, Cyclops', Storm's or another none of them had heard, but neither seemed to care much about that.

All of them turned to the professor, who had yet to utter a word in the presence of their new addition to this meeting. He just gestured her towards the chair, so she decided to comply. She pushed herself away from the bookcase, took some careful steps around the still fuming field-leader of the X-Men and let herself sink down into the armchair, while all the time her eyes were locked onto the professors.

"Welcome to my School for Gifted Youngsters. I am Charles Xavier and these are Ororo Monroe, Scott Summers, Kurt Wagner and Logan.", he indicated each of them to her, even if he hadn't needed to do so, but he couldn't've possibly known that, so she played along. Looking and nodding at everyone of them in greeting.

"Now...would you care to tell me your name and how you managed to get here on your own?", the professor asked her. Apparently he thought her to be another troubled mutant kid and didn't want to scare her.

"Well, greetings sir...you see my name is Alex...", she started to answer the easy question, but wasn't too sure about how to answer the second. The professor noticed the slight pause and decided to fill it.

"It's nice to meet you Alex.", he smiled at her kindly, that little facial action made the wrinkles around his mouth and eyes a little more noticeable and she was sure they were ones of laughter. She knew the man in front of her to be the 'good guy', so she decided to trust him with the truth. For the first second there she had thought all of this to be fake, but when Storm had moved the armchair for her to sit in, she'd stated to believe that this was reality and not some well placed special effect.

"I don't really know how I got here.", Alex admitted and instantly went on when the professor didn't seem to be surprised in the least.

"One minute I was at a bus station, just waiting and listening to music to pass the time, next time I open my eyes I'm here and exclaiming my confusion about that. Sorry for the immature display of swearwords by the way.", she hoped her apology would be accepted, but most of all she hoped that her grammar nor vocabulary hadn't failed her and that they hopefully hadn't noticed her accent. She knew it wasn't as strong as Nightcrawler's, but she knew she wasn't perfect either.

"Well, that sounds interesting and please don't worry about your 'immature display of swearwords'. Firstly this is a school so it didn't surprise me as much as you might have thought it would and secondly I know some other people with a rather colorful language. Present ones included.", he smiled mischievously.

"Uhm okay.", she wasn't sure if it was the right comeback, but found that it didn't matter.

"So you don't know how you came here, but surely there must have been a reason for you to turn up here. Do you happen to know your powers, by the way?", he prodded for further information.

Of course he's prodding! He knows noting about me and I'm not really sharing what little knowledge I have. , she thought angrily to herself.

"Not really. Look apparently I've been interrupting something important here, so maybe it would be of more help if I just waited outside until you're finished with whatever you had to discuss.", After all, I did interrupt one of their meetings, so there should be something to worry about. , she reasoned with herself. She rose from the armchair, just to be pushed back down by a heavy hand on her right shoulder. Maybe Cyclops didn't agree with her idea?

"No! You'll stay and explain yourself!", he demanded.

Jeeze! He's pretty rude. Really he didn't need to try and bite my head off! He could've just opened his damned mouth! , by now she too was angry and at the border of being rude enough to swear again, but instead of that she just shrugged the gloved hand off of her shoulder and settled for glaring at his visor.

"Kids.", Xavier sighed. "Please be nice."

"I would, if he wouldn't behave like such a damned ass!", she angrily pointed out, not even realizing that she'd switched back into German, but Nightcrawler had. He did not only notice, but he understood the insult and tried to sooth her in his mother tongue. She needed to calm down if she wanted the others assembled to understand her as well.

"Maybe he wouldn't behave like that if you just told us how you happened to be here all of a sudden.", he encouraged her kindly.

She heaved a deep sigh to calm down, then started to explain herself.

"I was just out of the cinema, waiting for my bus to take me home; it was raining, so I was listening to music to pass the time; I closed my eyes to relax a bit and the next time I opened them I was standing in your study, Professor.", she stated the bare facts.

"How come you know that I am a professor?", he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

"Well, you did say that this was your school."

"Does that necessarily mean that I have to be a professor?"

"Not really, but I know that you are a professor at your own school. For physics, if I'm not mistaken."

"How do you know that?", now he sounded truly surprised and that somehow managed to scare Alex a little. After all if he had no idea about anything that couldn't be a good sign, could it?

"Easy, I'll show you.", with that she reached down into her bag to pull two DVD's out, both X-men movies. The third was still running through the cinema's so it wouldn't be released onto DVD for quite a while. She laid them down on top of his desk, for all of them to see and she could tell one thing already: it certainly wasn't what they had expected her to do.

