Disclaimer: I DO NOT own the X-Men! Put away the hounds, Lee, I admitted it!
A/N: Well! I would probably put a long, boring, sentimental note about how it was nice to write to such wonderful people etc etc etc, but . . . I'm not done yet! So, read the ending, grin, and wait for "14II: Captive"
To Internutter: Thanks for the feathered hat!
Dedication: I hate to admit it, but I only just now read Internutter's "Out of the Darkness", book three in her crisis of Infinite Kurts, and it is so far my favorite! A must-read for elfaholics (me!) and Brotherhood fans.
The end is only the beginning . . .
Epilogue
Straight brown hair fell over her shoulders, restrained only by a headband to keep it out of her eyes.
Amanda held up her hand again, just to make sure that the illusion was working again.
"Liebling!" Kurt called from the door. He was dressed medieval rogue, feathered hat and all. "Art thou in distress?"
She stifled a giggle. "I will be if I don't eat something soon. And don't you get near the stove, fuzz ball -- I refuse to make Cassie sweep burnt blue fur!"
"Ah'm cooking, Amanda!" came a distinctly southern voice from the kitchen. "I don't intend to let Kurt anywhere near the stove. 'Specially in that getup."
"It's not the clothes I'm worried about!"
Rogue and Kurt were in the apartment Amanda and Cassie shared, spending the day helping Amanda recover from her bout with the 'flu'. Cassie was out for the day, so Kurt wasn't bothering with his hologram.
"Aww, lieblings!" he protested, pouting.
Amanda heard Rogue call from the kitchen, "Don't let 'im charm yah! The next thing yah know we'll be picking blue fur out of this and that's not part of the recipe."
"Can I come in if I promise not to shed on anything?" Kurt asked hopefully.
"No! Yah can't promise not to shed on anything, yah just shed!" Rogue called back.
Amanda grinned as Kurt pouted his way into sitting on her headboard. "That's what you get for having a reputation, fuzzy," she pointed out. "You might have burned your feather."
Kurt grinned, leaned down and kissed her. Then he tickled her nose with the feather on his hat.
"Alright, alright, enough!" Rogue rolled her eyes as she came in with a tray. Putting it out in front of Amanda, she set down a bowl. "Mah finest bowl of Cambells chicken noodle soup. That's as close as I get to cooking without poisoning someone."
The invalid giggled. "I guess it's safer than anything with blue --" she made a face, and held up her first spoonful. Kurt shrunk. "fur in my soup."
"I'm sorry!" he protested. "It just fell in!"
"Than don't sit above her, yah mangy furball," Rogue suggested.
Feather flopping about, Kurt stuck his nose up. "Fine! If you do not wish to be gracè deth by my presence, all thee need do is sayeth so!"
"Howeth abouteth thee stop the phonyeth accenteth?" Amanda suggested around a mouthful of (furless) soup. "Stay right where you are. And if you move your tail one more time, I will yank it off!"
"You wouldn't yank my tail off, you like it right where it is. Besides, it has a mind of it's own and you know it," Kurt retorted, settling onto his perch. "It's part of my charm."
"Yah have too much charm for your own good, fuzz ball," commented Rogue.
Kurt shrugged, and Rogue noticed he couldn't seem to stop grinning. "I think of it as a good thing."
"Uh-uh, we're not getting into an argument like that," Amanda protested. "Rogue, you mentioned when you first got here that you wanted to know how I managed to fanangle my way into staying in this country?"
"Yeah."
"Well, about what happened is this: Mother -- Margali -- and Xavier nearly got into a shouting match, I brought up that I was pretty sure the only reason she wanted me back was to continue my apprenticeship, and Kurt and I came up with the idea that I could stay over here as long as I kept up my studies."
"Ah take it yah don't mean geography."
Amanda shook her head. "Nope. As soon as I get out of this verdammt bed, I'm to practice teleporting."
"Great. Now we'll have to put up with both of yah doing it!" Rogue sighed in mock aggravation. "Well, that explains this. How did you get out of being punished by Cassie?"
"That's actually thanks to Mother. She caught me because of the surge of power I used up in the Windshield but when she figured out what I was doing, she shape-changed into Amanda and took my place. Cassie never even knew I was out later than I was supposed to be."
"Margali can shape-shift?"
Kurt sighed. "No one but Margali herself knows exactly what she can do. She's -- extremely powerful, that much is for sure. As little as she made of it, shimmering across an ocean and then shape-shifting without blinking an eye indicates some amount of ability."
Rogue blinked, and kept blinking.
"Oh, forget about Mother. She'll come and go as she pleases, and it's not worth worrying about," Amanda shrugged.
Rogue shrugged. She could understand wanting to forget about mothers -- hers hadn't exactly done wonders for her. "Alright. So, are you actually related to Cassie?"
"Ja, but much farther back than she thinks. Far enough back that neither she nor her mother know they're part Romani," Amanda shrugged. "She's actually a descent of the Romani woman who cursed the Kennedy family."
Rogue just raised her eyebrows. Before she or Kurt could comment on this something beeped imperiously fro the kitchen. "That would be Kurt's food," she glared at her foster-brother. "For a ball of fur you eat as much as an ox." she muttered as she went in the kitchen to get it.
"I though she said she couldn't cook anything without poisoning someone?" Amanda cocked her head at Kurt.
"Mein schwester, although she is an interesting person and, if you know what to look for, kind, loyal, and she even has a sense of humor. She cannot, however, cook anything but the simplest microwave food. She once severely burned macaroni and cheese."
Amanda giggled. "So I could end up in bed longer because of this?"
"Ah heard that!"
The couple wore matching grins. "Would confinement to bed be so bad, liebe?" Kurt wondered before kissing her.
"Not if you keep this up."
"My pleasure."