/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\/\\\

"So you come from where again?", it certainly seemed as if Cyclops still wasn't able to grasp the concept of the situation, even if she'd told them all there was to know about her already, five times now if anyone beside her had managed to care enough and keep track. She was a twenty-one-year-old German girl with absolutely no idea of how or why she got to be here.

"Germany.", she replied calmly, relying on every fiber of self control she had managed to create inside herself.

"So that's why I know you?", Kurt suddenly asked curious, while his tail seemed to be interested in the design on her bag. It was a black bag with a red dragon sewed upon it, decorated with some fashion plastic things she couldn't name.

"You know me? How so?", she asked him. She was a little puzzled by that statement.

"I've seen you before."

"Where?"

"Paris."

"I've never been there."

"Inside of the Notre Dam.", he clarified.

"Uh-uh.", she shook her head in the negative to emphasize her statement.

"Singing."

That was the last straw. Apparently he really knew her from somewhere, but she'd truly never been to Paris. But it was something she would have done, visit Notre Dam and sing there, preferably with the rest of her choir. Fact was, she hadn't done that...yet? When was she anyway?

"That can't have been me. Look I don't remember ever doing so, maybe it was me but...another me.", she carefully suggested.

"What are you playing at? Another you?", apparently Alex had been wrong in her earlier assumption about Cyclops, because now seemed to be the exact moment at which he truly lost track of the conversations subject or maybe she just needed to explain herself a bit better.

"Do you have a twin?", Storm suggested.

"None that I know of, but anyway it's not what I was trying to suggest. Can you please tell me what date it is?", she carefully edged around the real question she wanted to ask.

"It's the second of October, two thousand twenty six.", the professor supplied, sounding surprised but also deeply engrossed into a tricky riddle.

"Shit! That's what I feared.", Alex sighed.

"What did you fear?", Kurt asked her carefully, sounding truly curious, interested even and understanding.

"I'm not from this time.", she stated. And I fear I'm not from this universe, dimension, whatever either.

"When I 'left', for lack of a better word, home it was the twenty fifth of July, two thousand six.", now she'd truly dropped a bomb.

"Twenty years.", Cyclops mumbled to himself.

"That's a hell of a lot of time.", Wolverine remarked and Alex had to silently agree with him. "More than fifteen years."

"Well, at least you remember the past fifteen years. What would you say if the world went on without you for twenty years and you have no clue at all about all that?", Alex countered without much thought.

"What would you say if you didn't remember anything but the past fifteen years of your life?", he demanded angrily.

"Easy, I'm only twenty-one so I expect it wouldn't matter to me all that much. But considering you're talking about yourself and I had to imagine how I'd feel, well then I'd say: Life sucks!", it was true, it was how she would feel. She'd feel like life sucked and she'd probably do something stupid, too. She had no idea if Logan had ever done something as stupid as what she just considered doing herself, but decided: no probably not, otherwise he wouldn't be still around but buried with the famous R.I.P. gracing his tombstone.

"You have the guts to snarl that to my face?", Logan seemed to have gone rigid.

Maybe that wasn't such a good idea after all? Alex wondered briefly.

"Well, kid, you have spirit.", he smirked down at her and even managed a little lift of the corners of his mouth, so there could be imagined to be something akin to a smile on his facial features.

"Thanks.", she grinned back at him, feeling truly relieved on the inside.

So, maybe the Wolverine wont rip me to shreds after all! , she cheered.

"She can stay, can't she?", he asked the professor eagerly.

Wow. Two options! One: he truly thinks I have 'spirit' or two: he wants to piss off Cyclops even more than he already did. It's probably option two. , she sighed mentally.

"Of course she can. Would you like to Alex?", Xavier was quick to confirm.

"Well, I dunno. At the moment I have nowhere else to go, but part of my family should still be in L.A.", she contemplated her options carefully. From what she knew she was in Westchester, New York, three time zones away from L.A. and six from Germany, so yes it would be a good option to be able to stay at the school for a while.

"I could call your family and until they can take the time to pick you up you'll stay here. Deal?", he offered.

"Deal.", she was quick to accept.

"Ororo? Could you then please show Alex to a room?"

"Surely.", with that she was out of the chair and at the door, from which Logan stepped away to allow her to pass through.

"Thank you, professor.", her piece said Alex too rose from her chair and followed Storm through the maze they called a school until they reached a spare room for her to stay in.